The hazards of post-marital sex.

I miss sex. I miss unbridled (who wears a bridle?), rowdy, noisy, uninterrupted sex.

Pre-marital sex. PRE-pre-natal sex. (Is that a thing?) Pre-children-who-are-stalking-you sex.

I do.

I spent a good part of my late teens and 20’s having sex. Good sex, bad sex, weird sex…furtive sex, spontaneous sex, planned sex, obligatory special event sex, morning sex, sex in the back of a van as we crossed state lines…(why? I don’t remember).

On a piano, a pool table, in swimming pools, on the sink in the ladies room at a li’l breakfast dive, and once over the hood of my car in a bar parking lot after closing. Sometimes you don’t want to take them all the way home when you take ‘em home.

Sex is AWESOME.

And then you get married.

And the sex is still AWESOME. Just different. Where one door closes, a bedside drawer opens. It’s a game changer, but the game is still pretty hot. Now you can explore your curiosities and kinks in the safety of a legal contract. You entertain his weird desire to talk like Gru at all the wrong moments. You discover that right up in your ear? Gru is kinda hot. You try all the lubes, flavoured or not. All the positions, even the stupid, pointless ones that leave you with sinus headaches and rotator cuff injuries.

You are finally brave enough to try *blush* THAT, and it becomes a study in horrifying dark humour. You wake up together the next day, albeit without bed linens, smelling like anti-bacterial soap, and unable to make eye contact for a couple of hours. But together.

You buy things fearlessly. Handcuffs. Leg restraints. Silk scarves and uncomfortable underwear. Movies. The Kama Sutra love kit, with the weird minty jelly and friction heated oil that tastes like patchouli smells. And then the moment that made you realise he was the most secure man in the world – the day he bought you that THING. That thing that would look disarmingly real if it were not your favourite colour, which is purple. Yes. That thing. Life is good.

But one day, the goddess of irony flies in and drop kicks your clueless patchouli-flavoured ass into the pit of shattered illusions. Located somewhere in the cave of exhaustion, about halfway up the peak of vomit and poop.

Because that sex, that wonderful, amazing, mind-blowing sex – it made one of you pregnant. You probably even did it ON PURPOSE.

That sound you hear is your sex life. It’s laughing.

At first, it was no big deal. What’s a little sore boobs, when you are with the one you love? What’s a little morning sickness? It’s over by the end of the first trimester, right? Right?

What do you mean, you don’t feel like it? You never feel like it. I DO think that baby bump is sexy, honey, I promise….WHY ARE YOU CRYING?

What do you mean, you don’t want to? DON’T YOU THINK YOUR PREGNANT WIFE IS STILL HOT? DON’T YOU? DON’T YOU???? I AM CALM!

Experts will tell you that your sex drive kicks into high gear in the second trimester, and it does. Unfortunately, so do those dormant serial-killer hormones. All this, just in time for you to wear that blue and white maternity garb that makes you look exactly like the Stay-Puft Marshmallow man. WHY ARE YOU CRYING??

That sound you hear is your sex life. It’s mourning.

Coyote Sex. That’s where he lays by the hole and howls. And you think about shooting him.

Eventually, though, the baby is born. And for a while it doesn’t matter because sex is the last thing on anyone’s mind. Sore nipples, episiotomies, the fact that you just pushed a Volkswagen out through a straw, feeding schedules, diapers, incessant crying and baby weight all get in the way of what used to come naturally. (Those of you who blew your husband in the hospital room before you went to sleep that first night? Get off this blog. You are not welcome here.)

If you are lucky, eventually that little spawn will sleep through the night. And at first, that’s all you will do with the new found freedom: sleep. It’s exhausting, this parenting. And somehow, some of that fun, weird stuff you used to do? It just seems wrong.

And besides, you are never awake at the same time. You will be lonely. You will develop an emotional attachment to that purple thing that he bought for you, once upon a time. You will begin to have entire conversations with it, sometimes ending with both you, and it, in tears.

That sound you hear is NOT your sex life, talking to you. Find a good therapist. Really.

Finally, after a while, nap times become regular, feeding times become more structured, and you start to have time alone with each other again. Slowly, the mojo returns.

You sneak a little during those long nap times. While they are gurgling and waving their squash-covered spoons at Peppa Pig. You cross paths at midnight during diaper duty and take advantage of the moment, and again find yourself waking up smelling like anti-bacterial soap, missing bed linens and unable to look each other in the eye…but for different reasons.

Enjoy that, while it lasts.

Because soon, those little angels begin to walk, and babble and follow you everywhere. And smell like poop, all of the time. You can try to hide, but they always find you. You can tell yourself that it’s no different than when the cat is staring at you, but you know in your heart of hearts that it is. If he or she winds up being the kid who is sent home from summer camp for pretending to poop jello during lunch, you will know it’s because of that one time they wandered in and sat on the bathroom floor while the two of you had a quickie in the shower.

That sound you hear is your sex life. It’s suffocating.

This is how it will be for the next few years. You will have to pay a teenager who is surgically attached to a smartphone $20 an hour so you can bang your wife in the back of the minivan, wheezing like a beached whale because you don’t go the gym anymore and it’s cold as f*ck and is that a policeman?

At some point, they will become self-sufficient enough to be trusted alone for short periods of time. That is when they will suddenly become interested in YOU. With the talking, and the questions, and the needing clothing and food. They will show up and rattle the bedroom door, just as it was getting good, just as you have moaned “Harder, baby” into his ear and your child will say “Mom? Are you okay?”

And your husband will say very calmly “She’s fine. Can you go downstairs and I’ll find you, here in a bit?” and that infernal creature will say “Why?” and you will screech like one of the Harpies of the First Apocalypse “JUST GO DOWNSTAIRS!!” and it will instead sit down with its back to the door and play a game of Minecraft on its Kindle while you quickly reach a mediocre finish. Later, it will ask you why you were making that noise and it will demonstrate and you will mentally vow to never again have an orgasm.

But you are lying. You will eventually return to your dresser drawer and your deviant ways, while your husband is at work and you will fall asleep afterwards and you will be awakened by the phone. You will go to work and you will return home and you will tease your husband that “maybe he could show up for the sex next time” and you will hear your child in the bedroom calling your name – you will both go in to be greeted by it, pointing it’s accusing little finger at something in the bed. Something purple. “Is it fake poop?” it will ask, and you will look at each other, you and your husband, your eyes filled with mortification and his with stifled hysterical laughter and you will nod in defeat and he will say, gurgling, “Yes, it is. Your mommy is such a jokester. Go to your room.”

That sound you hear is your sex life. It’s surrendering.

This post originally appeared on ‘Blog Her’ and was republished here with full permission.