Hello, and welcome to Penned in Ink, a podcast where we discuss marriage and the power of long-lasting love.
In this episode, we will be discussing parenting and partnership.
Having children or not is absolutely one of the most relationship-defining decisions.
And whichever path you choose, it will have long-lasting impact.
For those of you who are joining us for the first time, I'm Michael, and I'm here with my wife, Melissa.
We've been married over 30 years together.
And in this podcast, we share stories from our time together, our relationship, with the intent, goal, and hope of showing you what a healthy, long-lasting relationship looks like.
All right, Melissa, how are you doing today?
I'm doing well, how about yourself?
Good.
Parenting, I feel like this topic is right up your alley.
I feel like, so last episode, we gave a little bit of insight behind the recording, and I had confessed all my mistakes about how we had struggles recording the last episode.
Another little behind the scene, I tend to do a lot of the initial writing on episodes, not this one.
Melissa really leaned in and did most of the writing on this one.
So I don't know if that means this is a topic that she loves and is ready to talk about, or if I was just taking too long to get the writing done.
So we'll see how it goes either way.
I was trying to be helpful.
Trying to be helpful, I like that.
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Now, Penned in Ink. is a podcast about relationships, not necessarily parenting.
As such, as we explore the topic of parenting, we will continually bring the focus back to the impact becoming parents has had on Melissa and I as our relationship has grown through the phases of raising a family.
Decisions don't come much more personal than whether or not to have children.
So let's start by sharing our parenting story.
Melissa, was having kids always in our plan?
And if it was, when did we talk about that?
When did we decide that?
It definitely was.
We talked about it when we were dating.
We definitely talked about it when we were engaged.
And then moving forward, as we started dating very young, it was more of a cursory, hey, do you want kids one day?
Yeah, I want kids one day, how about you?
Yes, and that was about it.
And then that evolved over time the closer we got in our relationship.
Makes sense, yeah, background.
We started dating actually in high school.
We were not talking about having kids in high school.
We got really serious about committing to each other in college.
So as we got toward the end of college, we're really like, okay, we're gonna get engaged.
That's probably when we really had our first conversation that was serious, okay, now we're having kids and we didn't know when or what form that would take, but we sort of had a vision that, yeah, having a couple of kids too would be the right number.
Yeah, all right.
Now, most of the time in this first segment, we go through and we tell you a whole bunch of stuff and then we sort of summarize at the end and say, here are the key takeaways for this.
We're gonna reverse that for this one.
We're gonna start with the key takeaways because, well, they're super big and overarching and I think they'll help set the framework.
So the first big key takeaway is, Melissa, what changes when you have kids?
Absolutely everything.
I think that's it, everything.
We're gonna go through a lot of things that change in your relationship, but just know you're not gonna have kids and everything's gonna stay the same.
It will change darn near every aspect of your life.
For us though, one truth remained throughout the entire journey of raising our family.
Melissa and I have been very intentional about keeping our relationship at the center of our decision-making because we're strong believers that the best foundation to build a family on is a good, strong relationship.
So for us, keeping our partnership intact and healthy was absolutely important through the whole process.
And the third takeaway, this will be absolutely one of the most pivotal decisions you make in your relationship.
If you decide not to have kids, that sets you on one path, right?
Great.
If you do decide to have kids, pivotal.
It's going to change your path.
So just give this the intention that it needs when you're considering to have kids or not.
It will change your relationship as in your relationship as part of everything.
Yeah, I think it's the biggest decision after deciding to be a couple.
Yeah, exactly.
How are you going to be a couple?
Are you gonna stay a partnership or are you gonna move on and become a family?
Yeah.
I shouldn't say move on.
Or are you gonna become a family?
Because becoming a partner and staying a partnership, we got friends that have never had kids and intentional about it, works great for them.
We are not family judges on this.
If you want kids, great.
If you don't want kids, great, it's fine.
Yeah, and I've also seen a shift in my mental health practice.
I have a lot more people now that are thinking about not having kids than are, I've never had that before.
And over the last five years, it's definitely grown.
Yeah, now for me to be clear, I think people should have kids.
I think it changes you in amazingly positive ways.
So if you're gonna ask me, do I think you should have kids or not?
Yeah, absolutely, because it's great.
It's part of, I think it makes you a much more rounded human to go through that experience, but it's not for everybody.
So there's our disclaimer.
Back to our story.
What did our first year of parenting look like?
And to set the stage for this, we had twins.
Yes.
So what did that first year look like?
Yeah, and twins in our mid-20s.
Best time to have them, because you actually got energy to take care of them.
Right?
Well, I can discuss later on the pros and cons of early versus later, but it was definitely something we wanted kids earlier.
We didn't know exactly when till we started discussing it.
Yeah, so twins when we were 25, 26.
I was 26, you were 25.
I was almost 26, so very close.
Right smack dab in the middle of the 20s.
Okay, so what did that look like?
And what was the big impact on us of actually having kids in our mid-20s?
Yeah, you go from being partners to co-parents.
Used to be just the two of us, and then all of a sudden, for us, it was the four of us.
A lot of people just go to three.
