Missing: One postpartum sex drive
When it came to postnatal sex, Kathleen Hamilton’s magic measurement was eighteen inches. In size? you gasp. No, in space. She wanted eighteen inches of empty space all around her at all times, which not only appalled her as a former self-confessed sex goddess, but was also impossible with an attachment-parented baby on her hip at all times. Needless to say, having sex ever again seemed an unlikely proposition.
The realization devastated and humiliated her, as it does many new moms. Where does our sexuality go when we give birth, and will it ever come back?
Hamilton went in search of the answer as candidly as she could in a world that has crowned postnatal intercourse its last sexual taboo. Sex After Baby: Why There is None follows the author’s own journey into discovering why the six-week rule is off (by about three years!), why hormones have everything to do with why you’d rather wear nightgowns than negligees, and why it’s important to respect your body’s personal timetable.
In a series of essays (many of them short enough even for mothers with fewer than five minutes to spare), Hamilton proposes the following, among other things, about why there’s no sex after baby:
- Moms don’t (or can’t) dress the part: “Sex is about clothes. About how they reveal and conceal and make us feel. One doesn’t warm up to sizzling sex wearing overalls or sweatpants.”
- Parents are out of the zone: “a state of being in which sex feels natural and easy and delicious, in which one is sexually alive and confident, and where pleasure is assured. […] Now there is an element of worry involved.”
- It’s painful in more ways than one: “The reawakening of our sexuality can be just as painful and awkward as our first inkling that it has gone underground.”
- Parenting isn’t sexy: “My sexuality has always been integrated into my everyday routine, fuelled by my activities, enhanced by my environment. […] Hanging out with babies and children, wiping bums and noses, being surrounded by their toys, all of these things are sexual turn-offs.”
- Media standards are unrealistic: “We are expected to look sexy and be sexually available during our pregnancies and after childbirth. […] Women are made to feel like failures when they don’t want sex six weeks after the baby is born, and even worse failures when we don’t fake it enough to act as our partner’s sexual caretaker.”
So, can there be sex after baby? We’ll let you read the book to follow the author’s own journey, but the short answer is yes, yes, yes. But...
- Expect hormones to keep you in the mother zone (and potentially out of the sexuality zone) as long as you’re nursing: “Within weeks [of weaning],” Hamilton writers, “I was experiencing random sensations in my body that I distinctly recognized as sexual desire.“ She nursed her son for two-and-a-half years.
- Expect a gradual return to your former sexuality: “ Thirty-nine months after giving birth, I’m back. Returned from the sexual void. I am whole. I am restored. I have undertaken the heroine’s journey.”
- Demand respect for your postnatal healing period: “Can we at least envision a world where a woman gives birth to her children, and her lover waits to receive a clear signal from her that she is interested in being sexual again? Is this too sci-fi?”
- Trust that your sexuality will return at the right time: “It [is] necessary and normal and temporary to lose [your] lovemaking abilities, in order to master [your] new role of being a mother. How long does it take? So much depends on the [mother]. And the conditions under which she must practice.”
So, new moms, consider yourselves armored, supported, and understood when (if?) your sexuality takes a nosedive after Baby arrives. It doesn’t need to be traumatic if you prepare yourself and your partner for it ahead of time.
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Birth Source Inc. has a limited number of copies available in store of Sex After Baby: Why There Is None. Stop in today to snag your own.
From the February 2010 issue of The Source
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