Mum pens brutally honest truth about how parenting affects your relationship

Sleepless nights, baby getting sick on all your shirts, and not getting out of your PJs until 4 p.m. are all par for the parenting course. What’s a little more unexpected, however, is the effect becoming a parent can have on your love life.

But one mum is winning praise from the Internet for her hugely honest account of how your relationship really changes post parenthood.

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In a Facebook post that has since gone viral with more than 8,000 likes, Mel Watts has fessed up about how having children altered her relationship with her husband.

“If someone told me years ago that my relationship would one day change, I would have laughed and said no way,” she wrote. Before going on to reveal that she has found herself lying in bed crying as her husband was “snoring his busy week away” and she reminisced about all the things they used to do as a couple.

Though she confessed to being “mad” at both her and her husband for letting things change, she also notes that deep down she knows it’s nobody’s fault and “it’s just a moment in our life where I can say — it’s not all roses and handcuffs.”

The mum of three goes on to explain that “the long date nights have gone. The sleep-ins are nonexistent. The surprise weekends away, we can no longer afford them.”

“The long hot showers, are now lukewarm, and we’re tag-teaming kids in between. The late nights are now lying there silently with our backs to each other hoping the other one will get up for the crying baby.”

Watts, who writes the parenting blog the Modern Mumma, quips that shaving has become a thing for “birthdays, nights out, and possibly (I mean possibly) because I just simply feel bad for him” only, and jokes that romantic text messages are more shopping list than saucy!

But it’s not all negative, because despite realizing that parenthood has changed her relationship, she has determined to redress the family balance.

“The children have become the number one priority and at some point we need to learn to put our relationship toward the top of that priority list,” she wrote. “I think in time it will become that way again.”

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“You have to make it past these difficult times to get there. It’s not that it’s even difficult; it’s just different. And sometimes different is really hard.”

Unsurprisingly, Watts’s open post has received hundreds of comments from frazzled parents whose relationships also slipped down the to-do list when little ones came along.

“I’m so glad I’m not the only one,” one mom wrote. “I’ve been feeling the exact same lately, and I’ve been really stressing about it and it’s making me so upset. And I’m so over reading and hearing about people saying their life is so perfect and their kids are amazing! More people need to be honest and real coz it really makes others feel better. So thank you!”