It Is Not Okay To Have Sex In Front Of Your Infant
I’ve done a lot of things in front of my children, but having sex isn’t one of them.
I was having trouble sleeping the other night and after I got tired of snooping around on Facebook I turned to my other internet addiction, Reddit, for entertainment. I love Reddit. When it’s two in the morning and I can’t sleep, Reddit is always there for me, like an electronic version of a teddy bear. I stumbled across this thread where the question was asked: When did you stop having sex in front of your babies/children? The late hour and my natural flair towards the dramatic got me worried that I was missing something, because I’ve never had sex in front of my kids.
I am an anxious mom, so between my constant need to check and reassure myself that they were still breathing and pediatrician-ordered feedings every three hours, it made sense to have the babies sleep in co-sleeper bassinets in our bedroom. The bassinets mainly stayed on the floor, but if a baby was having a particularly fussy night we would place the bassinet on the bed between us.
Between recovering from a C-section, around the clock feedings and having a baby wedged between us most nights, it was weeks before I even thought about sex. But when I was finally ready to get down with my bad self, I couldn’t do it with the babies in the room. It’s not that I was worried their wee infant brains would know what was going on and be traumatized by it, it was just that I couldn’t fully concentrate with one ear cocked waiting for a baby to cry. Not to be crass, but if I’m going to go through the trouble of shaving my legs, it better be worth the hassle.
We had agreed to move the babies into their own room once they were three months, but my husband convinced me that it would be much healthier for our sex life and everyone’s sleep schedule to do it sooner, so in the end they moved out of our room and into their cribs at ten weeks. Since then sex in front of the children hasn’t been an issue, except when we travel.
When we go away, we stay in one hotel room. After the kids fall asleep we will huddle on the balcony or in the bathtub, watching Netflix and listening for sounds of toddler distress. But that’s it. No hanky panky for us on vacation. Now that the kids are older, it’s not that I’m too worried, it’s more that I am afraid they will hear us, wake up, and then not only are we interrupted, we now have to get the them back to sleep. It’s that dread of having to sing ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ for an hour until they fall asleep that dampens my ardor.
Like the nameless Reddit user, I would love to know if my behavior is normal. Maybe all parents feel like this, or maybe my husband is a victim of my prudish ways. I’m not sure, but I do know that we are going away this weekend, and my negligees are not on the ‘to pack’ list.
