Sex After Kids: Yes, It Does Exist
From:
Meredith Rodkey
64 days 12 hours 45 minutes ago
If you’re expecting a baby, you’ve got a lot on your mind – from preparing the nursery to worrying about labor to fending off the grabby hands that want to touch your belly. Somewhere in all that fuss, you might also be worrying about your bedroom activities – will your baby’s cries also sound the death knell of your sex life?
Rest assured: It won’t (once the usual six- or nine-week post-labor recovery period has passed, of course). While most mothers will readily admit that their children changed their sex lives, their libidos are still going strong. Here are personal stories of three mothers who are still just as sexually fulfilled as ever.
CASEY H.*, a Manhattanite in her late twenties, thinks she has it easy. With her son, Jack, still not even two years old, she and her husband are still having just as much sex as they were during the first two years of their marriage before the baby arrived (that’s weekly – if not more). Casey is quick to note, though, that it’s a different kind of sex, much less spontaneous: “Instead of being exploratory, you dive into what you like.” They rely on an arsenal of babysitters to help them enjoy nights and weekends together, and Casey notes that they treat those nights with care, because “you appreciate spending the time with each other.” For as good as things are for her and her husband now, she does note with caution that things are likely to change as Jack ages and needs more attention in the evening. “The first year is cake,” she swears, “In the beginning, it’s the easiest to have sex – all they do is sleep and eat.”
MAGGIE A., a writer in her mid-thirties living in Miami, would beg to differ. She and Robert, her husband of eight years, enjoy sex once a week, which is less often than before their six-year-old son Diego and five-year-old daughter Isobel were born. Maggie reports the opposite experience of Casey – she’s found it easier to have sex as her children have gotten older and able to take some care of themselves, so she doesn’t need to be “on top of them 24/7.” Now that they’re grown enough, bath time for the kids also signals bedroom time for Maggie and Robert; they also make special efforts to awake in the middle of the night to find time for sex. Maggie’s biggest frustration is often her children’s uncanny knack for knowing when she and Robert are in the mood for a nookie session: “They know if you are even thinking about it and they stick to you like glue … You just have to do it whenever you can.”
LAUREN B., a stay-at-home mother from Seattle, reports the most difficult circumstances in the bedroom since the birth of her four-year-old daughter Stephanie. Due to complications from a recent surgery (unrelated to childbirth), she and her husband of 10 years recently went through a two-month sex drought, but are now back in the habit of having sex at least once a month. That’s the same as before the baby came along, and Lauren reports that sex now is “less sex and more making love …. We aren’t as loud, the cat tries to watch, we make sure the kid is asleep.” She advises that new parents do some planning in advance even if it kills some of the spontaneity (and so mom has time to shave her legs, and dad time to brush his teeth). In her marriage, Lauren sets “the sex agenda” to make sure neither she nor her husband are tired, disinterested or preoccupied.
*Names have been changed to protect the subjects’ privacy.
