What I Wished I Discussed With My Partner Before Having a Baby: Parenting Lessons From a Mom and Teacher
It’s 7:12 a.m. last Saturday, I’m standing at the kitchen sink scraping burnt oatmeal off a sippy cup, and my 3-year-old, Mia, is tugging the hem of my husband’s sweatpants begging for a cherry popsicle before breakfast. He looks over at me, grins, and says “Sure, just one, okay?” before I can open my mouth. I freeze, scrub brush still dripping in the sink, because that one small yes unravels three months of slow work I’ve done teaching Mia that we eat meals first, then treats.
We got into a quiet, sharp argument after Mia trotted off to the couch with her popsicle, sticky juice already dripping down her wrist. I said he was intentionally undermining my boundaries. He said I was being unnecessarily rigid, that a 3-year-old isn’t going to grow up eating popsicles for breakfast every day just because we said yes once. I stormed off to the living room, sat down on the floor next to Mia’s bin of stuffed animals, and stared at the sun coming through the window. Before we had Mia, we talked about everything. We compared notes on maternity leave policies, opened a college savings plan, debated co-sleeping vs. a crib, even took a weekend birthing class where we practiced breathing together. Not once did we talk about how we’d handle popsicle requests before breakfast. Not once did we talk through how each of our childhoods shaped what we think “good parenting” looks like on the boring, daily stuff.
I’m a first grade teacher, so I know better than most how small daily routines shape a kid’s sense of security. I see it every September: the kids who know what to expect from their day at home settle into our classroom routine faster, cry less at drop-off, argue less over turns at the block center. I grew up with a single mom who worked two jobs, and our schedule shifted constantly. Some nights we ate cereal for dinner at 9 p.m., some weeks I’d stay with my grandma and miss three days of school. I never knew what was coming next, and I spent most of my childhood tense waiting for the next change. That’s why I care so much about small, consistent rules now—because I know how good it feels to know what to expect. I never told my husband that before we had Mia. I just assumed he’d see it my way.
He grew up the opposite. His dad worked construction, often out of town for weeks, and his mom stayed home with three boys. The best memories he has from childhood are the days she’d wake them up early, throw the weekly chore list out the window, and pack donuts for a day at the lake. He was allowed to snack whenever he wanted, pick his own clothes starting at age 5, and the only hard rules were don’t get hurt and don’t talk back to adults. He never told me that before we had Mia. He just assumed I’d relax and enjoy the small, messy moments more.
That night, after Mia fell asleep clutching her half-eaten popsicle stick (don’t ask), we sat on the couch with cold beer and talked for an hour, no phones, no distractions. That’s when I realized the thing I wish we’d talked about before having a baby isn’t the big stuff everyone tells you to talk about. It’s the tiny, boring daily stuff that adds up to 90% of parenting. Most of the fights new parents have aren’t over college funds or birth control—they’re over popsicles, screen time, how long a kid can play in the mud before dinner, whether 7:30 is a reasonable bedtime on a weekend.
We worked out a system that works for us, that I wish we’d hashed out before Mia was born, when we had more than 15 minutes of uninterrupted time a week. First, we sat down and wrote a list of 5 non-negotiable rules, and everything else is flexible. Our non-negotiables are: hold an adult’s hand crossing the street, bedtime is between 7:30 and 8 on school nights, no hitting or biting, say please and thank you when you ask for something, and one vegetable at dinner. That’s it. Everything else—popsicles before breakfast, wearing a costume to the grocery store, 10 extra minutes of Bluey—can be decided by whoever’s on kid duty that day. No second-guessing, no undermining in front of Mia.
Second, we have a rule that we never correct each other in front of Mia. If one of us makes a call the other doesn’t like, we wait until she’s playing in another room or asleep to talk about it. We don’t call each other out in the moment, which means Mia doesn’t get to play us against each other, and we don’t have those awkward kitchen fights anymore.
Third, we set a 15 minute check-in once a month, right after Mia goes to bed on the first Saturday of the month. We just go over what’s been bugging us, what’s working, if we need to adjust the non-negotiable list. It’s not a long, formal talk, it’s just 15 minutes to get small frustrations out before they turn into fights over frozen treats.
Last week, we had a birthday party to go to, and Mia insisted on wearing her rain boots and princess costume instead of the nice shirt and pants I’d laid out. Clothing isn’t on our non-negotiable list, so I shrugged and let her go. She had a great time, no one cared what she was wearing, and I didn’t have to fight with her or my husband before we left.
We still have moments of friction. Last week, my husband let Mia stay up 20 minutes late to watch a special Bluey episode while I was on a work call, and she was grumpy and tired the next day. I was annoyed, but I didn’t say anything in the moment. We talked about it later that night, and we agreed that special episodes are an exception, which is fine. It’s not perfect. We’re still adjusting, still learning what works for us and for Mia. But if I could go back to that pre-baby year, sitting on the couch with my husband talking about stroller models, I’d pause and ask him what he remembers about snack time when he was a kid. I’d tell him why consistent bedtime matters so much to me, before we were both tired and stressed and fighting over a popsicle at 7 a.m.
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