Anger, resentment and blame. Those are the feelings blogger Raluca Loteanu felt towards her husband in the stress-filled, sleepless months after their son was born.

“I often felt powerless because I had no help, and I felt like I was doing everything alone even though my husband was helping me,” Loteanu tells NBC News BETTER. “So I was struggling to find a balance, and it was harder than I imagined before having a baby.”

The “Playful Notes” blogger says her husband, who works full time as a software engineer, had his own frustrations.

“He was working all day,” she says, “and then in the evenings, he was helping me with the baby. So this left him with almost no spare time for the things he used to do before having the baby.”

I think he started to feel unheard and alone even though we were together.

Instead of trying to see things from his perspective, Loteanu acknowledges, she accused him of not helping her. He would get defensive, she recalls, and the two would bicker constantly.

“I wasn’t such a great wife then because I was complaining all the time about how hard it was for me, and I was blaming him for some things that weren’t working in our relationship, and I think he started to feel unheard and alone even though we were together.”

Switch the focus from anger to empathy

Exhausted from all the conflict, Loteanu tried a different approach: “effective communication.” Also known as non-violent communication, she says the technique involves resolving frustrations with empathy instead of anger.

“I started to talk more about my feelings and my needs without making any judgments about him,” Loteanu says.

For example, rather than telling her husband “I’m tired because you never help me,” she would tell him: “I feel very tired, I feel very overwhelmed with the changes in our lives and I really need your help. How can you support me in this?’”

It’s simple: Effective communication involves switching the focus from your partner to yourself, she explains.

“This made a huge difference for both of us,” she says.