Do kids kill your sex drive?

I'm sure you are not alone. I enjoy cuddling with my younger children while they are smaller. There comes a point, around age 5/6 where we told our kids they needed to stay in their bed all night from now on. The older two do. The youngest is 4.5, he'll be there soon. This will not last forever. Quite frankly, I have a harder time getting them to sleep on time, staying that way, and not being frazzled and spent before I make it to my own bed. Even if they stayed in their bed all night every night, isn't that a bigger issue? Because as we mentioned, in our bed or out of our bed, we have little energy left for ourselves. So how do we overcome that? Seems like we need to work on smoothing out bed time routines, maybe a little earlier in the evening and then spending a little time on ourselves after they are in bed. And I don't mean indulging in ice cream, though you can. ;) Perhaps avoiding saving dishes and other chores for after they are in bed, saving enough time for a shower and a shave or repainting toenails, that sort of thing. I can't tell you HOW MUCH I enjoy having an hour or two of quiet between getting them all in bed asleep and going to sleep myself. (When it works.) I feel less stressed and drained. But on the other hand, avoid staying up TOO late enjoying that peace and quiet or you're being counter productive. In the meantime, you can try putting him to sleep in your bed, gently moving him to his own bed later and taking advantage of whatever time you have before he wakes up and climbs back in. Some nights it will work, some it won't. Since he's getting older, go ahead and tell him that you're going to move him after he's asleep but he can come back if he wakes up-- so that he doesn't freak out when he wakes up later. We've been doing this a while, and my 4yo mommy's boy has lately had more and more days where he stays in his room all night. The time will come, soon, where he will outgrow co-sleeping. I'll get my bed back. It will be sweet (and kinda sad, too.)

Oh I can relate to this, although we have no vomiting issues, thankfully. But our 4-1/2 year old ends up in our bed every night. She often starts out there (although she will start out in her own if we insist.) Sometimes we move her to her bed once she's asleep (and fortunately she does not protest too much) but she will end up coming back in eventually. At least we manage to get it on, if you KWIM, before she shoes up again. We don't really have a huge problem with it. I figure she'll outgrow it eventually; the other two did. She won't want to be in our bed when she's in high school. ;-) And as for the previous commenter, that's a whole lot easier said than done.