What's More Stressful?

I will DEFINITELY, hands-down, withOUT a doubt, say that it was the confusing, overwhelming, crazy, hormone-frenzied, wacked-out weeks after I had my children. Both times. Worse with the 2nd. This is why I will never have more kids. haha!

Wedding... please. Piece of cake compared to THAT.

It's a toss up between that first baby and my husband's recent cancer diagnosis. Both massively stressful, but for totally different reasons.

I think being a parent is more stressful because it goes on from pregnancy until adulthood and beyond and you really don't have a lot of control over a lot of things. Weddings can be stressful but it is short-term and controllable.

Lol. Yup we are exactly there. We just had our first baby three weeks ago and I can honestly say that this is the most stress our relationship has gone through. I'm suffering from postpartum anxiety and depression and that doesn't help at all. We've been having trouble getting adjusted to going from just being us to being three. I just keep telling myself that ''this too shall pass''.

Unemployment was worse than both of those for us...

When the kids were little and my husband was in a really high-stress job.

Our worst time was the year (or 2 or 3) after the second child. Our babies were 21 months apart, and the demands of having 2 little ones were just too much. But we hung on, worked through it, got better at communicating and understanding each other.
Now the kids are 7 and 9 and relationally we are doing great. It's just our super busy schedule that stresses us out. Wish we could retire already! :)

I think the last several months of operating a part-time preschool in our home has been very, very stressful for us. Our ground-floor common areas are school-dedicated, so we have no couch. We are losing money (due to childcare costs-- my son is in another preschool, which was necessary for us both, and I have a neighbor hired for aftercare) because the economy is sh*tty and I'm not fully enrolled. O. slot does make a difference. I have to use time on the weekends for planning and some prep; every Monday I have our son home with us and have to clean the house for school on Tues,Weds, Thurs. These three mornings, I have to spend over an hour prepping the house to be clean for 'school'.

We just got our son sleeping in his own room, but the many nights of his waking us up were not helpful to our relationship. Grrrrrr.

Oh, and all the other usual stuff that couples struggle with: finances, how to manage time/prioritize goals, etc. And we finally got to a point where my husband is going to have to take a long-avoided hard look at all his material stuff and make some choices. He's a collector -- of everything-- and so it's been a long road there. So, I think we're hitting the apex of marital stress... but I know we're going to get through it.

Nothing like the present.... At least we end our school experiment in midJune.

Uh yeah, definitely post baby for me too! I can remember with my first I'd wake up, feed him, get him back to sleep, lay him in his crib, go lay on the couch, close my eyes, then WAH WAH! That's when I'd burst into tears! I would just cry when the baby woke up because I was so tired! With my second, it was much better because I let him sleep in the bouncy seat for the first 2 months instead of in his crib.

post baby---running low on money- taxes due----stomach virus spreading through house!

Okay should not have read all these answers. Being a single Mom of two, I had no idea how those of you with hubby's would answer this. I definitely had stress being a single Mom, but now I think I might be scared to get married because it sounds so much worse than doing it alone. I have been trying to date the last year or so, with marriage as a goal and more kids hopefully. But Geez, now I think maybe I should leave well enough alone and stay single.

Oh Denise...Enjoy this time! I'm in the teenage years with my girls. It is definitely a different animal and the sleep deprivation is much worse when you can't hold them! :)

God bless!

M.

i'm with you. baby #2 and some degree of post-partum or maybe not-baby-related depression made that time period particularly dark. it's the only time during our loooooooooong relationship that the dh and i discussed separating.
khairete
S.

I second Mamma L's post. When I was suddenly let go from my part time job. I was still going to school and I was receiving day care assistance from the state, and because I didn't have a job, I had till the end of the month to find a new O.. Otherwise I would have to quite school. But luckily I was able to get a work study job after two weeks of looking.

I would have to say I agree with Momma L. I have never being so stress...actually I was more stress when we move with my MIL, now that is what stress is all about, lol.

When we had the second baby, my husband had just lost his job, the baby was in the NICU, and I had my c-section get infected so I had to go back in the hospital. Second place is a tie between when my first was born and on a respirator for 10 days and when I was pregnant with a 2 year old at home and I had severe insomnia (sometimes no sleep at all for 2 nights running and the medication I could take while pregnant didn't work). Sleep deprivation makes everything more stressful. Planning the wedding was fun compared to the new baby stuff! My wedding day was a 100% happy. Both my babies had complicated deliveries and there was so much more physical and emotional stress.

We let a friend live with us for a few months. He is not our friend anymore and we will never let someone into our home again!

I totally agree Denise-that was such a hard time. Being sleep deprived SUCKED! And just the fact that somebody always had to be with the baby/toddler/preschooler-up to what-3 or 4ish? We would always fight to make it equitable. And time out or at home by yourself was pure heaven! Now we do our thing and they do theirs...worlds easier. Call me totally crazy but sometimes I miss those little kid days as I feel my boys slipping away into independence! But honestly-if I had to do it again I am not sure I could. If I truly think back and remember how darn hard it was instead of looking back with those rosey colored glasses.

