Jeff:
Proverbs 5:18-19, Let thy fountain be blessed and rejoice with the wife of thy youth. Let her be as the loving hind and the pleasant roe; let her breasts satisfy thee at all times; and be thou ravished always with her love.
Always is the key. God is saying that you continue to have the intimate relations. No withholding during ovulation. Never is there a forbidding of the intimate relationship - save at one time, that was under the civil/ceremonial law, when a wife is menstruating.
I Corinthians 7:2-5 "Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband. Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and likewise also the wife unto the husband. The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband; and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife. Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not fo your incontinency."
What is God saying? The only time for us NOT to have the one flesh relationship of Husband and Wife is a specific, limited time to be used for fasting and prayer. Hmmm. How many couples are practicing a regular, weekly intimate, unrestrained relationship with each other? Sounds Mandatory to me, if you are not being intimate with each other, you are placing each other in the unecessary path of temptation by Satan.
Never is there any mention of witholding, withdrawing before the fluid of life is spent, or planning to have a first child or any of the current thought. God says, go ahead and keep on going unless for a limited time you need to fast and pray. Otherwise stay intimate, be intimate with your spouse.
Pete:
Have you had any children yet? If so, did your wife nurse them? This is a common practice (babies sleeping with their Mom) that you will find going on back to the days of Solomon. Remember the two women sleeping with their babies and one suffocated her child? Our babies stayed with us in bed after birth. I mean after all, they had been in our bed since conception - right. So this is not only part of a bonding process but also a physical separation process. The baby will sleep better in bed with its Mother and Father as it as been doing. The baby also will nurse when it needs to and find its comfort and security right there instead of being in another room.
After having our family of 4, we saw this every time. It is normal and surely the Scripture alludes to it with Newborn Babes needing the assurance and security of its heavenly Father. So do we when we are born. Here is an interesting thought to chew on. No where in Scripture do you find a verse that tells a Mother to love her children! Must be they don't have to if they don't want to then.
