- You Are Not Alone!
- Having a baby is a moderate to severe crisis that all parents go through.
- You can build the skills to keep a healthy family.
- Therapy may use role plays, examples, research information, and communication exercises to help deepen your friendship, manage conflicts constructively, share values, heal distress, and enhance healthy patterns.
- “The greatest gift a couple can give their baby is a loving relationship.”
- Delight in responding to your new baby.
- In playing with your baby, it is important to stay emotionally warm and available. Stay responsive to your baby’s cues, slow down, repair overstimulation.
- Cool down conflicts.
- Everyone has the best of intentions after their babies are born.
- Getting sleep deprived, tired, and crabby is normal! We lose our sense of humor and can’t cope as well. We may feel more out of control than usual just as we have more anxiety about our responsibilities, persevere!
- Do not fight in front of infants; Have a problem-solving meeting.
- Savor each other by building a strong friendship and a zesty sex life.
- “Sexual intimacy arises from emotional intimacy. And emotional intimacy comes from partners making the effort to find each other through the maze of duties to perform. When partners feel cherished and appreciated, affection comes naturally… Then romance and passion can reawaken.”
- Touch Often! Go on Dates!
- Warm fathering is wonderful.
- Divvy up tasks and beware of cultural messages pushing father’s away.
- Create an intentional legacy.
- Make choices with purposeful awareness and intention.
Adapted from And Baby Makes Three by John Gottman and Julie Gottman