A recent Family Circle survey revealed that almost a third of mothers have gone a few years without having sex. The stress of raising a family and post-partum body image issues can leave new moms with little time for love-making. HuffPost Live discussed the topic of sexless marriage and how couples can keep their relationship intimate even after children.
Clinical psychologist Dr. Sherry Blake explained why many women forgo sex after giving birth. "After you have a child, you go through so many changes. And it takes a minute to get back into the swing of things--it takes a minute to know, you know, 'I am still a woman, I still have that sexuality,' because all of a sudden, your focus shifts and it shifts towards the baby. So it's not unusual to feel that way."
Author Amanda Edwards agreed. Though she and her husband had sex five or six times per week before kids, after the birth of her children, they were no longer interested in getting it on. "Neither of us really wanted it, even after that six to eight weeks was up. We were so tired and just overwhelmed with parenting, especially with our second--having two under two. Two babies at home and what can you do with them? Because they're both so needy all the time. And how do you have any time for yourself? Let alone your partner. So that initial period was really difficult to adjust to."
Edwards and her husband eventually worked out a sex schedule, planning out specific times for sex, including Saturdays during their children's nap time. "Guaranteed. If you're looking at your clock and it's like noon-ish on a Saturday, we're doing it. I promise."
Blogger Megan Conley also recognized the importance of maintaining intimacy with her husband after giving birth. "It's important to realize you should have intimacy every day and you should have sex routinely, and sometimes intimacy and sex aren't necessarily the same thing."
She added, "For me, when I had a child, I realized that I felt gender neutral. I had had this baby--this womanly exercise--and I had never felt less like a woman, and when I was able to reintegrate intimacy, see that boy that I loved at the end of the day and take 15 minutes or three hours and 15 minutes, depending on the night, and find time for just the two of us, I found myself again. It was about me."