'It totally broke us.' 11 women on how having kids changed their relationship.

Listen to this story being read by Laura Jackel, here.

On a previous episode of Mamamia Out Loud, hosts Holly, Mia, and Jessie discussed how challenging it can be for a relationship when you become parents. 

The segment was inspired by an interview Missy Higgins did with Zan Rowe on ABC's Take 5, where she told Rowe that her five-year marriage to Dan Lee ended shortly after having kids.

"Our relationship didn't so much fall apart, as we just couldn't seem to parent together," Higgins said.

As a married parent of two boys, I very much relate. Learning to co-parent with my husband Jules was probably one the biggest challenges I have ever faced.

I got married at 24 and we waited six years before trying for a baby. 

In our pre-kids days, we travelled to far-flung destinations, we slept-in late on the weekends, worked hard, and went for long lunches with friends. 

When we had baby Toby in 2010, the shock to our lifestyle and relationship was enormous. 

I struggled immensely and Jules struggled initially to understand why I didn't just take to motherhood as naturally as he imagined.

Where we had once been equals in work and at home, I became a default stay-at-home mum and it overwhelmed me. 

Those early months of adapting to our new roles as parents while sleep deprived and having NO CLUE what we were doing were tough. We had to think about our relationship differently and rediscover who we were again - as parents and people. 

When our second son Leo arrived in 2017 after a few years of fertility issues, we went through it all again as we adapted our family to welcome its fourth (very loud) member.

For us, we just needed time - years in fact - to learn how to parent alongside each other, while still remaining happy as a couple. It's not always rosy and we still disagree about some things, but now we've worked out our strengths and weaknesses, it's a privilege to parent alongside Jules.

We have fun as a family and as a couple we talk a lot about the boys and our shared love for them. It unites us more than anything - even the frustrations of our regular parenting fails give us something to laugh about when they are tucked up in bed. 

I reached out to our Mamamia community to find out how becoming a parent has affected their relationships.

From the wonderful to the heartbreaking, this is what they had to say.

1. Hannah: "My partner is my best friend and I’m so glad to be parenting with him." 

"Parenting has been the best and hardest thing that my partner and I have done together. It has equally divided us, causing arguments with the division and completion of house tasks and also brought us closer through forcing us to have discussions about the division of labour.

"We had our daughter just under a year after moving in together. It certainly hasn’t been without its challenges and we also both have divorced parents.

"A large part of us being closer as parents is that we have one child. We can focus all our parenting attention on her whilst both having time to work and enjoy hobbies, as well as spending quality time together as a family. We also both generally agree in parenting style.

"My partner is my best friend and I’m so glad to be parenting with him. We got engaged when our daughter was one and will get married when she’s almost five which I think adds something exciting to our future to look forward to during our parenting journey."

2. Truan: "I think parenting has deepened our connection."

"I like to think that although we fought a bit initially, and it was definitely an adjustment, I think parenting has deepened our connection. Seeing him do everything he can for me and the kids, how he puts them first always, how he comes off night shift (and being away for a week at work) and stays awake all day to spend time with them... it’s impossible not to see how devoted he is to our kids. 

"We still argue and disagree over some topics but overall we have similar views and values, and maybe he’s more of a helicopter parent than I am (his words!), but overall I think we’ve ridden the early waves of sleep deprivation and stress fairly well. Ask me again when my daughter is a teenager though!"

Watch: Parenting 101: Handy hints for new parents. Post continues below.  

3. Asten: "The only thing my husband and I fight about is housework."

"This story resonated with me so much. Especially what Holly was saying [on Mamamia Out Loud] about the majority of chores falling to the woman when she is on maternity leave, but then you go back to work and yet the division stays the same. 

"The only thing my husband and I fight about is housework.

"When my parents look after our kids and we get to spend some time alone, we remember that we do actually love each other and really enjoy each other's company. 

"Then we go back to reality and our relationship becomes very perfunctory. It's all about the kids. 

"We are on the same team about the majority of things which makes things easier, but I see my friends' relationships around me falling apart because they have different views on how to raise their kids."

4. Nicole: "Sometimes you truly do not know a person until you have a baby."

"I felt like I wasn't supported by my then husband. I worked three days a week from when my child was six months and he expected me to still do the majority of housework and cooking as well as breastfeeding.

"I got up every night because he believed I would get the chance to 'rest' on a Tuesday or Thursday unlike him.