Yeah, our last episode dug all into intimacy in all its various forms, emotional, physical, intellectual, et cetera.
When you bring two kids into the mix or a singleton into the mix, some of those areas suffer.
Yeah, there's a lot less romance and physical intimacy and also alone time before maybe you would sit down and read a book and it would just be you and you're reading, not anymore.
Yeah, it becomes all-encompassing.
All right, so the first six months, nine months, year, massive changes, but things sort of started to settle into more of a routine as the kids got older and became toddlers.
So let's talk a little bit about how our relationship shifted a little bit when the kids were two-year-olds and running around and our family was growing.
What did that look like?
Our communication changed quite a bit, and I think that's pretty typical.
It's a lot more child-focused, and there's fewer in-depth conversations.
It's more, what's your day look like?
When are you going to the library?
When, all of that, it's definitely focused on what you're doing with the kids.
Becomes tactical.
It does.
How do you get through the day?
What are the kids' needs?
Which doctor's appointments do you have?
Where are you going to?
Yeah, all those little things, less the big topics and maybe more tactical.
At this point, I was working and you had chosen to stay at home for a little bit of time.
So I think a lot of, one of the things I noticed was when I came home, you had lots of words to share because you had been spending time with, well, before they were talking, you'd been spending time with someone who didn't talk or two girls who didn't talk.
But then even after that, you were having kid-appropriate conversations.
So you were ready to have conversations beyond.
That's what my day looked like.
From the minute I got up until you got home, it was the girls and I. And that's what I did all day.
And so it was nice to talk about something else.
I mean, we obviously talked about what my day had been like, but it was nice to talk to an adult about adult things and not what did we watch back then, Elmo and Teletubbies.
And that was my day until you got home and I needed to talk to a grownup.
Right, now we'll talk a little bit in a bit about what it's like to be a parent who's not the primary caregiver.
That was my role in this.
One of the things that kind of reminds me there is that I would be at work and having stress of work interactions and projects and all that sort of stuff.
And it's hard sometimes to transition back into the house that's chaotic and family.
And that transition is sometimes difficult.
Well, it was difficult for me coming back in because you wanted to start having conversations about your day immediately.
So just maybe a little tip is that if you are the spouse who's working outside the home, really try to be intentional.
At the moment you walk through that door, you're ready to transition.
So your car drive home, whatever your commute looks like, really get your mindset right.
Because some days I'd walk in and everybody's crying in the house and it's pure chaos.
Other days it was less so, but that transition can be very jarring.
And to walk into the house to think you're gonna have time to transition, it's probably not gonna happen.
The transition's gonna hit you at the front door.
Very true, I encourage people, especially if they've had a hard day at work, to take the long route home, to give themselves that time to decompress.
Because sometimes it might be too much to walk into that.
But maybe other days like, oh, you know, it was a pretty simple day.
I can go straight home and I'm ready to jump in.
Yeah, so I think our communication around that time became very tactical.
And it also became sort of unbalanced because you would have to decompress from the day and all those sort of things.
Let's keep this moving forward.
Eventually kids grow up, they go to school.
How did the transition into school change our relationship?
What started to happen for us at that point?
Was life simpler?
Was it slower?
No, but what started to happen?
Yeah, we had, at least I know I had more energy, more energy for you for, because I wasn't all day long with the kids.
There was that break there and I had time to recharge.
And there was more, like I said, energy for our relationship.
Yeah, now you were super busy during this time because I think the first year they went into school, you were active at the school and volunteering and doing all that.
But even in that, it freed up some amount of time for us to do things like we could connect for lunch or you had the evening or the morning where you could do this thing called, I don't know, self-care, actually take a moment, write a book, relax, actually get a bath without someone harassing you.
So I think as your time opened up just a little bit, there was more energy for us to start reconnecting to your point on those levels of intimacy, that emotional connections or that, because the kids were at least temporarily out of the house in school.
That sound right?
Absolutely.
We're doing just the highlight reel here.
We're gonna skip over all the high school and all the dramas that happened in there.
Because again, our focus is not necessarily how do you parent your kids, it's how does it impact us as a relationship?
High school was an amazing time for our girls.
They were busy doing lots of things.
We had lots of activities with them and it was great.
Some of our best memories of raising kids, or at least for me, was in that junior high, high school time frame.
And then honestly watching them grow in college was amazing.
For those of you who are new, our girls both have muscular dystrophy.
One of our daughters went through her diagnosis period when she was 13, 14, 15, massively impactful on our family and everything.
So we had a little bit of a unique parenting journey during there, although unfortunately it's not that unique.
There's lots of people who have mental or physical health issues that their kids go through.
So we had a very personal story that comes through there.
And we've shared it in previous episodes and we'll talk about it.
But again, our focus isn't how do you get through that as a parenting, but how do you as a couple come through that?
Now, let's talk a little bit about transitioning to empty nesters.
So that was a super quick through 22 years of parenting.
Just a snap, it's easy like that.
How did the transition for us to becoming empty nesters look?
I feel it went really well.
Why?
Just getting there, you didn't give me, I was in the, with my, I paused.
