Children, especially when they're wanted and planned for, are a blessing to a happy couple. Suddenly you're no longer just a couple - you're a family. But those little blessings will change your relationship in more ways than you can anticipate! For example:

Dates. Before my husband Alex and I were parents, we enjoyed occasional long, lingering dinners out at local Thai, Indian, Chinese, sushi or Vietnamese restaurants, among others. The ambience was relaxed, the mood romantic, and the conversation witty and meaningful in turn.

Those days are gone, at least for now.

Although we've managed to get our toddler daughter as addicted to Chinese food as we are, she's not quite ready to consider the other cuisines edible. Which is okay, since raw fish isn't good for little kids, and the Indian food available this close to the Texas border is too hot for us to consume. So when we go out to eat these days, it's to McDonald's more often than not, where we almost always have to make extra time for Keely to go to the play area. We did try to go out, as a family, for our fifth wedding anniversary. The local steak house is about as elegant as it gets in our little town, and we even dressed up...only to have our adoring offspring projectile vomit all over the table the second we sat down. It took a while for us to muster up the courage to go back after that.

Sleep. If you like to sleep, then you definitely need to find a different hobby once you have kids! If you're really lucky, the sleeplessness will start even before the little bundle of joy arrives. No sleep, of course, makes people grumpy. Grumpy people argue with each other more. Arguing usually has a negative effect on the relationship. And of course, if you don't have time to sleep, you don't have time for...

Sex. The comedian Jeff Foxworthy has a bit about trying to arrange time for sex with several young children in the house. He talks about starting to get all cozy with his wife when a little voice cries "Daddy!" and he yells down the hall "Go ahead honey! Get started without me!"

He's not lying. Or exaggerating

Until your kids are grown and gone, planned romantic interludes between you and your spouse are basically over. Between nightmares, delayed bedtimes and unpredictable naps on the weekend, you can't rely on a calendar to keep your sex life going. You may be in the mood, but your daughter may choose that moment to wet the bed. And in the early weeks, given the choice between an hour of sex and an hour of sleep, you'll choose the latter. Trust me.

Conversation. Remember the witty and meaningful conversations I mentioned earlier, the ones you and your spouse used to have, at least once in a while? They're mostly gone unless you make a Herculean effort to have them. Conversations are more likely to focus on who needs to be where when, and how to get them there, and what the baby did today that was cute and/or developmentally significant. Even if the two of you manage to hire a babysitter and go out for a long, unhurried meal consisting mostly of raw sea life, you'll still spend the evening either on the cell phone with the babysitter to reassure yourselves that everything is okay at home and talking about - you guessed it - the kids.

Activities. Remember when the two of you used to take long walks in the woods, or on the beach? Or go to art galleries? Or the theater? Or even a movie? And then you'd spend hours afterwards talking about where you went and what you saw? Those days are, at least temporarily, over. The good news is taking little kids putt-putt golfing or to the playground or the zoo is actually a lot of fun. Think about it. What do you remember most from your childhood? If you're like me, the moments that stand out are trips to the zoo or the amusement park or the county fair with your parents. It may not be cultural, it probably isn't exactly your "thing", but the two of you are giving someone else what you have - good childhood memories. And you may even find that the two of you can talk about the windmill hole at the putt-putt place for hours afterwards!

Having children means that the two of you have to be much more conscious about the care and feeding of your marriage. Eventually the kids will be gone, and the two of you will be alone again. Wouldn't it be a great thing to have an even better marriage than you did before you became parents?