Anyone’s husband been weird about sex after babies?

[Lao90]

Since I started to show during the pregnancy with my daughter (who is now 15 months) my husband started to become less and less interested in sex..usually he was all over me so it was quite a change. I didn’t put on excess weight in pregnancy, he just admitted that he didn’t find pregnant women sexually attractive and it felt ‘wrong’.

Then after we had our daughter I didn’t feel up to it for a few months as j was scared it would hurt etc..and chronic sleep deprivation got in the way. But I feel it’s never really bounced back. He used to be obsessed with my boobs but I notice now if we have sex he actively avoids them..I asked him and he said he feels a bit ‘scared’ since I was breastfeeding like they don’t belong to him anymore and he was always worried milk would get on him and still has it in his head (even though not breastfeeding anymore).

Generally he’s quite prudish but is extra freaked out about anything pregnancy / period / womanly stuff related! I’m really laid back and open minded sexually and always have insane sex drive during pregnancy so beginning to feel a bit rejected and like he’s gone off me..he says he hasn’t and he’s just always tired and feels his sex drive has died.

I’m pregnant again now so thinking will we ever have a sex life again..

If you are pregnant again then you are still having sex so your issue is with the frequency of it right not that it’s practically non existent?

Yes, we literally had sex at the right time of the month to conceive but nothing else. My husband finds sex when trying for a baby quite stressful which I get and I think this coupled with me being pregnant or breastfeeding for a while has just led us to drift apart in that way. The friendship side of the marriage is better than ever but obviously don’t want to lose the intimacy.

I think it's quite a common thing for men to disassociate sex from motherhood. Sometimes it feels that there are plenty of women who feel the same.

Before my wife got pregnant, I think I viewed sex as fun because it was naughty and dirty, a youthful adventure. Once she got pregnant, and especially after seeing our son born, sex, and her body, seemed much more profound, and I couldn't help thinking that dirty sex would be a violation of some sort. Between me getting twisted up in my head and her not being interested in sex for various reasons (exhaustion, nursing, body issues), I doubt we had sex more than twice in the two years after each of our kids was born.

The only thing that changed that was when she decided she wanted to get pregnant again. That turned her on, and I mostly went along.

Now that we're almost empty-nesters, we're trying to remake our sex life, and our intimate connection more broadly, but that post-pregnancy spell very nearly killed our marriage.

I found the opposite: our sex got dirtier post birth (once DW had recovered of course). It was as if because I'd seen her at her worst sex became much more matter of fact. So the fact that your DH has gone the other way is concerning.

It does sound as having children means he doesn't associate you with sex in quite the same way as before, ie, he sees you as a mother not a lover. Unfortunately for you that sounds like an issue that he needs to work through.

My oldest is coming up to 5 (difficult birth) and youngest is 2. Feel like sex life has only gone back to normal in the past couple of months tbh. Definitely improving still!