Good for you. Not only should you do what works and is healthy for your own family but the first two years of your first child is really a magical time. Why not optimize for peace and tranquility ?
I will also add that in addition to the western compulsion to kick kids out of the bed there is also a western compulsion that married partners should be sleeping together every night or something is wrong with their marriage. I strongly advise all parents to at least be open minded to the idea that sleeping in different rooms could dramatically improve their sleeping and parenting logistics.
YMMV.
My answer would be that you do it while the baby sleeps, and you do it less. Otherwise on the odd occasion you’re away from the baby. It’s a drag. Though in my experience I was always so tired, it was generally a lower priority.
Others might have had a different experience though.
This. As new parents, we really have to make it a priority otherwise, in general, we're just constantly exhausted. Raising kids does really require a village.
The theory goes that children are programmed by nature to prevent more offspring. A sort of incentive here.
Looking online there are mixed reviews of whether co sleeping hurt the adult relationship.
Middle-of-the-afternoon is a good time. Older kids can be occupied with Legos while the baby naps and the parents sneak off.
Obviously it varies a lot, and that is just a joke, but man it has been very true for me. My wife had a poor experience growing up, walking in on her mother having sex (they lived in a tiny apartment, so most of the space was shared), and so she has no interest in sex at all if there are children in the house. Anywhere. And it's a 3000sf house, not a tiny apartment.
Doesn't help that the kids (8 & 10) routinely choose to sleep in our room rather than their own (they do not sleep in our bed, however, we nixed that after they were a few years old because it was too disruptive to my sleep).
Our sex life has probably never been better in either frequency or quality.
We typically do it in the living room on the couch in the morning before they get up, or same location during their naps, or in my work-from-home office also during naps. Or where-ever we want when we have a baby sitter, although with the pandemic that's pretty rare.
I'd say about 75%-80% of our sexual activity is essentially scheduled at least 4-6 hours in advance, sometimes more. This works great for all involved. Occasionally if we miss our window because one of them wakes up early, we just reschedule to the next soonest window. We'll occasionally even stay up late after we put the boys down to makeup a missed session.
I also think breaking the habit of only having sex in our bed at a particular time when one or the other kind of vaguely expects it is a big contributor to the improvement in our sex life.
Instead we have explicit communication about when and where we're going to have sex. There's still some room to be spontaneous, but it's very limited with kids.
After 3 kids I don’t really care about the criticisms anymore. They stop co-sleeping when they’re ready, and it was as simple as that. I mostly enjoyed it. Sometimes you miss having a bed to yourself though, haha.
Even after having one kid, I too no longer care about the criticisms. We're all just trying to survive.
How do they even know you're co-sleeping in the first place?
If sleeping came up and I mentioned co-sleeping, people were often critical. They think it's bad for the kid, dangerous, unnecessary, what have you.
I don't mind the criticism; I think it's helpful to know how people feel and reflect on my own decisions. People are remarkably harsh with their criticisms when it comes to parenting sometimes, but I think this reflects how uncertain, even insecure and anxious people feel about the decisions we need to make as parents. It's fine.
If kid 4 does the best of the bunch then you know your parenting probably wasn't that great.
Peter Blair, based at the University of Bristol, has done some great work studying deaths caused by co-sleeping and found some very important factors, mainly the health of the child, any modifiers of the parent's sleep and the sleeping position. For example, drug use by the parents (including alcohol, cigarettes, over the counter & prescription medicine), making them sleep heavier. Also falling asleep on the sofa or a pillow near the child.
So much parenting advice is one-size-fits-none and it takes quite a bit of effort to work out the reality. Luckily, with a baby in arms there's often a lot of time available for reading the many opinions out there. ;)