Was pregnancy hard on your marriage too?
Pregnancy is hard. Marriage is hard. Put them together and they can be super duper hard. The weeks and months leading up to pregnancy are exciting. They are filled with sex and baby names, but mostly sex. So needless to say, marriage is pretty strong at that point. The first couple weeks into pregnancy are fun and exciting too. You and your husband have a big secret about a tiny person and the emotional intimacy that comes along with sort of secret is unreal! Then week 6 hits (about 2 weeks after finding out about your bean)...
Aaaaaaand your face is in the toilet 24/7. Morning sickness my ASS! Sick in the morning. Sick in the evening. Sick during the day. Sick so long that you swear new times of day emerge just so you can be sick during them. While you used to be a star chef (notice I say "you" not "I"), you can no longer stand long enough to wait for a grilled cheese sandwich to be ready. Dinner and the cleaning and the shopping all fall in to your amazing husband's hands. Does he get a reward? Nope. Those days of romping around are few and far between. Whoever said that you get hornier while pregnant is a tramp. A big fat ugly tramp who should be punched in the throat for making the rest of us mamas feel like we are bad at yet one more thing.
Second trimester hits and you expect to get better. You don't. Still sick. Popping Zofran like it's the newest designer drug. The sickness may eventually fade and you realize that you are not the person you were before the sickness. You lack the joy and the liveliness you had prior to this little person attaching itself to your uterine lining. You are not the person your husband fell in love with. Instead you are some other hormone-created robot that sits in the shell of your former self. You don't feel like yourself and you fear it will last forever.
Third trimester brings you aches and pains from your growing body, but it also brings doubts and fears and self loathing. Those hormones strike again and they are the meanest. The hormones tell you lies. They say, "you will not be a good mother" or "you will never be happy again." And your husband who has lost you to these hormones for the past 6 months wants to relate but doesn't know how. At about 8 months, his patience weans and he feels like he may snap if you say, "You don't understand because you aren't pregnant." You feel isolated. He feels isolated.
Birth comes and he falls in love with you all over again. He sees you as the strong and capable woman that he married. He's carried you through 9 long and trying months, but is helpless in these final moments of pregnancy and it all balances itself out. Finally your family is full and happy and you get back to normal...
7 months later it happens all over again.
Mamas, you are normal. You are not a failure. You are an incredible wife and mother. Talk to your partner. Write it down if you must. Know that this passes, but work to get back the intimacy you had prior to pregnancy. It's so worth it.
