Your parenting styles cancel each other out. It’s nice to think you’d share child-rearing philosophies. But it’s often hard to predict how you’ll feel about sleep, food, and discipline until you’re smack in the middle of your fourth night up with baby. This is not the ideal time to discover that while you favor a sleep-training method that lets your child cry, your spouse really can’t deal with tears for any amount of time. Just because you’re married doesn’t mean you can’t make a hot date. Get a sitter, shave your legs, and flirt a little. As for increasing the frequency of sex on nondate nights, experienced parents recommend making sure your bedroom is baby-free at bedtime. “There’s nothing like rolling on top of a toy caterpillar that starts to play ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ to kill the mood. Couple time is now family time. You’re always together, but no longer alone. Whether you’ve been a couple for years or just met and wanted to have a baby quickly, jumping from a twosome to a family is challenging. Making the leap from coupledom to baby-makes-three is exciting, exhilarating, and wonderful. It’s also exhausting, exasperating, and worrisome—a combination that can be toxic to the romantic relationship that made you parents in the first place. The bad news first: Maintaining a marriage post-baby takes a lot of time and energy, exactly what you’ve got the least of right now. Now the encouraging news: Working on your relationship pays off in spades. Without all that energy expended (read: wasted) growing resentful of each other, you’ll have more to spend enjoying one another.
