Making Time For It When You're a Busy Mom

How do you find time for sex when you'e a busy mom with young kids?

First, Sarah shares three mindset shifts, plus a bonus note on attitudes about motherhood:

1. You NEED to make time for your marriage. You don't find it, you make it. You need to make time for emotional connection with your husband, and also for sex. Ideally, you want both of them together, but if you only have time for one, consider prioritizing emotional connection first. Consider scheduling it, and have an attitude that accepts that preparation will make it better--just as Mass is scheduled, and entails many layers of preparation (the homily, music, flowers, usher plan, etc.).

2. Emotional connection is so important for making lovemaking meaningful and pleasurable. Women are designed to thrive sexually in an atmosphere of heart-to-heart connection with their husband, which includes that feeling of being truly known and seen. 

3. Good lovemaking takes time: ideally, 15-60+ minutes per session. If you don't care about it feeling good and bonding, or you don't care about feeling mutual pleasure, you don't need much time. However, that is likely to lead to you, the wife, feeling left behind, used, and resentful. You will be more likely to see sex as just another chore to check off your list. 

4. Motherhood does not have to mean you are frazzled and exhausted. That is not a sign that you are doing it right. It is incredibly demanding, but look for where you can bring in help and make space for more in your life than just caring for your kids. Make time to cultivate your mind, your friendships, your hobbies... and your idea of yourself as a lover, not just a mother. 

That said, here are four ideas for making time for good lovemaking in marriage:

1. Weekend afternoon, during the little one's nap. Put on a movie and set out snacks for the bigger kids. Then, Mommy and Daddy go to their bedroom to have "a little nap." 

2. Cereal Night. This is a weekday night in which you serve the easiest dinner possible--maybe even just cold cereal, in plastic bowls! Streamline the bedtime rooutine. Make it the simplest, easiest possible version of dinner and bedtime. Then, once the kids are in bed, Mom and Dad make a bee-line for their bedroom WITHOUT PICKING UP THEIR PHONES, laptop, or tablets first. (Those screens are "thieves in the night" that will steal your precious opportunities for emotional and sexual connection! They're a trap. Stay off, or an hour later you'll find yourselves scrolling or surfing, and then too tired to really have good lovemaking.) 

3. Set Your Alarms for the Middle of the Night. Get in one solid sleep cycle, and set your alarm for 4 hours after your heads hit the pillow. Then, wake up, make love in the dead of night, and go back to sleep for the rest of the night. 

4. Arrange Babysitting Just for Sex Time.  You can do a babysitting swap with another couple with young kids, bring the kids to in-town parents for the evening, or have a babysitter over while you two go to a faraway part of the house to "do your taxes" or "have a business meeting." Get a white noise machine if you want to. 

MORE RESOURCES

Free Enhancing Marital Intimacy Guide for Catholic Women: 9 Skills for Body, Mind, and Spirit (for married and engaged women)

Do you want to know what is allowed for Catholics in the bedroom? The "What's Allowed List" answers 20+ questions about what is licit and illicit. ($10)

Model-free lingerie! Get 10% off with my affiliate link for Mentionables.

