ChhaviIn a new initiative by Rabitat ‘Meet the Mom,’ we invited super moms Shweta, Radhika, and Shweta to discuss the joys and issues that come with motherhood.
Shweta is a full-time mother of a three-year-old, a photographer, and a Social Media Influencer for many moms and moms-to-be. Radhika is again a full-time mother of a three-year-old and an independent HR Consultant. Neha is also a full-time mom of a 10-year-old and Digital Marketing Head at Rabitat.
With Meet the Mom, we intend to share awesome tips, tricks and hacks with you all. We aren’t only focused on delivering the best baby products to you, we also believe that you should have the best time of your life being both a mother and a wife. Most importantly, we value your womanhood and the never-say-never spirit.
This episode is about how relationships change after the arrival of the child. How the husband becomes the father and the wife the mother. The couple gets promoted to this new position in life and gets so lost in it that they forget their own relationship.
As I write this, thank my multi-tasker self, I am also trying to get my three-year-old daughter to sit down and eat half-an-apple. She’s playing with her father and her father is now more of her father and less of my husband. I’m not saying this out of paranoia. Whenever we sit down at the dinner table, I admit my attention is wholly at feeding my child. And the same is on his end too. So it isn’t one-sided. This departing isn’t one-sided. We aren’t even departing, technically - we’re just learning to become parents together. But I’m afraid that we might forget that we’re spouses altogether.
But we aren’t alone in this: This little conversation between these moms proves just that!
On being asked about ‘dating the father of her child,’ Radhika, very precisely, describes, “I would say we’re two people who get along really well, great friends, sharing a baby, living under one roof!”
Which is true in every sense! Don’t we become just partners raising a child? Our whole world changes and revolves around the baby and nothing else, as Shweta also explains and feels that even at dinner - when the family gets together after having spent the entire day apart - the talks are still mainly concerning the child.
She says, “It’s either about the home or the child. I think it becomes very point-to-point and very categorical... very household centric. It becomes very monotonous.” She further says something that is actually the basis of it all, “I think that love, that essence, that passion - everything just fades out. And nobody, I think, puts a diligent effort to hold that back.”
We don’t disagree as we all know how we start taking things for granted. The man is just the husband, after all! Who cares? Now that the baby has popped out in the world, how does the husband matter? *Wink*
Jokes apart, the conversations start with the baby and end on the baby. We tend to value the happiness of the human who’s super new to both of us and, over time, we forget that there’s a life out of that mini-world of ours. That’s a part of the world - not the entire world. Apart from the child, most of the couples have nothing else to talk about, which Shweta feels, is very unhealthy. She says that the time and effort that we put into for a child’s development and happiness are the same measures that we should put in for our own relationships.
Our relationship transitions and we become parents together. Neha suggests that we should hold on to being a couple together, which we, unfortunately, don’t.
We mostly think that our romance just goes away with the arrival of the baby, but Radhika loves to disagree. She says, “Romance, I feel, it’s not like it goes away but it just takes a backseat.” Whether the romance goes away or takes a backseat, it’s our responsibility to fuel the fire and not let it quench.
Talking about the reinvention of love and romance, Shweta explains that while the reinvention is happening, it’s restricted to that only, it isn’t coming to us as partners. We fail to notice or recognize that reinvention because now the baby gets all our attention. She believes that the men take the crown of being a father way too seriously. Which could very well be true!
Neha, agreeing with Shweta, gives an example of how her husband continues to call her ‘Mummy’ in front of their 10-year-old daughter and she has to remind him that she isn’t his mother. We develop that habit of calling each other ‘Mummy/Papa’ in front of our young ones to get them into the habit also. But as the children grow older, our habits do too and we forget that they need to disappear.
The newly-father-turned-husbands should take a note here, as the ladies feel that you forget to woo the wife; you get into the suit of the father and forget that tonnes of other relationships exist!
One of the best tips we can take from this conversation is:
going back in time and revisiting all the memories you’ve lived together as a couple.
Shweta explains how important it is to relive those flashbacks from your life pre-baby - “And I just realized the moment I was back home, the moment I was even seeing him; I was blushing! Because all those memories were so fresh in my head!”
On being asked what deliberate efforts she makes, Radhika gives us one precious tip that, I believe, we all must follow:
“But one rule: when we do manage to have date nights leaving the child behind: The only rule on those nights is no conversation about the baby. None whatsoever! That’s the only rule.”
(You can try these simple date ideas without even leaving the home!)
Neha has another wonderful tip for us. She says,
“This friend of mine - she messaged me saying that I’m feeling really low and her husband had been traveling a lot. So what I did was, I texted her husband and I asked him to get her flowers that day. And, now, the other day she messaged me that her room’s never empty now like every time one set of flowers dry out, he gets her another one.”
She further explains how the beautiful gesture was returned back as a favor and that even she has flowers at her home now!
All husbands out there, you’re advised to get your wives a bouquet of flowers tonight and see how the love blossoms again.
Shweta further gives us insights into how she’s reworked her entire relationship just to not only keep it going but also growing. She says that it’s very important to have time that is just the couple’s. Whether it’s a movie date or a dinner - there have to be moments off the baby. To ensure that this works well, she blatantly goes to her mother and asks her to keep the child until she’s back. So from the men, we are walking back to our soul sisters, our girlfriends, and our mothers.
But husbands, this wasn’t it! The ladies didn’t have only complaints against you. They’re happy that you make deliberate efforts to take care of the baby, too. Gone are the days when handling the baby was just the mother’s job. It’s obviously something that makes us moms so independent today. We don’t need your permission, we only want your support to be successful as both moms and women.
The relationship changes, for sure, but the love and romance should reinvent, not go away or take the backseat.
I’m freaking out now! I think we should start taking these things very seriously and take cues from each other on how we can improve our relationships. I am starting today… no, right now!
Happy Mommying and Daddying!
