SAHM, Part II

I'm going to be home with my kids next year. And this scares me, but not because I'm going to be home all day, every day, with my kids.

Okay, not just for that reason.

My other concern is: What will this do to my marriage?

Don't get me wrong, my husband and I love each other. But our marriage suffered two rather large seismic shocks in the last 2 years, 11 months, and 3 weeks. The births of our children were more joyous than we expected. The raising of our children is more difficult that we could have ever dreamed. And it affected our relationship in ways we never thought of.

Sure, when you have a baby, you think you know what you are getting into.
You know that you are going to have sleepless nights. And you know you will have to spend money on things like diapers and baby food. And you have a feeling that your sex life might suffer. And you think that your marriage will change -- perhaps grow stronger as you raise a person together.

But no one tells you that newborns have to eat every 2 hours and they don't give a damn that it's 3 in the morning and you haven't slept in 2 weeks.

Or that diapers are $40 a box, and you go through 2 boxes a week.

Or that baby food is ridiculously overpriced and your baby will refuse to eat it half the time, and will knock it on the floor the other half of the time.

Or that baby toys will take over your living room.

Or that you and your husband can go an entire day where there only conversation you have is about your child's bowel movements.

Or, forget suffering... what sex life?

Or that you are an idiot for thinking that your marriage will get stronger - for the first six months to a year, it's all about survival and you and your husband are two ships passing in the night.

Or that at times you actually think your newborn might be plotting your death.

And after all of that, my husband and I are just now starting to get our marriage back on solid seismic footing.

So I'm worried that my staying home will be a large aftershock to those previous earthquakes.

Besides the obvious worries and stresses about money, I'm worried about something more simple. My husband, as much as I love him, is taciturn at best. And one of the things I knew we could always talk about is work -- we are both teachers, so that gave us something to "bond" over.

So, once we talk about the kids, what are we going to talk about?