Ellen DiResta Cain unexpectedly got pregnant at 42. She knew that having a baby would drastically change her life, but she had no idea how deeply it can affect sex. She was shocked by how painful intercourse was for her first time postpartum—and freaked out by how different her body looked and felt. Here’s her story about what it was like to readjust, as told to health writer Julia Ries.
My partner and I always had a great sex life. Then I unexpectedly got pregnant when I was 42. Even though the pregnancy was by no means planned, I was elated. Throughout those nine months, our sex life was really good. We always found ways to keep it fun and exciting.
During that period, so many thoughts constantly ran through my head about what birth would look and feel like. My postpartum sex life wasn’t on my mind at all, though, probably because I didn’t know how different it would be. There’s so much emphasis on how profound the physical and emotional changes are after you have a baby, but I never got any guidance about having sex again, let alone how to reconnect with my partner in that way after birth. Nothing like that was brought up to me during my ob-gyn appointments, and no one else really talks about it either.
Right after our baby was born, my partner and I didn’t rush to have sex again. You’re supposed to hold off for six weeks after delivery, and, to be honest, it wasn’t like I was even thinking about it. I had an emergency C-section—which is a major abdominal surgery—and my body was healing. I was learning how to use my core again, since so many little movements sent a stabbing pain across my abdomen: turning to look at something, laughing, sneezing, coughing, getting out of bed. In my adult life, I’ve had much longer stretches of not doing it, so it wasn’t that wild to me. My husband didn’t pressure me, I didn’t put pressure on myself, and I wasn’t stressed about it. I’d just had a baby—I was in a state of bliss.
Around six weeks after I gave birth, I got the green light from my doctor, like, “Okay, you can have sex now.” My core was feeling a little better, but my husband and I made a point to keep things very missionary to avoid sudden movements—I stayed on my back. Still, I was not ready for how different it felt, and how painful. It felt as if nothing had ever been in my vagina, like I had never had sex before. I don’t even think you could call it sex—it was just the tip, and I was like, “Goodbye. Get out of here.” I was scared there might be ripping or tearing. It didn’t seem like his body part could fit into mine, so we stopped.
I was like, Okay, clearly I’m not ready. I cried a little because, deep down, I felt like a failure—like I did something wrong or let my husband down. I told him I was embarrassed, and he assured me it was okay and that we were just trying. He said we could give it another go when I felt ready, and that if, at any point in the future, I ever felt uncomfortable or in pain, we would pause or stop.
I had many medical appointments in the first few weeks after having my baby, so it was easy to bring up my concerns about sex with my doctor face-to-face during my routine check-ins. I asked her about the pain I felt and how it just would not and could not go into me, like, “Is this something I should be concerned about?” She assured me it was common and normal, but didn’t give any indication as to how or why sex hurt so much. She’s one of the best ob-gyns in Los Angeles, but she had a very clinical approach. There wasn’t a whole lot of, “Oh, I know how you’re feeling!” The guidance I got was: Use some lube, and if sex continues to hurt, let’s get you tested. (I’m not sure what she wanted to test for, but hormonal changes and complications from the delivery, for example, can make sex hurt.) It was very matter-of-fact.
After that, I was a little in my head about the pain—I knew I’d have to relax, fully sync, and get super comfortable the next time. Again, there was never any pressure from my husband, and there was never a set plan to try to have sex again, but one day the mood struck. There wasn’t a whole lot of conversation in the moment, but he briefly asked me if I felt ready, and I was like, “Yes, let’s do it—let’s try.” This time we used coconut oil as a lube, which definitely eased the pain. It still hurt, but having slipperiness in the mix was a game changer. We didn’t use lube before I was pregnant, which is why I didn’t immediately think of using it, but it eased the friction.
It still took some time for the pain during sex to dissipate altogether—my nerves played a role too. It’s like getting a shot in your arm: You anticipate it really hurting, so you tense up. That fear went away after a few more times, at which point it felt like our bodies fit together and sex even started to feel good again.
