Rhonda Nordin - After the Baby: Making Sense of Marriage After Childbirth

Copyright 2000 by Rhonda Kruse Nordin

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any

meansincluding photocopying and electronic reproduction

without written permission from the publisher.

Designed by Janis Owens

Published by Taylor Trade Publishing

1550 West Mockingbird Lane

Dallas, Texas 75235

www.taylorpub.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nordin, Rhonda Kruse.

After the baby : making sense of marriage after childbirth / by Rhonda Kruse Nordin.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0-87833-168-9 ISBN 978-0-87833-168-0

1. ParentingPsychological aspects. 2. Marriage. 3. Marital conflict.

I. Title.

HQ755.8 .N675 2000

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Printed in the United States of America

This book is dedicated with love and appreciation, to my dear husband Bruce, and to my sons Addison and Ian. Their love and encouragement have enabled me to indulge my passion and bring this book to fruition.

A special thank you, too, to Dr. Dwenda K. Gjerdingen, whose help and direction have been invaluable.

Dwenda K. Gjerdingen, M.D., Family Practice

It is sad but true that we are often the least prepared for lifes most challenging responsibilities. One such responsibility is that of becoming a parent. Although health care professionals make an effort to teach us the basics of caring for a newbornhow to bathe, feed, and clothe it, for examplewe, as parents, still have few opportunities to learn beforehand how to cope with the changes that parenthood thrusts on us, especially on our marriages.

I have seen this lack of preparation on both a professional and personal level. I had just completed my formal training as a family physician when I gave birth to my first child. Medical school and residency had prepared me well for the physical changes that accompany pregnancy and childbirth. The childbirth education classes my husband and I attended taught us more than we ever needed to know about breathing patterns for labor. After the birth of our son, the labor and delivery nurses carefully taught the procedures for breast-feeding, bathing and diapering a baby, and taking its temperature. Then we were on our own. No one had prepared us for the weeks, months, and years that followed after we drove away from the hospital. Our drive home was blurred by tears of joy and fear, all mixed together. And rightfully so, for life was never again the same. My husband and I were two different people with new physical and emotional needs, a dependent infant, a new lifestyle, and a sense of total unpreparedness. It was this intense personal experience, together with the relative lack of clinical information about the postpartum period, that prompted my own research studies on womens postpartum health.

During the time I was conducting and publishing my research, Rhonda Kruse Nordin came to me for advice and direction on this book. I had realized for some time that, even though I was personally gaining a richer understanding of the postpartum period, there still seemed to be limited educational opportunities on this topic available to the general public. Childbirth education classes continued to focus primarily on labor and delivery, with little time left over to discuss the personal and marital changes that couples might anticipate after their babys birth. So I eagerly welcomed this book as a much needed resource for new and expectant parents. I feel privileged to have been involved with this project from the beginning.

In After the Baby, Rhonda Kruse Nordin clearly lays out for new parents the developments they can expect, good and not so good, in themselves and in their marriage after a baby is born. Her candid, direct style, sprinkled with anecdotes from new parents, makes this topic very approachable and even entertaining. Yet her work is cast in clinically sound principles derived from a large array of medical and psychological research studies. This book provides the educational experience that new parents need and want in order to understand and manage their marriage as it moves into parenthood. It may be one of the most stressful experiences they face as a couple.

If this book served only to enhance our knowledge of marriage and parenthood, it would be enough, but its purpose goes beyond this. It encourages us to become working partners in raising our children, to share lovingly in the labor, stress, and joy of raising a family and running a household. The overarching goal of the book is to strengthen marriages and families, and each chapter and paragraph strives toward that goal, through a skillful interplay of facts, stories, and practical advice.

The premise of the book is that the strength of our society rests on the health of each individual family, and the health of the family is, in turn, dependent upon the strength of its leadersthe parentsand the love and caring that spring forth from that relationship. Therefore, we need to be concerned with bolstering this most vital and basic alliance, and the rest of society will follow.

I have learned a great deal from Rhonda about the needs of todays new parents. This book has heightened my awareness of the changes and conflicts men and women face as they cross into the wildly uncharted waters of parenthood. I learned why many marriages break up in what seems to be inordinate proportions during this time. My medical practice delivers nearly three hundred babies each year. We observe their mothers and fathers and the marriages of these parents. Yet when working on this project, I learned things I did not know. I am sure my colleagues in the health profession will also gain from reading this book.

Those who will gain the most, though, are the many couples who are having a baby or contemplating starting a family. They will be most grateful for After the Baby. They will learn a great deal about their marriage and even more about themselves. The information in this book has been largely unavailable to the millions of men and women who become parents together each year. I am well aware of the facts. I work with this information each day, and much of it is available to me as a medical professional. I find it in related journals and periodicals, usually on library shelves and at resource centers I use for my work. Mostly, though, I see evidence of its reality in the lives and faces of those who are my patients. Rhonda brings this information to the men and women who so desperately need to see and understand it. I highly recommend this book. Its information is invaluable and will undoubtedly help many couples at the first critical crossroads in their marriage, after childbirth.

Dwenda K. Gjerdingen, M.D., Family Practice