The Real Deal

This is about my relationship. Fair warning, it may be difficult to read if you are currently pregnant, but it's just reality.

While I was pregnant I read on a message board that parents of twins have a higher divorce rate. My pregnancy hormones took over and I was like "oh yeah right, that makes no sense. When you have to parent two babies at once you have to be even closer because it will most likely be tough. Besides, we are more in love than ever." Those are my thoughts from my mind at the time. Denial. Big denial.

As all relationships, especially ones that have lasted for awhile, there are ups and downs. Fighting and bliss. When we first got married it was a down. I wanted to move to North Carolina and we made plans. I looked at houses even. Then he chickened out and I was beyond angry with him. I did not want to marry him. On top of that, I didn't want to have a big wedding but he did so we went with it. I had icy cold feet about the whole thing. But several months after, things just calmed down. Then we figured out that I am reproductively challenged and we became closer than ever. After we found out I was pregnant, it was like a dream. We were in big time love, undescribable really. It was magical.

I had been warned that post-baby relationships can be tough, especially the first six weeks, but I didn't believe it. When we were in the hospital I was over the moon in love with hubby. He was amazing. After we got home, things didn't go so well. My natural mama kicked in but he was still learning, which lead me to nag his head off constantly, making him unhappy. He also supposedly doesn't hear the babies when they wake so I was severely sleep deprived while he slept, which made me angry. Also, kids are not cheap, so then there were possible money issues as we ventured into our new life. I didn't want to go to work, so there was resentment. Of course I must mention our personal life, in very little detail because my grandma reads this, but when you are sleep deprived and newly deformed that doesn't seem like any fun, ahem.

It all became a recipe for disaster. We went from ridiculously over the moon to just hanging on by a thread. Our big trip wasn't only for my sleep, but for an attempt at getting our marriage back. We still have over 17 years of kids in the household and we have to make it work better than it was working. I was incredibly shocked at how the babies could be the best thing that ever happened to us as individuals but how negatively it affected our relationship, especially after how long we had hoped to be a family.

Luckily, the trip was a success. Unfortunately, the trip also threw Ocean and Peanut off of the only semblance of a routine they actually had so we have been sleepless for over a week plus hubby had to travel for work only two days after we got back. So the fighting began once more. The good news is that the time we just took to talk and reconnect made the fighting short and a solution quicker than before so hopefully we can keep this up. We are also making a schedule for ourselves because the task of parenting, both working full time, keeping up the household and even taking care of ourselves (via cooking meals at home or working out) has been a lot more than we can handle. Also, hubby is a student AND travels once or twice a month so it has been tougher than we imagined. It looks like that vacation was more than just a breather, but just what we needed to be able to work through our issues.

Besides . . . vacations to the Caribbean are a lot more exciting than therapy!

Since I bit the bullet and showed you photos of me already, in a swimsuit no less, I will show you a couple photos of me with my monkeys from the weekend on our fun family outing.