In the days before children, sex is a magical thing. There are whole acres of weekend or evening or, if you’re kinky, lunchtime to indulge yourselves. But when the stork does its worst, all bets are off. The windows of opportunity for any bedroom antics decrease suddenly, and the venues become limited. So you end up retreating to the garden shed once a month for 17 naughty minutes, stopping panickily every few minutes because you thought you heard crying. And even though it’s only 17 minutes and it’s only once a month, it’s also the very last thing you feel like, because the level of sleep deprivation you’re experiencing makes you laugh hysterically every time you recall how easy life used to be. The prospect of trying to avoid a rake-related sex injury is almost too much to bear.

This is the sort of thing that makes men like Simon Jones conclude their relationship is over. Three weeks ago, Style published a big whinge by the writer, in which he bemoaned the fact that his wives — plural (for he has been disappointed twice) — became frumpy, baby-obsessed bores the moment they gave birth. They had no time for him. They had eyes only for their babies. And he didn’t want infrequent shed sex. He wanted his glamorous, career-climbing women back. And, as hundreds of you furiously pointed out, he was missing the point.

Sex, like everything, is better once you have children. Not materially, obviously better. Not lie-in-a-Parisian-apartment-smoking-post-coital-Gitânes- while-she-pulls-up-her-naughty-stockings-in-preparation-for-a-croissant-run better. But — get the sick bucket at the ready — emotionally better. In that garden shed, those 17 stolen minutes are incredibly precious. You cling to each other like survivors of a shipwreck because that’s pretty much what life is once you are silly enough to reproduce. It doesn’t matter that the slug pellets are spilling everywhere, or that the soundtrack is not smooth jazz but the neighbour putting out the rubbish. Nothing matters except that you and she are having a moment to yourselves. And that you are still together — despite everything. And that you love each other.

In the first few weeks and months after childbirth, my wife, Harriet, was so shell-shocked, so exhausted, so caught up in the oh-my-God-I-have-a-child-to-keep-alive moment, she had no time for me whatsoever. But while Jones would find this upsetting, I found it perfectly reasonable. Frankly, I didn’t have much time for her, either. I was equally obsessed with keeping the baby alive, relentlessly comparing notes with other parents about how best one can do that. Careers, sexy clothes, long, pseudo-intellectual conversations, all the things Jones says he missed, no longer seemed remotely important.

Yes, your beloved has less time or inclination to glam herself up. She will no longer readily peruse the shops buying clothes to dress up purely for your titillation. Anything as naughty as a corset lies gathering moths in the wardrobe. You are now only the second, third or (if you’re a real masochist) fourth most important person to your wife. But wouldn’t it be weird if you weren’t?

Even now, two children in, well and truly beyond the first hysterical months of parenting, Harriet and I don’t talk like we used to. When we do talk, it’s usually about the children. We are boring. Our social lives have been reduced from something of a metropolitan whirl to a suburban crawl. We meet other families in hellish family-friendly pubs and we try to focus on conversations while keeping our children down off the walls. We haven’t sat through a whole film in years, let alone one with subtitles. But our relationship is closer and stronger than it ever was. Even if I am getting tired of waiting, cold and naked, in the shed. (“He’s almost asleep, darling. I’ll join you there in two minutes,” she said three hours ago.) There are other illicit pleasures, such as the joy of the sneaked child-free coffee break. Or the 30 seconds holding hands on a walk just after the kids have run ahead, and just before I have to run after them because they’ve found something untenable to climb. Or that first moment of the tremendously long day when both children are finally asleep, and you collapse on the sofa and one of you suggests something saucy to the other, then you both decide against it because, frankly, sitting on the sofa together is enough fun for one day.

When we did get a day away from the kids, six months after the second was born, my God, I felt like Steve McQueen when he nicked the bike off that Nazi. Except I was with Harriet and there was no barbed wire. And we had a lot more than 17 minutes. So we went shopping, had lunch, skipped through spring meadows and went home for a “cuddle” in the bed rather than the shed, but fell asleep before anything conjugal could happen. It was a lovely sleep and it was a good thing. Our equally boring bechilded friends stayed awake through their first day off. Nine months later, another child was born. And the windows of opportunity closed a little further.

Times recommends

• Live chat: Thrifty ways to update your winter wardrobe
• Is anybody out there really listening?
• Nutrition Q&A: Will eating late make me fat?