The LONG (rambling, too much information) answer is:

Wedding was a piece of CAKE! Planned it in ten days and kept it intimate and light. I planned it with friends and we all took part in the setup and cooking, so it was a very pleasurable time. I didn't think I'd enjoy being a bride, but it was a blast, actually.

Pregnancy was not a fun phase for me. No complications (thank God), I'm just not. a. fan.

The newborn phase was a bit difficult, mostly because it was an extraordinarily difficult period between my (now) husband and I. He is in recovery, but at the time was relapsing. Our relationship was...tense. But my focus was the love I felt for my daughter. It bowled me over! It kept me fed and alive. I remember laying in bed with her, as she nursed, with afternoon sunlight dripping through the window and onto the be. I loved to lay with her while she slept, I'd read, and we'd bask on crisp white sheets. Such a glorious and sweet time for her and I.

The hardest time, for me, was neither wedding nor newborn, though. A year and a half ago, my sister's mental health and addiction took her life over. We moved my niece, her daughter, in with us. The transition of integrating (an angry, confused, hurting) second child into our home, without knowing whether she would be able to stay, or if she'd be alright, and without her understanding the situation from an adult perspective, has been grossly challenging. It still is sometimes, but we have all shifted into a more graceful place. Not knowing if my sister is dead, or alive, is fairly heartbreaking. Processing and communicating with my husband through this, is a lesson.

We are just a few days from our O. year anniversary of caring for my most-incredible niece. She, and my daughter, are both...amazing. And doing amazingly. They are really dynamic people. They're SUCH characters; their own person. And, their hearts are genuinely big and RICH. What they've (unknowingly) shared, and the love they've given to each other is actually inspiring. I really, really, dig and love my kids (regardless of how they came to me or our future family structure).

It's a darn good thing that stressful and blessed/beautiful/Just Right can come hand in hand. We are learning and growing a lot and, through the hard, we all have each other. Love is a precious gift. My children laugh and smile. They tell jokes, hug, play, share, learn and dance. Sure, we have our moments, but we're doing just fine ;-)

Well, we took on a lot at once...so I think for us was last year...
not knowing where we would be moving in 2 weeks, while having an infant who was a poor eater and sleeper, and who had reflux, and a very demanding toddler, an upcoming yearlong deployment around the corner, and a visit to Childrens hospital with our baby just weeks after moving to our new state and home, days before the scheduled deployment, for an evaluation for a potentially devastating diagnosis (thank God, so far, he's ok). Whew...right now, we're half way thru deployment and life is challenging at times, but so much more peaceful...till the next overhaul! LOL

well we haven't gone through a wedding, but I would say that the MOST stressful time on our relationship was the first 8 weeks of our sons life. He didn't start sleeping 7-8 hours until then and we were constantly arguing cause we were both exhausted. I felt like he didn't do enough, he felt like the baby cried to much and didn't want him, I felt like he didn't want me, he felt like I wasn't accepting of his need to spend time with my son and his daughter, etc. etc. etc. I definitely used to yell the same like you yelled at your husband to him. Now that baby is consistently sleeping through the night, we are MUCH happier, probably because we are not as exhausted. We still have difficulties because young babies and kids are just HARD, but those weeks were definitely the worst.

Of course this is followed very closely by the pregnancy as we got a lot of comments from outsiders about our need to get married, how we were planning to parent, etc. before he was born. We still get those comments, but they don't get to me as much now as I have much more important things to worry about then other people's opinions

Wedding planning was bad because MIL kept trying to sabotage the wedding, and even had me cancelling the whole thing 2wks. The working 5 jobs to become debt free were rough years. The spending every night/weekend for 367 days rebuilding our home was quite an adventure. The difficult pregnancy to have my son, then him being born 10wks early with several health/developmental issues was a rough 3+yrs.

But, I'm thinking the infertility/several-miscarriage years were the worst and most stressful. Can't say I ever want to go back to that time :(

My first pregnancy because we were going through a lot of grief from my family. Personally, we were fine, excited, and looking forward to being parents. We had many sleepless nights and our worst fights over comments my mom was making, emails she was sending, attitude in general from her and my younger sister (who my husband actually had liked up until then).

I try not to think about it much anymore, but the gist included that they were furious that we did not plan to have my husband in delivery (and we were BOTH happy with that decision). It should have been the end of the conversation after that. I also did not take a child birth class. I kind of figured there's O. way babies come out naturally, and there's O. way my doctor would be removing him if things didn't work out, and otherwise there's plenty to read online if I'm interested, but I figured that women's bodies had been going through labor and delivery since Eve and mine would probably work about the same way. (I was right--my son came out the exact way I figured he would, and I have never regretted not taking a class--I'm not a group/class person.) So, phrases like "he needs to step up to the plate and support you," etc, started to really get to me. Many, many nights of no sleep (which sucks when you're pregnant) coupled with my husband's insomnia and immunity to his sleeping meds, made that the worst several months of our marriage ever.

We had no personal issues when my husband was unemployed for six months, but again comments from my mom like "why won't he just go get a job?" Yeah, like you can go make someone hire you. That was easier to ignore anyway.

But there's so many to choose from!

Honestly... any time my husband has spent at home over the past several years. It's always waiting for the other shoe to drop.