PRE-BABE

While trying to get pregnant, intimacy became a means to an end for us, which was calculated down to the most minute detail. This meant Jesse had to become twice as intentional to elevate the experience and set the mood. If you’re trying to get pregnant and it isn’t going well - first of all, we see you and we’re giving you a huge virtual hug - our best advice is to have fun, let lose and try to keep it spontaneous (as much as possible when you’re taking daily fertility tests).

DURING PREGNANCY

Time to buckle up and give all the compliments, foot rubs, clean the house, and set the mood! If you’re going on a babymoon - keep it realistic (i.e. Disneyland wasn’t our brightest moment). But more important than anything else, give yourself and your partner GRACE GRACE GRACE. So much GRACE.

KEEPING THE SPARK ALIVE WITH A BABY

Now with a babe, we’re only 8 months in, but so far we’ve found the following things are so crucial to stoking the flame and not just co-parenting:

• recognize that intimacy is so much more than just sex
• maintain a date night as regularly as possible
• consider couple’s counselling
• key moment expectation check-ins
• weekly business meeting
• if nursing, share the burden (if possible)
• the simplest sexiest phrase husband’s could ever ask (33:20)
• carve out time for yourself
• lean on people further ahead than you and open up
• stop comparing
• MORE GRACE

Honorable mentions:

Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman

The Real Life Podcast by The Bethkes