Questions for Expecting Couples: Talk About It Before Baby

Everyone talks about the baby. Almost no one asks how you’ll be as a couple. The first year is hard — everyone says so, and nobody prepares for it.

The expectations you quietly assume right now become friction after the birth: who gets up at night, whose career bends, how involved the grandparents are, and the big quiet one — will we still be us? These questions for expecting couples help you line all of that up while you can still talk about it calmly. This is the prep no one does.

How to use these questions

The simplest way: pick one question before bed. No prep, no right or wrong answer. One of you reads it out loud, you both think for a second, then you talk.

It gets better with a small ritual we built into DeepDialogue: you each answer privately, on your own phone first — then you reveal your answers together. It sounds like a gimmick, but it changes everything. Because neither of you has already heard the other’s answer, what you write is more honest. And the reveal has that moment where you look at each other and think, oh — that’s how you see it.

Start with the group that pulls at you tonight. The order below is an invitation, not a rule.

Before the baby comes

Birth, roles, money, boundaries, and staying „us“ — the full agenda, from the Before Baby deck (28 questions in the app).

1. What are you most excited about becoming a parent?
2. What scares you most about becoming a parent — honestly?
3. Before we had this on the horizon, what did you imagine parenting would look like?
4. How do we picture splitting the night feeds, diapers, and daily care?
5. What’s our plan for parental leave — who, how long, paid or not?
6. How do we think a baby will change our finances — and are we ready?
7. What kind of birth do you hope for — and how do we handle it if plans change?
8. Who do we want in the room, at the hospital, and in the first weeks?
9. How will we make sure we stay „us“ and not just parents?
10. What worries you about how becoming parents might change our relationship?
11. How do we each want to be supported in the first exhausting weeks?
12. What kind of parent do you hope to be?
13. How involved do we want each set of grandparents to be?
14. What values do we already know we want to raise our kid with?
15. What are you afraid you’ll lose about your current life?
16. How do we want to handle disagreements about parenting once they start?
17. What’s a fear about the birth itself you haven’t said out loud?
18. How will we protect time and intimacy for each other after the baby?
19. What do you need from me during the pregnancy that you’re not getting?
20. What kind of support system do we have — and where are the gaps?
21. How do we want to divide the mental load — not just the tasks?
22. What’s a hope for our future family you haven’t said out loud yet?
23. How do we want to handle it if one of us struggles more than expected?
24. What do we want the first month to feel like, realistically?
25. What tradition or ritual do you hope we start as a new family?
26. What are you most looking forward to doing together as three (or more)?
27. What do you want to promise each other before the baby comes?
28. Of everything ahead — what’s the one thing you most want us to get right?

Frequently asked questions

The opposite. Couples who name their fears and expectations before the baby handle the transition better. Naming a worry is how you protect against it.

Probably more than you think — most couples discover a quiet disagreement or two, and it’s far easier to sort out now than at 3 a.m. with a newborn.

Any time in pregnancy works. One question a week over a cup of tea is plenty — you’ve got months, not minutes.