Parents and romance: These are two words that seldom show up in the same sentence. With three children and a schedule that can include ice rinks, emergency rooms, sweaty gymnasiums, projectile body fluids, and the headmaster’s office (nothing good, I can assure you), a cozy date with my husband can be as rare as detention for my middle son is routine.

One recent evening, I swapped sweatpants for silk, eager to escape our fun house for the quiet of the restaurant down the street. My husband walked in the door while I was putting the finishing touches on my face. “Daddy, Daddy,” squealed our 15-year-old son, charging as if they had been separated since birth, not since breakfast. Standing head-to-head, man-to-almost-man, my husband put his arm around our son and said, “Mom and I are going out for dinner. Want to join us?”

Seismic activity directly underfoot could not have left me with a greater feeling of displacement. I wanted to leave the children behind; my husband wanted to take them along. I wanted to be alone with the man I married; he wanted to embrace the family we created. This was a first.

I was feeling the aftershock. The earthquake had, of course, happened years ago — the day we brought our first child home from the hospital, ready or not. Overnight, his needs nudged ours aside. The accommodations we had to make were non-negotiable, uncompromising, largely unforeseen; they were accommodations our infant was not only blind to, but for which he was not expected to feel any appreciation. I became focused on his every need. It was a love affair — a requited love affair. He sought me in a crowded room, quieted only to my voice, drank only from my breast, and smiled most broadly on me. For my son, I discovered a reserve of energy that I couldn’t muster for my husband were he to ask for something as basic as a prepared meal — which, thankfully, he was too smart to do. That scrawny little boy had beaten us both out for the position at the top of the pecking order. My husband and I pretended — he out of hurt and I out of guilt — that nothing had changed. But we both knew there was a new man in the house.

When I returned to work, I would call home five, six times a day. No amount of detail was too much. What did he eat? Did he poop? How many times did he sneeze? Try as I might, I could not summon the same enthusiasm or excitement for the parallel equivalents of my husband’s daily productions. I did not yearn, at the end of a long day, to bury my face in my husband’s hairy chest and blow bubbles on his belly.

A trip for the two of us came up. What a lovely idea: my son and me strolling down the beach and watching the sunset. Shockingly, my husband was referring to the two adults in the household — not my son and me. He wanted time alone with me. He wanted to return to a time when he came first. I managed, eventually, to convince him that this was true over the course of long weekends squeezed in between more pregnancies, nursing, jobs, business travel, and relocations. The delicious moments my husband and I had to ourselves were punctuated with worry over every disaster that could befall my children in my absence. I worked hard at whittling down the hours spent aching for them each day. They were little, they were vulnerable, and they needed me and only me. I was their mother, and my bond to them was unbreakable, sacred, and mutual. Somehow, a decade passed.

My youngest daughter, Leigh, is now 9; my son, Lucas, is 12, and Cooper, 15, is the oldest. They are fully verbal (too much), fully able (too much again), fully opinionated (way too much), and increasingly independent. They have their own MetroCards, their own schedules, their own friends, and their own priorities. They don’t want or need me with the same burn. And to the extent that I may want and need them, I have learned to feign otherwise in the face of their gestures, comments, and body language. I am unenlightened, embarrassing to them in my dress; they resent my hovering, my tinted eyebrows, and my interest in any and all conversations involving feelings.

So, after many long years, I have been liberated. I am not needed for impromptu hugs or after-school adventures. I have rediscovered my freedom and, it turns out, am adapting nicely. I like it. I am ready to travel with my husband, leave for days, and maybe even weeks. I read more novels in a week than I used to read in a year. I read three newspapers when I used to read none.

But alas, no such monumental shift is without reverberations. My demotion created a vacancy at the top — and you’ll never guess who took the job. My son seems baffled when he returns mid-day from school: “Where’s Daddy? What time will he be home?” And again, “What time will he be home?” My husband is thriving in his newfound popularity. I get a cheek kiss coming and going as he runs out to cycle with Cooper, ski with Lucas, or eat doughnuts with Leigh. On weekends, he may cart all three off to the local diner, followed by a car showroom and a test-drive around the neighborhood.

The good news is that I am left to read the paper uninterrupted, with a steaming cup of coffee on my table that is in no danger of being overturned. The bad news is, it is suddenly awfully quiet around here.

Sara Berman is on maternity leave. Ms. Belzberg is a writer and parent living in New York.