About the book

"Am I supposed to gush over what a fine job he did emptying the dishwasher? What does he want, a gold star?" - Leslie, married 8 years, 3 kids

"How did my wife react to becoming a mother? I can sum it up in one sentence: "Honey, I forgot about you." - Gabe, married 6 years, 2 kids

No one wants to say it, but everyone knows it's true: having babies and parenting small children can be pretty tough on a marriage. Are you and your spouse enduring the inevitable challenges of early parenthood? Do you see things differently now that you have kids? Do you think you're the only ones going through it? Then Babyproofing Your Marriage is the book for you.

Three wives, mothers and friends, Stacie Cockrell, Cathy O'Neill and Julia Stone have written a funny, thought-provoking, no-holds barred account of the impact parenthood has on marriage. Fueled by their own first-hand experiences and conversations with hundreds of men and women, the authors reveal that the struggle to balance marriage and family is nearly universal. Everyone is going through the same thing. With candor and empathy, Babyproofing Your Marriage explores both sides of the post-baby relationship divide, and offers simple but effective ways husbands and wives can bridge the gap and reconnect with one another -- so that having children doesn't mean sacrificing being a couple.

Babyproofing Your Marriage takes on the most contentious issues: the tit-for-tat arguments over the division of labour (scorekeeping), managing the demands of the in-laws and outlaws, the oxymoron of the family holiday, and perhaps that most combustible of all post-baby squabbles – the dwindling sex life (otherwise known as the Sex Obsessive/Ice Queen Vortex). It gets to the heart of why men and women see things so differently (He thinks, "Hey, look at me -- I'm doing a great job, taking care of the baby on a Sunday morning and letting my wife sleep in!" She thinks, "God, he does such a half-hearted job – sipping his coffee and reading the paper while our son is sitting in a soaking wet nappy watching Teletubbies on repeat play!") -- in the name of building mutual understanding and finding that elusive path to compromise (and maintaining a sense of humour on four hours sleep a night).

With its down-to-earth humour and balanced perspective, this book will show you that despite your disagreements about who's getting up in the middle of the night (a.k.a. Midnight Chicken), or who's doing (or not doing) what to whom in the bedroom, it is indeed possible to create the kind of happy family life you want for yourselves and your kids.