As new parents, starting up sex again after the birth of your child can be a big wellness issue; you want to reconnect with your partner, but your body has just been through a bit of an ordeal. However, according to a new study, published in The Journal of Sexual Medicine, much of what drives women’s desire in the postpartum period are not physical factors, but psychological ones.
Sexual health expert Stephanie Pappas explains, ‘In many cases, social factors such as spousal support and the baby’s sleeping habits play a larger role in new moms’ interest in sex than physical factors like birth trauma, the research found. Women also begin feeling desire and engaging in sex sooner than the six-week waiting period that most doctors recommend… The new baby period is a time of little sleep and healing from childbirth, two factors not conducive to a rambunctious sex life. But studies have shown that new parenthood doesn’t cool the sex drive for long. Research suggests that desire returns to pre-pregnancy levels within about three to four weeks, though most couples don’t resume vaginal intercourse until week seven or eight.’
Study researcher Sari van Anders, a behavioural endocrinologist at the University of Michigan, notes, ‘One interesting thing is that women performed oral sex on their partners and engaged in masturbation earlier than they received oral sex or engaged in intercourse. People have frequently assumed that women just aren’t interested in sexuality early in the postpartum period and that the sexual activity they do engage in is for the sake of their partners, but the rates of masturbation suggests that many women are feeling sexual.’
Pappas points out, ‘Previous studies have mostly focused on the physical trauma of labor and delivery as well as post-baby hormonal factors to explain the postpartum sex drive. But there’s more to sex than biology…The researchers recruited 304 women who had given birth in the last seven years to reflect on their postpartum experiences in a series of online questionnaires. All of the women had a romantic partner during the first three months of their baby’s life. They answered questions about their sexual desires, their sexual activities, their partner’s supportiveness, their birth experience and other factors, like breast-feeding.’ So what were the results?
‘By the end of the first three months, 85% of the women had started having intercourse again,’ says Pappas. ‘65% had engaged in oral sex and 61% had masturbated. In general…women start performing oral sex and masturbating first, with receptive oral sex and penile-vaginal intercourse coming later…In terms of timing, the most important factors for a woman were her perceptions of her partner’s sexual needs and desires, suggesting that some women start sexual activity again more for their partner’s benefit than their own. A woman’s level of social support and her experiences in childbirth (both physical and psychological) also influenced how soon she started engaging in sexual activities again. Fatigue, stress, body image, breast-feeding and vaginal trauma were not associated with how quickly women started having sex again, however.’
So why don’t doctors recommend sex earlier than six weeks? ‘Health-care providers often don’t discuss too much about sexuality before that six-week period except to express that women shouldn’t be doing anything penetrative until after that timeframe,’ van Anders comments. ‘But our data suggest that women are engaging in a host of behaviours and that they have desire… I think we need to make room for thinking broadly about women’s sexuality in the postpartum period, as a part of positive lifelong sexuality but also as a positive part of the postpartum experience.’
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