And then with my next breath, I was going to say- No pauses in the podcast.
Because we made our relationship a focus.
And therefore we were already, even though we talked about not being connected all the time, for the most part, we had a very strong relationship.
And so it was natural.
The girls left and we got to spend even more time together.
And we like spending time together.
We knew that before, but it really became front and center when the girls left and we had all the time together.
And not everybody has that.
Yeah, I think, unfortunately, you hear lots of stories of couples that stay together for the kids, right?
And they get to the empty nest phase and they've lost their relationship.
They don't know how to reconnect because they didn't do the intentional work while raising kids to maintain the relationship.
And this is going to sound a little bit maybe harsh and it's sort of one of those debunking sort of things.
But I don't think kids should be the center of your family.
And I think a lot of mothers, particularly early on, they put the kid's needs above everybody else's needs in there.
And I think there's a difference between the acute care for a child.
Yes, of course, I'm going to do whatever I need to to care for my children.
And when Alexa went through her medicals, yes, she was a major focus for us.
But at no point in that was the focus above my focus on you and our healthy relationship.
Again, because I believe very much that the foundation of our family is us.
And if our family is going to have success, it comes because we have success.
Now, many couples lose that.
I hate these things, but the father becomes another one of the children in the house, right?
And his wife is taking care of three kids instead of the two kids plus him.
And it's just like, well, so for us, the transition to Empty Nesters was super easy and it was exciting.
Now, did we cry when it happened?
I was going to say, it was super easy after the first weekend.
Yes, we dropped them off.
We purposely made plans so that we wouldn't be in the empty house, just the two of us, because that was so rare.
We did stuff in order to get through that first weekend.
I did, I cried a lot.
Yeah, so we went from, I mean, one of the shocks of having twins is, hey, when they come, you have twins.
One of the shocks is when they leave, you have none.
So it was just an all or nothing sort of transition for us.
And we did, when the girls were junior high and high school, we did some host family stuff with USA Baseball.
So we had these high school boys who would stay with us for a little bit during the summer.
And we made good connections with several of those boys.
And it just happened on the night we were dropping off our girls at college.
One of our boys that we had a good connection with was playing in a minor league baseball game across town.
And we called him and said, hey, we're gonna come see you.
We need some family time.
And we came and watched him.
So it was a little micro transition to, we dropped our girls off and we went and saw one of our adopted boys and we connected with him.
But yeah, but the first few walks down the stairs in the morning when it's silent in the house were very disorienting.
But to your point, it was a great transition for us because we were ready for it.
Pretty good?
Most definitely, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
All right, it's time for you guys to weigh in.
Where are you in your decision-making on this topic?
Have you decided to start a family?
Still pondering, or is couplehood your long-term plan?
Let us know in the comments.
Let's do a little bit of a deeper dive into how our partnership changed as we stepped into our new roles.
We did our journey, but let's get a little more tactical about some of the things that we noticed in our day-to-day relationship that changed.
One of those things I think you wanted to lead with was we had roles of how we were sort of running our house and it was just the two of us.
What happened to those when kids came into the mix?
They changed.
Yeah, there's definitely a change in the division of labor, pre-children to post-children.
And what it comes down to is I believe before kids, it's more of an equal.
And the focus after having kids, it's more equitable.
There's a difference there.
Oh, you're using all these words on me.
To find the difference between equal and equitable, I should know the difference, but give us the definition.
I can't give you a formal one.
I'm not a dictionary, but equal, you're each doing about 50% of the work.
Equitable is we might not be doing 50.
It might be 60, 40, or it might be 70, 30, but what we're doing is impactful and it's equitable.
One person doesn't feel like they're doing all of it because especially with me, I nursed the girls for quite some time, a really long time.
That was very much time-consuming and I might not have had time, even though before I was the person that did the dishes, I might not have had time to do that during the day because I was nursing and I was doing this.
And so you did more of that, but I was doing more of the childcare.
Equitable, but not necessarily equal.
Yeah, that makes sense.
A thought crosses my mind there.
Not only was the division of responsibilities different, but there was a whole ton of new responsibilities and someone has to take all those on board.
And in the case of nursing, as you pointed out earlier, I apparently couldn't nurse.
So that was your responsibility.
But the bigger point there is that, yeah, there's all sorts of new things that had to be done.
And the goal wasn't, oh, I did this task, you did this task, I did this one, you did this one.
For us, it was about getting through those things together and there was an unbalance, but the goal was to get them sort of all done.
Yeah, exactly.
I think that's a really good point.
How does schedules align?
Because I think this was one of the biggest things that I maybe wasn't ready for.
When we were dating and everything, we were more or less on the same schedule.
We sort of went to school or went to work at the same time.
We kind of got home.
We had our meals sort of together.
And we've always been one of those that more or less go to bed around the same time.
Not like, oh, it's time to bed, go to bed, but basically same schedule, get up around the same time.
That was thrown out the window when kids came in the mix.
Yeah.
The unsinking of schedules.
Yeah, very much so.
Especially in those very, that first year, whenever they were sleeping, I was trying to sleep because I was exhausted keeping up with two infants.
