Sex and body confidence after having a baby - what worked for you?

[LauraEMumsnet]

Hi all,

We're writing an article about sex, and about feeling confident in your body and/or sexy, after having a baby.

We know that many women struggle with body confidence after giving birth, especially when it comes to sex - and that it's something that can take a long time to overcome. So we'd love to include stories from women who've been there before.

If this is a subject that you feel personally connected to, we'd be grateful if you could share your experiences on tackling sex after pregnancy, whether that was slowly rebuilding intimacy through smaller acts like cuddling or hand holding with your partner, improving your body confidence by trying out new lingerie and/or toys, or even just the practicalities of sex after a traumatic birth, c-section, episiotomy etc.

We're partnering with Ann Summers for this piece. Its purpose is to empower, but also to share real stories that we hope will be inspiring to others.

Here’s the kind of thing we think would be interesting for our readers:

• What was the hardest thing for you when it came to approaching sex after having a baby, and how did you overcome it?

• Did you struggle with body confidence after giving birth? Is it something you're still struggling with? What steps did you take to tackle this?

• Did you find items like lingerie and sex toys helpful? If so, which ones? Ann Summers items would be of particular interest

• What general advice would you give to women struggling with body confidence/struggling to have sex after giving birth?

• On the flip side, if you have been enjoying sex since having a baby, how do you feel about introducing sexy lingerie or even a sex toy to your sex life?

If you're happy to share your thoughts, it would be great to know just a little bit about you too ( only if you're happy to share - if not, that's totally fine)

• How long after giving birth did you feel like having sex?

• How long after birth did it take for you to have penetrative sex (if applicable)?

• Some info about you if you feel it's relevant: age, number of DC, whether or not you have a partner

TIA

With me I dont necessarily think my issue was with confidence after having children. I just didnt feel like my body was my own.. I breast fed both my children. It just made me uncomfortable when my partner touched my boobs. Plus I felt they were always leaking and uncomfortable. I also built it up in my head a lot. I think a lot of it is hormones too, I just didnt have the urge too at all!! Breast feeding for me just killed my sex drive. I had fairly straightforward births so I was really lucky and everything went back to normal for me quite quickly... I just didnt want too!

I did not struggle with body confidence but I had zero desire for sex until a year after birth. I do not find certain positions comfortable any more if I am going to be honest. With a child that only likes to cosleep and zero energy we have only done the deed a couple of times since LO was born

Plus the older I have got the more I have decided I am going to be comfortable in what I am going to wear. Why would sexy underwear convince me to want to have sex???? Nowadays it would be a 2am quickie if LO is in his cot

I breast fed both my children. It just made me uncomfortable when my partner touched my boobs. Plus I felt they were always leaking and uncomfortable. I also built it up in my head a lot. I think a lot of it is hormones too, I just didnt have the urge too at all!! Breast feeding for me just killed my sex drive.

Am I (again) in the minority here? It made me feel so sexy and I just wanted him to ... OK I'll stop but, really. Breast feeding was a very pleasant experience and it did not at all put me off sex.

Being scared I'd die did, but not having breasts brimming with milk.

We are all individuals, but I think that keeping hold of our core sexual identity, through the whole experience of being a woman, is crucial.

So I loved having full breasts. Someone else hated it. It then comes down to the partnership with your DH/P and how well you work together.

@Parkerwhereareyou

I breast fed both my children. It just made me uncomfortable when my partner touched my boobs. Plus I felt they were always leaking and uncomfortable. I also built it up in my head a lot. I think a lot of it is hormones too, I just didnt have the urge too at all!! Breast feeding for me just killed my sex drive.

Am I (again) in the minority here? It made me feel so sexy and I just wanted him to ... OK I'll stop but, really. Breast feeding was a very pleasant experience and it did not at all put me off sex.

Being scared I'd die did, but not having breasts brimming with milk.

We are all individuals, but I think that keeping hold of our core sexual identity, through the whole experience of being a woman, is crucial.

So I loved having full breasts. Someone else hated it. It then comes down to the partnership with your DH/P and how well you work together.

