How My Wife and I Reconnected Under the Heaviest Pressure
TL;DR:
New parenthood quietly erodes the connection between partners, hiding behind exhaustion and care. A simple deck of cards and the discipline to sit down together gave two sleep-deprived parents permission to feel lost — and find each other again.
Becoming a parent is not for the fainthearted. A mentor of ours told us that "there's no manual when you bring home a child" and that's on top of protecting your marriage. We quickly realized, surprisingly, that keeping a newborn alive and relatively happy is the easier part. Let me give you a peek behind the curtain, what was the most challenging to us.
In the early months (the fourth trimester) mother and child are basically one entity; this is how a newborn survives the arrival to our harsh reality. Mothers are real life superheroes, because they are wired to accommodate the needs of their infant and send their own needs to the sidelines. But this naturally evolves into a 24/7 shift where clocking out seems like luxury.
We were lucky enough that I could go on a 7-week-long paternity leave all at once, covering double the length of the fourth trimester by being home to support their wellbeing. Cooking, cleaning, and logistics.
Facing Monotony
What I observed about us is that the tasks themselves were not that challenging, they were everyday tasks after all. The challenge was how monotonous they were, and that's noticeable from a guy who used to be a software tester running day-long regressions every other week. I cope with monotony pretty well, I'd say.
Underneath the monotony lurked disconnection, however, and it's devious because it disguises itself as care. You as a parent do care about the wellbeing of a newborn but somewhere along those sleepless nights you forget to connect to each other, running on reserve batteries for weeks, and deep conversations seem like an afterthought that would require too much energy.
When we noticed after a few weeks that we forgot to talk to each other, we felt devastated. It was not like us to just become absent from each other’s lives. Seemingly we weren't; we were physically close to each other every day but became slowly distant emotionally.
Luckily for us, we established a marriage that keeps us accountable for showing up for each other by working together. My wife is the noticer and vocal one as her ethics are straight as an arrow, as they say, and she's also brave enough to say out loud what's on her mind.
I, on the other hand, as a professional coach, am the reliable shoulder that can endure the weight of a small world on my shoulders, ours in this case. I just need a prompt to do so sometimes, as I was also heavily sleep deprived at the time.
So, she noticed and told me we have a problem and I agreed to start looking for a solution. I found the cards on the bookshelf — ones we had purchased months ago — waiting for us.
The Deck of Solutions
The cards you see to the left are thematic questions targeting parents, especially in the early days of having a newborn, nothing magical on the surface. They are open-ended, and the "game" is to sit down, pull up a card and say the question out loud, taking turns answering the questions as honestly as you can.
The only trick is you have to remember to sit down. To make sure we won't forget, we put the cards in the nursery where we had our dinners together, all of us, every evening. Usually, I was the one finishing my meal first – our newborn was last – so I started to ask the questions.
At first, it felt uncomfortable as we used to have unguided free-flowing conversations every Thursday at our dinner table talking about anything that popped into our minds. Not going to lie, the questions felt forced at times, making us skip some of them. But on the other hand, when a question hit a nerve, we were both feeling things we just hadn't had the chance to intentionally talk about yet. We frequently ended up sobbing – trying not to wake up our peacefully sleeping bundle of joy.
Presence Helps Reconnections
During those talks we didn't tell each other what to do or how to do it, we learned to trust each other entirely. We offered each other space to share honestly what felt emotionally heavy and helped ourselves carry those weights by lending our focused attention to each other.
Behind the tears we also saw lighthearted smiles of recognition of how awesome parenthood is as it brought out the best of both of us. It warmed our hearts to see each other in our new roles that still felt like oversized coats but let us become tender with each other in a way we couldn't have experienced otherwise.
I think we didn't admit it, but we looked for the missing manual between those cards, like hidden wisdom that would magically solve our problems. They offered no such relief. Instead, they gave us permission to feel the disconnect between us and gently build a new bridge between two eternally exhausted souls.
If you need someone to hold space for you and help you reconnect with your own feelings and lighten the emotional weight you carry, book a free intro call to see how I can help you.
It’s perfectly okay to ask for support. You don’t have to figure everything out on your own. While I believe everyone is their own best expert, I’m also a big believer in asking for help to create change together. It’s comforting to have someone by our side as we go through transitions. If you’re feeling motivated to expand your comfort zone and curious about how I can support you on your journey, let’s talk.
A partnership can shift quietly once a child enters it, long before either of you says so out loud. Online parenting coaching gives that shift somewhere honest to go.
