Matt explores how to know if you and your partner are ready to have a baby and welcome all that chaos into your life and relationship.
The Real, Messy Relationship Podcast Episode 3: Is your relationship ready for a baby?
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Matt: [00:00:00] Hello, and welcome to the Real, Messy Relationship Podcast. I'm your host, Matt Marquez, and I'm a relationship coach, and this is where I dig into the insights and strategies to handle the messy details of being in a real relationship. And today I have a question that was submitted that I'm going to answer, which is, "How do you know if you're ready to have a baby?" And I think this is just an awesome question because it is an intentional question. It reflects a desire to choose how you want to live your life. And in my experience life and relationships are super, super messy. But having clear intentions helps you accomplish the important stuff, the stuff that you really, really care about. And having a child is a huge, huge step. It's probably the most transformative experience you can have.
I have a young daughter and sometimes I'll talk to my brother about what's going on in my life. And, and he'll start [00:01:00] telling me about how he wants to start a family one day. And sometimes I can't help, but tell him how tired I am because my kid won't go to bed until 11 o'clock and how frustrated I am, because I don't have as much time to work and play as I want. And I say all of this and my brother will say, well, I'm excited to be that tired someday. And I'm like no sleep play, you know? Do all the things that feel so hard for me to do these days. But of course having a kid transforms you in other ways, and it's not just about getting tired. It really challenges you to, I think, grow a larger heart because you are just challenged every day to become the person and role model you want to be for your kids. And I've said this before, but my daughter is the reason why I really became intentional about my life and my relationship and why I chose to become a relationship coach. [00:02:00]
But anyway, let's get back to the question. How do you know if you're ready to have a baby? And I think a really good first step is to decide with your partner, do you both want a child? That's I think a great question to have while you're dating someone. You know, but even if you haven't really had that conversation, It's really, really important to understand where you're coming from and where your partner's coming from.
And obviously if you're both not on board with having a child. Maybe it's not a good time. But if you are. Then I think it's really, really, really important to next ask, how do you want your child to be raised? And there's kind of a lot of questions related to this. I'm just going to throw some out. So some of the questions you might want to consider are, do you have a child rearing philosophy in mind? Maybe you have something in mind or maybe you just want to raise your kid the way you were raised, or maybe you want to figure it out as you go along. Some other things [00:03:00] to consider are what religion is your child going to be raised practicing or no religion. Do you want them to attend public or private school homeschool or some other kind of communal situation? Do you want to breastfeed or use formula or both? And who will handle which daily responsibilities between you and your partner. Like, is someone focusing on the meals, cleaning the house? Who will be working and earning money or not working? And how much will you allow your friends and family to play a role in your child's early days and their early life?
There's a lot of questions here so feel free to go back and digest some of that. And whatever came to your mind as you're answering these questions in your mind. I guarantee you, they will change if, and when you have a child and that's okay. That's good because it means that you're going to try one thing. Realize it doesn't necessarily work for you. And then you're going to find something [00:04:00] that works better. And that's the real messy process of growing a human with someone else.
In my own experience with my partner, you know, we have a four-year-old daughter and I think almost everything we started out wanting to, or believing we were going to do almost all of it's changed. How we were raising her was kind of set. But we keep learning and adjusting it.
And you know, now we, we use some kind of combination of like, gentle parenting, sturdy parenting, conscious parenting, all that stuff. But it's an evolution. And so you don't need to know where you're going to end up, but having a starting point in mind, is super, super important, because you want to make sure that you're in the same ballpark as your partner. And if you're not. That's a really important conversation to have. How do we get into the same ballpark on these things? Maybe not all of them are super important to you, but the ones that are important, those are the things you want to make sure you're in the same [00:05:00] ballpark on.
And if you have that conversation and you're just not able to kind of get in that same area together. Might not be ready to have a child yet. Which doesn't mean that you won't, it won't happen. It doesn't mean it won't happen. Because you and your partner are changing all the time. And maybe it just takes like a month.
Maybe it takes, you know, six months a year, maybe a little bit longer. And eventually you might have that conversation again and realize, okay, we're both on board. We both agree on the stuff we really, really care about. But you won't know that until you have those conversations.
When it comes down to it, having a child is really an act of faith. Because you are putting trust and faith in yourself and your partner and your relationship to handle all the things that are going to come, and there's just no way to really predict and understand exactly what's going to happen. [00:06:00] There's just so much stress.
There are long nights. Longer days. There are lots of smiles. There's laughter there's just incredible experiences and lots and lots of poopy diapers.
And the way you can tell if you trust yourself, your partner and your relationship to handle, having a child is to ask yourself, Can we settle disagreements and still feel like we're on the same team, and that we love and care and support each other?
Do you and your partner both have support systems like friends and family, hobbies, exercises, and so on that can help you take care of yourselves so that you can show up in your relationship the way you want to, even during stressful times, like hours of crying in the middle of the night or deciding if, when and how to sleep train your child.
That's a big one. That's a hard one. And if you trust that you and your partner can settle those kinds of disagreements and still feel secure in your relationship, then that is an excellent sign that your [00:07:00] relationship is strong enough to handle a baby.
And if you don't think your relationship is ready, that's something you can work on.
That's one of the big reasons why I work with couples. So that they can handle those disagreements and still love themselves and each other.
There is I think never a perfect time to have a child, but there can be a good enough time. If you have this conversation with your partner, and you feel like you're on the same page and you feel like, yeah, I trust this person and they trust me. I think it's a go.
If you found this conversation useful, please rate this podcast and leave a review. And if you have a question or topic that you'd like me to answer or address, please send me an email at matt@growmorejoy.com. That's Matt, M-A-T-T. Thanks for joining me. Until next time.