if you love vaccuming so much, why don't you marry it?

i just read an article about finding time for sex when you're a mom. i hate these articles. they seem to be everywhere, and they are always depressing. they are always written from such a defeatist standpoint, as if managing to have a sexual relationship as a parent is pretty much impossible without a daytimer and a truckload of viagra. i have a small baby who sleeps very lightly and has to breastfeed every two hours. i have a husband who works odd shifts at a demanding job. we both have bad backs and massive sleep debts. but, shockingly, we still manage to have sex several times a week. how do we manage this mythical feat of will and strength? we love eachother, so we make intimacy a top priority. it's pretty simple - if you want to have sex with someone, you do. if you don't really want to have sex, everything else will get in the way. the thing that is your top priority is what gets your time first. and nothing should be a higher priority than your spouse. sure, sometimes the baby wakes up at inopportune times. sometimes we are both tired and cranky and stiff. but that's not every single night. there are 24 hours a day, and 7 days a week. if you're not managing to take one or two of those hours to be intimate with your partner, it is not the fault of the laundry or the baby or the job. sex is a really important part of a healthy relationship. it's what makes my relationship with my husband different than my relationship with my best friend. no, i don't always feel super sex-kitteny after being thrown up on, cleaning the kitchen, doing the laundry, and all on almost no sleep. at the end of most days i feel exhausted and frumpy and stressed. but what better way to get relaxed and feel desirable than to be intimate with the man i love? the more sex we have, the sexier i feel. i may not love my new post-baby thighs, but nothing makes me feel better about my body than my husband wanting to see and touch it. when he has a bad day at work and i've had a bad day at home, what better way to comfort eachother than by being intimate? back hurts? - work a massage into the foreplay. baby wakes up? - the 10 minute interruption doesn't have to kill sex for the night. basically, there are always things that one can choose to make more important than one's spouse, whether you have kids or not. i think the real reason it's so hard for some parents to have sex is that they have made the kids and the dog and the chores more important than eachother. my house is usually a total mess, and it's often embarassing when someone stops by unexpectedly. but it's more important to me to have sex with the man i love than to have an impressive house. sleep is a precious, rare commodity, but even sleep is not as important as recharging the most important relationship in my life. the chores can wait, but a healthy marriage can't. and aside from the first few newborn weeks, no baby is so demanding that sex is impossible. we've only been married for a year and a half, but i am committed to doing everything i can to build a great marriage for the long haul. i don't want to be one of those couples who realizes once the kids are grown that they don't have any spark left. the spark doesn't disappear overnight. you either keep the flame going through conscious effort to keep your spouse the top priority, or you let if gradually fade away one 'headache' at a time. 20 years from now, i won't look back and think 'gee, i really wish i had folded the laundry more promptly every time it came out of the dryer'. what will matter in 20 years is the love and affection and intimacy that i've shared with my hubby. all the 'how to squeeze in sex' articles should really be 'get the fuck over being martha stewart' articles.