Namechanged for this.
DP is driving me spare at the moment. We have a lovely son who is 9 weeks old now. His birth was pretty traumatic, long labour and emergency section instead of planned home birth. I have a history of sexual abuse and social phobia, so psychologically the heavy interventions in hospital really knocked me sideways, however I am doing ok, no PND, very happy with my baby and settling into motherhood pretty well.
DP has not been all that helpful since going back to work. He's doing very little around the house, I'm doing 10 loads of laundry a week (cloth nappies daily). I do all the cooking unless I'm totally beat and he orders takeaway which we can't really afford. He changes the cat litter, and some days that's it. He was supposed to take responsibility for keeping the kitchen clean and tidy, but he doesn't, it's a total mess and doing as much as I can right now keeps it just on the right side of not squalid. He doesn't help with the baby much, the odd nappy change and winding, but I find myself asking him to hold a sleeping/quiet awake DS so I can so much as eat my dinner or nip to the loo, the rest of the time it's up to me. DS is colicy and some evenings I am trying to soothe him for 4 or 5 hours straight. DP has instigated his "boy's night" once a week, because he needs to socialise, which leaves me alone with DS for a 16 hour stretch.
Oddly enough, none of this is the real problem.
The real problem is sex. DH has a fierce sex drive, it took a "chat" last year for me to make him understand that I physically could only keep up with 3 times a week, not the 3 times a day, every day, he wanted. In my pregnancy things tailed off a fair bit, then I got SPD and was in agony, so he made the decision for me that we would stop until after the baby.
He has been asking to "resume relations" since DS was about 2 weeks old. I am not ready, at all, I don't want him to touch me in a sexual way right now, and I don't want to touch him either. I went to see the Dr about having an IUD fitted, but the prospect of the examinations for that really scares me right now, and DP and I agreed we should hold off until I am a bit less shaken up post-birth.
My scar hurts, my boobs hurt, I have no sex drive, and the thought of anyone messing around "down there" makes me very uncomfortable, I'm just not ready. He keeps on about it though, constant saucy remarks when we are together, we can't have a cuddle and a kiss without it leading to a grope, I woke up to find him using my hand to masturbate while I slept, I would have been really livid but he was so ashamed and disgusted with himself. He keeps asking me to give him oral sex or a hand job to relieve him, but that just makes me feel horrible and sleazy, I can't face doing that stuff when I am not feeling at all sexual.
He is getting frustrated and angry now, it's become a much bigger issue than it should be. This morning he got upset because I asked him to lay off cajoling me, and pushing boundaries, because it makes me less inclined to trust him, and is just pushing me further away.
He keeps asking me to get help (the birth debrief people aren't answering the phone - but that's never going to be a magic bullet), today he was blaming me for ceasing treatment with my therapist (for social anxiety) over a year ago, but I did that because I was well. I'm not mentally ill, I had major surgery and became a mother just 2 months ago, not feeling like sex is surely not that odd.
We have a fairly liberal relationship and have discussed him sleeping with someone else, but concluded that actually, it's me he wants, but I'm just not available right now.
So basically he is miserable and frustrated, and I am struggling to be a mother, wife, housekeeper, and supposedly lover, which would be a struggle even if I did feel like it. This morning he suggested separate beds to remove the temptation, but I feel that spells an end for the shred of intimacy we have left when I get to curl up in his arms to sleep.
We love each other, and our baby so much, I hate to see this one part of our relationship tearing us apart like this.