Parent Time

You know they must have found some time for sex, since Melissa and David Samuels* have children, ages four, three and one, and are expecting their fourth baby in a few months. Yet they both say that sex after baby has been, to say the least, challenging, thanks to the general exhaustion, lack of time, hormonal changes and frequent interruptions that are all part of life with a new baby.

As David Samuels says, “You have to keep a sense of humour about the whole thing.”

A sense of humour is always good, but you may not feel there’s much to laugh about in the state of your postpartum sex life. Because after your body has blown up like a giant watermelon, been stretched in ways you never imagined possible during the birth, begun leaking from places where it never leaked before and — oh yes — a small person has come along to wake you up every two hours all night long — well, getting to sex just isn’t that simple.

As one new mother told me, “Any article about sex after baby can be three words long: There isn’t much.”

An equally anonymous father added: “If you were planning on this being the year of frequent, spontaneous, outstanding sex — then you probably shouldn’t have had a baby.”

Originally published in Today's Parent Baby & Toddler, Autumn/Winter 2005