What Is It Like to Have Sex for the First Time After Giving Birth

GoodRx Health

Having children is a major life event. Children affect all areas of a new parent's life, including their sex life. Many new parents find it difficult to resume sexual intimacy after giving birth.

Several factors contribute to a person's readiness to engage in sexual activity after childbirth. These include physical recovery, mental health, emotional wellness, logistics of new parenting, body image, level of support from their partner, and the availability of postpartum care.

The timetable for getting your libido back is different for everyone. So are the emotions that go along with it. Here's how three women describe what it was like to have sex for the first time after giving birth and how they prioritized their well-being.

After her first baby, she didn't crave intimacy

Charlotte Heiney, a 35-year-old mother of two in Maryland, says she had a healthy, active, and spontaneous sex life before having children. When her first child was born, things changed.

"After my first, I had absolutely no desire for any kind of intimacy, sexual or otherwise," says Charlotte, who works for a biotech company. She says several factors contributed to her lack of desire to resume sexual intimacy.

"I'd had one or two stitches after my first birth and experienced a lot of discomfort from the site of my epidural as well," she says. "Sex was literally the last thing on my mind."

During that time, Charlotte says, her husband was supportive and understanding. But it took her time to adjust to being a mother.

With her second child, Charlotte was surprised at how quickly she regained her desire for sex. "My sex drive had returned with a vengeance," she recalls. "I was very careful to follow the guidance of our medical team and held off until I received the go-ahead from my midwife at the 6-week [postpartum] mark. I was very surprised at how ready I was to be physical with my husband again. I was anticipating a similar experience to after our first child, which understandably caused a lot of anxiety. But I healed much more quickly and felt a lot better mentally afterward."

In retrospect, Charlotte says, she was "too embarrassed to seek help" when her scar tissue after her first birth made sex no longer pleasurable. But the birth of her second child seemed to break down her scar tissue and resolve the issue, she says.

She credits her husband's support for helping her through it - helping out with the baby, allowing her to rest, giving her words of affirmation, and advocating for her medical needs.

In sharing her story, Charlotte says she hopes others accept that sex after birth will be different. She says that she wishes she had gotten help sooner to resolve issues with discomfort related to scar tissue. "It was silly of me to be embarrassed to seek help, as it could have been resolved much sooner," she says.

But she knows recovery can take time.

"Your mind and body go through so much when you give birth and then recover," she says. "Whether your body says 'yes' but your brain says 'no,' or vice versa, just be sure to listen and do what feels right for you."

Accepting a new version of yourself can be emotionally draining

Cortni Herod, a 43-year-old human resources administrator from Maryland, is a mother of four.

Before their first child, she and her partner had been together for 13 years. "We were very comfortable and familiar with each other," Cortni says. But having sex after giving birth was different after each of her pregnancies.

The birth of her first child made her feel empowered, she says. But she experienced what she describes as crippling postpartum anxiety with her second child. With her third, she suffered from nerve damage.

She says those challenges affected her relationship with her partner as well. She craved connection, but sex was not at the front of her mind after birth.

"We were no longer a young couple focused on our own needs," she says. "We now had this whole tiny human to focus on. I still valued connection with my partner. It just took a different form."

The first time Cortni and her partner had sex after the birth of their first child, Cortni says she experienced a "flood of emotions" and found herself in tears.

"In addition to some scar tissue, I was unprepared for how emotionally and psychologically challenging it would be to resume a sexual life," she says. "There was so much that had changed in me. Reconciling this new version of me as a mother, a woman, and a sexual partner was overwhelming, to say the least."

Cortni says sex after birth made her confront her own long-standing insecurities - including past sexual trauma and "body issues [that] were now magnified with my postpartum body," she says. "I struggled, and still do a tiny bit, to love this new version of my body despite my partner's continued attraction to me."

Returning to intimacy got easier with each child, she says. "I think maturity and working through my past traumas helped along the way."

