Last night I did what I ordinarily do around eleven o’clock. I shut down my laptop computer and put it away, then closed the book I was reading and set it on the lamp stand next to the sofa. I brought my water glass and my wine glass into the kitchen and put them in the dishwasher. While my husband went outside to smoke his last cigarette for the evening, I climbed the stairs and readied myself for bed.

My wife, Lael, and I had repeatedly been cautioned by our experienced friends to expect severe, relationship-altering sleep loss after the birth of our daughter. The truth was, though, that we looked forward to the challenge.

I'm going to confess something that might sound shocking coming from a writer who often takes as her subject the complex and sometimes dark experience of mothering young children . . .

Lately, I’ve had a growing concern for moms. Not in the how-can-we-manage-our-over scheduled-kids kind of way. But I’ve been deeply worried about us as women.

Emi is ambivalent. She is five years old, losing her baby-fat and gaining the responsibilities of a kindergartener. At school she loves the thrill of being in "K," though she is anxious over the newness of it all. At home, she revels in her status as an older sibling even as she is bitterly jealous about having to share me with her brother.

So, you see, we had this baby. Life changed. I don’t mean to brag, but before the baby came, we were good—really good—at going out on dates with each other.

When I was 32, three years into my blessedly peaceful second marriage, 16 months into the motherhood gig, five months pregnant with our second child, I sat on the floor of our New York apartment in stunned silence.