How first-time parents can survive loneliness and lack of sleep: by communicating and having empathy

Soon after marrying her childhood sweetheart, Amy Wong discovered she was pregnant with twins. Shocked yet delighted, the couple assumed parenthood would cement their relationship. But instead, they found themselves at loggerheads. Juggling her legal career with child-rearing responsibilities, Wong noticed a steep decline in their marital bliss.

“I was constantly rushing between the office and home, desperate to spend as much time with the kids in the morning and then get back for their bedtime. At times, I felt I was doing all the parenting myself, as well as sorting playgroups and kindergartens, arranging play dates, planning the kids’ meals, managing the helpers and our household,” the Hong Kong mum says.

“While my husband helped with night feeds and taking the kids to playgroups, he also made time for his social life and to play football at the weekends. He just didn’t feel the same degree of obligation as I did,” recalls Wong, now a happy, stay-at-home mother of three.

Looking back, Wong sees how they went into parenting completely blind. Their views on how to raise children, their personal and family values, and expectations of each other all came to a head as they struggled to make it through the day.

Though the arrival of a child can be the happiest day of the new parents’ life, it’s a myth that everything will be wonderful from this day onwards, advises Jim Bierman, a clinical psychologist and certified parent evaluator at Central Health in Hong Kong.

“The reality is having a child turns your life upside down completely. Your priorities change. You’ve just added a 2.5 full-time equivalent job position to your life. It divides your previous notions of partnership and marriage,” he says.