And back then, they didn't have the paternity leave that they do now.
Oh yeah, I think I had- I think two weeks.
Tops.
Yeah, after two weeks.
So I was left with two weeks old.
We had a support system, which we'll get into later.
But in general, having two, two weeks old, two, two week olds on your own, I was so tired.
So we rarely went to bed at the same time.
Meals were different.
Everything sort of becomes out of sync.
And the reason that this is sort of something we want to share is that that impacts intimacy, not physical intimacy alone, but just the ability to connect and everything.
So you're going to go through a period where you're going to be unsynced.
It happens.
I think that was something I wasn't fully aware of until you're immersed in it and it's like, oh yeah, okay.
And sometimes I think it almost, well, and again, this is where you balance the twins versus the one.
In some aspects, it almost felt like solo parenting at some point, because I always had a baby in my hands.
You always had a baby in your hands.
There was never sort of time to observe.
You're always doing something.
I think maybe that felt at times like, wow, I'm doing a lot.
I'm doing a lot.
Well, clearly you're doing a lot too.
We're both doing a lot and just being aware of that.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think that plays in maybe the next topic, which is one of the things that took me a little while to learn.
Again, you were stay at home for the first five, six years?
It was almost six years.
Yeah, and I was our sole earner at that point.
And one of the things I really had to learn was how to separate those things and how to be fully present in whatever I was doing.
So at work, I couldn't be overwhelmed by the fact that you maybe had a sick child at home or you had whatever.
I had to focus on the job and doing the job.
But then when I was at home, I couldn't be worried about deadlines and that sort of stuff.
I had to be immersed at home.
So learning to do those transitions and being fully committed to whatever role I was playing at the time was something, a skill I had to learn.
And the other two sort of roles I had to play in there was if you and I managed to get any time that was just the two of us, we had to sort of be very protective of that and really be engaged in that.
And it might be tempting to just say, oh, let's just rest.
Well, no, let's just reconnect for just a minute.
We've got that moment.
Or heaven forbid, if one of us got time alone during all that, which very rarely happened, you'd do this little thing called, what, self-care?
Right.
Which I think there's a lot more focus put on that, maybe less so 25 years ago when we were going through this.
But today, find those little moments of self-care and then just really taking advantage to use those as a recharge.
So just being fully intentional of whatever you're doing, be in it.
Thoughts?
Yeah, I was just kind of chuckling because I was thinking about what alone time meant.
Back then, I found after a very short period of time that taking two infants to the grocery store to do your weekly grocery shopping, too intense.
So- I forgot about that, yeah.
Yeah, and so in the evenings, I would head to the grocery store like eight or nine at night and do my grocery.
That was my alone time, was grocery shopping.
I remember that.
It was chuckly.
You would- Yeah, how you define alone time is a little different, right?
I mean, it's not bubble bath, then relax.
It's, hey, I get to be in the car alone to go get food.
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah, so that was, and yeah, it changes.
And I think acknowledging that it's temporary.
I knew I wasn't always gonna be doing grocery shopping at 10 o'clock at night, unless that's what I wanted.
But I also knew that wasn't the only alone time.
I knew that at some point, the girls would start school and I would have more opportunity to do things that self-care that you speak of.
Yeah, it's a season of life, right?
And that you just gotta be aware of that.
And I think the risk might be to wish yourself through the season because it gets very hard at times.
As the old man looking back, I would just say, no, treasure those seasons because they are seasons and they go.
And once they're gone, I sound like every Hallmark thing.
Once they're gone, they're gone.
So just enjoy them while you're there.
Go on.
You were gonna say something.
It just is.
It's the way you do.
And there are, you know, what is it?
What do they call the two-year-olds?
Terrible twos.
Terrible twos.
Yeah, ours was actually three, funny enough.
But- Well, it's for heaven.
Sorry, I interrupted.
I was just gonna say, in that moment, oh, you can't wait for them to turn four.
But you're like, I can't wait to get out of this season of life.
But I agree with you.
You really do.
I mean, even that, you know, while they're screaming, throwing themselves on the ground, kicking their feet, kind of chuckle at it, you know, because that will go away and that will be nice.
But you also miss some of that.
I was laughing because twos were actually great for us because with twins that aren't mobile and you got to pick them up and move them every place.
As soon as they start walking, a lot of parents are like, oh, now they're mobile.
It's like, no, heck, they're mobile.
This is great.
I don't have to carry them everywhere.
Come on, let's go.
So yeah, our experience is a little unique in that.
But at the end, there's lots of fundamental things about raising kids.
And it's one or two or three, I don't know.
A couple more things I want to talk about in here before we move to the next section.
We mentioned earlier that I was the sole earner at this time.
And one of the things I was very intentional about was being committed to being fully a parent when I was at home.
Is that always the case?
What was our experience?
And what have you heard through your, oh, this would be a good time to mention, Melissa is a counselor.
So you work with lots of relationship issues with people come to you.
So when I ask you a question that's about other people, you're drawing from your professional background.
Again, we're not giving clinical advice here.
I think you're just talking about your experience that you see through clients.
So I was very committed to being present and being part of the parenting unit at home.
