After you’ve had a baby, sex and intimacy may not be top of your agenda – but you shouldn’t put your relationship on the back burner. Counsellor Matthew Bartolo shares his advice with Jo Caruana.
All sorts of challenges arise in relationships once a new, little person enters the equation. From exhausting late-night feeds to the changing dynamics you and your partner will now experience, there’s a lot of pressure on parents to get it ‘right’. And that’s before you even consider what intimacy will be like for the two of you.
“There are a number of challenges that present themselves when it comes to sex after pregnancy,” explains counsellor Matthew Bartolo, who specialises in sex and relationships, and is also the founder of the Willingness Team.
“Exhaustion is definitely the most common problem. Parents go from living alone as a couple to having a very dependent human being with them, who cries, sleeps at strange times, poops and eats all the time. It obviously takes a toll on the parents and their relationship.”
Lifestyles also change. For instance, parenting can cause financial anxiety until the couple find a new budgeting system to cover expenses incurred by the baby. Moreover, their social life and alone time has changed too.
“Beyond that, some women I have worked with have worried about how they might look ‘down there’ after giving birth naturally,” Bartolo explains.
“We live in a world where women are even opting for labiaplasty, which is partly because they are now comparing their vaginas to the ones they see in pornography. This is known to cause insecurities, which are mostly emphasised after giving birth, and which can also put women off having sex after their baby is born.”
But the problem doesn’t necessarily only start once the baby comes, but can even start during pregnancy.
The longer a couple lives without sex, then the more difficult it can be for them to get intimate once again
“Some couples stop having sex completely during pregnancy – possibly because that’s what they’ve been advised to do by their doctors, or because they’re worried about myths that surround sex during pregnancy. This often exacerbates the problem because they get into a routine that helps them avoid intimate time, and they find ways of filling their lives in ways that help then avoid sexual intimacy. This can be damaging because the longer a couple lives without sex, then the more difficult it can be for them to get intimate once again.”
Bartolo suggests that most couples would, secretly, prefer baby time to intimate time once their baby arrives. “They choose to spend the little time they have left enjoying their baby, rather than each other,” he says.
But there are other blocks too. “Some women fear pain during or after sex. This is often the case when women have had stitches after giving birth, and they haven’t had a clear and open chat with their physician about their recovery time and process. On the flip side, sometimes it is the man who is worried about causing pain to his partner, and this is often related to the ‘trauma’ of birth. Sometimes this event proves so traumatic that the couple not only fear potential pain, but also worry about getting pregnant again, because it would mean going through the whole process again.”
However, regardless of all these worries, Bartolo’s key recommendation for overcoming all this is simply to take the bull by the horns, and do it. “Start as slowly as you like, but do start,” he says.
“Some couples wait for sex to happen but the truth is that, the longer you go without sex, the more difficult it becomes. So plan sex. Start as gradually as you need to with hugging, kissing and even watching TV on the same sofa. As long as you move towards one another intimately, it’s always better than just waiting for things to happen.”
Finally, if you’re worried that you and your partner aren’t managing to get back to intimacy after the birth of your baby, then you may want to consider counselling.
“Working with a sex therapist helps to facilitate the conversation about an uncomfortable topic,” Bartolo says. “It will help to re-establish your connection as a couple, especially if you have become caught up in your new role within the family and have forgotten that you are, first and foremost, a couple. Some people take parenting very seriously, and have very regular discussions about house management for example, but forget to spend time talking seriously about themselves.
“So, therapy will give you the time to discuss priorities and boundaries now that so much has changed about your dynamic. And beyond talking, it will help to initiate the process of being sexual once again,” he adds.