When I was pregnant with my first baby, my fears felt practical.

Labour. Sleep deprivation. Whether I'd instinctively know how to keep a tiny human alive.

The anxieties were centred around becoming a mother.

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This time, the fear feels heavier. More personal. I'm not scared of birth anymore, I'm scared of what another baby might do to my marriage.

Not because we're falling apart. We're not. This baby is loved so deeply already.

Chosen deliberately. Hoped for in the quiet conversations couples have when they decide they want to grow their family again.

But the first baby cracked us open in ways nobody really warns you about. Not catastrophically. Just slowly, subtly.

We became parents overnight, but finding each other again as partners took much longer.

And I think there's a unique kind of fear that comes with entering parenthood for a second time when you already know the emotional cost of the first.

When you know love alone doesn't protect a relationship from exhaustion, resentment, survival mode or the quiet distance that can grow between two overwhelmed people who are trying their best.

The first time around, there's innocence. A kind of hopeful naivety.

You know a baby will change your life, but you don't fully understand what that means until you're standing in the kitchen at 2am, both exhausted, emotionally fried, surviving on broken sleep and cold coffee, wondering how two people who love each other so much suddenly feel so far apart.

After your first child, you understand that love and strain can exist at the same time.

You understand how quickly a relationship can shift from romance to logistics. From intimacy to survival mode. From "how was your day?" to "did you sterilise the dummy before putting it in the baby's mouth?"

And honestly? I think that's why I'm scared. Because we've only just come up for air.

Now we're diving back in.

I know what sleep deprivation does to a person. I know what it feels like to be needed constantly by someone small and helpless.

I know what it means to become so touched out, by the end of the day that even affection from the person you love most can feel overwhelming.

Like it's just another person you have to give to when you have none left for yourself.

That doesn't mean I don't adore my husband. It means motherhood changed my nervous system.

I became "mum" in every possible sense of the word. My body no longer felt like mine. My time wasn't mine. Even my thoughts didn't feel like mine anymore.

During postpartum, my husband became everything at once: partner, therapist, sleep consultant, emotional support person, breastfeeding consultant. And somewhere amongst the feeding schedules, the exhaustion, the household load and the endless mental tabs open in our brains, being lovers quietly slid to the bottom of the list.

People call it the "roommate phase," which sounds harmless enough until you're living in it.

Until you realise how much energy it actually takes to claw your way back to each other.

And now, as I prepare to have a second baby, I can't help but wonder: does it get harder every time you add another child?

Or does the relationship simply evolve into something different entirely?

Maybe marriage after children isn't supposed to look the same as marriage before children.

Maybe love stops existing separately from the family and starts existing within it.

Maybe intimacy becomes less about grand gestures and more about surviving another day together without turning on each other over whose turn it is to settle the toddler.

And maybe just choosing each other every day is the definition of love.

I overthink for a living, so naturally I've spiralled into Googling relationship statistics after children. Unsurprisingly, the research isn't exactly comforting.

A major longitudinal study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that marital satisfaction commonly declines during the first two years after a couple's first baby is born.

Another international study of more than 7,000 married people across 33 countries found that relationship satisfaction tended to decrease with the number of children.

And honestly? I get it.

Postpartum can make you feel like a stranger inside your own relationship.

I remember after my first birth, barely recognising myself. I was healing from a complicated delivery and episiotomy. I was leaking breast milk constantly. I smelt vaguely sour no matter how often I showered. I woke up looking like I'd been hit by a natural disaster.

I didn't feel sexy. I didn't feel confident. I barely felt human.

And intimacy felt different after birth; physically, emotionally, mentally. Sex wasn't simple anymore. Desire wasn't automatic anymore.

By the time the baby finally slept, I didn't want to give another piece of myself to someone, even someone I loved deeply. I wanted silence. Space. Sleep. Comfort.

I was tired from feeling guilty for needing that.

After holding someone all day, I just wanted to be held.

I think that's the part we don't talk about enough. How hard it can be to switch between being "mum" and being a partner.

How guilt sneaks in when your relationship changes.

How easy it is to sit there silently wondering: Does he still find me attractive? Does he miss who I used to be? Are we okay?

Meanwhile, he's probably thinking: I don't want to pressure her. I don't know what she needs from me. I just watched her give birth. How do I even approach intimacy now? Does she even want me?

The stories we create in our heads can be far worse than reality.

Because underneath all of it, most couples aren't falling out of love. They're drowning in adjustment. And maybe that's what I'm trying to remind myself heading into this next season: hard does not mean broken. Change does not mean forever.

A relationship that changes after children isn't necessarily a sign it's failing. Sometimes it's proof that two people are adapting in real time to one of the biggest transformations a human can go through.

The version of love you have after kids may look different, but different doesn't always mean worse. Sometimes love looks like your husband taking over the toddler's bedtime because you physically cannot do both newborn nights and toddler wake-ups.

Sometimes it looks like texting each other from opposite ends of the house because you're both too exhausted to speak or... wake the baby.

Sometimes it's choosing to believe that this version of your relationship — the tired, messy, survival-mode version, is not the final version.

Because the hard seasons do pass.

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Babies eventually sleep. Hormones settle. You slowly start recognising yourself again. And if you're lucky, you look across the chaos one day and realise your relationship didn't disappear under the weight of parenthood.

It just became something deeper.

Less performative. Less perfect. But stronger in ways you couldn't have understood before.

So yes, I'm scared for my relationship heading into baby number two.

But I also trust it more now.

We know now that love in early parenthood isn't always romantic. Sometimes it's patience at 3am, sometimes it's taking over bedtime without being asked. Sometimes it's simply choosing not to turn away from each other in the middle of exhaustion.

I think real commitment begins when you stop expecting your partner to stay exactly the same forever. Parenthood changes people. Life changes people. The strongest relationships are built on learning how to keep finding each other through every new version.

Maybe that's what lasting love actually is. Knowing how to find your way back.

Feature Image: Getty.