Couch Conversations Season 3, Ep. 3 with hosts Tabitha & Chance Brown and Kari & Antonio Dennis

My husband, Salah, and I watched the episode of Couch Conversations: How Do Children Change a Marriage, and man, we relate to this and agree wholeheartedly (especially as parents of five!) From managing time together after having a baby, to working around the different parenting styles between my husband and I, there’s always a challenge. But we’re very intentional about prioritizing our marriage and not allowing the stress of parenthood to interfere with our union.

Before neither of us had children, Salah and I had a connection years prior. We parted ways and each had two children with other people before we reconnected. I came into the relationship with a six-year-old daughter and a one-year-old son. Salah had two sons, ages six and eight. So quickly we each went from having two children to having four. Something that we struggled with and still do to this day, is our different parenting styles. My husband is extremely playful with the children, whereas too much noise and disarray will drive me crazy. Certain things that he allowed his boys to do resulted in me being frustrated. I will never forget the first time he bought the boys over to my house so all the children could play. They were jumping and flipping off of my brand new couch. Fuming inside, I really had to debate whether I wanted things to continue with Salah or not. Salah also felt like I “babied” my son more than I should have. In the beginning, my son slept right in the middle of us as we slept. Needless to say, there were aspects of our different parenting styles that we both had to work through. To this day, I am very vocal to my husband about how I feel like there is a double standard regarding the discipline we give my daughter and the discipline he gives the boys. The boys get slaps on the wrist because my husband often doesn’t carry out his punishments. Whereas my daughter could do the same thing but, suffers the consequences adequately. It’s challenging not letting the children alter the dynamic of our marriage. 

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About nine months into our engagement, we surprisingly discovered that we were having our 5th child. Our daughter, Kairo, was the glue we never knew we needed. We both were excited because this was the first loving pregnancy that we experienced. My husband was even more excited because this was his first biological daughter. Although we both were on cloud 9, our time together took a slight turn. Kairo was a breastfed baby and never slept in her own bed. The number of hurdles we had to jump over, just to get busy was insane. We would have to strategically plan to have one-on-one time together. Luckily, we were on the same page with carving out time for each other. We both had the same urgency when it came to implementing bedtime just so we could have our alone time.

Balancing parenthood and marriage is still a challenge for us, but my husband is so hands-on, and he’s such a team player, that he makes this experience so worth it. Whenever I feel overwhelmed or feel like our alone time together is overdue, he never ceases to step in and help. Having a supportive and understanding partner is what makes parenting easier to manage.

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