Becoming Parents - Staying a Couple

Here's How You Can Survive the Birth of Your First Child as a Happy Couple

The birth of the first child pushes many couples to their limits. In the first years after birth, the separation rate is at its highest.

This conclusion is drawn by the family study "Transition to Parenthood" by the State Institute of Early Childhood Education in Munich.

"Even well-meaning people expressed the suspicion during my work on this humble piece that I could finish myself off with my confessions. That's wrong.

What's right is that I was completely exhausted before the first lines. Furthermore, I object to attributing the described circumstances solely to the fact that I was older at the birth of our children. What's right is that I aged rapidly in the three years of their existence."

So writes a newly minted father.* So you are not alone with the phenomenon of being totally overwhelmed by the responsibility of caring for a child in a society where the highest values of competition, performance, perfection, and efficiency - not only at work - determine our lives.

Reassessing Priorities

During this phase, priorities and task allocation need to be renegotiated.

For example, is order and cleanliness in the household really that important? Or should the focus rather be on a well-cared-for, content child? Who gets to determine the standard?

One of the biggest relationship killers in the family is the pursuit of perfection in the household, which unnecessarily creates pressure and stress.

Maintain your independence from external opinions and standards. Even if your mother supposedly knows better how to run the household, don't let yourself be unsettled by it.

If you fear that visitors will turn up their noses at the mess, meet them outside or overlook it.

Fostering Good Communication

Have conversations. Be open and stay grounded.

Support and relieve each other, understand each other; this can only work with good communication.

I'll show you how to do it.

Building Supportive Relationships

It's important to give yourself time to recuperate and seek support from friends or family. Start looking for a babysitter now; this is not yet about "outsourcing childcare," but about building a long-term support relationship. The sooner and more gently the child gets to know a caregiver, the less stress both the child and you will have when it is alone with the babysitter. This is not a luxury expense but an investment in maintaining your physical and emotional health in the long term. If you plan to return to work in the foreseeable future, it's best to build up two babysitters whom you regularly use once or twice a week.

Self-care

Take sufficient breaks for yourself. Only those who take good care of themselves can take good care of others. Plan regular joint activities. A relaxed dinner for two, a nice walk in nature for three, anything that feels good and enriches life.

Maintaining Connections

People are social animals. Cultivate old and new contacts with family and friends, other parents. Organized meetings, such as parent-child groups, baby activities, also help. Parental stress results not only from lack of sleep but often also from the combination of isolation and boredom with simultaneous overwhelm.

*Dieter Bednarz: Überleben an der Wickelfront. Vom Elternglück in den besten Jahren.