Is that always the case?
It is not always the case.
You know, we talked about how having children changes everything.
The paycheck earning parent doesn't feel that they're still doing exactly what they were doing before.
They're going to the office or whatever it is that they do.
And when they get home, they don't necessarily switch into, oh, somebody needs help.
They've been alone all day with the kid or kids.
They need help.
They go, oh, you know, I had a long day.
I'm going to go have, I'm going to get a drink and I'm going to watch TV or I'm going to read my book.
No, that's, we can discuss that.
We could spend hours on that.
But not everybody takes that viewpoint that, okay, I've been gone.
Now it's time to spend time with my kids.
Yeah.
I don't know why parents choose to become parents, but then not fully participate.
So my, this isn't an advice section or an advice column, but I would say as a father, if you are the one who goes to work and works all day and makes the paycheck for the family, when you come home, man, be a parent.
Just embrace it, be full-time parent.
Because again, it's a season.
You're going to miss it if you don't participate.
And you're also going to create a lot of animosity and disconnect between you and your spouse if you don't participate and don't parent.
Again, back to that, you're going to be closer to becoming one of the children than you are remaining your partnership and being strong.
So parent when you're home.
Absolutely.
How's that for a little bit of advice?
Yeah.
Yeah, very nice.
Now, throughout this, we're looking back at it and maybe there's a little bit of revisionist of like, oh, we did good on all this stuff and everything.
Cause we definitely had our struggles.
When we had our struggles through there, what's the key?
And we say this in darn near every episode, but what's the key when you're struggling with your partner and you're feeling that disconnect and you're not aligned?
Communicate.
Yeah.
Talk about it.
And the reason we mention it in every single episode is because it is so, I can't stress this enough, it is so vital to having a strong, healthy relationship is communication.
The good, the bad, the ugly.
You talk about everything within reason, we discussed in our last episode.
But you have to communicate.
You have to say when you're feeling disconnected.
You have to say when you're feeling like things are not equitable anymore in the home.
And you have to build those conflict resolution skills, those intimacy building skills, all those skills throughout your whole time together so that you can get through those positively.
There's gonna, I mean, kids are gonna throw stress onto the fire.
I don't know anybody who has kids who doesn't get stressed in a relationship.
Kids introduce stress.
Yes.
That's great.
You're making it sound great.
No, I mean, it is.
I mean, I think that's what sharpens you.
I think a lot of men report that when their family grows, their sense of responsibility grows and that they become better at their jobs or better at their work or better at their church life, their family life, whatever, because now they're working for something beyond their own needs.
I think it defines us.
So yeah, but it comes with stress, especially if you're the sole earner and everything.
I mean, stress.
But yeah, stress is good.
Was it pressure makes diamonds?
That is correct.
Right, all right.
Anything else on that?
Let's move on.
I think we covered it.
Okay, now it's time for you guys to share again.
If you've already had your first child, how have you seen your relationship change?
Let us know in the comments.
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That brings us to our first recurring segment today, which we call Inked Moments.
In Inked Moments segment, we share a memory from our past that is related to today's episode.
I like the memory we're sharing today.
Let's share, how did we find out we were having twins?
That is one of my favorite stories.
We have a lot of stories.
We've been together for 30 plus years.
You have a lot of stories.
One of my favorites is that, which is we were in an ultrasound very early on because I had had some troubles early on.
And so they did an early ultrasound.
They don't typically do them this early.
So like eight weeks or whatever.
And the technician, I'm holding your hand.
We're watching the monitor.
We have no idea what we're looking at.
It doesn't make any sense to me at all.
Me either.
And I'm- The imaging I don't think was nearly as good as it is now.
So if you're looking at one today and you're going, how did you not understand?
This was 25 years ago.
It looked like a kidney bean, right?
Maybe, I don't think it was.
Anyway, I'm holding your hand.
We're, oh, we're oohing and aahing.
And all of a sudden the technician goes, oh.
And obviously you tense up.
First pregnancy, had no clue.
So when your technician says, oh, you're like, oh my gosh, and you had been having troubles and you were worried that you weren't going to be able to maintain the pregnancy.
You get nervous when, and she said, oh, there's another one.
And I dropped Michael's hand immediately and said, another what?
And she said, there's two babies in there.
I dropped your hand.
Looking back, I feel it was so rude.
Well, what was the first thing I said when she said, there's two babies in there?
You can share.
I said, are there any more?
So your mind went to, oh crap, there's two.
Mine went to, oh God, there's not three, is there?
So I think we both had our own sort of visceral responses to, yeah, you think you're having a singleton and you're a little worried that you're even having a child because you were going through some issues to all of a sudden there's two heartbeats and you're like, oh, okay.
Shell shocked.
I remember walking out the door and just kind of looking at you and go, what?
Well, and let's share a little details about this.
So there's two things that come to mind.
One is it was super early and apparently a lot of pregnancies are multiples early.
So were we even sure we were gonna have twins coming out of there?
No, it's called vanishing twin syndrome and it's not uncommon prior to 12 weeks for there to be two pregnancies and one isn't viable and so it's kind of absorbed into the woman's body and into the other fetus.
