This is our third, so no real surprises this time, but that has given us a lot of time to reflect on where we are and where we've been in our 10 years together (8 years married). Most specifically we reflect on our relationship changes after the birth of our first.

Nothing is more amazing, and life altering, than the birth of your first child. However, as we (mothers) go into new-Mommy-mode, which entails becoming ultra-child focused, my husband says that men go into "caveman mode" - i.e. "New baby, ugh, must provide more saber-toothed-tiger meat, ugh". Both reactions are primal, and normal... but they serve to create a gap between husbands and wives, one that surprises us (all, not just moms) as we assumed the baby would bring us together as co-parents. Men run to working more, and mom's find that despite their most innate desire to love, hold and protect our new babies, we desire time to ourselves and we don't know how to create that time. When the men come home we hand over baby, and rush off to take showers, or make dinner, or whatever.

It comes to us as a surprise that we're still supposed to have relationships outside of our role as "Mommy", and it may even be a stressor. We have to resume our roles as "wife", "partner", and "lover" - but at the onset it's just something else we have to do (along with the laundry, feeding baby, and getting ourselves clean for the day)!!! Our husbands become secondary - because they don't NEED us as obviously as the babies do... but in reality, they DO need us. Just in a different way.

For me, to reconcile myself in all my roles took time, and thankfully the understanding and patience of my husband. He recognized his own innate urges as a new father (to run to work more, rather than being home where I felt I needed him) and potential shortcomings (being at work, NOT being the father both I and the new baby needed him to be), and I recognized the cognitive dissonance I was facing as the multiple roles clashed in my head and in my body. In the end we were able to come together to a better place, one where we DID co-parent, and we valued each other more for the people we'd become since the birth of our first daughter (and then subsequent children).

Neither of us would change a thing.