"He forced me to wean her at 12 months because he said, 'That's what you do after 12 months'. When she turned one, he wanted us to try for another baby, 'Because they need to be close together in age', even though I didn't want to. 

"When I miscarried, we had to try again straight away. When she turned two, he said, 'You have to toilet train her'. It's very obvious now there were huge issues at play. Our marriage ended when our only child was two and a half years old and I had three miscarriages.

"Sometimes you truly do not know a person until you have a baby."

5. Mel: "Having a baby was a total shock."

"Having a baby was a total shock. I thought I would love being a stay at home mum. I was in my late thirties when I had my first. I was extremely social and I worked as a manager in disability support. 

"My partner had just started his own company and was gone from 5am until 4pm five to six days a week. All my friends already had kids that had left home. I went a bit crazy. My son would only wake a couple of times during the night but never napped, so I never got a break through the day and felt like a slave to breastfeeding. 

"Afternoon cluster feeds meant I was stuck in a chair for hours at a time. My partner was really good in hindsight but at the time I resented him. Then we tried for baby number two. We got pregnant and I had a late term miscarriage at 16 weeks. He only took one day off to help me recover and look after my son.

"I continued to build resentment. But when my second baby came, I made it clear I needed stuff too. I went to university, got a part time job, and my kids are six and four now. 

"The worst part of our relationship is sex. We never have it. I work nights and he works days. But honestly, the first years with young kids are so hard! 

"If you have a good man... hang in there, as the kids get more independent, so can you."

6. Donna: "It's bloody hard." 

"Our kids are 16 and 18 and it's been a rollercoaster. I think the strength of our parenting is that neither one of us professed to be the expert and we were (usually) willing to discuss and work through things. 

"It's bloody hard. And it's really hard to remember sometimes that these little people who consume so much of your time and thoughts will grow to be adults and make their own way, and that when they are off doing their own thing, there will be the two of you again. 

"That's a pretty good thing to hold onto when they are teenagers and stealing your beer!"

7. Leah: "Her existence has just further deepened our love for one another."

"My partner and I had been parenting together for nine years (we each have a child from previous relationships) before we had a child together.

"Our daughter together is only seven weeks old, but her existence has just further deepened our love for one another. The reason we chose to have children together was because we were already so clear on what kind of parent the other was and we loved each other for it. 

"Before meeting each other, we were both a bit uncertain about having kids again because we knew what it did to relationships. We love our kids dearly (from previous relationships) but now we're so clear on what wasn't working within those relationships, nothing really shocks us. 

"I should also add that I'm that friend who is generally pretty honest about having kids - you don't just have a 'baby', you have a baby/toddler/child/teenager/young adult and they're all bumpy in their own way. I hate the romanticised story that people tell those that aren't parents. 

"Parenting is incredible and beautiful and terrifying and brutally hard. It would be better for everyone if parents were honest about that to their people."

8. Kel*: "My partner and I are opposites at almost everything."

"We had to go through lots of IVF before having kids and that was more difficult than when they were babies. No sleep, a colicky baby, blocked breast ducts, and going back to work were all easier than IVF for me.

"My partner and I are opposites at almost everything when it comes to parenting. I plan for the worst. He thinks everything will be okay. This proved interesting when we decided to immigrate and when we chose schools etc. 

"Parenting little people might SEEM difficult but it's much easier than parenting teenagers as the little people go along with the parents. 

"The thing that saves us time and time again is the fact we want to stay together more than anything, even when we really disagree on a parenting approach."

9. Mim*: "It totally broke our marriage."

"It was so hard as our styles were so different but of course we did not realise that until we actually had babies. It totally broke our marriage. 

"I liked noise and mess and play and reading and my ex-husband liked routine and order. I went for experience and love and he wanted discipline. He said things like, 'They do not have to love me but they bloody will respect me.' He smacked them, twice. So I picked up the kids and left."

10. Jess: "Parenting saved our marriage."

"Parenting saved our marriage as we had something very traumatic happen a few years before our first child was born and the grief and sadness was affecting our relationship so much. 

"When our daughter was born, we had something to focus on (we were very aligned in parenting styles) and my husband was finally the thing he always wanted to be - a dad.

"For a lot of couples, kids throw a bomb into your relationship but for us the bomb came a few years earlier, so our baby really was the healer we needed."

*While the women are known to Mamamia, names have been changed for privacy reasons.

Laura Jackel is Mamamia's Family Writer. For links to her articles and to see photos of her outfits and kids, follow her on Instagram and  TikTok.

Feature Image: Supplied / Canva.

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