I have a bit of a bone to pick with baby and pregnancy magazines. When I
was pregnant for the first time, I bought loads. I'd get excited when the new
issues came out each month. I would spend hours poring over them, circling all
the things I wanted to buy, and filling my head with totally unrealistic ideas
of what having a baby would be like.
At some point those magazines would do a
relationships feature. And when they did, the point of the feature seemed to be how to keep
the spark alive in the bedroom. In a nutshell: we must keep our sex lives exciting, or our relationships will suffer. Never mind what our bodies and minds and emotions are going through whilst we grow whole other human beings, that isn't as important!
Those kind of articles can result in a lot of stress, pressure and anxiety. During pregnancy lots of people find that their libido takes a huge
nose-dive. It's hardly surprising when you spend most of your time feeling sick,
or tired, or swollen, or anaemic, or *insert-pregnancy-woe-here*.
Some pregnant people experience the opposite and find that their libido goes off
the charts - yay for them! But it's a misconception that it's like
that for everyone.
And once baby is here we're suddenly dealing with a lot more
cooking, cleaning and washing, recovering from pregnancy and birth, our emotions can be wobbly while our hormones are settling, we're feeding this new tiny human all around the clock, and we’re expected to do it all on barely any
sleep. It's hardly surprising that sex is not top of our list of priorities.
So it's those articles that I have a problem with. They talk a lot
about how your partner still has "needs" and that if your libido has plummeted
then you should try to please them in other ways. And then the poor, neglected,
sex-deprived partner reads this and says, 'hey honey, your magazines say we
should be doing xyz.'
Excuse me?!
How about if a someone doesn't want to have sex, you let them be.
And how about their partners are simply supportive and
respectful of that.
They don't have to "try" to do anything, other than take care
of themselves and their baby. And once they feel rested and recovered and ready the sex will happen. When both parties want it to.
It would be much better if those articles simply explained that
it's totally normal to experience a lower - or complete lack of - sex drive
during pregnancy and for quite some time post-natally.
It would be so much better if, instead of telling new parents that they still need to fulfil their
partners' "needs", they could give advice and ideas so that partners can better
understand what to expect and how to support their loved ones during pregnancy as well as when the baby is here.
And let's be honest, those "needs" are not needs at all: they're wants.
You'll cope without sex. Nutrition, however, is a need. Sleep is also a need.
You need them both to survive but they're two things, particularly the latter,
that end up being sacrificed to some degree after you've birthed your baby.
A less tired, less stressed and well supported parent, a parent who has had time to heal, rest and recover, a parent whose own needs are being met first, is more
likely to find their mojo than one who is shattered and feeling pressured. After
all, we're growing, nurturing and raising a whole other human being and that's a
pretty exhausting, albeit amazing, achievement!
So magazine writers, please, I beg you, for the sanity of
sleep-deprived parents and pregnant people everywhere, rethink the angle of your relationship
features!
PS. For the record, I'm a long-time subscriber of The Green Parent (highly recommend it, btw!) as well as a couple of other non-parenting magazines. I love magazines, I'm just not a fan of setting people up with unrealistic expectations.
Originally published 11/12/2015; updated 13/12/2020
Has your relationship changed since becoming a parent?
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