Spending time with husband after having baby

Struggled with this, and still struggling at 17 months in… we co sleep and breastfeed too and I’m not ready to leave baby at bed time so there’s been no date nights etc. we’ve left baby with grandparents for a few hours whilst we’ve been out for lunch, but we didn’t do this until probably the 11 month mark onwards? At 5 months I was definitely not comfortable with being away from my baby, and was super protective over breastfeeding and not wanting to use bottles etc so it definitely hindered our ability to have baby free time. Honestly… it will get better but you either become the parents that are ok with leaving your child & or you’re not, and you won’t get that independence back until they’re older and tad more self sufficient (not solely reliant on boob) neither is right or wrong, it’s whatever you feel comfortable with. A strong relationship should be able to survive without some intimacy whilst you adjust to parenthood x

Try not to put too much pressure on yourself to make any changes, it’ll happen. We still contact nap too, and like you I need it to either nap with her or just chill out and be on my phone for a bit.
At night she now does 1-2hr stretches for the first few hrs until I go to bed around 4hrs after her bedtime. When she was around 7-8 months old I started slowly sliding away from her off the bed and leaving the room, going back in to pat or feed her to sleep if she woke up. The first time I left her I cried even though she was fast asleep it just didn’t feel right, but she was fine. We were in the next room and had the camera set up watching her every move. For many months she was waking often and I needed to go back in multiple times and I was OK with that. We are now at a stage where some days she’ll wake after 30 mins and need comforting back to sleep, and other days she might give us 2hrs. I thought the same that our intimacy would go down the drain especially as I had a long recovery

from a traumatic delivery, but as soon as we started spending those few hrs together again and watching tv sharing snacks the closeness slowly came back. My husband works from home but isn’t technically present during that time either, but he is also helpful which I think plays a huge part in keeping that love alive whilst we’re not able to share more intimate moments. It is hard when you are willing to sacrifice so much of your time and attention to your baby who wants and needs you too. 💕

We had maybe 1 date night when our first was born before our second arrived a VERY short 14 months later 🙃 since then we lost ourselves in parenting. It wasn’t until our eldest was nearly 3 that we went away (locally) for the night and realised what we’ve been missing. We’ve made it a bi-monthly thing now. We go away for the night, not far away, close enough if they really need us, and somewhere cheap enough. But it’s really helped our marriage. You can’t forget where those precious babies came from 🥰