The biggest factor has been having a supportive partner, Cortni says. She wishes more mothers felt this is something they can be open about.

"We need to talk candidly and frankly about this period of motherhood in a space that allows all experiences and challenges to be shared and affords an opportunity to commiserate, laugh, cry, be vulnerable, and support each other through it," she says. "It's so important to educate more humans on this phase of life and assure them that they are not alone, [that] they are not broken or damaged, and that they deserve a healthy sexual life as much as anyone."

The pressure to get pregnant can take away from the joy of sex

Kathleen Zak McDonnell, a 36-year-old mother of four in Maryland, remembers having sex a couple of times a week before having kids. Once she and her husband decided to have a baby, sex changed from "no pressure fun" to being more task oriented, she says.

"All of a sudden, it's like you're peeing on ovulation tests, and you're checking pregnancy tests every month. And then the stress of that kind of creeps in and kills any of the fun," she says. Trying to get pregnant was more of a task. "There was a lot of pressure around it, and it felt like a failure each time it [pregnancy] didn't happen."

After the birth of her first child, Kathleen says her feelings toward sex shifted even more. She recalls feeling overwhelmed after being told at her 6-week postpartum checkup that she was cleared to resume sexual activity.

"I looked at [the doctor] and said, 'Do I have to? Because I'm not ready.'" It took months for Kathleen to feel physically and emotionally ready to have sex again. "Postpartum rocked my world, so that [sex] just did not happen for a long time after I had my first child."

For the most part, Kathleen says her husband was understanding. "I had a lot of birth trauma, and then postpartum depression, and I was struggling with breastfeeding," she says. "He tried to be very understanding. And we tried to find intimacy in other ways, whether it was watching TV together and snuggling after, or just holding hands over dinner and reconnecting about our day."

Around 6 months postpartum, Kathleen says she and her husband had sex for the first time. She recalls still not feeling ready, but she felt guilty. She felt like sex was something she should engage in because her husband had been patient and understanding. Kathleen says the experience was very painful. It took about a year for Kathleen to feel that her sex life had returned to normal and was no longer painful or uncomfortable.

After their second child was born, Kathleen and her husband resumed intercourse around 3 months later. This time, Kathleen says she felt less pressure and less guilt to resume any sense of normalcy.

"I didn't feel as bad about things, and I didn't have as much guilt around it [abstinence]," she says. "Physically, it was also less painful." She says that doing pelvic floor exercises played a major role in her recovery after her second child. "If somebody would have suggested [doing pelvic floor exercises] the first time, maybe it would have been different," she says. "I feel like so often our postpartum care is lacking."

With the births of the couple's third and fourth children, Kathleen says they resumed sexual intimacy around the 6-week mark postpartum.

Her biggest piece of advice to new moms is to take their time and nurture themselves before worrying about jumping back into sexual activity.

"Don't rush it," she says. "Because the more guilt and the more pressure you put on yourself, the more it takes away from the fun. Give yourself a little bit of grace. It's OK. It [sex] isn't going to go anywhere. It will be there when you're ready."

What does the doctor say?

Patricia Pinto-Garcia, MD, MPH

Senior Medical Editor

Physical intimacy after giving birth is a deeply personal and unique experience. Many factors go into whether you're ready to be sexually active after pregnancy. Most people are aware that they'll need to wait at least 6 weeks before having sex after giving birth. But this recommendation has to do with how long it generally takes to heal after a vaginal birth and for the cervix to fully close to lower the risk of infection.

Some people may feel ready for sex before the 6-week mark. Others need to wait longer if they've experienced complications or infections after giving birth. It's important to talk with your healthcare team about when it's safe to start physical intimacy after giving birth. That time frame is going to look different depending on your birthing and postpartum experience.

As these stories show, there's more to consider than physical health and healing. It's important that you feel ready emotionally and mentally. There's no right answer when it comes to being ready to have sex again. Set your own timeline, and respect the needs of your body and mind.

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