Yeah, which I had never heard of because why would I?
So we walked out of there believing we were having twins but it was too early to tell people we're having twins because that might become a single baby.
So you hold onto that news and that's maybe an example of maybe some of the most intimate info you hold as a person because just you and I knew that.
We had at least a month or so where we're holding this super scary, exciting, whatever news.
So if you think that becoming parents doesn't drive intimacy, it does because you're holding on to something life-changing.
All these memories coming back.
Not just, it was double news.
That wasn't a twin joke.
We hadn't told anybody we were pregnant yet.
Okay, yeah.
We hadn't said that yet.
Oh, you hadn't told your mom?
So we hadn't told anybody because once again, we were having troubles.
I didn't wanna have to, if I lost the pregnancy, I didn't wanna have to grieve with somebody else.
I wanted to do that first with us and then I would've told people.
And we hadn't told anybody.
And then we had the double news.
So, oh, it was killing me.
My mom and I are close and it was killing me not to say anything, but we had decided.
And I think it was, even to this day, I think it was the right decision to wait.
To hold, yeah, exactly.
One other story related to that.
My dad gave a toast at our wedding and I don't know what he'd been drinking, smoking, whatever.
But one of the things he said was, oh, I look forward to you guys growing your family and having twin daughters.
Did he say there were redheads?
I think he did.
He said redheaded twin daughters and watching them play soccer one day.
Cause we grew up playing soccer and everything.
And I'll be damned, man.
I mean, we had twins, they're redheads and yeah, they played soccer for a while.
So again, I'm a believer of speaking things into the world.
Maybe dad had a little bit of a superpower on speaking that into the world.
So that's our story of how we found out we're having twins.
All right, today we are gonna bring back one of our reoccurring segments that we call from his perspective, from her perspective.
This is just what it sounds like.
We're gonna put a gender lens on one of the topics around parenting.
This one's gonna be a little bit of a myth busting rant, whatever you wanna call it.
But here's my question.
Why do people say a dad is babysitting his own kids?
Fewer things annoy me as much as hearing comments or jokes about dad babysitting.
No, he's parenting.
Okay, let's discuss.
Now I get where the joke comes from and that the whole concept is as a primary caregiver, moms often historically have done the massive load of parenting responsibilities.
I get that.
However, as a father who didn't do that, as a father who put a lot of time and energy into being present and being a co-parent in our relationship and being surrounded by lots of guys in my life who are very good parents.
And again, maybe this is a bit unique, but I did things, sports, or I did activities where the girls were involved and we were with other fathers and seeing the time and energy that fathers, good fathers put into this.
Man, it just drives me bonkers when I hear movies make fun of it or I hear commercials make fun of it or we belittle the contribution of dad.
So why do we call it babysitting?
And does it bother you nearly as much as it bothers me because I'm not babysitting, I'm parenting.
It definitely bothers me.
You might take it a notch higher.
I can chuckle about it a little bit because I'm like, wow, how misguided is that?
But it really strikes a nerve with you because you started coaching them in soccer at age four.
There's this thing out here in North Carolina called YMCA Guides and Princesses, and it's dads that do like, how would you explain that really?
Organized scouting activities.
So it's the camping, it's the fishing, it's the outdoors sort of focused things, but it's also access service and et cetera.
So it's through the YMCA, but yeah, it's a program intentional at nurturing father-daughter relationships.
They have an equivalent that's father-sons.
They do.
Yep, absolutely.
Just the importance of that.
And I do see a lot of that, but I also saw the opposite.
I belong to twins group.
One of the first things I joined when we moved out here when the girls were three was, at the time it was mother of twins group, now it's parents of twins.
Of course.
Right, right.
And yeah, the moms would comment about the fathers being at home, babysitting the twins.
And I got all cringy.
I didn't go in my soapbox.
I really wanted to, but we were new here and I was trying to make friends, but I really want to say, babysitting, really?
They're his kids.
A babysitter is somebody, you know, that you pay or, I think grandma might be a babysitter when she does it, but I just, no, you're parenting.
I think we've made our views clear on this particular thing.
And I get the origin of it.
And I get that some fathers don't lean in and some fathers are not comfortable raising their kids because they haven't done the work to be competent at it.
I get it, but it's not babysitting.
If you're a good father, you're not babysitting, you're parenting.
Absolutely.
If this bothers any of you, as much as it bothers me, let us know in the comments or go in there and rail and say, my husband, I love him to death, but he's babysitting and defend it.
I don't know.
But for me, I never babysat my kids, I parented them.
Now, no parenting episode would be complete without at least one segment where we just give you some advice.
Now, our focus is the relationship with us, but there are some things that we did that just helped us in raising our kids that we think will help you.
So we're gonna go through a few of those and I'm gonna kind of let you take the lead in this.
Now, as a couple that has twins, we've gone through, we've launched them successfully, drop some knowledge on us for those young parents out there that are maybe just getting into this.
What do you got?
It's funny that you say this, the advice section, because the very first thing I wanna say is, listen to good meaning advice, but still make the best decision for your family.
