“It can be hard to get in touch with your feelings about your body after the birth”

Feeling sexual again - it can be hard to get in touch with your feelings about your body and your sensuality after the birth of a baby. Women often say things like:

• “my body looks awful after the pregnancy and birth”

• “the stretch marks are ugly”

• “my breasts are sagging”

• “my vagina has changed a lot”

These are just some examples of the way society’s expectations influence how women feel about their bodies.

It is important for you to regain a sense of yourself. Exhaustion and lack of time may make this difficult. But there are things you can do to make friends with your new body and reclaim your sexuality.

“Sexuality encompasses more than intercourse. Sexuality is really how we feel about our whole being. Individuals are sexual beings from birth, negotiating their way through a sexual learning process which is continuous and constantly changing to suit the demands of the life cycle.”

All women experience their sexuality differently, depending on their situation and if they are married, single or in a lesbian relationship. You might also need to react to different cultural expectations relating to sexuality.

When to have sex

Every woman is different and there is a wide variation in how soon after childbirth women want to have sex again. No one response is ‘normal’.

Some women feel a flood of vitality which they long to express sexually even in the first few days after delivery. Most women will start to have sex again about six or eight weeks after delivery. But many women will not want to have sex until three months or more after giving birth. And some women will not feel like having sex again until they have finished breast-feeding.

Your partner may assume that you can start to have sex again straight away. And magazines tend to paint a picture of what you should do, saying that you are not normal unless you have sex a certain number of times a week.

But in fact it is common for women to enjoy less sex, less often, during pregnancy and for up to one year after delivery.

Make sex more fun

Pregnancy and childbirth often stretch the pelvic floor muscles. This can make your vagina feel different. Pelvic floor exercises will help to improve your vagina’s muscle tone, making sex (and masturbation) more pleasurable. These are simple easy exercises that you can do anywhere, anytime (see the box on the following page).