My husband and I just took our first kid-free vacation. It helped me realize how much he’s changed since becoming a father.

Katrina Donham and her husband visited the High Line on a trip to New York City without the kids.

“I can’t even remember the last time I had brunch like this,” I said. I was sitting across the table from my husband as I savored the last bite of pan con tomato and washed it down with the last sip of my cortado at Spanish Diner in Hudson Yards. “Yeah, it feels like a lifetime ago,” he answered.

In some ways, it was a lifetime ago.

We moved away from New York before having our second child

Across the table, I stared at his handsome face, which annoyingly doesn’t age, and I began to remember that pivotal move we made to NYC in our late 20s. That special chapter, sans kids, lasted six years and ended four years ago.

Suddenly, there we were, back in our old stomping grounds — the city that never sleeps — vehemently missing our daughters while feverishly tracing our footsteps back to the life we used to have, searching for the people who we used to be: people who enjoyed people-watching in Washington Square Park, taking the ferry out to the Rockaways on the weekend, and drinking fancy cocktails in dark places off dark streets.

The trip was my husband’s idea. At first, I wasn’t keen on leaving our 2- and 4-year-old daughters for eight days, but my mother-in-law was available to take care of them, and he urged me to take advantage of the opportunity.

After we settled our brunch bill, we took to the High Line and made our way south to the Meatpacking District. On our walk, we’d occasionally stop to admire a view and recollect memories of days gone by when we were bright-eyed and bushy-tailed transplants.

The world was our oyster back then, and we were shucking it, day and night. Now, our world revolves around our daughters, and we’re completely focused on them, day and night — with the exception of this inaugural week away.

We stopped to take a break at the NYC Love mural, an installation by Nina Chanel Abney on 22nd Street, and soaked in the mix of tourists and locals watching the amusing performance of a middle-aged xylophonist. To our right, we saw a couple about our age with a 2-month-old child. Immediately, we were transported back to that challenging time: when we became parents in the middle of a pandemic in April of 2020 in what felt like a burning metropolis.

Katrina Donham and her husband visited the Spanish Diner in New York City.

Our trip gave us time to reflect on harder times

We had no help, no support, and no idea what we had gotten ourselves into. After months of interrupted or absent sleep, we could feel the tight threads of our marriage loosening; our energy now diverted, weaving, strengthening a different bond, one with our first child.

Twenty months later, I gave birth to a second daughter, and the weak areas in our marriage could no longer be ignored. After a few intense breaking points, we finally began to recognize one another’s hurt in those first raw years of parenthood, in those first raw years of survival.

Fortunately, we decided to “put in the work” to repair our relationship by communicating more directly, setting aside time together (just the two of us), and acknowledging one another’s effort and progress.

Miraculously, we survived and have found our new selves again, both separately and together.

Katrina Donham and her husband left their two daughters with her mother-in-law to go on a trip.

As we got up from the wide bench to continue our stroll on the High Line, I asked that little family to the right if they wanted their picture taken. I remarked that I wished that I had more family photos of the three of us during that first hard year of parenthood. The oxytocin-charged, sleep-deprived couple handed me one of their phones, accepted, and thanked me for my thoughtful offer.

While I snapped the photo, my husband began divulging about our experience of becoming parents and how cute their daughter was and how they were doing a great job — the most important job, the most fulfilling job. It’s all worth it: the demand, the stress, the love, the joy, he expressed.

I then realized as he rhapsodized about the roller-coaster that is parenting, that just as I had become a mother, he had become a father. Yes, my experience of matrescence was my own and forever altered my mind, my body, and my soul, but my husband, my life partner, was forever changed, too.

His body became our children’s play yard. His mind became cluttered with real concerns, fears, and worries about our world and our girls’ place in it. His soul expanded and continues to expand daily through our daughters’ tight embraces, sloppy kisses, and “I love you, Dada”s.

After that happy exchange with the tiny family, we continued our walk. I wrapped my arm around my husband’s waist, tears welling in my eyes. I’m so proud of this person. I’m so proud of us. And, though I miss the “old us,” I’m enjoying the “present us” — and looking forward to the “future us,” too.