How to Prepare Your Relationship for a Baby
TLDR
It's not the baby's fault: The tension that new parents feel in their relationship isn't about the baby; it's about the huge transition they're going through and what that brings up from the past.
You're normal: Roughly two-thirds of couples see their relationship satisfaction take a significant dip after baby number one. It's common, and it doesn't mean you've made a terrible mistake or chosen the wrong partner.
You're both changing: Expect to feel a bit disorientated. You're both becoming different versions of yourselves, and old family scripts have a funny way of showing up at 3am.
The secret: You don't need a 10-step plan. You just need to stay curious, keep the warmth alive, and remember you're on the same team.
Having a baby is, by any metric, a big deal. Most couples spend an extraordinary amount of time fussing over the birth plan, the pram, and all the equipment they may, or may not, actually need.
But let's zoom out a bit. The arrival of a first baby is just one chapter in a much longer story of family life, a story that has probably already held the hopes and uncertainties of trying to conceive, and perhaps even the grief of a loss along the way. Birth, and preparing for birth, can feel like the entire story when you are in the thick of it, but in truth it’s just the start of years of becoming parents together. Your relationship is the thread that runs through it all. Preparing your relationship for a baby before they arrive can make those first few months so much easier.
How your relationship changes when you become parents
Of course you already know that life is going to change, but it can be difficult to imagine just how much before it happens. Consider the sheer scale of the transition: sleep becomes a luxury, time alone with your partner now has to be planned and protected, and you move from being partners to being co-parents, with all of the night wakings and a million tiny decisions that go with it, all while navigating a level of exhaustion that is difficult to describe.
And underneath all of that there is a more profound shift occurring. For the person who gave birth, there is 'matrescence'. Dana Raphael coined the term to describe the reorganisation of identity that happens alongside the physical changes of pregnancy and the postnatal months. It can be an incredibly disorienting experience, even when the baby is deeply longed for. You might find yourself grieving your former self at the exact moment you are falling in love with your child. The partner, meanwhile, moves through their own version of this, as stepping into a new parental role reshapes a person's sense of who they are and where they stand in the relationship.
There’s often something else that can surface that often surprises couples: how you suddenly find yourself re-enacting the family you were raised in. The way your own parents met your needs, or handled closeness and conflict, has laid down blueprints you may never have put into words. One of you might assume, quite naturally, that a crying baby should be picked up instantly, while the other feels just as strongly that a moment's pause is best. It might look like you’re arguing about the baby, but you’re not: the families that shaped you, and the attachment patterns you formed long before you ever met are colliding. But it isn't only about the past. Underneath the row about who picks the baby up sits a live question you're both asking right now: when I'm overwhelmed and frightened, are you there for me? When these histories surface at three in the morning, they can feel enormous, and the person you love can start to look rather like a stranger holding a very different rulebook.
This doesn’t mean your relationship is broken or forever changed. It just means you are doing something incredibly difficult, whilst carrying a great deal of history that you might not even be able to see.
What the evidence tells us
The pattern is well-documented. Decades of research by John and Julie Gottman show that about two-thirds of couples experience a significant decline in satisfaction in the first few years of parenthood. That might sound scary, but try reading it this way: if most couples feel the strain and are struggling, then feeling it yourself is not a personal failure. It is simply part of the shared human experience, and one that couples can move through.
So, what about the other one-third? What are they doing differently?
They aren't wealthier, calmer, or have babies that are better sleepers. They just do a few small things well:
They turn toward each other: John Gottman found that partners are constantly making little 'bids' for attention. This could be a comment about something out the window, a meme, a text, what to have for dinner - anything really. The couples who fared well noticed these bids and responded, even briefly, rather than letting them slide. These tiny moments are like little deposits in the emotional bank account of your relationship. They help partners feel seen and important, and create a buffer against sleep deprivation induced snappiness or irritability.
They protect the "fondness bank": When exhaustion reduces life to a series of tasks, it is incredibly easy to start seeing your partner as the person who forgot to pack nappies or who didn't sterilise the bottles. The couples who did well managed to hold on to a warmer perspective, remembering what they actually liked about each other, even on the truly grim days. That doesn’t mean that they didn’t raise complaints with their partner, but they did so from a place of seeing their partner as someone who is probably trying their best during a really tough time.
They stay on the same team: Somewhere amid the feeds and the laundry, they managed to keep hold of the larger thing they were making together; the family they wanted to become and the values they hoped to pass on. That sense of a shared direction gave the daily grind a sense of meaning.
There's nothing here about big grand gestures, and that's the point really. What keeps couples feeling connected is feeling seen, being appreciated, and feeling like you're in this together.
What you can do, right now
There's no single answer to how to prepare your relationship for a baby, but starting the conversation now, while you're (hopefully) still getting a full night's sleep, can give you a head start in staying connected through one of the most significant transitions you will ever go through.
You might start by talking about your 'maps'. What are you each bringing into this? What did conflict and closeness look like in your home growing up? What do you want to pass on, and what do you want to leave behind? These are vulnerable things to talk about, and it can feel a bit difficult. But talking about them now can help turn them into a shared map you can come back to later when you’re trying to understand why you might be so worked up by something that wouldn't usually bother you.
It also helps to spot the pattern of the fight before you're in it. Under pressure, many couples fall into the same loop: one reaches for connection and turns critical when it doesn't come, the other feels got at and pulls away, each move feeds the other. The loop is the problem, not your partner, and understanding what that looks like now, can help you recognise it when it inevitably happens next.
Once you can name the loop, you can start to agree on some ground rules. Remember, the tension is a guest, not a resident. When you feel it, label it, rather than identify it as a character flaw in your partner. Couples who assume a rough patch means they have failed often turn on each other, when they really need to turn toward each other. Couples who understand that the difficulty is part and parcel of being a new parent tend to meet it as a shared challenge.
Small acts of maintenance can also help before the baby arrives. This can be anything that keeps the friendship under your partnership breathing. It's this friendship you will both be leaning on when life feels like it’s been turned upside down.
Finding support as you prepare for parenthood
If you've read this far, you're probably already doing the thing that matters most: treating your relationship as something worth paying attention to before the baby arrives.
If you would like support designed for exactly this moment, the Bringing Baby Home workshop was created for it. It comes directly from the Gottmans' research, and it gives expectant and new parents a practical, evidence-based way to protect their relationship as they move into parenthood together. For couples who are already feeling the strain and would value more individual attention, weekly couples therapy offers a slower, more tailored space to understand what is surfacing and to find your way back to each other.
You can find out more here:
I'm Dr Helen Lewis, a Clinical Psychologist (HCPC registered), Certified Schema Therapist, and EMDR Therapist at Philos Psychology in Sheffield. I use Gottman Method Couples Therapy in my work with couples preparing for, and adjusting to, parenthood.
References/ Further reading
Gottman, J. M., & Gottman, J. S. (2007). And Baby Makes Three: The Six-Step Plan for Preserving Marital Intimacy and Rekindling Romance After Baby Arrives. Three Rivers Press.
Raphael, D. (1975). Matrescence, becoming a mother, a "new/old" rite de passage. In D. Raphael (Ed.), Being Female: Reproduction, Power, and Change. Mouton.