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Brittany L. Bergman

Savoring motherhood, building marriage, and living simply

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7 Ways to Strengthen Your Marriage Before Having a Baby

Nov 9 35 Comments

I think it’s sweet when I see posts on social media about how women love their husbands even more after watching them become dads. I have definitely shared this experience — my love for Dan has grown much deeper as we learn to parent together, as I watch him fall more and more in love with our little girl, as he changes countless dirty diapers without complaint.

But I have to be honest and say that our relationship has been stretched and tested by the fires of new parenthood. In the midst of sleep deprivation, intense responsibility, and raging hormones (mostly mine), we’ve had to make some of the most important decisions of our lives. The experience of being a new parent is a crucible of change, and as we continue walking through it, I’m so grateful for the ways we developed healthy habits before we had a baby.

There’s nothing that can truly prepare you to have a baby, but I do think there are many things you can do to strengthen your marriage before welcoming a child into the world.

The experience of being a new parent is a crucible of change. There’s nothing that can truly prepare you to have a baby, but I do think there are many things you can do to strengthen your marriage before welcoming a child into the world.

 

1. Make dating each other a habit.

This probably isn’t new information for any of us — there’s so much good dialogue happening about the importance of dating your spouse! I’d add to this, explore what makes time together feel like a “date” for you. Maybe a date means being out of the house, even if it’s just going to the grocery store together. Maybe a date means quality time and undivided attention for a conversation, even if it’s on your own couch. It’s not always possible to get out for traditional dates when you have a young baby, so knowing how to make your time together feel like dating is so important.

2. Become fluent in each other’s love languages.

Babies bring on a bit of tunnel vision, and if you’re not used to speaking your spouse’s love language, it can be hard to learn to do it once the baby is taking up so much of your brain space. If you’re not sure what your love language is, you can take the quiz here.

3. Get comfortable asking for what you need.

I had to ask for so much help when Selah was small (heck, I still do), and I had to learn to get over my guilt at doing so pretty quickly. It’s not that Dan didn’t want to help, he just wasn’t sure how, so I had to make it clear what I needed. It would be easy to try to do it all yourself until you get overwhelmed and snap, pleading for help, but if you learn to ask for help graciously now, it will really go a long way as your family grows.

4. Learn to handle conflict well and extend forgiveness quickly.

Having a baby results in . . . well, let’s just say some differences of opinion. There is so much to think about, research, decide, and do, and you’re trying to make decisions for the health and well-being of your child while also being sleep deprived. It breeds some conflict, folks. Learning to share your opinions graciously, listen well, and find unity in conflict is critical to staying on the same parenting team, even if you have different parenting styles or models from your childhood. There are a million little ways you can hold a grudge against your husband in the early days of parenting (and a million little ways he could do the same to you!), but choosing to let go of the little things and forgive quickly will serve your marriage and your children well.

5. Determine your financial goals and establish healthy habits.

Babies don’t come cheap, friends. It’s wise to plan for big expenses like doctor appointments, hospital bills, and baby needs, but it’s also wise to think beyond these immediate expenses. Do you want to be able to buy a house before you have a baby? Do you need a more family-friendly vehicle? Does one of you want to stay home when the baby arrives, or will you both continue working? Considering the bigger financial questions and making decisions together will help you know when the time might be right for a child and how you’ll make things work once he or she arrives.

6. Adopt a pet.

I’m well aware that taking care of a pet is not at all as difficult as raising a little human, but I do think caring for an animal can teach us many transferrable lessons. When we adopted Riley, it forced Dan and me to learn how to divide up care, work through our conflict about the best ways to train and raise Riley, and together put someone else’s needs ahead of our own. It was also such a cool new bonding experience as we worked together to take care of someone we deeply love together, and it made us even more excited to welcome Selah. (One caveat, because I just have to say it: don’t adopt a pet unless you’re 100% committed to loving this animal for its whole life. Obviously things happen that can change your ability to care for an animal in the way it needs, but don’t adopt a pet just to test things out.)

7. Travel together.

We all know it’s more difficult to travel once you have a baby. It’s completely possible, albeit a little stressful. My reasoning for this one is less about the post-baby difficulties of travel and more about how traveling together shapes a marriage. You learn so much about navigating new circumstances together, communicating well, and handling conflict and stress as a team when you travel. You also create memories and a shared history you can draw on when times get tough and the days become more mundane.

Dan and I definitely did not master these habits before having our first baby, nor do we do these things perfectly now, but we have been very intentional about developing these habits. They have served us well as we’ve learned to be true partners and preserve unity in these early days of parenting, and they are helping us model for Selah the type of marriage we want her to believe in.

What would you add to this list? What helped you to strengthen your marriage before having kids?

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Filed Under: Marriage, Motherhood Tagged With: family, habits, intention, love, marriage, motherhood, relationships

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brittanylbergman

Brittany L. Bergman
✔️ Kamala shirt ✔️ Kamala pearls ✔️ Ka ✔️ Kamala shirt
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✔️ Kamala curls

It’s a great day to witness the shattering of a glass ceiling, to embrace empathy and decency, and to breathe a collective sigh of relief.

