Hellobee

One year ago, Mr. Confetti and I went out to dinner for (yet another meal of) spicy food.  I was already a week overdue.  I was hormonal, exhausted and ready to finally meet this baby.  At our delicious Chinese food feast, our conversation drifted away from my impending induction to the year that would follow.  Of course, we had spent the past nine months (and several years before that) discussing our thoughts and views on parenting.  What we hadn’t talked much about was how our relationship would fare once our family dynamic changed, and how this huge change would have an impact on not just our relationship, but that with our friends and our poor new puppy.  We had not yet discussed our own personal goals and how they would change or evolve once our duo became a trio.

That night, we spent our evening discussing the upcoming year and our goals for ourselves as individuals, as husband and wife and as a family.  Now that Little C is nearly one, I thought it would be interesting to see where we landed one year later – which objectives we accomplished and what aspirations were not achieved.

The Goal:  Date Night Twice a Month by Month 3

Expectation:  Mr. Confetti and I have always believed that our marriage has stayed strong over the past 5+ years because once we got married, we always made sure that we were still dating.  It was one piece of advice that we received when we got married that was truly spot-on. We knew that becoming parents would be another big transition in our relationship, and we wanted to make sure that our relationship maintained its strong foundation when a child turned everything upside down, especially in the first year.

We tried to be realistic when setting this goal. We knew that it would be difficult to have weekly date nights with Mr. C’s ever-changing work schedule and an unpredictable newborn at home.  When we set this goal, we assumed that by 3 months, Little C would have some semblance of predictability, which would make it easier for us to make plans to leave him at home while we went to a quick (and eventually not so quick) dinner a couple times each month.

Reality:  This was a goal that we definitely achieved.  At the beginning, we would go for an extremely fast dinner at one of the restaurants within a couple blocks of our place, while my sister or a friend sat on our couch, timed carefully with moments when Little C was already asleep and projected to sleep for at least a couple hours.  We actually were able to start these dinners earlier than three months, and once his nighttime sleep was predictable, we got comfortable hiring babysitters rather than relying solely on my sister and a few of our closest friends.  Honestly, we never sat down and said, “Are we sure we’ve scheduled two date nights this month?” because it was usually at least that much if not more.

Verdict:  Yay Confetti family!  Victory!

As cute as this face is, it’s important for us to leave C home with a babysitter so we can have “us” time

The Goal:  Maintaining Healthy Relationships with Friends

Expectation:  We knew that we did not want to become the kind of people who fell off of the social map once we had kids.  Not only had we seen it happen with friends and acquaintances, but we both felt pride that getting married early (I was 23, he was 24) hadn’t kept us from having vibrant social lives with our friends, and we hoped to maintain these close friendships as we entered this new stage in our lives.  Therefore, we resolved that by month four, we would each make sure we gave the other a boys’/girls’ night out at least once a month.

Reality:  Mr. Confetti has been much better about this than I have.  I am more of a homebody than he is, and he has a few close work friends who are always happy to go to happy hour after work and then some, whereas I have trouble generating the momentum to get out in the evening after a long day with Little C.  I am lucky that a couple of my closest girlfriends are always happy to come over to my place for dinner or a movie night.  Plus I have worked hard over the course of the year to make new mom friends, so I get a good amount of “girlfriend” time during the week at play dates.  The other reality is that we end up double dating with other couples we are close with, which is becoming more of our reality than separate girls and boys nights.

Verdict:  Success – by the skin of my teeth.

Quality time with my best girlfriends – crucial for my happiness post-baby

The Goal:  No Keeping Score and No Nit-picking

Expectation:  Parenting is hard enough that it is not worth it to not be supportive of one another.  We had to go into this as teammates, and as such, we knew that it required 100% effort from both of us.  Nothing in life is 50/50 (and of course, when you add breastfeeding into the equation, it can’t ever get close to even), and everyone has their own style when it comes to taking care of a child.  As long as we talked about our decisions and kept a united front, we wouldn’t judge or bother each other about inconsequential details – how the diaper goes on, how we play with him, etc.

Reality:  This one is hard.  It is hard to be rational when you are running on little to no sleep. In the beginning, our no nit-picking rule was hard to abide by when Mr. Confetti wasn’t swaddling Little C tightly enough for him to settle into a good sleep.  Or forgetting to point Mr. Penguin down to keep Little C from having a leaky pee diaper.  Or sleeping like a rock while I heard every peep coming from the nursery – with the sound off on the monitor.  In the beginning, I threw the nit-picking rule out the window.  Eventually my nit-picking slowed, with a few gentle reminders from Mr. Confetti, but I still sometimes have trouble with keeping score, especially since Mr. Confetti started traveling for work, and I have been mothering solo for half the week each week.  Mr. Confetti is great at not keeping score, but he falls into the nit-picking trap sometimes – it drives me crazy, which it turn keeps me from doing it to him.

Verdict:  This will always be a work in progress.

Goal: Make Sure to Have Quality Time with the Puppy Each Day

Expectation: We are that crazy family that treats our puppy like a fur-baby.  She is our first child – we brought her home, and then found out two weeks later that we were pregnant (pretty interesting if you’re among the charters of the hive…).  After nine months of snuggling, spoiling and strolling, we worried that our dog, still a puppy, would feel neglected when all of the attention was focused on the baby.  We resolved that we would try to spend a bit of time each day giving the puppy exclusive attention.

Reality:  We succeed in this, mostly out of necessity, since we live in a city environment and can’t just let her out into the yard to do her business.  She still gets four walks a day, and while many of them are very short – just down the street or around the block – she always goes out with us, rain or shine.  Still, we do our best to sit on the ground with her and pet her or brush her as often as we can.

Verdict:  Room for improvement, but definitely adequate – our puppy knows she is loved.

My boys loving on their puppy on Mothers Day

Goal: Make sure “The Fire” is relit and kept aflame

Expectation:  Mr. Confetti will hate me for writing about this online, but I think it’s something really important to discuss in this kind of forum (and to my mom, if you are supporting me by reading my posts on HB, you can stop reading – no more cute baby pictures here…). When you’re dating, engaged, newlywed, not-so-newlywed, and trying to get pregnant, sex (or the prospect of sex, if you skip sex during the first two steps in that journey) is exciting.  It may ebb and flow in frequency, but it is an underlying constant. Before Little C arrived, we heard rumors that it can be hard to…get back on the horse.  As we sat and listed our goals that night, we knew that we couldn’t put a timeline on this or set any quantifiable goals – it just seemed too weird and unnatural – but we knew that just mentioning it would be enough to confirm that we both feel that it is an important aspect of our marriage that could not fall by the wayside once we became parents.

Reality:  Brace yourselves ladies – I am about to overshare.  For two months, I didn’t have the medical clearance thanks to some pretty severe tearing from the birth.  And thank goodness because sleep deprivation is not sexy, and I was a hot hormonal mess.  What I did not expect was the effect breastfeeding continued to have on my hormones, impacting everything from libido (none) to natural lubrication (none).  For the first six months of Little C’s life, this was something that loomed in my mind, caused me to feel guilt and frustration and I’m not going to lie – pain.  Mr. Confetti was a saint and did not push me – he was the kind, patient husband that I knew he had always been.  Once I weaned, things were 10000% better than they were, but not back to 100%.  In the months that followed, at some point, things just seemed to fall back into place, but not without effort on both of our parts to make it a priority, find time for each other and be sensitive to each other’s physical and emotional needs.

Verdict:  None of your business ;)  Just kidding bees, but suffice it to say, all is well.

When you were pregnant, did you and your partner discuss your post-baby relationship?  Did you make specific goals?