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To an extent, maybe on a lesser level, and I'll be honest and say in my house, I am exactly on par with my husband in terms of grumpiness and sometimes feeling overwhelmed/sleep deprived.

I don't have any good advice for you, but I've been thinking of ordering "How to babyproof your marriage", even though now we have 2 babies, haha.

Part of me feels like it's a season, and we have two young kids so it's natural we are more stressed and shorter with each other. But another part of me feels like I'd rather address these issues and improve our relationship now--there's no reason we can't have a GREAT marriage, even with small kids. We just need to tweak a few things.

@Anagram: I read and loved that book and it helped me before we had H. I really try not to keep score but sometimes it is so hard. I think my husband and I need to both read it and work on it before #2 gets here. Side note: Just this morning I got so aggravated with him because he got H up and didn't change her diaper, which added another five minutes to my routine because now I had to fight her to change her diaper in addition to trying to clothe her/tame her hair.

@AggieDaze: This is something we are struggling with. I'm newly pregnant with #2 and I want to get ahead of those feelings. T (my husband) has had a really hard time adjusting to not having as much money to spend on himself and the time constraints he has now. He loves H and I, but he misses being able to go and bike for as long as he wants or buy new bike stuff all the time.

I've read that the transition from one to two is harder on the fathers than the mothers because generally the burden of care for number one is on mom until the baby shows up and then dad had to take over the oldest while mom tends to the newborn.
Do you have anytime after the kids are asleep to devote to DH?

I could have written this post a few months ago. The transition from 1 to 2 was way easier for me personally than going from 0 to 1, but it was MUCH more difficult for DH and our marriage. I also struggle a lot with "keeping score" and will admit that I have not been the easiest person to live with in the 8.5 months since DD was born, especially since I've been back at work. But at the same time, DH has had a hard time dealing with less alone time and less attention from me and tends to take it out on our boundary-testing 3 year old.

I don't have a magic solution either, but I will say things have gotten much better in the last month or two. We had a few nights where we really sat down and hashed things out. I was honest and said it makes me want to kill him when he's sitting watching TV at 10pm while I'm still making lunches, packing day care bags, etc. He said I'm always so stressed he's afraid to do anything and get yelled at for not doing it right. He's stepped up and helped out more and I've tried to tone down the OCD a bit. It's not perfect but it's definitely helping.

I also committed to monthly date nights and make a conscious effort not to talk about the kids while we're out. Just the date nights alone have helped tremendously.

There are times when I could've written exactly this, and with 1 kid! I think what ultimately helped is to talk about your expectations, and help the other understand how you feel and what you are going through. A bad fight always breaks out after we both suppress our feelings for too long.

I definitely used to resent that he gets more free time and sleep. And he used to think that he's doing so much b/c he solo parents Monday's and Friday mornings.

So at some point before DD turned 1, we had a bad fight about this (during a bad sleep period too), and we both felt so much better just airing out all our feelings and why we feel resentment, bitterness, etc.

Now, of course I still feel that sting once in a while. But I actively choose to think about all the things he does that I probably don't appreciate enough. And he definitely stepped up his game too in volunteering to help me at night, etc.

So I think honest, but loving communication is really important.