Once you become a parent, let’s face it… your marriage takes
a backseat to get through the first year. You’re both up running around in the
middle of the night searching for something to help soothe your little one or
walking the halls bouncing, swaying and cuddling the babe back to sleep. Your
days are just as hectic with everything from sanitizing to bottle prep time to bath
time… needless to say there’s definitely not as much marriage time than before
your bundle of joy arrived. And at first you are both in survival mode. You
take things you’ve learned from your own parents, grandparents, family and
friends. You go off of your instinct, gut feelings and things you’ve read and
you PRAY – you pray a ton!
Now that we officially survived the first year of
parenthood, we realize more than ever the importance of cultivating and
nurturing our marriage.
Here are a few things we do to make sure we are making time
to stay connected in our marriage while also making sure we are maximizing our
time with our daughter:
Day dates – these have been great for us! Working close by
or with your husband definitely has its advantages. It’s been so nice to plan
out our days and know when we can take a lunch date together, take a long
stroll outside together or just run errands and be with one another – just the
two of us. We also get to carpool together and there is a lot to be said while
stuck in traffic on I-485.
Nap times – Isla doesn’t always take 2 hour naps, but when
she does we make the most of it! We use this time to reconnect, communicate and
catch up on what’s going on, plan our day or the next date and listen to music
together. Something that has always been a shared interest between my husband
and I is our love for music… while we don’t get to go to as many shows as we
once did, we still have time together to check out new bands, talk about the
music we love and share a new found artist.
Planned date-nights – this one was really hard for me to
come to terms with and really due to Isla’s colic and just me being an
overprotective momma bear… my husband and I didn’t have a lot of one-on-one
time away from our daughter until more recently. I will say though, it is so
nice to be able to plan an exciting date for your significant other and
surprise him/her…and since we cherish this one-on-one time now more than ever,
it makes it that much more exciting!
No comments:
Post a Comment