Postpartum is making me feel like a bad wife.
I 22f and my husband 29m have been struggling with being intimate and i’m wondering if this is normal. It’s not like me or my husband are overly tired or over worked my husband is a great partner and father who does more than his fair share of baby and house chores. On top of that he is still extremely intimate and romantic, for him not much has changed since the baby but i can’t seem to be able to be intimate lately. Even when we’re alone and the baby is with family for the weekend or over night, i still make excuses not to have sex.
I’m ten months postpartum and it’s been five months since we last did anything. We have talked about it and each time we try my husband says he can tell that I’m just doing for his sake and not because i want to or like it. and since then he has stopped mid way when he notices i’m not having fun. It not just sex it’s him touching me in general like hugging, kissing or cuddling. Each time i just feel a so overstimulated with feelings not like overwhelming emotions or anxiety but like a physical feeling that like him touching me is just too much. Like my body just freezes up and screams to step away. Leading me avoid touching him anyway intimately/affectionately. Doing stuff like that now just feels overstimulating to me.
I don’t know if this is a loss sex of drive or what. We used to be very active with each other and always touching each other. He recently confessed that my distance is making him feel insecure like i don’t want him or something which is not true, I find my husband to be very attractive on top of that. He’s very attentive and romantic and he has even been more vocal about how attractive he finds me saying he finds my post pregnancy body very to be very sexy which made me happy because originally i was insecure about it. I’m open to talking to a therapist about it but i don’t know it will fix me being overstimulated pacifically by my husband touching me. Yesterday was our one year wedding anniversary and my husband is finally on his six weeks parental leave. we hadn’t had sex or cuddle or even kiss in weeks Just went to dinner a few without the baby. My husband try’s hard to make being a mom a easy and happy experience for me and i feel terrible that i can’t even be intimate with him rn. He keeps buying me stuff like flowers and wine and all my favorite things but it’s still hard to be emotionally or physically intimate. Any advice is greatly appreciated. This is our first year married and as parents.
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I'm 1 year pp and we haven't had sex yet because I just have absolutely no desire for it and it feels wrong to do it just because I feel I should. Think of it hormonally though, your body wants sex because it wants to get pregnant and have a baby but once you are caring for one then it doesn't want to get pregnant because it knows you have one to look after. Our hormones will go back to normal eventually, I assume I'll want sex more once my periods come back too. It's great that we both have understanding partners. Sometimes we have a play where he gets to finish but it's just not sex, it's nice to have the intimacy and feel connected without the pressure to have sex. It sounds like you're also overstimulated, when you have a baby clinging to you all day then the last thing you want is your husband touching you once the baby is asleep! If you feel it's something deeper than hormones then you can look into psycosexual counselling, I've had this in the past for some gynae issues and it worked incredibly well
I resonate with you too on this. I can easily go a month but hubby will let me know when it’s been almost 2 weeks. I don’t like doing a lot of kissing anymore ever since pregnancy. Touch is overstimulating for me too but used to not be that way. I’m sure we will go back to normal at some point.
Also I think it would be good to sit down and have conversation with hubby about what things will help you to ease back into things.
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