There's nothing wrong with hearing people say, oh, thanks, and then doing whatever it is that works for you.
And sometimes that does mean incorporating.
One of the things that I loved about Twins Group is I learned stuff from the older moms or moms that had older kids that some of the techniques or some of the little tricks to having twins, that was well-meaning advice and I took it, but not all of it, right?
Be open to advice, but trust your instincts.
Believe it or not, you actually develop pretty darn good instincts and you know your baby, they're not all the same.
Like what your kid actually needs is sometimes different.
So just, yeah, trust your gut.
What else you got?
Yeah, even between our girls, they're identical twins, but they still had different needs.
So every child is different.
I also, this was especially important for having multiples, but I think it's important for everybody, which is build a support network because there'll be times where you can't do it by yourself.
You need other people that you can rely on.
I have a story about that.
Early on, after having the girls, I got mastitis and it's an infection to do with breastfeeding and it knocks you out.
Somebody told, I think the doctor said it's like, you feel like you got hit with a Mack truck, didn't you?
I was like, that's exactly right.
Like a really bad case of, oh, so painful, so exhausting.
Well, Michael was back at work and you couldn't, you were just taken two weeks off.
You guys had a lot going on at work.
And so my dear father-in-law came out and stayed with me for a couple of days and would take care of the girls.
I stayed in bed, did the self-care that I needed to, and he would just bring them to me to nurse.
And without that support, obviously you would have had to take time off, but since we had a support network and we had, my mom helped out a ton.
Like I said, your dad helped out.
We had people.
And even when we moved out here, we had a community, which was surprising to me.
We had neighbors that helped out when things were tough, even though we are so far from family.
Build a support network.
It is so important.
You might not think you need it, but at some point you're going to need it.
Yeah, to find that, because, and not everybody has that.
We were very fortunate.
We had a very strong community around us, but make sure you try to put that in place, prioritize it.
I totally forgot the story about my dad helping out during that time.
Goes sort of to the blur, the haze of fog, the fog of war.
We're deep into that.
There's so many things that happened in those first nine months that I just don't remember because you're sleep deprived and it's such a busy time.
So yeah, that's a good one.
What else you got?
In this day and age, this is especially important.
Don't Google everything.
Not everything your child does is an issue or it also doesn't mean that they're so advanced.
Everybody spends so much time on the internet.
Is this normal?
And what is normal?
Yeah, there are some things, right, that you should, if you're confused about something or you want to, okay, what does crying it out mean?
Yeah, you can Google that.
But every little thing, you're gonna get in your head.
You're gonna find scary stories online.
You're going to get bad advice online.
Don't Google everything.
For the most part, the vast majority of parents can trust their gut, that there are quite a few things that you probably know that you don't realize you know.
Yeah, that's a good one.
We had no option on that.
We couldn't Google.
We had to call mom and dad.
We had to call friends, family, because there was no super accessible Google at the time.
It's funny because it just points the old school version of this.
I know they still make them though.
There's the what to expect when you're expecting book and then what to expect with infants, what to expect with toddlers.
And it kind of goes, so there were a ton of parenting.
And I had the first couple of those, but eventually I just went, everything, this is fine.
We got this.
And I tell the parents that I work with a lot of time, within reason, there's not any one thing that you're gonna do that's gonna screw up your kids.
So if your kid's doing something in the moment and you do something to fix it and you fix it, but you're not sure if it was the right thing to do, you can ask somebody later.
Any one thing you're gonna do, it's the things that you do consistently that could potentially mess up your kid.
You could screw them for life.
Absolutely.
Well, before you get to your last couple, I'm gonna throw one in here.
I see this a lot with the toddlers and the younger kids, not maybe the infants, but sort of just that toddler and early school days.
Don't overschedule your kids.
Let them be kids.
Some of these things where you don't have to fill every moment of every day with your child.
And one of the things we're losing with devices and all this overstimulation is we're losing that time to simply be bored and to be unscheduled.
And the negative impact of that is our brains are wired to sort of become creative and to fill those spaces, those gaps.
If you don't give your mind, those young minds time to be unscheduled and sort of exploring and figuring it out, they don't develop those parts of their brain, their creativity and all that sort of stuff.
So don't feel like you're a bad parent if you don't have them in seven different classes and this sport and that gym and you're going to the museum.
Kids don't need nearly as much as we throw at them.
Let them be unscheduled kids.
And we were very intentional with that early on, partially for finances, because all that stuff is super expensive.
So we made the decision of like, we're going to do a couple things that are important for them, but also we're just going to let them be at home and play and do other things and go to play dates and whatever that are not organized, filled, do this sort of thing.
So let them be kids.
Well, the other part of that that I see all the time is parents thinking they need to entertain their children.
There is nothing wrong with saying, hey, why don't you go to your room, read your books, you know, if it's before they can read, picture books, or play with your Legos or whatever, because mom needs to do X, or mom and dad need to do whatever it is.
I feel that parents think that they do, that they have to, if they're not, they feel they're not being good parents.
If they are not using all their free time to be with their child.
Kids need to learn how to entertain themselves.
And that's from very early on.
