How does a baby change your life?

Do we ever truly know how much a new baby will change our lives? Going from a ‘carefree’ couple to also looking after a baby is a big change but a change most parents welcome, I hope. A new baby will change lives forever. Babies bring parents closer together while pushing them further apart. Babies change everything, even when they grow up.

Recently, I was sitting enjoying a quiet coffee out with my wife when I said something to her that I could not quite believe would have ever come from my mouth a few years ago. Maybe it was seeing other parents with prams and younger children than my, now teenage, son.

“This would be so much better if he was still here with us in the pram”.

The look on her face told me that she understood what I meant, and that she missed it too.

Making the change

When you first become pregnant as a couple, it is an exciting time of anticipation but also one of nervousness and uncertainty. Especially if you are the one that will be giving birth. There is a period of preparing the nursery for the arrival, and also getting a lot of loving attention from family. Possibly you even get to enjoy a new baby shower and lots of gifts!

When your child arrives it is usually a time of great excitement and novelty. You are relieved that everything is OK and you are typically (hopefully) surrounded with support and advice.

Within a few weeks, you will learn how, if you didn’t know already, how to change a nappy, make a bottle and which songs soothe your baby to sleep: without much sleep yourself! After some time, routine settles in and you become accustomed to the new arrival. This is a change unlike any before in your life. It's not the same as moving house, getting married or starting a demanding job, and life will never quite be the same again.

You are not in Kansas any more.

Having a new baby when you are used to being a couple can affect your life in multiple areas, so I’ll try to tell you how it felt for me, particularly as a stay home dad.

Managing the workload, logistics, and responsibility

I always liked to think that I was fairly well-organised. The bills were paid on time and I hated to be late! When my son came along, I expected things to be different, but the amount of planning and daily workload was a big surprise. It's a lot more than just having to remember to bring in a bottle of milk and pay the rent. A new baby takes a lot of organising.

Raising a child is a lot more like herding cats. It goes from not running out of nappies, to being on time for school, to making sure they attend medical appointments. I think it is different to a career in that at five o’clock on Friday you can start to leave work at the door.

Of course, this can feel on top of all the other pressures of parenting as a huge weight of responsibility. Fortunately, responsibility can be shared, and you will be surprised how quickly you become an awesome family taxi, nurse, homework wrangler and are at the school gate on time daily. As a stay home dad, sometimes a lot of the stress and logistics can fall on me, but I'm glad to say these skills will also make you better at managing everything else in life, including your career.

Sacrifice, Freedom, Identity

It takes a lot of time, money, and some tears to parent a child. Something has to be sacrificed to achieve this. The commitment pays off in love, fulfillment and knowing you have done something incredibly worthwhile. To achieve this inevitably meant, certainly for me, a loss of freedom. As well as being short of time and possibly money to do the things you used to as a couple, you need to plan how you are to do things taking account of children.

A change in lifestyle like this will mean your sense of identity changes. This can mean everything from a sense of purpose and satisfaction to the days when you mourn the previous freedoms. Personally for me, it was a mixture of purpose and mourning and something to watch out for is when you and your partner feel differently about the changes, particularly when there are mental health challenges. I found that if I found some time out and lots of communication about teamwork I found it was more about purpose than sacrifice.

Relationship taking a back seat and struggling with the change

Before my son was born, I think I really took it for granted that if I wanted to chat with my wife about my day, or to go to see a film and have a quiet drink. She usually could. With a new baby or child, you need to prioritise them, and they will take a lot of your time and energy.

I grew to enjoy time with her as part of a group of the three of us, and grew the patience to wait for the conversation I wanted. The activities in your spare time have to include a child and typically need planning. It would be a lie for me to say that it didn’t take time to adapt and that many other couples go through the same issues. It can almost become an uncomfortable type of jealousy.

Some parents can really struggle with this and the other issues listed in this blog. The lack of freedom, the responsibility and the financial pressures. You need to talk about how you feel, and hopefully you find the rewards of parenting more than compensate.

Exhaustion

When my son was a new baby , like most people, I had heard the cliché about going without any sleep. After even just a few weeks, I would definitely not argue with this.

I believe there are things that nobody tells you about becoming a parent, and one of them is how tiring it can be. This varies with your child’s age, but it's not just about the lack of sleep, There is also the mental tiredness from entertaining your child all day, the physical tiredness of chasing a toddler or driving a teenager around every weekend. Finally, the emotional tiredness from worrying about them and from any disagreements is rarely spoken about.

Jealousy and Guilt

These two are hard to grasp at first, and you might only understand them if you experience them yourself firsthand. Why would you? Who could possibly be jealous or feel guilty about their own child?

For me, it was undoubtedly a big surprise. Of the two, guilt is a bit easier to understand. Even before the arrival of my son, I wanted to provide the best childhood I could, as did my wife. When your child arrives we wanted to give them the best food, the best education, not make mistakes and started to feel guilty for taking time out or focusing on careers. This was where jealousy can start. You start to resent the amount you give to your child, especially when you sacrifice more and more. You no longer have freedom and independence, and you have to now share your other half, or possibly you feel your child is closer to your partner. Furthermore, you probably feel guilty about being jealous.

Loneliness, boredom and missing friends.

Before I became a dad, I used to think the things I would find the hardest would be changing nappies and getting up in the night. Would I learn how to feed my son and be capable of raising a child? We got used to nappies and early mornings fairly quickly. The biggest change from being a couple is that it’s all a marathon, not a sprint. It’s a full-time job, and they need you constantly. Meeting their needs will dictate your schedule in a way nothing really does as a couple. Even the hardest day job has days off. However rewarding it is, raising a child is a process requiring sacrifice. I missed time to myself, time with friends, and you will miss the variety of not being a parent. It might take time to adapt, and maybe you will always slightly feel this way.

