Sex Life After Child Birth
It’s the dirty little secret of baby-making: After nine long months, you’re overwhelmed by the love you feel for your newborn — and shocked to find how much havoc that bundle of joy is wreaking in the bedroom. If you’re feeling less than lusty after having a baby, you’re not alone.
“It’s completely normal for both women and men’s libido to hit a rock-bottom low during the first six to nine months following the birth of your baby,”
You don’t need to throw your sex life out with the bathwater. Here are a few secrets to help you dust off your sexuality post-baby.
Adjust Your Expectations
Celebrity magazines make it seem like your waistline and your sex life should snap back to normal in a matter of weeks. But the experts know otherwise: Your new postpartum hormones are designed to make you lust-less. The first six weeks are definitely the hardest hormonally and physically for both women and men. If you’re a new mom your hormones are all over the place, your low estrogen level is in the menopausal range, your vagina is dry with little natural lubrication, and sex hurts. This is the normal.
Meanwhile, studies have shown that men’s testosterone levels dip when they become fathers, and the more they interact with their baby, the lower those levels go.
First step: Don’t rush things.
Most women will find intercourse painful up until the three-month mark. Once you cross that line, look for life to get easier in every way.
Take Two-Hour ‘Vacations’
The best advice I can give to people to fix their libido is get some help with the baby. You can hire a nurse, or ask your mother, your cousins, your friends, your neighbors. Then take a break.
Less free time and more baby chores can put sex on the back burner. Take a two-hour vacation as it can make the world of difference. It’s short enough that the baby can manage without milk or formula, but the two hours makes a huge difference for you mentally and psychologically.
Get Touched
A 90-minute sensual massage “vacation” can allow you to relax and remove a lot of the stress. Even if you don’t have a full-on yoni massage, the time spent being touched, hugged and caressed will make you feel wonderful.
Much of it has to do with oxytocin, the bonding chemical we release when we hug, make love… and even breastfeed. After giving birth, the mother winds up getting her oxytocin from her kid. Couples disconnect, emotionally and physically.
To get back on track, start touching and being touched — right away to raise your oxytocin levels. Even in the first six weeks, when intercourse is frowned upon, set up time to get yourself a relaxing massage. Just having someone rub your feet for 30 minutes will make a world of difference.
Post Natal Massage: Benefits
Mothers are always concerned about their babies’ health but what they forget in this process is that they also need to take care of themselves in order to heal post-pregnancy. Giving birth to a baby is a difficult task and a new mother’s body needs a lot of pampering. Post- Partum massage provides a new mother’s body with this pampering which restores your body to pre-pregnancy condition and speeds healing.
What kind of benefits a postpartum massage offers to a new mother’s body:
- Induces Relaxation
- Improves Breastfeeding
- Decreases Swelling
- Reduces Postpartum Depression
- Tightens The Skin
When should you avoid getting a postpartum massage?
- In the case of medical complications during or after pregnancy.
- You suffer from high blood pressure.
- You have a hernia.
- Wait until your scar is healed in case of a c section delivery.
- You have skin problems like rashes, blisters, boils, and eczema.
