I will be a first time Dad in the next month or so and this past nine months I have felt a change in me.
- easily frustrated
- annoyed when asked for things constantly
- I’ve found it very hard to be intimate with my wife
I do have the common stresses of being self employed but I am very fortunate buying a new house recently a baby boy coming I feel like I should be just 24/7 happy and it should bring me and my wife closer but I feel like I am finding it hard to be close to her let alone being intimate.
Would like some input from others with life experience!
Comments
Therapy therapy therapy.
Have you told her how you feel?
Therapy therapy therapy
Why are you asking Reddit? It will only get harder after the baby is born.
Therapy therapy therapy
Man, there are people who are infertile and can never have kids.
Remind yourself of things you are grateful for. For having good pregnancy, wife going through it, having a son soon.
Also make sure to take time to yourself, to rest, to enjoy little things in life.
The expectation is that you “should” be happy. The reality is that you’re stressed, TFO!
A new baby, a new house, your work schedule, expenses, financial stability, all of those things are now in limbo and 100% dependant upon YOU, and if you fail, your entire empire crumbles. Right?
Take a moment to breathe. Take it one day at a time. Take a look around you. Be thankful for the life you have, the things you have, the people in your life.
Then sit down with your wife and discuss expectations. Who cooks, cleans, car maintenance, yard work, pays bills, who spends time with the baby, changes diapers, who gets a night out, how often do these things take place, will you hire a cleaning lady, will mom go back to work, what will life look like once you bring that precious baby home? (You’ll both comfort the baby differently, as well as discipline and play differently.)
It’s not the end of the world. It’s a beautiful new beginning! Just make sure to keep things light and have plenty of open communication, and you’ll be fine.
Parenting is hard , but the right partner being on the same page and trusting their ability is crucial. You can’t over communicate…
It was really hard for me to be physically intimate with my wife during her second pregnancy. We had a loss on the first and the specialist recommended that she goes on bed rest, with very limited physical contact. Doctor told me “oh you’ll survive”. Lots of scares along the way but the baby made it through. He was right. I survived.
Postpartem, I wasn’t supposed to have sex until a few months after she had the baby. Of course I was kept in the dark because her OB/GYN gave her a date and it just so happened to be December 25th. Wife decided to write a note as a Christmas gift to inform me we could do the deed again. By then…it had been a full year.
What really helped both of us is physical touch. Lots and lots of it. Wife recalled the same. Especially postpartem.
Meanwhile she is growing an entire human being inside her with constant changes in her body that no man could ever fully comprehend This is your time to learn as much as you possibly can about everything that goes on with her and become the man she needs Remember afterwards also that the body will need about as much time healing as she took incubating and growing your child Your sacrifice is minimal in comparison but the stress is there so education is key
Having a kid will not bring you and your wife closer together. More likely the opposite.
You need to be prepared for the possibility that your sex life won’t return to normal for at least a year if it returns at all.
Best of luck, cowboy.
Communication.
No one prepared me for all the mismatches in moods and finances and stress etc that occur in relationships.
Maybe Im just lucky, but it feels more than likely more of a response of me getting older and enforcing boundaries.
But we talk about everything. Our mismatched incomes, our mismatched labidos, our mismatched challenges and emotional rollercoasters.
And shit doesnt make sense sometimes, but we know and talk about our love and commitment for each other, and how we’re on this roller coaster together. And its worrisome, but less so when we know we have each other’s back, and a bad day for one of us isnt the end of the world or the relationship.
So pregnancy is temporary. And it can disrupt and complicate things. Just like job loss, death, emergencies, health concerns, etc.
The big thing is keep talking about it. You both might be worried and scared about the changes and unexpected outcomes.
But was your relationship just based on physical/sexual chemistry? Or is this just another challenge to discuss, share, and overcome together?
While sex was so important early on in our relationship, I think we both found there is so so much more to life and relationships than just sex/intimacy.
And while at some points intimacy is just sex, sometimes it is so much more.
When I was younger I thought Id fuck everday. But im older, more exhausted and tired, my hormone levels have changed, etc.
Im older now, communicate better/more. And I am so lucky to have a partner I can communicate with about both the good and bad, the scary, then new etc.
So the path forward is unknown, and you’ll both be better off discussing it and figuring it out together.
I had the same thing with our first child, it freaked me out, I was totally over it on #2. You are stressed, that is normal, once the baby comes you will forget all of this. She is probably pregnancy horny too. I don’t know how I worked though it but it was all fine in the end.
You’ve just described some reasons why DV often begins when a partner is pregnant ( to clarify: by absolute scumbags whose behaviour I do not condone in any way)