by Maggie Downs posted in Life

If you've been following along for our first BabyCenter Book Club, we've been reading How Not to Hate Your Husband After Kids, a humorous but also helpful guide to relationships after a baby enters the picture.
New York Times bestselling author Jancee Dunn wrote this part-memoir, part-self-help guide as she and her husband struggled to keep their marriage together after the birth of their daughter. The book blends real-life experiences with expert advice, all wrapped up in a chatty, funny bow. It feels like something that could have been written by a helpful sister or a reliable girlfriend.
Dunn answered some of our questions by phone last week about the process of writing the book, what helped her marriage, and what she hopes this guide will do for others.
Was it always a given that you would use your own relationship as a test case"
I am used to writing about my life, but never my marriage. My husband is a private guy. He?s a writer also, but he doesn?t write about his feelings or any of that stuff, so I was really hesitant. It?s fun to talk about boyfriends and stuff, but when you get married, it?s a little more sacred, I guess.
So he was initially opposed to the idea"
It's his nightmare to expose his relationship to the world. He had never gone to counseling, and there was also the risk that this big book project would fail. Who knew if it would have a happy ending or not"
We were not doing well. It was very unclear if ...