Parenting styles or roles and when they clash.

When you first take your new baby home, and while you go through each milestone of parenting, there are lots of decisions to make. I really wished I had a manual, but there isn’t one. For me, I felt out of my depth at times, and instinctively I would copy how I was raised or how I saw other children being parented. As a couple, the arguments about what colour to paint the house or where to go on holiday pale into nothing when the stakes become as high as your child. For us, it was a disciplined style. The thing to remember is that your partner will have their own different upbringing and ideas. Thinking your ideas are better, and clinging to maybe how you were raised, can lead to a whole other level of disagreement you never had as a couple. Adding in the tiredness and other pressures that come with parenting is fuel to the fire.

Help or interference from extended family

As a couple, you will definitely have arguments, and one of the things you might argue about is extended family. Possibly you want to spend more time with parents and communicate more often than your significant other.

When my our new baby came along, my extended family were amazing, and I am still really glad of their help and guidance, but not everyone is so lucky. Your in-laws might think their advice is to help you, but you can easily feel interference. The opposite problem can be just as bad, and you might argue that one set of parents don’t help as much. Especially if you are struggling with childcare.

Financial pressure, budgeting and priorities.

According to The Times, the average, 2025 cost of raising a child from birth to eighteen in the UK is £223,256. A lot of this cost is childcare, so you might not need to panic quite yet, as there is hopefully government or family help with this. This is a considerable pressure for anyone, but when you add in the other background pressures of parenting and the guilt to be a good parent, it can only feel worse.

This felt most personal for me when at the times when we were running low on money as a family. The times when I still needed to buy nappies or milk, or when my son needed expensive new clothes or shoes. As a parent, you will always find a way.

For me, I felt it brings not just the pressure to have the money, but the accompanying decisions on how to earn it and spend it. The sacrifices you might have to make or the hours you work, and when. The type of work you do, maybe choosing stability over what you really enjoy. Also, there are the sacrifices you might need to make on spending your money. Fewer nights out, takeaways or luxuries as you spend more of your budget on your child.

Possibly there will be some arguments that as a couple that you never really had before. Did you really require that expensive pair of trainers, who gets the most quality time at home and if you could be earning higher wages and paying for more? These arguments can sadly turn nasty quickly.

Of course, there is a flip side to this. Your work feels more worthwhile as you are providing for your new baby, parenting can make you more resilient, and possibly even ambitious to finally chase the job you always wanted. Possibly a better work/life balance is what you realise is truly important. A new baby smile is worth alot!!

The unrealistic pressure to be perfect.

There is a pressure on you as a young couple, especially on social media, just as there is on everyone. You can be judged on the clothes you wear, the sort of wedding you might have or where you go on holiday. For some people this is easy to ignore, but when you become parents this can seriously increase. How your child behaves in public, how well they do at school, if they have nice clothes or gadgets and maybe how they progress compared to other children all feel under scrutiny.

The reason this is much worse is that you will inevitably pile a lot of pressure on yourself. It's much easier not to care about what people think of you, but you definitely want the best for your kid. You will worry how they are doing, and the Internet is full of people to compare yourself to and ideas on how to raise children. As a stay home dad I had more exposure to this than is typical as I was there to observe how other families live, or appear to live at the school gates or birthday parties.

Stress and Mental health Issues

Reading this blog and others on CosyChats will hopefully be useful in conveying to you the scale of the changes involved in becoming a parent. These changes come alongside the hormonal challenges of pregnancy and usually come on top of life’s other challenges, such as your career. It's no surprise then that parents can feel stressed and unfortunately also develop mental health issues after becoming parents. It's important therefore to manage stress from early on and seek help for any mental health problem promptly.

Why having a kid is one of the best things I ever did.

If this blog sounds a bit negative, then please remember me saying how much I now miss it. The first part to remember is that children grow up quickly, There will be long hours and short days. Before you know it, they go from walking to talking, to school and to being young adults.

If you can take help from the people and resources around you, work as a team and take the bad days with the good, then it will be surprising how it changes you as a person.

Nothing will give you a greater sense of purpose than raising a child. In fact, I have found it hard to replicate this as my son has grown more independent. Generally, the other problems you might be facing will hopefully become more like background noise. Ending your day knowing that your child is alright puts them into perspective. Maybe there is something instinctive and natural about doing what thousands of parents have done before you. In fact, raising a child is character building. You can’t help but be more resilient, organised and compassionate. The other surprising thing is, after teaching your kid to read or ride a bike, and showing them the world, suddenly that pint in the pub doesn't seem quite as exciting any more.

Despite all the upsides, though, it is fair to say that parenting is a challenge. It is supposed to be hard because it’s such an important job. Even though it's rewarding, it's still essential to have time away from parenting. To reset, to refresh, and to keep your identity intact. But if you feel it is seriously effecting your mental health, it's vital to seek professional help early on.

For me this was time away from home cycling, listening to some music or going out for a coffee. Even when you feel completely depleted, there are hopefully small ways to relax. You just need to find what mix of outlet works best for you.

Work as a team with your partner, always communicating and co-operating. Take all the help you can because, as is often said, it takes a village to raise a child.

If you would like to talk to me more about this or any other parenting issue, don’t hesitate to contact me on CosyChats.

My name is Drew and I'm a stay at home dad from the UK who passionately believes in parents supporting parents. We're all in this together and none of us has a manual.

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