Transcript

0:50

How do you find time for sex when you are a busy mom with young kids at home? This is such a common challenge. I hear this question a lot, so I thought I'd make this whole episode just for you, just for you. Wonderful, beautiful, busy moms who are saying your yes to life and in those very draining and really hands-on years. Of raising young kids and maybe you've got multiple young kids, but it doesn't matter. Even one kid at home. And even if the kid's not that young, maybe they're in high school or maybe they're in high school, um, or young adult living at home, it still makes an impact on your schedule and your energy and your feeling of freedom around, you know, when you can find time to make love with your husband. So I'm gonna share some. Ideas, and I have four practical ideas that you might not have thought about. Most of these are geared towards the moms with younger kids, but you might be able to find ways to apply these to the older kiddos as well. And then I'm gonna precede them with three important principles. So the first principle is that it's important to make time for your marriage. You need to prioritize time with each other, and no one's gonna hand it to you on a platter because life is so demanding. There is so much to get done. The household work, jobs, kids, all the activities, it's nonstop and. It's not a matter of like, oh, everything slowed down for a minute and now we have time for each other. That's not how it works. It's that you have to plant your flag in the sand. You have to pray to God, and then use strength, grace, and grit to part the seas and carve out that time for each other because it's a priority. Because it is important for your marriage that you have time to connect. And I'm not just saying connect for sex, and I'm not saying you have to do that frequently, but you have to make time for your marriage. You have to make time to spend with each other in some way that's meaningful, relaxing, fun, pleasant. Uh, where you can feel like you can talk about more than just logistics, more than just getting things done. So that is really important. And I would say if you have to choose between time for sex and time for emotional connection, choose emotional connection. But ideally you want both. You want to create some time for sex. That's what this whole episode is about. But I don't want you to short shrift emotional connection that really needs to be part of it. You can't make love to your husband if he feels like a stranger to you because you've been passing like ships in the night. It, that's not really how we're designed as women to respond and to thrive sexually. We need to feel like we have some sort of. Connection, um, that's personal. That's at the affective level. That's, you know, there's some sort of emotional, you know, feeling of being seen and of really knowing your husband and what, what's going on with him. So that's really, really important. And another, so that's, those are some important principles you have to create this time. That's principle number one. The emotional connection is super important. That's principle number two. And then principle number three is good. Love making takes time. You have to be intentional about. Setting aside time for it. If you want it to be good, if you don't care and you're okay with just bad love making, you know, by which I mean love making in which you're not gonna feel much pleasure, um, in which you're just getting it done and like checking it off your list. That doesn't take that much time. Five, 10 minutes, whatever, like. That's fine, right? That's not, and you might be exhausted and tired and then you might feel kind of resentful and left out and like you're being used and that's sad. I don't want that for you. I want so much more for you. But that, that doesn't really take that much time. Usually for most husbands, most men have a pretty short, intense arousal curve. And you know, if, um, if you're like, fine, go for it. Whatever, you know, just do your thing. That doesn't usually take that long. Um, but what I'm talking about is making time for fulfilling mutual good love making where you're going to feel nourished, connected, like bonded. Um, feel some pleasure. That takes time. It takes, I would say like at a minimum 15 minutes, ideally more like an hour. And so that's, that's time you're most likely gonna need to schedule or think ahead about in some way or prepare for in some way, right? The things that are important for us in life, especially things that are important that recur, we usually schedule and plan and prepare for those things. Like look at mass, right? We don't just randomly have mass at like. 10 42 Sunday morning when the priest spontaneously feels like offering it. Uh, no. We set a time. Your mass times are like probably the most looked up thing on your Parish's website because we all wanna know what time is mass so we know when to show up so we can prepare and. There's a lot of preparation that goes into that, right? The priest is writing his homily. The musicians are preparing, they're, you know, practicing the psalm and the, the music for the mass, the Altar Society is preparing beautiful flowers. There are a lot of different elements, and that's just part of it. I'm, there's probably so much more preparation that goes into this that we don't even know, um, unless we're, I guess, involved in parish work. Uh, and so similarly. Your love making, which is a sacred time, a time of communion and connection, a time for growth and renewal in your sacrament of marriage. That takes some preparation and planning and setting aside time for, for it to be good, right? Like think about if we went to mass and people hadn't prepared those things. There's no music, there's no homily. The altars bear, there's no pretty flowers. The alter linens look shabby because no nice alter, you know, society, ladies or whoever is doing it, has laundered them and pressed them. Um, it's disorganized, getting in and out because there's no