HONESTLY!... Did having a child help or make your relationship worse?

Question

Im not planning on having one, but I justwant to know after having your first child did it make your relationship worse or better? What was the hardest part and the good parts? thanks
will pick a best answer! :)

Answer 1

Our first child..? That one is complex because she died at birth.
Ultimately it made our relationship better. I understood how much my husband loves me. (This knowledge has been very helpful in later, difficult times.) He learned a lot about women, more specifically his wife. Because we are both introverts, it forced us to talk on a deeper level. Also gave us the ability to separate the important things in life from the urgent things in life.
We became more unified through her birth.
Hardest part was leaving her little body buried in another country.

Since you asked about our first child, I could leave you here at her burial in another country, however...

We did have three more children. Fifteen months after our oldest daughter died, our "older" daughter was born. Five and a half years after that daughter was born, our youngest daughter was born. Ten and a half years after the youngest daughter was born, our son was born (we adopted him when he was two-days-old). ; ) I should add that we miscarried two little boys between our older and youngest daughters.

Each birth has improved our relationship. It has never been easy.
Each child has presented different challenges as well as different blessings. Each child has been a gift.
Each pregancy and birth was stressful, but we worked through it.

This is not to say that we agreed completely on everything about raising children. But we had agreed, before we had children, to support each other's decisions in front of our children and to "negotiate" our disagreements apart from our children. For the most part we have stuck to this.
Having children has certainly stretched us as individuals and as a couple.
We wanted our children to know that we do not agree on all things, but to know that parents can disagree with one another and still be friends. Our marriage is their security, especially when they are young. More so for our son than our daughters.

Hardest part...ten years ago my answer would have been puberty. Now it is wisely negotiating your child into independant adulthood, where the parent moves from caretaking and guiding to mentoring to more of a friend and then watching your child move into their own life.

Now we come back to our first daughter. As long as my husband and I live we will not forget this child. Her greatest gift to us was to make us both more appreciative parents of those to come and of each other.

Honestly, this is a pretty general response to 27 years of parenthood, which has not been perfect, but has overall been great.

Thanks for making me think about it, I always appreciate reminders of why I am still playing with LEGOS and hanging out with much younger moms. And what a really cool guy I married nearly 30 years ago.

Answer 2

My husband and I were married for only a few months when we decided to start trying. We had known each other for years and married later in life. I ended up pregnant right away. Since it was our first the pregnancy was tough cause my husband didn't understand anything I was going through. I would try to get him to read the same books as me but he never kept up with it. After our son was born everything changed. At first it was all very difficult and caused a lot of fights. But now that a year has gone by our relationship is great. We both have adapted to being new parents and are still adjusting everyday. The birth of our son has made us a family and my husband and I now look at each other in a different light. We have more love and respect for each other.

Answer 3

No. No, no, no, no. Just NO. First of all, if that were true then there would be no single mothers OR single fathers, no need for child support, no deadbeat parents and no absentee parents. Children don't cement a relationship - EVER. The only way to "cement" a relationship is for the two people involved in it to completely commit to each other, forsaking all others, to share mutual love and respect, and to have no desire to ever be with anyone else ever again. A child is a blessing, and the icing on the cake. Besides, any woman who gets pregnant for the sole purpose of keeping her man around is getting pregnant for the WRONG reason, and the child will be the one to suffer for it. Perhaps a decent guy will stick around out of duty to the CHILD, but certainly not out of duty to the woman. And why on earth would you even WANT a man who only stayed because of the child? Why wouldn't you want him to stay because of YOU? And not everyone sees having a baby as a "lifelong commitment". I personally know a woman whose husband left her when she was four months pregnant, came back after the baby was born, got her pregnant again and then left again, at four months pregnant. He has since signed over rights to his children and has never made an attempt to be in their lives again. The world is unfortunately full of people exactly like him.

Answer 4

At the time it made our relationship stronger. We have now been married for eleven years and things are not so hot. We have three kids and we love them very much but it makes hard when we want to just scream and can't. You lose some of your freedom when you have kids. It makes things more difficult. You are forced to not be selfish. You have to think of all of the people involved not just you and husband/boyfriend. We are working it out and maybe that makes having kids good to, we will try harder to keep our relationship strong because we are a family not just a couple. We are the only two people in the world that share the bond of our three beautiful kids, we created.
I hope this helps you.

Answer 5

During the first trimester of my pregnancy there was a lot of arguing, that's just because of hormones etc... After that the pregnancy has only made my relationship better and brought my boyfriend and I much closer together. Now we have something to share that is a part of both of us equally. It's a miracle and I doubt it would push people apart. Once there is a child that both of you have made all of the other problems in the world seems to float away.

Answer 6

I wasn't married, but it did both to our relationship, in a way. It made it worse in that my main priority was my daughter, which was not always his main priority. But it was better that way, because I totally realized he is not the type of guy I want to be with, and definitely not the kind of father I would like for my child. It kinda put an end to things after awhile, and who knows how long I would've stayed with him otherwise... I wasted a lot of time in a going-nowhere relationship, but having a baby saved it from going any further.

Answer 7

I was young when I got pregnant and then got married a month before my daughter was born. Having a child made things worse because of our actions after having the child. It wasn't her fault me and my husband was just young and couldn't deal with stress well and each other at that. We both started going out and acting a fool. But when his mother basically slapped both of us in the face and made us realize what the hell we were doing to each other and our family we grew much stronger and now have our second child comming any day now.

Answer 8

neither. The relationship is going to work or it's not. Having a child should not bring a relationship to it's demise nor should it improve it. It's all the work of the couple.

A child should never be blamed, nor should it be congratulated for the ruin or the success of a relationship.

having said that, if i had not gotten pregnant i wouldn't have stayed with that idiot for as long as i did. i would have left a hell of a lot earlier!

Answer 9

Nope. I had a lot of complications during labor and childbirth and my husband wound up caring for our child during her first weeks. We didn't have the alone time we once had but now we had something new bringing us together as we truly were working together to raise her. I don't think all couples are like this because of the idea that "Well, that's your job - I don't want to be bothered" but I think if you work together, a child can be a stronger bond (but not the only bond).

Answer 10

well theres ups and downs to having a child...when you have a child your relationship becomes more comfortable than "so in love" with eachother....i mean evrything you and your spouse do is with the kids or for the kids, its not very relaxing and it can get very stressful...but it also makes your relationship stronger because its team work to raise a child and you tend to do a lot of things as a family, me and my boyfriend like to stay home and play with our son, so its nice quality time together....i love having children, i have baby boy #2 coming in Nov...we are very excited, we know are kids wont stay kids for long so we enjoy being parents for now and then when they grow a little older and dont need so much attention then we will get back to our "so in love" relationship....dont be afraid to be a parent its the best thing that could ever happen to you and i truely mean it!!!!