New Mom Can Work Out a Knot in Her Marriage

Dear Vicki: I dated the man who became my husband for four years, and we’ve now been married for five years. We have enjoyed a wonderful, loving, caring and--above all else--easy relationship. Now we have a 14-month-old son whom we love dearly.

My nose is out of joint because I have had to work at my relationship with my husband for the past 10 months. My husband won’t watch our son for three hours a week so I can work out. And he works from our home, while I work outside our home.

We’ve been blessed with a wonderful nanny who works four days a week and my husband watches our son on the fifth day that I work. He says I should have the nanny come to work earlier if I want to work out.

I feel like I’ve made all the compromises since our son arrived and my husband’s life has changed very little. Do you think there’s any hope of my liking this man again? Should I just leave home, hit the gym and the hell with my mate and the baby? Painfully yours. . .

--FLABBY AND FURIOUS

Dear F&F;: Where do I start? How about the marriage question? If you are familiar with my books and columns, you already know how important I think it is to keep a marriage intact once children have been added to the picture. (I’m not dissing single-parent families in any way, so please don’t write me about that! We’re just dealing with the issue at hand.)

Not every relationship can survive the demands and maturity that parenthood imposes, but more could if we parents could keep in mind that a marriage is more than a child-rearing structure. Remember, a well-raised child is a child who moves out in a couple of decades and leaves us married folk staring into each other’s faces over the granola in the morning. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could recall what brought us together in the first place?

Trust me, as a marriage vet of 15 years, I assure you that sometimes you have to learn to skate by a lot of apparent injustice and compromise to the point of drawing blood, but you can keep the love affair alive and strong.

Now, on to the immediate issue of your fitness. Yes, you should just leave home, hit the gym, etc. Here’s why: Mothers are the locomotives that pull the family train. If you aren’t in optimal shape, neither is your family.

You already know how important fitness is to both your physical and mental well-being and it’s as essential to you as taking your vitamin or getting a Pap test. Your well-being is not a gift from your husband, Girlfriend; it’s yours to claim for yourself. Your darling son will do just fine whether it’s the daddy or the nanny covering during those one-hour workouts that you crave. Stop beating everyone up and ask the nanny to come early.

Guilt, guilt, guilt. It’s a mommy’s middle name. Unfortunately, it’s an activity that burns absolutely no calories, so stop already. It will amaze you how happy you will be about your family once you carve out this little niche for yourself.

P.S. Don’t be embarrassed about this little lapse; it hits all of us and I think you caught it just in time.