The 8 conversations every couple should have after a baby (but rarely do)

Psychotherapist Meera Moore Danowski, founder of The Nest Club, works with couples navigating the first years of parenthood. Here she shares the eight conversations she wants every parent and parent-to-be to have, and to keep having.

When couples are expecting a baby, a huge amount of thought goes into the practical. Take the pram. Extensive research goes into the comfort, the suspension and whether it has a coffee cup holder. Far less goes into preparing for the emotional highs and lows that can come with becoming new parents.

I see it all the time in my work with couples. Two people who love each other, sitting opposite me a year into parenthood, exhausted and baffled, wondering where the couple they used to be has gone. It isn’t that anything went wrong. It’s more that we have this sense we should simply be able to cope, to figure it out and get through these big life transitions as if they were the most natural thing in the world.

It helps to talk about the things that matter most before you’re running on three hours’ sleep a night. Here are the eight conversations I’d love every parent and parent-to-be to have regularly.

1. How do we want to parent?

Most of us parent the way we were parented, or in rebellion against it. Either way, our own childhood shows up the moment we have children, often in ways we didn’t see coming. A phrase of your mum’s comes out of your mouth, or you find yourself reacting to a toddler tantrum exactly as your dad did.

So talk about it: what you fear, and how you hope to be as a parent. What do you never want to repeat? How were you comforted, disciplined and praised? You won’t agree on everything, and you don’t need to. But knowing where each of you is coming from makes it far easier to work things out together when you’re in the thick of it.

2. How will we keep getting to know each other?

People change, and parenthood changes them faster than almost anything. The person you fell for may become more anxious, more protective, more tired, more ambitious or less so. Couples often tell me, ‘I don’t recognise the person next to me, and I don’t recognise myself.’ That isn’t a sign the relationship is failing. It’s usually a sign that nobody stopped to get to know the new versions of each other. When we make assumptions about what the other person says, thinks or feels, we stop listening and connecting.

Keep being curious. Ask the questions you asked when you first met, and be prepared for different answers now.

3. Who’s going to do what?

Roles tend to drift into place, usually during the first few chaotic months. Often one person becomes the main carer: the one who knows when the vaccinations are due, that the nappies are running low and which friend’s birthday party is on Saturday. That invisible work of remembering is exhausting, and it’s where resentment can grow quickly.

Talk about the whole load, not just the jobs. The noticing and the planning as well as the doing. And agree to review it, because what works at six weeks won’t work at six months.

4. How will we talk when things get hard?

Things will get hard. Not because you’re doing it wrong, but because sleep deprivation and a newborn are plain hard, and because life throws curveballs. Research suggests around two thirds of new mothers report a drop in satisfaction with their relationship after their first baby. That isn’t a reason to panic. It’s a reason to prepare.

Agree now how you’ll handle the hard stuff. Perhaps a pause word you can use when a row is escalating, and a promise to come back to it once you’re both calmer. Talk about how each of you tends to react under stress, and how you can each self-soothe and manage your own emotional regulation.

5. How do we feel about getting help?

This is the conversation almost nobody has, and I think it’s one of the most important. If you hit a wall, would you both be open to couples therapy? For some people, therapy still feels like an admission of failure, the place relationships go to die. It really isn’t. Nobody thinks you’re failing because you see a personal trainer; you go to get stronger and avoid injury. Relationships are the same. I often tell the couples I work with that couples therapy is one of the most romantic things you can do for your relationship.

Agreeing now, while things are good, means that if you ever need support, neither of you has to be the one who ‘suggests therapy’ in the middle of a crisis.

6. What will we do about money?

Money gets complicated quickly when one of you takes time out of work or goes part-time. It can shift the balance of power in a relationship, even between two people who would never have expected it. And the long-term effects, particularly on pensions, are easy to overlook in the fog of early parenthood.

So talk about it plainly. How will you make sure the person stepping back doesn’t lose out, now or in 30 years? It isn’t the most romantic chat you’ll ever have, but it’s one of the kindest.

7. Sex and intimacy

Your sex life will almost certainly change. Bodies change, desire changes, and exhaustion is the least sexy thing in the world. Many couples stop touching altogether so as not to put pressure on each other, and the silence can become the problem.

Talk about it before it becomes a sore point. Intimacy isn’t only sex. It can be a proper hug in the kitchen, a hand on the back, or ten minutes together on the sofa without your phones. Agree that you’ll keep talking about it, without blame, when you’re both relaxed rather than after a knock-back.

8. The grandparents: how do we stay a team?

New grandparents can be the most wonderful support, but also a source of real tension. Advice that feels helpful to one of you can feel like criticism to the other. And criticising someone’s family can feel like criticising them, so couples often avoid the subject until it boils over.

The couples who do best build a strong alliance that comes first, without pushing family away. Agree your boundaries together: visits, advice and how much involvement feels right. Decide who speaks to whose parents when something needs saying.

Ask each other: ‘How do we make sure we’re on the same side, whoever’s in the room?’

Keep the conversation going

None of these is a one-off conversation. Your answers before the baby arrives will be different at three months, three years and thirteen. The couples who come through the early years stronger aren’t the ones who had it all figured out. They’re the ones who kept talking, kept getting curious about each other and kept choosing to be a team.

Meera Moore Danowski is a psychotherapist and the founder of The Nest Club.