After we crossed that threshold, it was like, “Oh, we did it!” But it’s not like our sex life was instantly restored. It kickstarted a long journey back to having sex regularly, which for us, looks like sex that’s spontaneous, on a near-weekly basis, and in a range of positions. First, there was a bit of a lull—we were doing it about once a month—as I dealt with the long list of things you think about after becoming a mom. You’re constantly like, “Okay, at this time, my baby needs to be napping, at this time they need to be feeding, and at this time, I need to be doing this! And this! And this!” It’s hard to step out of that incessant logical thinking. It’s like your brain is wired differently.
Physically, there was a lot going on too. As in: You carried a baby inside of your body for the past nine months and now they’re just always on you—whether you're feeding them or they’re sleeping on you. That phrase “touched out” is so real. You can get to a point where you want everything else to go away—you’re giving so much of yourself to your baby, and it can be hard to make room for anything else, sex included.
My insecurities ramped up. I worried about whether we were having sex enough. I felt like my boobs looked great when I was wearing a shirt because they were big and full. Underneath, they were chapped, bloody, and peeling. It’s hard to feel sexy with all of that going on. You stand and look at yourself in the mirror and think, I don’t recognize this body. This body doesn’t look like my body. This body doesn’t feel like my body. Is my husband looking at me and thinking, That’s not my wife’s body, or, Her body doesn’t feel the same to me anymore?
At the same time, my husband and I were feeling so much bliss and intimacy on a different level as parents. So, in a way, it felt easy to hide all the underlying stress and insecurities—all of these incredible new experiences with our baby overpowered them.
This continued for nine or so months until my doctor told us it was okay to try for another baby. Because of my age—I was 43—we had to move quickly. For the first time ever, we were actively trying to get pregnant. That kind of intercourse made our approach to sex very robotic: My doctor instructed us to do it only when I was ovulating (this would maintain his sperm quality, she said). For the next year, sex became militant—and all of the worries and insecurities that affected me right after childbirth ramped up and escalated. Not to mention, I stopped breastfeeding around this time, and my boobs changed again. It was like they were deflated pieces of skin. I was like, Wait a second, I just had awesome-looking boobs, and now they’re gone.
I got pregnant again, but around 13 weeks in, I had a miscarriage. My doctor told me I could try another time, but that I only had a 50-50 chance of carrying a baby full-term because of my age, making the pressure increasingly intense. I wanted my son to have a sibling so badly.
We weren’t having sex on a whim—but, rather, sex on a slot on a calendar. I felt tired and stressed out. We tried to make sex fun—which, for me, meant trying to let go of all the mental stressors affecting me and surrendering to the moment—but it wasn’t as pleasurable as it was before we became parents. When I opened up about this to my husband, he told me I was putting too much pressure on myself and to try not to worry too much about getting pregnant. In the back of my mind, though, I’d think, “Let this be the one.” There was a goal, which is different than when you’re just having sex for fun.
Eventually we decided, “You know what—we’re good. This is what it’s meant to be for us.” Once we made the decision to stop trying so hard for a second child, the pressure evaporated. I practiced yoga, which made me feel in touch with my body again. I tried to be patient with myself. I still felt out of practice, and it was so hard to turn off all of the thoughts about my newborn, my body, and wanting another kid but maybe not being able to have one. If an intrusive thought about sex crept into my head, I told myself, “All right, that’s there. It’s okay. Just let it pass.”
We started to come back to “us”—though now it’s like we’re different and better and more mature versions of ourselves. Shifting our mindset was life-changing for our sex life. We let go, and it’s so much better now. I finally felt like we could have sex whenever and however we wanted—we no longer had an agenda limiting when or how we did it. Sex became spontaneous and frequent again. It was very freeing.
Looking back, it’s like I was in the middle of a storm. It absolutely took more than six weeks to feel good in my body again during sex. Two years later, I’ve never been prouder of, more happy about, and more at home in my body. If I could go back and give my postpartum self some advice, I would say, “Don’t panic. Go through these phases, and let them feel safe, but they are going to change. That’s okay. You’re going to get there. Just take the time you need.”
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