Breastfeeding was an altogether traumatic experience for me. Extreme pain and resentment of my body for not working as it should. Heavy flow meant I was incredibly full but struggling to feed meant mastitis. Mastitis meant hospitalisation with DD1. Even my DDs attempting to feed had me in so much pain I’d be in tears and need to squeeze DH’s hand. I used to flinch away uncontrollably when DD2 tried to latch. Even wearing loose clothes over the top caused me pain when they brushed against me.

Bleeding and infected breasts led to nerve damage in my nipples and, unless it’s extreme pain whilst breastfeeding, they really don’t feel anything much anymore. DH knows this and wouldn’t want to cause me pain. It hurt him watching me in so much pain.

Childbirth and breastfeeding are such personal and unique experiences for every woman that I don’t think two people will go through exactly the same thing. What’s a pleasant and empowering experience for one woman can leave another feeling traumatised and broken.

It was actually awful for me for the first few weeks. I also had a temperature and swollen breasts and bleeding nipples and every tiny little mew at my breast was agony. Really.

I had cabbage leaves heated and put on me. I had the duty doctor out for a home visit. I cried and cried and people said 'Baby' needed to be 'topped up' with formula. I went sobbing with my baby to 'The Breast Bus', a kind of mobile library bus parked next to an architecturally unsavoury block of flats where women and babies wailed and 'experts' shoved teats into bleating mouths. .... Medieval.

But. After a time I got with it. I understood and became accustomed to it. I was able to say that I'm not the kind of woman who can breastfeed in the Baby Cafe or on the bus. I am one who feels it so intensely that I'd rather be completely private when I feed my baby. I am not one who just 'gets out a boob'. No. I'm too sensitive for that. Well, more it just feels too intense, and I don't want everyone looking at me, and anyhow what's the point as I can't focus while I have this amazing kind of fountaining sensation in my breasts, and my sweetheart's little eyes are closed in concentration and there is this incredible energy exchange feeling going on.

No, I'm not a public breast-feeder. And it wasn't easy. I had to learn. We have to learn. Most of us find it tricky. Persevere. Own it, if it's possible. I know not always so.

I also had a temperature and swollen breasts and bleeding nipples and every tiny little mew at my breast was agony. Really.

When my DD1 was just a week old, I had a fever. I was burning hot and cold repeatedly. DH sent me for a nap and came to get me to feed DD but he couldn’t wake me up. So bad was the infection that my DH couldn’t rouse me at all. That’s when he decided I needed to go to the hospital. Multiple IV drips of antibiotics and a drip in each hand for a week. All as a first time mum with a newborn.

A lot of women suffer from pain when they start breastfeeding because it’s a very new sensation and they have to get used to it. I have issues with skin sensitivity anyway. Things that don’t even bother other people cause me pain - I don’t really know why - so breastfeeding was unbearable pain.

Most of us find it tricky. Persevere. Own it, if it's possible. I know not always so.

My Dad (normally a very supportive man) told me parents should make sacrifices for their DC after I told him I was giving up breastfeeding my DD1. Those words stuck with me through every bottle (mixture of expressed breast milk and formula) I gave my DDs. I wasn’t good enough because I couldn’t make the sacrifice to breastfeed my babies. I couldn’t sacrifice my mental health and my bonding with my DDs so they could get the best milk. What kind of mother did that make me? A selfish one.

With each attempted feed, my mental health deteriorated and I would feel intense fear when I knew they would want feeding. Even switching to expressing (which I eventually gave up due to the pain it caused me and the blood I was expressing) became a massive source of anxiety for me. Telling me to persevere would not have been helpful. I was teetering on the edge of PND and, if it weren’t for my incredibly supportive DH, I would have fallen. Never once did he tell me to persevere. He told me he would support me with whatever decision I made and he has done that without fail every day that we have been parents.

@BeingATwatItsABingThing

I also had a temperature and swollen breasts and bleeding nipples and every tiny little mew at my breast was agony. Really.

When my DD1 was just a week old, I had a fever. I was burning hot and cold repeatedly. DH sent me for a nap and came to get me to feed DD but he couldn’t wake me up. So bad was the infection that my DH couldn’t rouse me at all. That’s when he decided I needed to go to the hospital. Multiple IV drips of antibiotics and a drip in each hand for a week. All as a first time mum with a newborn.

