Intimacy is always a complex area for couples after having children. They become conscious by default, restricting their affection to hugs and pecks on the cheek. As for sex, new parents rarely get the time or energy. Many couples ask questions along the lines of how to be physically intimate after a child enters their life. But sometimes…couples get caught having sex. They leave the door open, or choose an area which the child can access, and there comes an awkward moment. When kids catch parents doing it, the duo don’t know what to do. How do you react? What’s an explanation you can offer? Today we have a similar story of a dear friend who shares his struggles of being caught doing it. Amusing and insightful, let’s get straight to the incident which many of you might relate with.
Intimacy After Having Kids
Most new parents run on very few hours of sleep. They are drowning in a sea of diapers, wailing, and toys. Where, among this chaos, will they have time for themselves, let alone each other? I mean, moms struggle with me-time already. Plus, there’s a lot of things you juggle after having a baby. There’s much learning to do as well. So in the first five to seven years of having a child, words like romance and intimacy take a backseat for couples. In the time they do have for their sex life, sometimes the kids catch parents having sex. This brings out a lot of questions which need to be answered carefully. In a nutshell, intimacy after having kids is hard. Your worries of getting caught doing it are completely warranted. Hear the story of someone just like you who is on the same journey. This is his story which will give you the perspective you need!
1. Oops moment
Here’s a conversation that my friend narrated to me. She was blushing even as she told me about it. This was a conversation that she had with her child…. This four-year-old screamed at his mom while punching the air: You don’t love me. Mom: What happened now? I love you more than anybody else in this world. Son: You love daddy more than me. Mom: But I gave you the same number of kisses I gave daddy! Son: No! You are not kissing on my lips. No! Not this way. I want you to kiss me the same way you kissed daddy yesterday. The mom didn’t know what to do. She perhaps managed the situation with a kiss on her son’s lips and convinced him that she was kissing daddy the same way. Thereafter, my friend told me that they were conscious about PDA in front of their son. Because they knew that their son would demand exactly the same thing from the mother the next day. Imagine what would happen if this cheeky toddler caught them doing it. When you have a small child at home, like we have a three-year-old, there are a lot of difficult moments, but the most difficult of them all is the intimacy bit. You run the constant risk of getting caught and having sex in front of kids by accident. All couples worry about parenting mistakes.
2. Co-sleeping with kids
Take my son for example. He invariably chooses to lie down between my wife and I on most days. He can’t sleep alone and has to sleep with his mother beside him. If by any chance he finds her hugging me, then he starts crying until she turns around and hugs him. He also has a strange way of sleeping: he sits on the bed and rests his back on his mom’s belly and continues to sleep in the “sitting” position, unless she readjusts him. But that happens only if he is in deep sleep. When you have a child, the first thing that goes through the window is the intimacy that you are so used to. There’s no solution to this relationship problem. You obviously cannot have sex in front of kids. And we’ve heard enough tales of how kids catch parents doing it; we walk on eggshells. Yes, we have consulted therapists and doctors who have bombarded us with countless lists of advice about how we should deal with the child, and how the intimacy between daddy and mommy should be portrayed in front of him. To be honest, it doesn’t work all the time. After a hard day at work for both of us, it gets a little difficult to follow those tips. You don’t want to be caught doing it, but the sexual frustration builds up over time. I read a newspaper piece where one couple resorted to having sex in front of the kids because they couldn’t deal with their situation.
3. Complete changes in schedule
We come back home and then we devote our time to our son. Like me giving him a bath, or playing with him for a while so that he is happy and occupied while his mother can tend to other things. She also gets him to finish his dinner, and by the time all of this is sorted, we are too tired to even sit down to talk for a while. Our daily conversations take place around the morning coffee which is briefly and frequently interrupted by my son racing up and down our small apartment on his bicycle (that has recently been fitted with horns). Sometimes the mornings seem like mayhem. My wife and I had a live-in relationship for almost two years before we got married. For us, evenings were all about intimacy. Whether we’d go for a film, a dinner or just spend time in the bedroom; it was all about us feeling secure in each other’s company. This was the routine that was followed for the most part, for close to three years. These days, our lives are different. They have taken on a different trajectory. If we tried following even a teensy bit of the old routine, we would be caught doing it. Children these days are quite smart and active. So many kids catch parents having sex.
4. Summing up
No, I am not complaining. I am also not saying here that my wife and I suddenly lack the intimacy that we need. No, absolutely not. We, like always, have found a way around the ‘problem’. That’s not the point I am trying to make. The point is that you need to change everything when your child starts growing up and most children start reacting differently to their daddy-mommy getting intimate in front of them. These situations, I have learnt, have to be dealt with properly in front of the child, otherwise he or she can get you in an awkward situation later on. For example, I watched in horror how a little girl started describing how her daddy was once beating up his mommy in the dead of the night. A little later, we discovered that the little child was not exactly describing a domestic violence scene. It was quite the opposite of it that she had chanced upon because she had woken up at the wrong time. It was not only an awkward situation for the elders but also for her mother who blushed beetroot red when told about it. Kids catch parents having sex, and narrate the story to others… Just like our friends who were caught doing it, we’ve had a few close brushes where we’ve almost been caught having sex. The equation between a husband and a wife changes when a child arrives. It is beautiful. But if you don’t handle the issue of intimacy in front of your child, be prepared for a few awkward blushes.
