Five Tips For Maintaining Your Sex Life After Kids

Sex is an essential part of most relationships. 

But sometimes it’s hard to make time for it – especially when you have kids.

Between school holidays, busy work schedules, meal times, extracurriculars, and whatever else you have going on as a family, sometimes sex with your partner becomes the last priority. 

Having sex isn’t just enjoyable. It’s key to a healthy relationship. It also helps you show up better in every other area of your life, including being a more present, happy parent.

So how do you manage to have a steamy sex life after you have kids?

Here are our top five tips:

1) Understand Your Kids

Unfortunately, there’s no hard and fast rule for having sex after you have kids. That’s why it’s so important to understand your kids and where they’re at at different points in their lives. 

Their age and how self-sufficient they are will impact how you go about your sex life. For those with babies and toddlers that may mean nap time or late at night, while those with school-aged kids may take advantage of school time or when your kids are at play dates at other people’s houses.

You know your child (or children) best, so you’ll need to trust your intuition and know that things will change as they get older.

2) Get Creative

Remember when you were young and in love and you would have sex anywhere you could? From the back of the car to questionable spots in nature, you had to get creative and be resourceful.

Put yourself in your younger you’s shoes.

Where or when can you create space to have sex? Try in the shower or even in the shed. Do you normally make time to work out in the morning? Replace one or two workouts a week with intimacy time.

The creativity and spontaneity can be a hot form of foreplay!

3) Set Them Up with Activities

Ok, as much as we love spontaneity in our sex lives, sometimes intimacy after having kids can take a little extra planning.

If your kids are old enough to be left alone for a bit but aren’t totally self-sufficient, you may want to set them up with an activity and some snacks so that you can carry on with your own *activities*.

This could mean setting up shop in front of the TV and letting them watch whatever they’d like, or making a craft station with something they love to do. It may be helpful to leave out snacks for them or let them know that they can grab whatever snack they’d like (without asking), to help prevent any hunger-related interruptions.

4) Have an “Emergency Only” Rule

While you want to communicate the importance of privacy time (more on that in the next step), you also want your kids to know when it’s ok to interrupt you.

Although that may be different for different families, it probably means they can interrupt you if there’s an emergency. Still, “emergency” can be an open-ended term for kids, so make sure you explain what that means – injury, sickness, etc.

If it’s not an emergency, but they really need you, just make sure you tell them they need to knock before coming in. 

5) Communicate with Your Kids

Sex is a normal part of life. It’s also essential to a healthy and happy relationship. While your kids might not be old enough for you to explain the concept of sex or intimacy to, they likely can understand the idea of “private or special time”.

It’s important to explain to your kids how important this is in an age-appropriate way that reflects your beliefs and values as a family. You can also explain that having this special time helps make you better parents.

The older they get, the more open you can be about this and the more boundaries you can set. You might try putting a “do not disturb” sign on the door or saying that you and your partner need a “nap”.

What if your kids hear you having sex? 

It’s bound to happen at some point. So the older they get, the more open you can be about it. Sex is nothing to be ashamed of, really it’s a key part of relationships that should be embraced.

While we hope this helped give you some guidance and *inspiration*, ultimately you know your kid best!

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