The importance of being a team when you become parents.

I know from different experiences, that when you have children it can sometimes be difficult to remain a team with your partner.

If you haven’t discussed it beforehand, you could find that you have very different ideas of how you want to bring your children up or you may find if you have quite different personalities it might affect how you parent and whether you parent separately or together.

Although we were both raised in a very different family dynamic, Mark and I are so lucky that we both wanted to parent in a very similar way. However, none of this would have been possible if Mark wasn’t such a hands on dad.

In order to be a team, you have to help one another and be able to share the burden, and if one of you needs to do more for whatever reason then you do it without holding any resentment or frustration. An example I have of this is the first night Grayson and I were allowed home…I couldn’t move. I physically couldn’t sit myself up to get Grayson out of his bed attached to our bed, and my milk still hadn’t come through so I couldn’t really feed him anyway. I was in pain and so exhausted, and although Mark was exhausted too (in a very different way), that first night he got up with Grayson every 45 minutes.

Because that’s what you do when you’re a team.

I struggle when I see mums or dad’s that do everything themselves, because I can only imagine what it must be like to not have a solid team with the person that made this baby with you. Don’t get me wrong, some parents work better separately and that’s totally OK. However, it’s when you see couples that don’t share the work load and you can tell that someone is clearly struggling that I think team work should be mentioned.

In many cases, you’re in this together and so it’s only fair that you raise your child together. That includes feeding, changing, teaching and loving. It shouldn’t be left down to one person.

*Just a small disclaimer here, this post doesn’t go into any detail about single parents or any other family dynamics other than the situation we are in and can comment on. If you are in one of these other dynamics, I’m sure you’re absolutely smashing parenthood regardless of being in a ‘conventional’ team or not!