A lot of women suffer from pain when they start breastfeeding because it’s a very new sensation and they have to get used to it. I have issues with skin sensitivity anyway. Things that don’t even bother other people cause me pain - I don’t really know why - so breastfeeding was unbearable pain.

Most of us find it tricky. Persevere. Own it, if it's possible. I know not always so.

My Dad (normally a very supportive man) told me parents should make sacrifices for their DC after I told him I was giving up breastfeeding my DD1. Those words stuck with me through every bottle (mixture of expressed breast milk and formula) I gave my DDs. I wasn’t good enough because I couldn’t make the sacrifice to breastfeed my babies. I couldn’t sacrifice my mental health and my bonding with my DDs so they could get the best milk. What kind of mother did that make me? A selfish one.

With each attempted feed, my mental health deteriorated and I would feel intense fear when I knew they would want feeding. Even switching to expressing (which I eventually gave up due to the pain it caused me and the blood I was expressing) became a massive source of anxiety for me. Telling me to persevere would not have been helpful. I was teetering on the edge of PND and, if it weren’t for my incredibly supportive DH, I would have fallen. Never once did he tell me to persevere. He told me he would support me with whatever decision I made and he has done that without fail every day that we have been parents.

I'm completely sympathetic to this and did stop after 12 weeks with my first, as it was too bad. With my second, I have a scar on one nipple which is testimony to my perseverance, but just when it stopped hurting, at 16 weeks, she decided didn't want it any more.

I said 'if it's possible' because it quite often isn't. But sometimes perseverance works.

Nobody prepares us for the breastfeeding. I think we can agree on that.

What worked for me, in terms of “body confidence” was knowing that my DH wasn’t pressuring me to wear or use anything to fulfil his needs. He let me go at my pace. And it was particularly reassuring that if I needed to go to bed early & he ended up on his own for the evening, he’d usually be watching videos about music, or maths, or science. (He’s a bit of a geek.) He doesn’t make me feel like I need to live up to unrealistic ideals, & AFAIK he doesn’t watch Pornhub or similar exploitative rapey crap.

I'm flabbergasted that someone at Mumsnet though this was a good pairing. It feels similar to the Bounty reps in maternity wards.

Women already know about Ann Summers. I have no doubt that if a bleeding mother with leaking boobs, or a mother who is two years postpartum and feeling good/bad/indifferent about her changed body wants to buy a sex toy, a "maid's outfit" or crotchless knickers then she knows where to get them.

Women should indeed feel empowered sexually and that doesn't involve spending £100s on different vibrators, butt plugs, handcuffs and "sexy" outfits designed with a demeaning, objectifying male gaze in mind.

@Babdoc

I would love MNHQ to post this on the FWR board! I will supply the popcorn and sit back to watch the well deserved kicking that will be administered by angry feminists, to whoever thought promoting the tacky products of a tawdry sex shop was any way to “empower” women post childbirth.

Yes indeed. I don’t think Ann Summers understands women’s sexuality, or the reality of childbirth and post partum sex, at all. And I speak as someone who was lucky enough to have no adverse physical or emotional issues after childbirth.

Ann summers? Are you serious. Is this a joke? It's very bad taste MNHQ. Like a bit of lingerie is going to help with how much my body has changed after 2 x ds's?

If Ann Summers want to start a range of sexy (but classy) underwear that holds you in at the tummy and bras come in DD+ sizes with a breastfeeding option and flexi wire and the material is actually non scratchy and comfortable then I'm all for it. Otherwise I'm pretty cynical about this exercise.

A year later of healing after a bad tear worked for me thanks.

I'm shocked at this, frankly offensive, post assuming that crotch less knickers should be all it takes to hop back into bed with a partner desperate for sex.

A) For the vast majority sex is NEVER going to be the same. Not by a long shot. No amount of sex toys is going to change this.

B) Maybe your partner isn't sex obsessed? Maybe they don't want to leap into bed at the earliest opportunity? Maybe they would rather concentrate on gentle intimacy at first than outrageous shagging?

Hi all!

Thanks so much for all your posts and feedback. It's been hugely helpful and, as always, we really appreciate the frankness.

Thanks in particular to those of you who have been so open with your postpartum stories.

We've thought a lot about this and agree that this isn't the right approach for us to take for such a partnership, so we'll be changing tack.