ushers. Like it would, it would still be mass, but be kind of a sad experience of mass. And I just, I love, I love masks so much. I'm so grateful. I'm so grateful for our parish communities. And everybody involved who make it special, and most of all, to God who comes to us, who comes to us in Word and Sacrament, who speaks to us, who connects with us emotionally first through the liturgy of the word, through speaking to us in awaiting our response. And you know who God is there who He just wants so much to share his whole self with us, his heart, his gift, his nourishment and healing. And he wants so much for us to come with full conscious, active participation to show up, not just getting our behinds in the pew, but showing up with our heart and our soul, and our will and our mind really oriented to him and really disposed, eagerly to receive him. In his word and in the physical gift of himself in holy communion, which we take inside our bodies and just, and have special moments of treasuring there, which is bringing us so many graces. So anyway, I hope that makes sense and you can see the parallels there, that fear of love making to be really like nourishing. Meaningful, um, feel worthy and worthwhile. I mean, it's, it's, of course sex is worthy. In your Catholic marriage, uh, you know, as long as you both consent and are willing and right, no one's using the other. The church is very clear in saying that the actions by which spouses give themselves to each other in the marital and embrace are noble and worthy. Right. So that's worthy, but I'm talking about right, like let's make it this something, uh, something that you're going to enjoy in your marriage, something that's going to be nourishing and sustaining to your relationship and to you. The wife, you the wife, who is also a busy mom. So how do we set aside the time for that? Okay, here are some ideas. And I think I'm also gonna add one other little preceding like mindset tip here. I want you as a mom to realize and to just think that like. Totally spending and exhausting yourself in motherhood. So easy to do like that. It just feels like that a lot, so much. Right? But that's not the goal and that's not the sign of you being a good mom. So sometimes I think, especially in North American and Anglo type cultures, we really kind of pride ourselves on like, oh my gosh, I'm just like, ah. It's everything so crazy. Um, because, and that shows like you are just spending yourself in motherhood and it doesn't have to be that way. You can have a little time for self care. You can structure your life and your idea about motherhood in such a way that the kids aren't everything in your life, so that you have something of you besides just you, the mom. Right. You have you who has like an intellect that you nourish with reading and learning. You have you that has friendships, you have you that has, um, ideas and interests and uh, hobbies and you who are a lover. So that's the part we're gonna talk about. You woman who are a lover also. Okay? So for this to work well, you need to make time. Life with kids is busy. Yes. Just. Try to think about like where can you save a little bit of energy? Where, what are the optional things that you don't have to do that you're doing now? You kind of assume you have to do them. You don't really have to. Where are the areas you can. In good conscience, cut corners, you know, maybe meal prep or, um, yeah. Number of activities you permit your kids to be involved in or that you expect yourself to be involved in or, or your standards for meal prep or house cleaning or something. You know, there are areas where you can be like, well, I guess I don't have to do it a hundred percent at everything. Maybe in some areas it's okay for me to do it at like a 60% level, and that's okay. All right. So that said, here are four practical ideas for making time, for connecting with your husband and having sex when you are a busy mom. So my first idea here for you is a weekend. Afternoon. So this is where you. Maybe you have a baby and a toddler who are napping and they have a, a midday nap. So you make sure to clear your Saturday or maybe you go to Saturday evening mass and you're clearing your Sunday, at least this part of the day. You're not gonna do a big Costco run or Home Depot run or, um, you know, getting, doing a birthday parties, whatnot. You've got a open midday when the baby and toddler are napping. And you put a movie on for the older kids, a movie they're gonna really like, and you get them some special snacks and then you tell them that you and daddy are gonna go have a nap together or mommy daddy time behind the locked door. And they are not to come interrupt you unless there's blood or fire like the other problems. Teach them how to solve it, show them what to do. But this is mommy daddy time. They've got their movie, they've got their snacks. The younger ones are sleeping and you and your husband go slip off to your bedroom, lock that door, put on a white noise machine if you need to, and then you, you need to learn to like, just surrender the fa, like just your kids are gonna be okay. Give yourself this hour, 45 minutes, maybe half hour, if that's all you've got. I would really like for you to have an hour though, and just be like, all right, the kids are gonna be okay. And. I am a lover. Once you step through the threshold into your bedroom, you cross that door. Just sort of imagine slipping off your mom wardrobe, your mom messy bun, you know, your, uh, spit up stain shirt, whatever it is, right? And then inside this bedroom, this is like a little oasis for you. This is retreat time. This is marriage retreat time. This is Garden of Eden time, and you are man and woman in this garden. And then you can cuddle and chit chat with your husband. Ask him what's on his mind. Ask him if you can share, you know, if you can listen ni, you know, share what's on your mind, what you've been thinking about while you cuddle and start stroking each other. And then you can make love, but