Keeping Romance Alive in the New Parents Stage
The question, “Is there Sex After Kids?” reveals a common understanding among parents of new-born children: sexual desire and opportunity for sex can easily hit an all-time low! Is there anything easy about the new parents stage? Not much.
The New Parents Stage Can Be Easy:
Mutual excitement with the upcoming birth—and then the exhilaration and joy after a successful delivery can certainly draw couples together.
That’s about it for easy!
The New Parents Stage Can Be Hard:
Sleep deprivation and a demanding new born often bring physical and emotional exhaustion that can even develop into depression. This, of course, is a common reason for lack of sexual desire.
This exhaustion coupled with higher-than-normal levels of anxiety over lack of experience as parents can make this stage quite stressful.
Focused attention on the baby’s needs result in the legitimate emotional and physical needs of both mother and father not being met. Feelings of isolation and separation between parents can result.
Tips for Couples In the New Parents Stage:
Prior to the arrival of the new baby, develop plans to manage each other’s physical and emotional needs.
Ask the following questions:
How will household chores and other responsibilities be handled?
What can be done to intentionally connect emotionally and physically?
Is there a support group (grandparents/ friends) that can be called upon to help?
Consciously juggle the priorities of your newborn and your spouse. Both are important and must not be neglected.
The first step is communicating! Keep talking about it and come to mutual decisions and strategies to intentionally bring parents together emotionally.
Although the new parents stage is both easy and mostly, very hard…the key is to enjoy this stage of your marriage!
This is part 2 of a 5-part series: Keeping Romance Alive in “Every Season of Marriage”.
