I had several miscarriages before I had my first child, a daughter who’s now 10 months old. My husband and I were very anxious throughout the pregnancy, and I was tired and sick, so we didn’t have a lot of sex. The doctor actually sat us down one day – I don’t know if she’d got a vibe from us – and said, ‘Intercourse is fine during pregnancy.’ My husband was mortified and I gave her a death stare.
After the birth, sex felt like the elephant in the room. The first six weeks, it was obvious nothing was going to happen as everything was so raw. Even though I’d had a C-section, I still had a large amount of vaginal bleeding. Then, after about a month, I got two urinary tract infections really close together – apparently, they’re pretty common after you have a baby. And then I got thrush. I didn’t expect all of that and I was just cursing everything about my vagina for five or six weeks.
Even after that, my body was doing weird things. I was breast-feeding and I had a lot of milk, so everything felt damp. I remember sitting in the living room in maternity pants and a bra, with the baby hanging off me, and nothing about that situation was sexy at all. I’d put on around three stone during pregnancy and breast-feeding certainly wasn’t miraculous in terms of the weight dropping off. I’d had really cute boobs, my pride and joy, and they’re not like that any more. I found that sad.
Seeing my Caesarean scar was weird, too: a huge purple, angry-looking line, just above my bikini area. It stayed painful for a long time, and even now is still very sensitive. It’s left me feeling like something as basic as taking my clothes off is never going to be the same. Complicating things, newborns are in your bedroom with you. You don’t have your body for months while you’re pregnant, then after they’re born, you have no personal space and can be interrupted at any time.
But eventually, I thought, ‘We need to get back into the swing of things. If we don’t do this now, it’s going to get so awkward.’ My husband and I went away to a wedding around three months after our daughter was born and I had my first drink in a year. I decided, ‘I’m just going to climb on him and get this over with.’ Our daughter was being looked after, we had 14 hours to ourselves, and I thought, ‘This is it. I’ve got to make it happen.’ My abs had been cut in half, so things I might have done before, I wasn’t exactly volunteering for... But we did it. It was drunken and a little hesitant, but fun.
Now, we’re almost back to pre-pregnancy levels of sex and our last time was around a week ago. I’d say we do it weekly, when you work it all out – but it depends on the week. One thing has definitely changed though: we’re a lot quieter than we used to be, because we live in a small house and we don’t want to wake the baby. We laugh sometimes and call her ‘the cock-blocker’. You have to find humour somewhere when you have a small baby.
Next week: The single 31-year-old who just slept with her friend...