I lost my libido when I became a mum
By Amy Gerard
With three very small children, I had the sex drive of a potato. Gone were the days where I would happily jump in the back seat of a car and sit on Rhian’s lap. You couldn’t have paid me money to have sex anywhere that was remotely uncomfortable. Or cold. Or that required me to take off all my clothes. I turned into something of a starfish. I would still put out here and there — and once we were having sex, it always felt good. It was just that the feeling of wanting it had completely disappeared. For four years I put myself last, looking after the needs of my three kids first, and I just didn't have it in me to wax Rhian's sword.
Navigating a sex life with your partner when there are kids involved is tricky. It’s something that takes time and simply can't be rushed.
When you don’t want sex, you need to communicate exactly that. You also need to make space for your partner to communicate what they are missing. If he wanted to go to pound town multiple times a week, then I'd be flipping the bird and asking him to come back with a more reasonable request.
But please know that, just as parenting small kids is a season, so is the roller-coaster ride that is your sex life. There can be so many exhilarating moments, but you can also find yourself suddenly stuck at the top of a hill due to a mechanical issue.
When you've had a tough day parenting small kids, the last thing you want to do is feign interest in a bulging penis staring directly at you.
Sex is such an emotional thing for me. Not only did the physical touching stop for me but the resentment built up, and those free-flowing conversations became a thing of the past. I would have been far more inclined to want to jump Rhian’s bones if he had helped me bring in the washing and then sat down and we’d just had a chat. About anything. I want to talk to my partner and feel like I’m being heard. Based on the qualitative data of many chats with many girlfriends, I’ve concluded that more often than not, men don’t want to simply listen: the only want to offer up solutions to the problems. When I felt like I was drowning in the demands of three babies, I almost hated Rhian. He was working long hours but, in my head, home life with the kids was always much harder. I actually do remember him telling me that going to work felt like a holiday, so my feelings were completely valid. I was more sexually attracted to the Uber Eats delivery driver than I was my husband at one point because I had been harbouring resentment for so long. When he was working long hours and I was three kids deep, intimacy would fall in the ‘just couldn’t be fucked’ basket.
If you're lucky, your libido might have only taken off to New Zealand for a ski season, then returned after a few months. Mine had well and truly started a new life in Mexico, married a hot señorita and started a family, and I had no idea if it was ever going to return.
It took me ages to even want to get back on the horse but I noticed that things started to change when Kobe started preschool. It made total sense. For almost five years I had always been at home with a child — or two, or three — and after five years I finally got two days to myself back. So I used that time to do something for myself. It wasn't 'take a poo solo' (but that also felt good). I started pilates. It was there that I slowly started to feel like myself again. I’m not sure if it was the endorphins the pilates set off, or the fact that I didn’t have someone hanging off me every minute of the day, but all of a sudden I had a slight skip in my step. And slowly but surely I felt my libido packing up its belongings over in Mexico and starting its long journey home. It still took a while — because it’s a libido, and it doesn't know how to read airport signs — but after a few months of lying on my back and exercising (the only form of exercise I like), my libido walked through the front door and back into my life. Not only did I feel so much better but I started being the one initiating sex. Doing something for myself (even just pilates for an hour twice a week) made me feel like I was coming alive again. Hornbag Amy from 2001 probably won't ever resurface but a more mature, sexually charged mum of three had taken her place. My mojo was back.
From that year onwards, there was a ripple effect: the exercise helped release endorphins, my clitoris came back to life, I fell. back in love with self-pleasuring, and it made me want to jump Rhian’s bones all over again. After having three children in close succession, most of my internal organs felt like they had been rearranged. My once favourite position wasn’t so comfortable anymore, so we began practising different positions to work out what felt good now. I was also sent a sex toy in a PR package once - it’s called the ‘Essential Vibe’ but I nicknamed it ‘the pear’ because that’s what it looks like. If you follow me on Instagram you may have seen me mention it a few times. I’m basically their unofficial ambassador and it has absolutely elevated my self-pleasure game… SWEET BABY JESUS.
For those of you who are back where I was seven years ago, I promise you things will change again for the better. But it’s definitely not something that shifts overnight. You will one day start to feel like yourself again, and you'll realise that this too was a season that passed. So ride the roller-coaster (or horsey) that is your libido after children, communicate to your partner if you need time, and say what you want. Listen to your partner's needs and compromise somewhere in the middle. Buy yourself a pear and get reacquainted with your bad self; work out what you and your body like now that things have moved about. Take that new knowledge (and your new toy) into the relationship and spice things up a bit.
* You just read an excerpt from Amy’s hilarious memoir ‘Strap Yourself In’ available here.
Listen to Amy share more about her motherhood journey in episode 5 of How Motherhood Changed Me.
