The Key to a Happy Sex Life After Kids? Quickies — And a Good Sense of Humor.

Sarah and Zach have been married for four years. Shortly after they tied the knot, they welcomed their first daughter. Unsurprisingly, a baby brought dramatic changes to their sex life. Now that their daughter is five, and has a penchant for stirring up trouble, finding the time to be intimate is a challenge. Before kids, they used to have sex every day — sometimes eight times! — they say that they are now lucky to have time together twice a week. It’s not better or worse. Just different. Plus, the strength of their connection, and the ease of their relationship, has amazed them. Here, Sarah and Zach explain how their sex life changed after kids, the last time they had really great sex, and why becoming parents unlocked a completely different of intimacy.

The Details

Age: Sarah (23), Zach (26)

Years Married: 4Years Together: 5.5Kids: 1 daughter, 5 years oldLocation: FloridaJob: blogger and a web designer (her) local truck driver (him)

You have a five-year-old. That presents a different set of challenges than when she was an infant. How has your sex life changed as your daughter has grown?

Sarah: I think in the beginning, it was definitely more of not having sex – just out of sheer exhaustion of having a newborn. But, back then, when Ocean was a newborn, we got lucky because we had parents nearby. That was nice, because we did have more of an opportunity to get away. They’d babysit her for the night.

Zach: I do feel like we were more exhausted earlier on, but it was easier for us to get into the mood to have more sex, as opposed to now. Now, just the chaos and cadence of life just makes it a little bit harder to have quite as much time as we used to.

S: I do feel like our weekends now are dedicated to school events, birthday parties, and stuff that we didn’t have earlier on.

How often do have sex these days?

S: About six months ago we made an arrangement where we were going to have two date nights a month. That turned out to be just one date night a month — that’s all we had time for — but I do think we’ve had more sex in the past six months.

Z: We usually have sex about once or twice a week, and usually, that’s early in the morning or late at night, either right as we’re waking up or right before we go to bed. But we’re just kind of in our own space, our daughter is asleep, we don’t have anything else to worry about, and we can just focus on each other.

S: Basically, if our daughter is in bed, we’re good to go as long as we don’t fall asleep on each other — which happens.

Z: Now that she’s up and walking around and doing stuff like that, we have this whole other angle of, she couldn’t walk in on us before! When she was a baby and she was taking a nap, we could go out for a little break every now and then.

S: It used to be just her crying, now it’s her like, “Hi mom, hi dad. What are you doing?

Has the quality of your intimacy changed now that your parents?

S: We’re definitely more comfortable. When we first started dating, we had sex like eight times a day. Like, all the time. Now, we don’t have all day to have sex. We have like, 10 minutes or 20 minutes. And now we get our clothes off separately and we have sex.

Z: Yeah, it’s a different kind of intimacy. It’s not inherently sexual intimacy anymore. It’s more of a, like, almost a deeper intimacy. Our lives are so intertwined, you know, I can hear her breathing halfway across the house now. You kind of transcend the purely sexual intimacy and do something altogether different. Sex is still important, but it’s beyond that.

S: It’s easier and it’s harder at the same time.

S: It’s definitely more comfortable — and it’s definitely more fun. We can literally talk about anything. It’s definitely easier.

When was the last time you had really great, bonkers sex?

S: I think last weekend?

Z: Yeah.

S: That was pretty good.

Z: That was pretty good this weekend.

S: What did we do differently? I think we had more time. Our daughter was really exhausted from the birthday party we went to.

Z: She went to bed early.

S: Yeah, she went to bed early and she was like, knocked out. So we usually go to bed later, and we didn’t have to do anything Sunday until the afternoon. So we got the chance to spend some time together.

What is your favorite part of your sex life today?

S: Well, still, my favorite thing is when we go on a date night and we can talk like adults without our daughter. And I like when we come home and our daughter is in bed because we can continue that later into the night. I think that’s the best part. We don’t have any family around us because we moved recently, so I do think it really revolves around date nights.

Z: Yeah, it takes a lot more on our part. Before, we could just ask my mom to watch her and she’d be all over that. And so definitely, it’s more of a commitment now. We have to take a lot more time on ourselves.