like make sure the emotional connection's there first too, right? Repair, make up. If you've had a fight, do a really good repair first and then love making time right there in the middle of the day. And some advantages of this are, it's not at night when you might be tired and might be more likely to fall asleep. And it could be kind of like special too, to do it in daylight. Um, and yeah, I just, I think this is. A good possibility with lots of potential that you should definitely explore at least once or twice a month. You know, maybe other weekends you've gotta have the birthday parties and the Costco run and you know, get together with the in-laws or your family or whatever. But at least once or twice a month, I bet you can clear a weekend day for some afternoon delight with your husband and it's important and it's worth it. So treasure that. I mean, what a gift. You're both alive. You're both healthy and well and able to make love. That's really special. I just, I see women. Uh, I help them in my delight and, and through my emails when they're later in life. And when you're in these busy years of raising your kiddos, you don't realize it's not on your threshold that like, oh, you know what? Me and my husband might have health problems later on that might make it harder for us to make love. You know, we might have prostate issues and need to get a surgery and then you, you know, might lose the ability to have erections so easily. Or like I might develop, um, issues with menopause. I mean, it, menopause can be a great time for you too. You could have your best love making around menopause and beyond, but it could go the other way too. And so just treasure this. It's such a gift that you're healthy and young and um, and able to do it. So seize the day. Okay. Another idea. Idea number two for you is cereal dinner night. This is a weekday night where you punt. You just absolutely punt on dinner and housekeeping and kid bedtime. You'd make it the easiest possible version of all those things you have. Cold cereal for dinner. If your kids eat cold cereal for dinner once a night, once a week, they are gonna survive. They're not gonna die of malnourishment. Um, but you know, maybe it's something else. I proposed this idea inside this cohort of my delight that I'm running this fall of 2025, and one mom was like, ah, well I could at least give them my homemade granola, which is great. Right. Okay. She, um. Or, you know, like a, a meal you've made ahead of time. Maybe you've made planned overs, you made a double batch of last night's casserole, so then you can just pull the, the second one out of the fridge. Um, but hey, what about paper plates, paper spoons and knives for an easy cleanup, and you just don't plan anything else for this night. You're not gonna try to get anything else done. Look on your schedule. Do you have at least one night when there's no other activities in the week? That is your cereal dinner night, your lovemaking night with your husband, right? So you have the kids' baths different nights, you know, they can go one night without baths. And the easy version of putting them to bed, right? Like one bedtime story instead of two or three, one lullaby instead of two or three, maybe you combine the story. Um. Yeah, just you get the idea, right? It's the quick, easy version of bedtime. Tuck those kiddos in. Now a little sidebar here. Do your kids have a hard time staying in bed and knowing that once they're in, in, you know, put to bed that they're expected to stay there? We, same here. I had kids like that, but I had to learn. Um, to really set the expectation that you need to stay there and to not entertain their shenanigans. And we love kids. I love kids so much. And the really, I think the game changer for me was with our fifth child. I wanted to avoid getting postpartum mood disorders. I had learned from having them twice before with two of the previous babies. Um, I'd done research and realized that. Postpartum mood disorders are correlated with sleep disruption. And we had a style of, uh, kids sleep where we did lots of attachment, parenting and co-sleeping with the kiddos. And man, I just looking back there, there was a lot of sweetness with that. But there's a lot of missed sleep and a lot of chaos around sleep and bedtime. And if I could just go back 20 years, 22 years and do it all over again, I would've skipped all that. I mean, your kids will still be attached and they'll still know you love them. And if you don't do the co-sleeping and the attachment parenting style around sleep, um, I think I had this black and white mentality about it. And I dunno, just based on my own anxieties and wounds, I think I really latched onto that and like. I took this as like, I have to do this or else I'm not a good mom. I don't know what my deal was. But anyway, it was the best thing ever. When with baby number five, I decided while pregnant, you know what? I'm gonna hire a pediatric sleep consultant and we're gonna teach this baby from the start to to be a good sleeper. And it was gentle. The sleep consultant that I worked with, we did not do extended cry outs. It was a gentle, loving process and that. Child is now our best sleeper and it was just the best thing. I wish I would've done that from the beginning. So anyway, this is just your little heads up that maybe really looking at training your children in a loving, gentle, but firm way to be good sleepers. Maybe that would be a really good help for you and also can really help your love life as well. Okay, so that is. Tip number two, just do it easy, easy night. Plan on it being easy, and then plan on making love. Then after you put the kids to bed, you and your husband. Do not pass your screens. Do not pick up your devices. Do not pick up your phone or laptop or iPad. No, no, no. You just go hop straight into bed. When you still have brain cells that are functioning when you still have some energy, you just make a beeline for the bed, and you don't have to have sex right away. You can