The work is only just beginning, but today, we celebrate. Congratulations, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris! 👏🏼🎉💙
What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaki What a beautiful, exhausting, festive, heartbreaking, cozy, chaotic-but-strangely-quiet Christmas we had. ✨🎄✨

That’s a wrap for me on 2020—I’ll be off social media until sometime in January. May you be filled with peace and hope as we close this year but still wait for the close of this chapter in our history. 💜
I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; d I have faced Christmases full of grief and loss; depression and rage; exhaustion and loneliness. But I can honestly say this is the weariest Christmas I can remember. I say that not to shine a spotlight on me, but to say that I have a feeling this might be your experience too. I’m with you.
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And so the words to my favorite Christmas hymn hit me different this year. They resonate in a place much deeper, more tender and true than ever before. I rejoice in the giggles of my meltdown-prone child. I rejoice in stolen moments alone in the dark, the room lit only by the glow of the Christmas tree. I rejoice in every video and every social media post I see of a frontline worker receiving the COVID vaccine, our ticket out of this nightmare. I rejoice in the vision that next Christmas might look more familiar than this one does. I rejoice in the hope of Christ, whose universal, creative, motherly love holds the whole universe together.
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On this Christmas Eve, I’ll leave you with this quote from Howard Thurman. I hope these words bring a slant of light to your day.
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“The symbol of Christmas—what is it? It is the rainbow arched over the roof of the sky when the clouds are heavy with foreboding. It is the cry of life in the newborn babe when, forced from its mother’s nest, it claims its right to live. It is the brooding Presence of the Eternal Spirit making crooked paths straight, rough places smooth, tired hearts refreshed, dead hopes stir with newness of life. It is the promise of tomorrow at the close of every day, the movement of life in defiance of death, and the assurance that love is sturdier than hate, that right is more confident than wrong, that good is more permanent than evil.”
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Whatever and however you celebrate at this time of year, I’m sending you all my love and peace. 💫
I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in I found my Christmas spirit this weekend, just in the nick of time.

I baked cookies with Selah without getting frustrated (first time ever?), took the kids on drive to see Christmas lights, and wrapped a bunch of gifts.

But here’s what I think did the trick, and please do steal this idea (because I stole it from someone else but have no idea who): Magical Movie Night™️.

On Saturday night, I stealthily placed a golden ticket under Selah’s pillow (which I printed from the internets and colored quickly with a yellow marker; good enough is good enough for Magical Movie Night!). We put Eamon to bed and got Selah ready for bed too, going through all the normal motions of brushing teeth, putting on pajamas, picking out a book. When we climbed into bed, I told her to look under her pillow.

She was confused when she found the ticket, and I told her it was for a Christmas movie night. “When?” she asked. “Right now!” I said. “What do you mean ‘right now’?” When it dawned on her that she was going to stay up past her bedtime to have a special movie night with Mommy and Daddy (sans Eamon), she lost her mind with excitement.

Bonus: Gramma was waiting downstairs with a bag of popcorn and Swedish Fish!

We snuggled under blankets, turned on Elf, and laughed our festive butts off. (This was her first time watching Elf, and it felt like the dawning of a new era. It’s such a big kid movie! And she loved it! Hold me. 😭)

Deck the halls, bring on Christmas, fill my mug with holly jolly goodness. 

I also acknowledge this has been a crappy year in so many ways, and I know many of you are not going to be able to access Christmas cheer this year. That’s okay. The real spirit of Christmas is light breaking through the dark, love making a way, and the beauty that can’t help seeping through the dirty, messy, horribly human moments of our lives. So you’re covered.

(And if you want to fake it ’til you make it, give Magical Movie Night a try. It’s the actual easiest.)
In which I couldn’t come up with a clever captio In which I couldn’t come up with a clever caption. There are signs of life but my brain is dead. 💀
“This is what I find most mystifying about Adven “This is what I find most mystifying about Advent: the period of waiting ultimately ends in great joy, but we can’t get to that great joy without intense, active, unbearable pain. In Advent we sense the mingling of anticipation and anxiety, excitement and disappointment, joy and pain, hope and fear.
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“On this side of history, we have the luxury of waiting with great hope, great joy, and great expectation. We know Jesus will be born, we know he will save us and redeem us, we know he will die and rise again, and we know he will set all things right one day.
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“But before Christ came, Advent was dark. It was lonely and unknown, as the Israelites waited in faith to hear from God, and all they got was… nothing. Silence.
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“Isn’t this more characteristic of the waiting we usually do? The waiting seasons of our lives are less often marked by joy and hope and more often marked by pain and fear. They are not often cozy or comforting but difficult and dark and even laborious.
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“We wait as a pregnant mother waits for her child to be born—there’s a vision of the joy to come, to be sure, but in the throes of gut-wrenching labor pains, we think we might actually die before we see that joy fulfilled. After a long season of pregnancy, when the fullness of time has arrived, the advent of labor ushers in the real period of waiting—and it is active and painful and raw.”
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// From “In the Fullness of Time,” a new blog post on @first15. There’s a link in my bio to the whole piece, with thoughts on pregnancy, Advent, and waiting well in an exceptionally hard year. 💜 Thank you so much to @first15 for publishing this post!
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Brittany L Bergman is a for-profit blog. Any company that I collaborate with is chosen by me and fits the theme and readership of my blog. At times, posts may contain affiliate links or sponsored content, which is never at any charge to you.

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