5 Love Languages & How Knowing Yours Can Make You a Better Partner
How understanding your love language can benefit you in birth & the postpartum period
Look, this is niche. 100%. I always ask my clients to take the 5 Love Languages quiz (linked below). If you’re not familiar with the quiz, its a free quiz that has you choose ‘would you rather’ questions to tell you your love language, or the way in which you like to receive love. For example, it’s more meaningful to me when… my partner & I hug OR when my partner helps me with a task. The five love languages are: quality time, physical touch, words of affirmation, acts of service, and gifts. Sometimes parents already have a good idea at which one they prefer and sometimes they aren’t sure at all. The quiz only takes a couple of minutes and I swear it helps the whole team be better birth support.
I offer a lot of prenatals in my birth packages; many more than standard doula packages. Even with 5-6 meetings before birth, I’m not able to truly KNOW mom & dad on a deeper level because we just met. There’s not a lot of foundation there like there is with friends you’ve known for years and years. I like to think that the additional visits really help us to become more comfortable with one another and that leads to a better birthing and postpartum experience , but the 5 Love Languages quiz gives us so much insight. I say ‘us’ because this includes all birth support people and most importantly - mom’s partner .
Ok, so here’s how it helps, in my opinion. First, in knowing mom’s love language, we can see how she feels most loved, or supported. This helps me to figure out how I think mom may feel the most supported in pregnancy and birth and it also helps me to make suggestions on how her partner can support her. For example, if mom’s love language is physical touch, I’m going to suggest that dad spends a lot of her birth physically touching her, if she likes it. We all know that sometimes the script is flipped when it comes to birth and things we may normally like may annoy the heck out of us during labor. That’s ok too! Moms that receive love through physical touch may have low birth satisfaction if their partners aren’t spending a lot of time physically offering support during their birth. If dad is across the room, mom may feel like he’s not really present and supportive. I would also be more hands-on with mom in offering touch if she prefers it. Knowing this love language lets me know that she may prefer this support and not feel supported if it isn’t offered.
So, that’s birth. But I ask dad to take the quiz too. I’m not just supporting mom; I’m also there to support dad so I like to know his love language as well. But, I think that mom & dad understanding each other’s love languages is a real gift to their relationship. Once baby is born, their relationship is forever changed. That’s to be expected. But they’re going to have to get each other through the postpartum stage and be a good support team when it comes to raising their tiny human. So, I encourage mom to learn her partner’s love language as well and then use that postpartum to support her partner.
TL;DR - The 5 Love Languages is kind of niche but I think the whole birth support team is better able to support mom when they learn her love language and mom can learn dad’s to support him in their relationship. Take the quiz below.