A Beloved Item From the Lost & Found

Warning: This post is rather explicit. If you are easily offended by the discussion of human sexuality, do not read past the cut. If you read this blog through a feed without the cut, you should also avoid all of these posts and stop reading the text here.

Babylune’s mandate demands honesty and this childbirth recovery issue is highly-personal, but in the effort to give other parents hope, I can’t hide it in the comments section of the Lost Libido conversation.

Here is a revelation I am making a month after the fact. I am writing it while the experience is fresh but setting it to publish during a designated vacation day so that I don’t have to deal with comments until I am ready. A few days before my daughter turned 18 months, my libido came back. It was a bit of a surprise, a bit like being on the back of a runaway horse (OK, not exactly like that, I can’t resist the occasional romance novel reference).

I would like to tell you that one day, I just woke up, looked at my handsome husband and wanted him unlike I ever have before, but in retrospect I realize that it wasn’t so easy.

Here are the things that happened before my libido returned.

1. I still haven’t weaned our girl completely, but she is only nursing two or three times a day. A body that is dehydrated from nursing and sleep exhaustion is not wired for sexual pleasure.

It’s only been recently that there’s been enough energy juice (sorry, not the scientific term) for my body to make the lubricant that is the mark of female sexual excitement. No stimulant in the world can make sex more attractive than sleep when a woman is completely drained and depleted.

2. I lost a little weight. Not a lot, but about 4kg (8.8 lbs) in about 6 weeks. I don’t think I look any different, but I do feel a lot better about myself. I am inside my body again, not just running from task to task with the fear that I won’t have enough energy to keep going.

3. I had a little career-boost. I am not the business woman I once was, but having a taste of success in my writing made me feel like I wasn’t going to be trapped in mommy-track jobs and financial stress forever.

4. I stopped feeling angry. There were a lot of issues surrounding the birth of our second child that didn’t exist when our first child was born. After the first birth, we went through transformations separately and together. I had to become a mother, he had to become a father. When our second was born, there were no transformations to make, there was just twice as much work. We didn’t naturally work it out. I was involved and he was withdrawn, or that’s how I saw it and for a long time that perspective hurt.

Now, I am not saying my perspective was wrong. There were, I think, other factors influencing me. Physiologically, I think women do withdraw from their partners when the pain of childbirth is still raw. I think there may be a natural urge to withdraw to focus on the new baby, to nurture it and protect it and bond. The same withdrawing makes it possible for fathers to bond with their older children as the mother makes a bit of distance between herself and the older children as well. It’s not easy to negotiate. You have to want to come back.

5. I started giving more non-sexual affection to my husband.

When you’re a mother, hugs are never in short supply. When you feel angry, abandoned or used by your partner after childbirth, it is easy to just hug your children than to go to your partner for non-erotic affection. And yet, holding hands without swinging a toddler between you, or navigating a stroller, displays a connection between adults. Hand holding and other non-sexual touches between partners are reminders of promises made. I returned to them because I needed to remind myself and they have been returned a thousand-fold.

It hasn’t been all me. My husband has changed too.

After our first child was born, I worked mostly in the evenings once my husband returned to take over childcare duties. Once our second was born, I went back to work during the day. My reasoning was that if both children were in day care, then could all be together in the evening. If I’d stayed home with the baby while the older boy was in kindergarten and then went to work, I would never get to see the boy. The problem was that my husband never got the opportunity to parent both children without me there. I’ve since started working one evening a week again to give him some alone time with the kids. He knows what it is like.

My husband started planning more family time away. We’ve made three weekend trips in the past two months. We are budget travelers, we spend a lot of time outdoors, we do a lot of packing of picnics and we take a lot of walks through the countryside, but being away from the pressures of housework that is never finished and the work that is never done, gives all of us room to breathe.

My husband does the laundry. All of it. True, I fold it and put it away, but he puts it into the washing machine and hangs it to dry. We never discuss the laundry. For my perspective, the pile of dirty clothes just disappears and the same clothes reappear on the couch waiting to be folded. Sometimes, we even spontaneously fold clothes together in the evenings without discussion.

Laundry is one huge pressure I do not have to worry about because he takes care of it. It may be the best aphrodisiac on the planet.

So, that is my analysis of how I got my groove back.

That said, just because we want to, doesn’t mean we get to. The kids must know something is up because now they never go to bed, they insist on more attention while falling asleep and cling to us after they’ve drifted off. It’s a bit like being 17 again. Except, instead of being worried that our parents will catch us, we have worry that the kids will wander in.

Still, it’s a better problem to have than just feeling nothing in the libido department.