Page 163: Parents almost always guessed the five-start big event or vacation that took meticulous planning and buckets of cash. It can be as simple as Thanks for changing that last epic diaper, I was about to pass out from the fumes. There it is ladies, 5 honest tips from a relatively new mum who went through war (literally) with her husband.

She suggests that moms make a conscious effort to prioritize activities that bring them joy and relaxation and to communicate their needs and boundaries to their partners and families.

Regardless, during that time, make sure you touch regularly to maintain closeness — a quick squeeze on the arm, slinging your legs over his while you’re watching a movie. What we observe as “normal” in our households has a profound impact on children and what they will perceive to be normal in adulthood. A friend of mine recently said, about her husband and new baby girl, “He would take a bullet for this kid, but he might forget to put a hat on her. Two months into our daughter’s existence, my husband, Tom, and I nearly came to blows over whose turn it was to empty the Diaper Genie, whose plastic entrails had become bloated and coiled like a postprandi

With over 6 million of the world’s best eBooks to choose from, Kobo offers you a whole world of reading. Before this pandemic and parenthood, Sam was an avid traveller who split her time between cruising down the coast of California and frolicking on exotic beaches in Asia. Use of this site constitutes acceptance of our User Agreement and Privacy Policy and Cookie Statement and Your California Privacy Rights. It’s in this transition that you may have to remind yourself to extend grace to your significant other. The parent can do whatever they want during that time– sleep in, exercise, nothing at all, without comment from their partner.New York City–based time management consultant Julie Morgenstern told me to ask myself this game-changing question if I was about to pick a fight: “What does this cost me? Saying something as simple as “Thank you for picking up dinner” will make your spouse feel like they did something right. If you are thinking of strangling your husband with that dirty diaper in your hands, you are not alone. This process happens little by little so let’s give you credit for already taking those first steps.

I myself struggled greatly in the early days of motherhood and found my new shift in identity much more difficult than I had anticipated.

I stumbled across a recent SELF article which put numbers to this issue in a way I felt hit home: a 2015 study that looked at 182 heterosexual first-time parent partnerships found that women picked up an average of 37 hours of childcare and household-related work each week.