More conflicts with husband after baby?

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purple1

Registered User
Is it normal to have more conflicts with husband once you have a baby? We never used to fight before. But since we have a baby we have had a few, not really fights, just unpleasant experiences. Seems like we became much less patient with each other and get irritated more easily. It only happened like once every couple months but it still hurt me a lot.
just want to vent...
 
how old is your child?

i have found that hubby and i DO argue more. i think most of our serious arguements involve the children and discipline or his mother's "approach" to our kids.

i think that part of the problem is that we have so much more pressure on us know compared to when we were just the two of us.

finances:
when it was just the two of us, if money was tight, then we'd just have noodles/dumplings 3-4 times per week. we didn't go out, we downloaded stuff on the computer to watch etc.

once kids come along, you can no long cut back in the same places that you once did. it isn't healthy for the kids to eat instant noodles 3-4 times per week etc. then when the start school, you have the added expenses of that etc.

sex:

before kids, we seemed to have a lot more energy... now, not so much...good cuddles, if we don't fall asleep first, if we are lucky most nights.

time off work:
before kids, you could do what YOU wanted to do.
after kids, you do what THEY want/can do.
 
yes, definitely. It's a whole other ball game with kids in the picture.
 
I agree with everyone above. Everyone that I know have had marital issues after having the first baby especially. It's a whole new way of life and everyone is adjusting to it. Sleep deprivation is a real mood changer for sure! It makes me turn into a terror! Communication is VITAL. Talk about everything together. Go out on a date together, even if baby has to come (ours does, we don't have a helper or family here). Go to the TST starbucks on the harbour and just sit for a while and get the communication flowing.
Good luck! It's a rocky road but you can get through it.
 
as my mum once said to me, "you've spent so much time as a couple (7 years!), you need to learn how to be a family now."
 
I think that we fight less now that we have a child. At first, after our son was born we had a lot of problems--but all of those were external things (health problems; hormonal/post-partum problems; baby sleep issues; breastfeeding issues etc.) --after those problems had run their course (about 6 months to 1 year after my son was born) we actually stopped fighting as much.

I think you have to get perspective, especially if you are in the early stages of being a parent because a lot of the fights you have are just a result of dealing with an extraordinary amount of stress and change (having a child is really high up on the list of the top 100 stressors list--I think pregnancy is #12 on the list).

Before our son was born I think we had a lot more time on our hands and we would spend hours (and days) fighting over things that in hindsight seem pretty pointless. Nowadays we honestly don't have the time to fight like we used to--there's just too much to get done and we'd rather rest and have peace. Now that I'm working we have even less time to argue so those days before baby when we would indulge in these spats seem like a long ago luxury.

Nowadays, when we fight (a major fight usually every 6-8 weeks) it is usually about something really important. We actually rarely fight about our son or parenting him. We do have our disagreements but that's just normal (especially in a cross-cultural marriage when communication can be a HUGE issue sometimes) but we tend to deal with those right away and I wouldn't call them fights.

I guess we just don't see fighting as a negative thing because every time we fight there is often something deeper that we are learning and gaining from the disagreement and for us it usually signals that something positive lies on the other side.
 
I think we fought more in our first year of marriage than we did after kids too. We were married for nearly 4 years when we had our first though so maybe that's part of it... There were definitely new issues that came up that we didn't have to deal with before kids - but overall, we MOSTLY agree on issues like child raising, discipline, etc... Our first year of marriage was rough though - a lot of issues we hadn't considered before marriage, and we both were young (23 and 25). Plus cross cultural marriage too. I think one of our biggest "fights" is over in-law issues. The way that Chinese relate to their parents is VEERRRYYY different to the way that Aussies relate to theirs...
 
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