Never loose your bond,
Stay Connected and Communicate
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Know that the first 6 months to a year are the hardest. You will feel disconnected, alone, emotional, anxious. You will be exhausted mentally and physically. Little things like a sock on the floor, will make you meltdown, cooking beans in a pan, you will get wrong. It will feel like everyone is judging you. Depression can quite easily set in here, for one or both of you, 60% of partners will slip into depression if their partner is depressed. Mirror emotions... Anger = Anger, Happy = Happy.
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STOP! Breath and reset.
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Look at the ball of joy you brought into the world. Look at your partner and think of Clooney, Vin Diesel or in my husband's head Katie Cassidy, then reality hits.
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Talk.
Simple but effective, tell your partner how your feeling, ask your partner how they are doing? Be supportive and work together. It is simple but guess what, it works. Remember how and why you fell in love with your partner.
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Try new things you like doing together.
Everyone loves trying new things, it doesn’t have to scary or insane but a new restaurant, if you don’t have a baby sitter it does mean you have to take your child with you. You cannot leave them at home or in the car. Shame! Do something together, cook, read the same book, do something sweet for each other.
Appreciate your partner.
Buy small tokens, nothing massive, a bar of dairy milk, flowers, bath salts, a DVD with popcorn, say I love you, Thank you, ask them how they are doing. Its simple things, things we take for granted.
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Be Adventurous with sex don’t get in a rut.
I and my partner have struggled with this, I run 3 businesses and he works 24/7 shifts. So this advice is one I need to work on myself. We are not all perfect, writing and doing are two different things. With a little one and jobs, you’re often too tired to have sex at night. All you want to do is eat chocolate, drink wine and pass out. But daytime sex is another story! When your little one goes down for their nap, steal this moment for an intimate moment together, and make sure it’s not rushed or lacks desire, if it’s that, you might as well just go in the room on your own with a wand. Though sometimes you might feel more satisfied. Kidding!
Talk about and even try and do a fantasy to bring the excitement back.
Be spontaneous, become teenagers again, there so many more rooms in a house than the bedroom… if you drop your child off somewhere, grandparents, school, etc. bonus of being parents 7/10 of us that drive, upgrade our cars to larger ones after having children. Just a thought... an FYI on this, back seats are long gone due to the Isofix systems! By the time you have unhooked a child seat, the passion has gone!
Some people even schedule sex in, for me this lacks passion but is an option.
Remember sex is not everything but it really does help with emotional well-being in the form of happiness and balance. It really gets your endorphins rising and this can only be a good thing!
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Go on date nights with friends.
Enjoy adult time, if you go out with friends that also have children, it might be worth sharing a sitter to save some money. Let them have an adventure of their own. But try not to talk about Harry and Larry all night it becomes boring. Subjects to touch on and move on quickly:
1 -Jobs,
2-Kids,
If you don’t, these are the subjects that you will keep referring to. Talk about holidays, shopping, sex, let the guys talk about whatever they talk about, Spurs and Chelsea. But just talk and laugh!
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Get away from each other.
Seriously this is something you need to do as otherwise you will want to kill each other. You will get wound up by the smallest of things. You need your own space, even if its 3 hours in the bath or mowing the lawn. Have your own time with your own thoughts.
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