Reclaiming Your Sexual Self Postpartum
Author: Kara Hoppe, MA, MFT
Illustrated by The Sex Ed
It should come as no surprise that, along with all the fun birthing-related hashtags out there (#newbaby, #newborn, #momlife, #momreality, #postbaby, to name a few), there’s also one for #postbabyhankypanky. It was started by Hera Schlagintweit and her colleagues at Dalhousie University in Canada after they surveyed new parents and discovered that sexual concerns were not only frequent but also the cause of considerable stress for many. In fact, 59% of the new parents surveyed reported experiencing sexual concerns. Although the researchers did not report on the sexual orientation of the parents in their sample, they did note that these new mothers and new fathers expressed similar levels of severity with respect to their sexual concerns. So if you are worried about the state of your own sex life post-baby, know you aren’t alone; you’re actually part of the majority.
What are the most common postpartum sex struggles?
Postpartum struggles in general can be related to the physical trauma of birth itself or to hormonal changes surrounding pre- and post-pregnancy, but they can also be psychological in nature. These psychological struggles can include a range of emotions and span a variety of diagnoses, including postpartum depression, postpartum blues, anxiety, and postpartum posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Many people who give birth may not require a clinical diagnosis yet experience emotional struggles that have a negative impact on their sexuality. Three psychological factors people who give birth can struggle with are: emotions stemming from birth trauma, body image, and sustained lack of vitality and/or intimacy.
Birth trauma
Cheryl Beck, from the University of Connecticut, studied people who had just given birth and found that emotional trauma can result from five types of experience during the birth process: feeling deprived of caring, being stripped of dignity, having a terrifying loss of control, neglected communication, and feeling buried and forgotten. If this experience is severe, the person who gave birth can develop PTSD, whereby the trauma, with all its incumbent emotions, feels like it is recurring. Notably, the obstetrician or other medical professional does not have to consider a birth traumatic for the person who gave birth to feel it as such. Most people who give birth don’t end up with PTSD, but many feel some lingering emotions of trauma after the birth, and these feelings can make resuming sexual activity difficult.
Body image
I like to call the struggle with body image that often follows childbirth “the body change blues.” That’s because, while our bodies inevitably change after giving birth, many new parents become upset by those changes. Some experience strong emotions—ranging from discomfort to anxiety to shame—when they realize they can’t just flip a switch and get their old bodies back. When the body-change blues hit, they stop feeling their usual sexual and sensual selves. They shy away from being seen naked, being touched, or engaging in sexual activity. Hera Schlagintweit found that body image changes, including the impact these can have on sexual activity, ranked as the top psychological concern of people who have recently given birth.
Sustained lack of vitality and/or intimacy
Some people who have given birth find it difficult to go back to their normal lives post-baby. They want to see friends again or resume activities they enjoy that make them feel vital and alive, but they find themselves unable to break away from the baby. With respect to sexual intimacy, doctors typically advise parents to wait six weeks before being sexually active. However, there is no time frame that is right for everyone; some people resume sex quite quickly, while others have not done so six months or even years later. One thing that can interfere with regaining vitality and intimacy is what’s known as “over-touch.” In this case, a new parent is touching their baby throughout the day. In addition, they may have other small children demanding physical attention. Then, when a partner comes along and shows interest in sexual contact, more touch is the last thing they want.
How can you heal from the emotions of birth trauma?
It is well known that telling one’s story is a powerful way to heal from emotional trauma. Even if you see birth trauma as a unique type of trauma, telling your story works for it as well. Not talking about your experience—whether it was feeling out of control or stripped of dignity or something else—makes those memories more likely to go underground and fester. When you talk about them, they lose their power to keep triggering you. And in this case, if the emotions around your birth trauma are holding you back from experiencing your sexuality, talking about them can free you up.
I recommend telling and retelling your birthing story as many times as you need in order to heal. Tell your friends. Tell your relatives. If you have a partner, tell your partner. Write about it. Journal. Paint a picture. As you tell your story, notice the difficult parts and the happy parts. Let the whole story come out.
How can you heal from the body change blues?
A client of mine became distressed when her breasts remained large after she had weaned her baby. She felt uncomfortable and ashamed going out alone in public because she imagined people who didn’t know she’d just had a baby would think she had a weight problem. She also stopped feeling sexual around her partner, even though they assured her that she was as sexy as ever to them. After some experimentation, this woman found that wearing loose-fitting tops helped her regain comfort in public. She also came up with a creative solution for the bedroom: wearing a sexy top during sex took attention away from the size of her breasts and helped her feel sexual again.
