This week, approaching Valentine, everything tells us about love, sex and desire. And we have thought about talking about these issues clearly, delving into the expression of sexuality in couples who have children, talking about parenting, breastfeeding and the puerperium.
For it We will interview several experts, starting today with the psychologist Mónica Serrano, whom our readers already know about the special we dedicate to the hypersexualization of girls.
Mónica Serrano is a psychologist and expert in Maternity and Parenting with Attachment and we can usually follow her on her Psychology and Parenting blog.
Is it normal to decrease desire or passion with parenting?
Postpartum is a stage in the life of the couple in which important changes occur. The birth of a child involves great psychological and emotional transformations for parents. Also, the woman experiences physical and hormonal changes after childbirth.
And besides, it changes all the schedule and we are exhausted, will that also influence?
Sure. The arrival of a baby in the family means an adaptation at all levels by the parents. The schedules, the routines, the activities change to be oriented to respond to the baby's needs. In addition, after childbirth, doctors usually recommend a period of sexual abstinence of 30-40 days to the couple, to allow the woman to recover physically and that sexual relations (with penetration) do not harm her.
And after quarantine do you automatically recover the desire for sex?
After this period of abstinence, most men usually want to resume sexual intercourse. However, many women find it difficult to resume them. Fear of pain, baby-centered attention or hormonal changes may explain, in part, these complications.
Are there other factors that can cause sexual desire to not exist?
Many women have to readjust their body self-image and, therefore, their self-concept and their self-esteem after pregnancy, due to the body changes experienced. This acceptance process takes time. This can strongly influence a woman's lack of sexual desire, since not feeling attractive causes her libido to decrease.
Does love change so much when children arrive?
It is obvious that postpartum is a stage in which desire decreases in almost all women. After postpartum, parenting causes the couple to need to build new communication spaces adapted to the needs and requirements of their children. This new way of interaction as a couple influences sexual relations.
In this way, the couple will go through a process of transformation in their relationship that will vary throughout the upbringing.
Both men and women will develop their own identity as father and mother and, consequently, their identity as a couple.
The decrease in the desire of the early puerperium will be transformed into a form of sexual contact adapted to family life. When this adaptation process ends and the baby begins to be more independent, sexual desire usually increases again. But for this we must respect the rhythms of the baby and the mother, especially. It is essential to allow the other and oneself to develop this new space of sexual interaction and understand it as gradual, progressive.
But, really, the puerperium is not a time for sex, or yes, if we understand sex not as penetration and if as sensuality?
The puerperium is the period of time that occurs during childbirth and lasts until the baby is able to perceive himself as a differentiated being from his mother (around 2 years of age, generally). After delivery, the mother's organism prepares to integrate with the physical and mental functioning of her baby. The mother, during the puerperal stage, is completely connected with her baby, since he does not yet have a concrete notion of the “I” and perceives his own existence from the entrance and participation in the emotional world of his attachment figure (for usually his mother). This mother-baby connection during the puerperium influences the mother's relationships with other people and obviously also influences the couple's relationship. Naturally, the mother is oriented to the protection and care of her baby, establishing as a priority all the actions aimed at this end. Thus, the rest of actions and relationships pass temporarily to a secondary level.
In this way, we could understand that during the puerperium, the mother's interest in sex decreases. This decrease is more pronounced the younger the baby is.
But not everything is black or white, right?
The woman generally tries to find spaces of intimacy with her partner. In many cases, couples try to deny this change in their sex life due to the fear that this causes them. The thought that their sexual relations will never be as before the birth of the baby, the fear that this will shake their relationship as a couple or the feeling of “lost youth” are some of the phenomena that make the couple try to deny change and resume sexual intercourse in a forced manner ahead of time.
It seems that we have to be as before and as quickly as possible in all areas. Isn't that a mistake?
The puerperium, understood as a natural process, would require the mother to reduce her general activity to focus on caring for the child during this entire stage. However, the consumer society in which we live does not allow women this reduction. The immediacy of return to work is a clear example of this. Something similar happens with sex. The social message drags us to continue consuming continuously and sex has become a business with many associated consumption objects. In this way, the puerperium is a difficult period for the couple in terms of sexual intercourse. It is at this stage that the period of adaptation to the arrival of the child and the personal transformations that motherhood and fatherhood entail are going through.
It is the stage at which new forms of communication, relationship and sexual contact must be established
.
We thank the psychologist Mónica Serrano the attention she has given us in granting us this interview and tomorrow we will continue talking with her about sexuality and love in couples who have children.