cuddle. I recommend it first. You can talk, you can laugh, you can share about your day. That's actually super important. I really want you to be able to do that, but you're gonna lose all that time. If you, each of you pick up your phones and you start scrolling and you, you do your emails and check whatever it is you check, no, don't check that. It'll wait for you. It'll be there the next day. Just be at peace about it. Just get your little selves into bed. Chop, chop. Do it, and then you'll have some energy before you get real tired. To, um, prioritize each other and have that time for emotional connection and sexual connection and get your, you know, half hour to hour love making session. Um, so, okay, so that's idea number two. Idea number three is the middle of the night, and I learned this tip from a wife who is in my delight, who had, um, eight kids and she and her husband had a pretty good love life from the start, but she wanted to just, you know, keep growing, which is. So great and so good, but she shared that what she and her husband do in their busy house with lots of kids of all ages, including the older kids who tend to be up later doing their homework or hanging out with friends, is they just set their alarms for the dead middle of the night, like 2, 3, 4 am. Then they'd wake up, make love in the middle of the night, and then go back to sleep. And the house is quiet and nobody hears, and they're not distracted with anybody. So that's an option too. I mean, work for them. And you might have lots of objections to it, but I just want to propose that you could find solutions for all those objections and you could try it a few times and see if you can make it work because you know that's available to you. There's no one stopping you from doing that. Except maybe a baby who wakes up in the middle of the night, but maybe that baby's your alarm. You, you know, baby wakes you up in the middle of the night, you nurse baby, feed baby, soothe baby, put baby back to sleep. And then you go wake up your husband and be like, Hey, I'm up. And guess what? Wanna make love, right? Like, that could be a really great time. And then your sleep after that, if you do spend the time to have a, you know, a. A lovemaking session that's gonna bring you along your arousal curve, maybe even bring you to orgasm, that can help your sleep after. Be much nicer. You'll have some oxytocin. It just will be great. All your good neurotransmitters will be stimulated to some degree. Could be really good for you. Okay, fourth idea. Get babysitting just so you can have sex. This can look a lot of different ways. Um, maybe it's a Saturday morning, you have some friends. Watch your kids Saturday morning or get a babysitter or you know, leave your kids at your, um, if you have parents or in-laws in town, drop them off on a weekend morning, Saturday morning, for example. Um, or Sunday morning if you've gone to mass Saturday evening. And then you just go home and same thing, cuddle, make love, and that's it. That's the whole date. It's so worth it though. It's so worth it. So yeah, we actually had done that a few times when we had young, young kids and it was really nice. It's really nice. Okay, another, another way you can work this is, um, get a babysitter. Have the kids walk. You know, be with a babysitter watching a movie in one part of the house of an evening. And before bedtime and you and your husband go to the other part of the house to your bedroom, white noise machine, um, you can say whatever you wanna say about what you guys are doing, that you're just having some quality time with each other, having some uninterrupted time with each other, having a planning meeting, having a business meeting, whatever. But, um. Right then it's just you make love in the evening with a babysitter there, or your kids at a baby being babysat somewhere. So currently in this cohort of my delight, I have a young wife who's somewhat newly married and with a baby, and the husband's parents live in town and they drop their baby off at the husband's parents' place. Um, in the evening, couple times a week, and that is their love making time. So you can do it. You could do this too. You could find a way to do something like this or maybe a babysitting swap with friends where one evening a week you drop your child, our children off at their house, and then you go back to your own house for some love making and then. Another night, a week you watch their kids and then you know, they are free to do whatever they want to do during that time. So yeah, just think about how you can use babysitting for this and then. Yeah, that is tip number four. And then I would just, I guess I just wanna add as a little postlude here, these are such busy years. It's really hard. It is really hard and demanding. And I just wanna encourage you, busy moms, it is okay to ask for help and to seek help. Uh, and by that I mean like, maybe housekeeping help, maybe extra babysitting during the day, aside from for love making, but you know, just to help you keep your head above water. Um, maybe you throw some money, like you have your resources of time, money, and energy. How can you arrange those so that you can bring in some more help? How can you draw on your social network to get more help? These are the years you're gonna want it most, when it's gonna be most valuable to you. So don't hesitate. Don't think you're failing, that you ha if you, if you are finding yourself. Wanting help and don't think that you have to do this all on your own. I, I don't think we were like, I think, I think we were meant to have more support around us socially than we do currently, the way society is structured. And I, you know what, I'm gonna be praying for you all today because it's hard. I, my youngest is now six and it's just, it's a lot. Easier now that we're outta those diaper and young kid years. So I'm gonna say a hail Mary today for you young moms or moms of young kids listening. Okay, God bless you. See you in the next episode.