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Birth injuries are real.
If you had stitching or surgery, your body registers that as an invasion. It can take time for your body to feel safe to something entering it again. This isn’t always logical. Your mind may really want sex, but your body may not cooperate and open. Vaginas are miraculous, and sensitive. If they do not feel safe, they won’t open. That is not a reflection on how you feel about your partner, necessarily, it may be that your body is holding on to unfinished material from the birth or that earlier traumatic material got stirred up during the birth. Even women whose births went remarkable well or who had C-sections may experience pain in their pelvis, which can be confusing. Sex should never be painful. If you keep pushing through pain, this may lead to further aversion, because your body will start associating pain with sex, and eventually shut down. Seek out support from a STREAM practitioner, a pelvic floor PT, or one of the resources above.
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Stress hormones and sex hormones work in direct opposition to one another.
If you are producing one, you can’t produce the other. So if being a new mum is stressful, which it is for most of us, you aren’t producing as many sex hormones. In order to shift gears into a sexy mode, so that you can create even more of the pleasure hormones, which will in turn decrease the stress hormones, you have to make a concerted effort to carve out that time. You might let your partner know that instead of trying to turn you on, that he might help mitigate the factors that turn you off, namely the stressors. This is in part why women joke about vacuuming being sexy. When partners help to eliminate the things that cloud our mind, we become more receptive to sharing pleasure.
You might let your partner know that instead of trying to turn you on, that he might help mitigate the factors that turn you off, namely the stressors. This is in part why women joke about vacuuming being sexy.
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There is no right time to want sex.
There is no “normal” here. There is just listening together with honest communication. Commit to intimacy and communication and see what possibilities for connection arise. Honing these skills as the potential to make your sex life even better than before, but you’ll probably have to work at it a little.
Originally published HERE.
Kimberly Ann Johnson is a sexological bodyworker, somatic experiencing trauma resolution practitioner, birth doula, postpartum care revolutionary and single mom. She specializes in helping women hands-on, hands-in prepare for birth, recover from birth injuries and birth trauma, and heal from sexual trauma. She is the author of The Fourth Trimester: A Postpartum Guide to Healing Your Body, Balancing Your Emotions and Restoring Your Vitality. You can read more about her work and become a part of the Magamama movement at www.Magamama.com.
