Those are the toughest days in a marriage, says this father of two, one that’s not simply fixed by the couple sinking into the sofa in the evening with zero per cent beer and Netflix. He could have been more proactive, he writes, in this instalment of CNA Women’s series on men who champion women’s issues.
They say the days following the birth of a child are among the toughest in a marriage. And so it proved for mine when my wife and I became first-time parents in end 2015.
Handling a raft of new errands was manageable, but learning to understand a person who had just broken down her body to birth a child would be far trickier.Newly minted parents are almost always naive, especially after a fuss-free pregnancy but this row-filled postpartum phase came as a shock. And in hindsight, there were several things I could have done to mitigate the fallout.
And because my wife never complained at the start or asked for specific help, I thought everything was hunky dory. That she was managing okay, because, hey, I was there by her side.Some proactiveness and tighter communication on my part would have gone a long way. I should have paid closer attention to non-verbal cues, but I didn’t know any better.
After a row-filled postpartum period, the couple found a new way forward: More listening, more empathy and more patience.
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