Tia Mowry-Hardrict Admits to Scheduling Sex with Husband Cory Hardrict Between Parental Duties
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Jack Strutz Tia Mowry-Hardrict and her kids
Tia Mowry-Hardrict is keeping her marriage a priority — even if it takes a little creativity with her calendar.
In a PEOPLE-exclusive first listen of the Sister, Sister alum's appearance on iHeartRadio's What to Expect podcast, Mowry-Hardrict reveals that she and husband Cory Hardrict have had to schedule sex considering their other obligations that include work and being parents to daughter Cairo Tiahna, 2, and son Cree Taylor, 9.
"We had sex dates," host Heidi Murkoff (who's the author of What to Expect When You're Expecting) told Mowry-Hardrict of her own approach to intimacy with her husband after kids. "We had to have sex once a week. That was the rule in our house, because otherwise we wouldn't get around to it."
"Heidi, this is the first time where I'm admitting it: We do too," says Mowry-Hardrict, 42. "And when I was younger and when I would hear that, I'd be like, 'Why do you have to do that?' "
"But like you said, you do — especially with kids and with work and all that," she adds. "You have to make sure that it's not neglected in any kind of way."
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Stewart Cook/Variety/Shutterstock Cory Hardrict and Tia Mowry-Hardrict
Mowry-Hardrict also spoke with Murkoff, 61, and her daughter Emma on the podcast about her battle with endometriosis, as well as the "frustrating" and "very hard" war she waged toward getting diagnosed before welcoming Cree in 2011.
"For years, I had suffered. I was going to my regular doctor, which was a family practitioner, and I would constantly tell her about my symptoms," recalls the Tia Mowry's Quick Fix host. "I almost felt like I was telling her about my symptoms every time I would be on my period, but the weirdest thing was it was like she wasn't taking my symptoms very seriously."
The actress says she has to be "her own advocate" in terms of her reproductive health, sharing that she "continued to fight" until she underwent surgery for doctors to "properly diagnose" her with the "highly inflammatory condition," often associated with infertility.
"You don't want to wait until something bad happens or something scary happens in order for you to start [taking] precautions," Mowry-Hardrict continues of how she changed her diet and lifestyle for the better after being diagnosed. "Just taking care of yourself."
Jack Strutz Tia Mowry-Hardrict and her kids
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As for the "best advice" Mowry-Hardrict has ever gotten about motherhood, she tells Murkoff that it was to "sleep when the baby sleeps" — and while she "didn't listen," she wishes she had.
Another piece of pre-parenthood advice that was "very beneficial" to the star? "This woman had told me, 'Tia, make sure you do everything that you want to do. Even when it comes to having fun,' " she says. "I was such a good girl, with Sister, Sister; I rarely got drunk and I was like, 'Let me see what it feels like, just to get drunk.' "
"Have fun, travel, do whatever it is that you want to do and that you can do before you have a child, because ... certain things, it's going to be very easy for you to put on the back burner until things get settled again," Mowry-Hardrict recalls. "I was asking this woman, 'How do you do it? How are you present with being a mom and with being a showrunner and being able to juggle all of these things, and you still have a smile on your face?' "
"And she said, 'How can the goose lay the egg if the goose does not take care of herself?' " she adds.
Tia Mowry-Hardrict's episode of What to Expect airs Wednesday on iheart.com.