Changing your clothing can aid in healing the body change blues, and I’m all for thinking up creative solutions. However, healing from the body change blues usually requires a deeper examination of one’s body image. If we don’t have a positive body image, it is hard to maintain a sense of ourselves as sexy, attractive, desirable people.
The first step in improving your body image is to understand that it has nothing to do with the actual shape or size of your body. It’s not about having the perfect body, because the perfect body doesn’t exist. If you keep trying to create a perfect body, you will just get more uncomfortable in your own skin. The second step in improving your body image is acceptance of your body as it is. This doesn’t mean you can’t decide to change your body in one way or another; it just means that those decisions should be based on your health, not on your desire for any particular image.
I recommend some exercises to heal the body change blues. One is to spend a few moments gazing at your naked body in a mirror. Observe your body from head to toe. You may be reluctant to look at some parts of your body. See if you can overcome your hesitancy and look at these parts. Notice how you feel about each part. Notice which parts feel sensual and which don’t. The purpose of this exercise is not to change how you feel about your body in the moment but rather to just be with your body. When you can be with your body like this—with no pressure and no expectations—your comfort level and acceptance will naturally increase.
Another exercise is to offer gratitude to your body. Giving birth to another human being has put it through a lot! It’s time to thank it for that work, as well as for everything else it has done for you over the years. You can do this exercise mentally or you can do it by journaling. You can do it alone or with a partner. In each case, make a list of the things you’re grateful to your body for. And actually tell your body. If you do this with a partner, have them express their gratitude for your body.
How can you heal from a sustained lack of vitality and/or intimacy?
For some new parents, getting back a sense of vitality can come from carving out more alone time; for others, it comes from reconnecting more with friends and partners. And of course, it can be all of these. Getting back to your life can be especially hard if you don’t have childcare available to give you the space for either alone time or friend/partner time. You may need to get creative. For example, if going dancing will help you regain your vitality, you may want to find a friend who can watch your baby, perhaps with an offer to reciprocate in the near future.
People who have given birth who are also partnered may see the resumption of sexual activity as key to regaining their previous level of intimacy. This can be difficult for the reasons we’ve discussed, such as birth trauma (physical and psychological) and the body change blues. It can also be difficult for practical reasons: you’re more fatigued, you have less free time, you’re over-touched. I recommend the following ways for reclaiming intimacy with your partner.
The first is scheduling sex. Your initial reaction might be “But sex is supposed to be spontaneous! Scheduling it will suck the life out of it.” In fact, partners who practice scheduling sex typically find the opposite to be true. Scheduling sex allows them to find times when they are least fatigued and when they can either arrange childcare or be relatively certain baby will be asleep. Clients of mine who tried this practice turned their texts to each other about when to schedule sex into part of their foreplay, which often stretched over many hours of the day.
In line with scheduling sex is making a commitment to have sex every day. This works best for partners who have performance anxiety postpartum because it takes away the uncertainty over whether or not they want to give it a try. It also leaves room to define what they mean by “sex.” For example, they might start by limiting intimacy to cuddling or mutual masturbation, and later extend it to include intercourse when both feel ready.
[Ed. note: The Sex Ed also recommends using plenty of lubricant during sex, especially postpartum. If you’re curious and want to learn more, our Creative Director shared her postpartum experiences using CBD lube.]
Finally, a word about how to heal over-touch. Finding ways to create boundaries can be very helpful. Some people who have just given birth find that having just fifteen minutes alone—for example, having a friend or partner watch the baby so they can go into their room and be by themselves—can be a game changer. Sometimes just a few minutes can make all the difference. If you’re in a partnership, then redefining intimacy to include talking or doing a quiet activity, rather than defining it only as sex, can create the space to heal from over-touch.
If you are experiencing psychological stress related to your sexual self as a new parent, first try taking an inventory of your feelings. Is your stress related to birth trauma you experienced, to your changed body image, to a lack of vitality and/or intimacy? Or a combination of these? In the event that your answer is yes to any of these questions, consider whether you could benefit from some professional support. If you don’t feel you need that support—and even if you do—try any of the exercises described here that resonate with you, and see if you can move toward reclaiming your sexual self postpartum.
Pleasure is something we all deserve, and claiming it is a journey worth taking!