I have always heard that marriage takes work, but I didn’t know how much work marriage would take once having children. My husband and I recently celebrated our seven-year wedding anniversary  (insert seven year itch joke here). Ironically I’m finding that the seven-year itch jokes were probably founded by people who had been married with children. Now don’t get me wrong, neither of us feels like straying away from our marriage but we are finding that we are needing to work harder at making time for ourselves and having actual adult conversation and physical contact. A note about physical contact, I’ve been on pelvic rest for the past 8 weeks of my pregnancy, which has probably lent itself to any potential frustration we both might be feeling, but as we all know a marriage needs more intimacy than just physical intimacy to make it work.

Last year an organization I am involved with offered a free workshop on keeping one’s marriage going strong after children, sadly that workshop was sparsely attended. I was surprised that more people didn’t take advantage of attending this presentation. Granted, I wanted to but couldn’t make it that night either, but what I wondered about later is if people where embarrassed or did not attend because they didn’t think they needed it or thought that by showing up they would be admitting that they didn’t have it all together in the marriage department.  After all no one wants to be known as the couple that is having problems in their marriage. Rumors begin flying around the neighborhood and soon you are splitting up and/or having a divorce. People start dropping off casseroles and offering to take the kids to the park so you can get some alone time.

With kids in the picture and tiredness setting in, it seems much easier to pass on conversation and just go about our daily business. Soon, it can seem as though we are roommates living parallel lives sharing the same walls and little else. What is a good sign in our relationship is that we have had discussions about this and we are both uncomfortable with it perpetuating. Hiring a babysitter once a week or every other week has lately provided us with some much needed alone time to catch up on what we’ve been doing and given us time to talk about what we’ve been thinking about. Goodness knows with baby #3 on the way, it’s not going to get easier to find time for each other.

I feel very fortunate because my husband is very loving to both my kids and me. He is generous and kind and he has always been an equal partner in raising our kids. He’s changed thousands of diapers, given hundreds of baths, and read countless stories. I am so lucky in this area and to know that no matter how much distance comes between us we are both conscious enough about things to take a pause and make some changes so that we are acknowledging each others contributions to the family and giving each other attention. It’s taken us a little time lately to come around because we have both been working so hard, he with his business and me with the kids, but we are seeing the positive results of our work pay off. Now if only my doctor would take me off pelvic rest, then maybe we’d be like newlyweds all over again (I’m blushing).