Yeah, it goes back to that mindset of, kids aren't the center of the world.
They aren't the center of your relationship.
They aren't the center of everything.
They're a piece of it and a part of it.
And they can, at very early ages, they can stand alone and entertain themselves and do those moments to free up.
Yeah, good one.
Right, and I touched on this one a little bit, but I want to stress it a little bit more, is that you're going to make mistakes.
Give yourself and your spouse that grace.
I didn't make a single parenting mistake.
All righty.
Not a single one.
Don't know what you're talking about.
All right.
Well, I was just going to let him think that.
Give me grace.
Give you grace.
Despite the, what to expect when you have toddler book, kids don't come with a manual.
And so there's going to be mistakes.
And once again, it's not, you can't do any one thing within reason, you know.
Yeah.
There's abuse issues, but you can't do any one thing that is going to mess them up.
It's if you do that thing over and over again.
So do your best in the moment, and then you can think about it some more and see if there's a better way to handle whatever that thing was.
That giving grace makes me think of something.
We have different parenting styles.
And sometimes there's conflict that comes into our relation, that came into our relationship, because you would do something one way, I would do it a different way.
And as the primary caregiver, you sometimes did not like that it wasn't done the same way.
And we've discussed in a previous episode that was talking about conflict resolution is that if I'm doing it wrong and it matters, breaking routines, something that's going to cause problems down the road or is harmful, then stepping in and fixing it and adjusting it makes sense.
But if it's just a preference of how things are done, give that grace, understand that a dad's going to parent different than a mom's going to parent, it's fine.
We bring different approaches to things.
And so it's not just giving grace when you snap at each other or having a relationship, but give grace in that you're going to parent different than I'm going to parent.
And it's fine.
The kid's going to be better because they're going to see two different approaches to the same thing.
I think it comes down to there's more than one right way to do something.
There's more than one wrong way too, but yeah.
Absolutely.
But just because you want it a certain way doesn't mean the other way is wrong.
But that's hard.
When you've just spent 12 hours alone with the kids and then somebody comes in and then changes something and you're like, we just did this for 12 hours.
Now you're changing everything.
It doesn't mean it's wrong.
Exactly.
All right.
So solid words of advice for a mother who has walked the walk.
Are you deep in your family building days and have additional advice to share?
Drop your best tips in the comments.
What brings us to our final segment, our Pen to Paper segment.
In our Pen to Paper segment, we give you a practical challenge or reflection to help you write your own lasting marriage story.
This episode is centered on parenting and how it will change your relationship.
We covered earlier, it changes everything.
Our challenge to you today is to discuss having children before committing to marriage.
And if you are already married, but unclear on your vision, hopes and dreams in this area, have the conversation now.
Melissa, why is it so important to discuss having children or not before you commit?
For a lot of people, it would be a deal breaker.
If you want them or don't want them and the other person does or don't, that I would think that'd be a deal breaker because my best advice, I just got off some advice, let's give another one.
My best advice is don't assume that they'll change their mind.
I have seen it on rare occasions where they have because sometimes they say they don't want kids before they've met the person and been in a relationship with them.
But for the most part, if somebody says they don't want kids or that they do, the chances of them changing their mind are slim to none.
It has to be a deal breaker.
If the other person, you're not aligned on that.
Yeah, if you want to find yourself in one of those parenting partnerships where one parent does all the work, have kids with someone who didn't really want to have kids.
It's a surefire way to do that.
I think the, unfortunately, it sounds very obvious.
Of course, we're gonna talk about this before, but unfortunately, people don't.
They don't think that far ahead.
They don't plan.
They don't, and it's not even just necessarily do you want kids or not, but do you want one kid versus three kids?
That's a difference, right?
So talking about what your vision is for your family, do you want the big family?
Do you not?
Being honest with yourself about, are you fit to be a parent?
Like, what do you want out of your life?
Be honest with that.
Don't make the decision to have kids because your partner wants them.
You have to want kids because it will massively impact everything you do.
And yeah, have that before.
Now, if you're already married and you haven't had that discussion, boy, get on it.
Because again, that's gonna be a deal breaker or lead to problems.
And I think there are a few areas of alignment that couples really need to have to have long-term success.
Financial alignment, you need to treat money the same to have kids or not is one of those big ones.
There's a few others.
So these are really like relationship-defining decisions.
So anything else to add on that?
No.
All right, have those discussions early.
That's our Pen to Paper segment.
Well, that brings us to the end of today's discussion on how becoming parents has impacted our relationship.
We hope you have heard a few things today that will help you strengthen your relationship as you make your own decision to have children or not.
This is truly one of the biggest decisions you will make as a couple.
So give it the weight and the time that it needs.
Our final parting advice to you is to always put your relationship at the center of your decision-making.
If we haven't made it clear enough earlier on, we believe that the only or the best foundation to build a family on is a strong, healthy relationship with your partner.
With that, we wanna thank you for joining us today.
We invite you to connect with us by joining our free Penned in Ink community.
Here, we share free digital guides and occasional updates to help you build your own long-lasting love.
Click the link in the description to join now.
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Have a good day.