Postnatal sex

What is postnatal sex?

Postnatal sex is sex after childbirth, in the weeks and months while your body recovers. There’s no fixed date when it has to happen again: it depends on how well you’ve healed and how you feel. The first few times it often feels different than before, because the tissue is still fragile and hormones shift after a birth.

When postnatal sex is possible again

There’s no calendar that fills this in for you. Thuisarts.nl advises waiting until your vagina has healed and you have no more bleeding. Often that’s after about four weeks, but with an episiotomy, a tear, or a cesarean it can take longer. Take a woman who, six weeks after her birth, feels it “should” be possible but isn’t ready for it yet: then her body and her head count, not an average. There’s nothing wrong with waiting longer, and nothing wrong with wanting it sooner, as long as it’s healed and comfortable. The six-week check-up after the birth is a natural moment to put questions about recovery, pain, or contraception to your midwife or GP. For many couples, by the way, sex only picks up again months later, and that too is well within the range.

Why it feels different for a while

After a birth, a lot has changed. Thuisarts.nl explains that the lining of the vagina is often still thin and fragile, and that your vagina gets less wet during sex if you’re breastfeeding. That’s because the hormone driving milk production keeps estrogen production low, which reduces natural lubrication. Pain during sex isn’t rare in this period either: the prospective study by Ellie McDonald and colleagues in BJOG shows that pain during sex is common in the months after a birth. Usually it eases with time as the tissue heals and the body recovers. Where an episiotomy or tear has been stitched, the scar can be more sensitive for the first few months; that too usually loosens up. It helps to know this is a phase and not a new norm, and that you’re doing nothing wrong if it feels different for a while than you were used to.

What postnatal sex can give you, and what it asks

Becoming intimate again after a birth is about more than the body. For many women it’s a way to feel connected again with their partner and with their own body, which for months was mostly in service of the child. At the same time it asks for patience: fatigue, a different body image, and the attention the baby demands all play a part. For a partner it’s a search too, because they see your body and your life change and often don’t know when pushing is unwelcome and when waiting creates distance instead. Talking helps more than guessing there. What it shouldn’t become is an obligation or a test. If you don’t feel ready yet, that’s not a problem to be solved but a pace that deserves respect.

What you can do yourself

A few practical things make the first times after the birth easier.

• Wait until you’ve healed and have no more bleeding. That’s the floor Thuisarts.nl keeps to, whatever the people around you expect.
• Use water-based lubricant. While breastfeeding your vagina is drier; lubricant makes it more comfortable, and there’s no reason to feel embarrassed about it.
• Take your time getting aroused. If it takes longer to get wet, that’s normal; rushing backfires.
• Sort out contraception in time. You can get pregnant before your first period returns, so don’t wait with it.
• Go to the GP or midwife with lasting pain. If it keeps hurting, pelvic floor physiotherapy or other tests can help.

What I see of it

I’m not a doctor and I’m not in charge of your recovery. I do speak with women who, after a big change in their body, have lost the sense that it’s also their own, and not there only for caring for someone else. What strikes me is how much shifts once there’s no longer a goal that has to be met and there’s simply time and attention. Not as an assignment, but as something allowed. The women who get the most out of it are rarely the ones who want to be “their old self” again fastest, but the ones who allow themselves the room to discover what feels good now.

More reading on postnatal sex

Within this glossary, pregnancy sex explains the period before, and dyspareunia what lasting pain during sex can be. Beyond this site, Thuisarts.nl lays out the advice after childbirth.

Where this fits on this site

If you want to quietly rediscover after a birth what intimacy is for you, with nothing required and entirely at your own pace, intimate togetherness tells you how a meeting is built up. Talking can always come first, and that commits you to nothing.

Sources

• Ik ben net bevallen: belangrijke adviezen. Thuisarts.nl. Provides that you wait with sex until your vagina has healed and you have no more bleeding, that the lining is often still thin and fragile, and that your vagina gets less wet while breastfeeding, where water-based lubricant helps.
• Ik ben net bevallen en wil niet zwanger worden. Thuisarts.nl. Provides that you can use condoms right after the birth, the mini-pill from three weeks and most other methods from six weeks, and that you can get pregnant before your first period returns.
• Dyspareunia and childbirth: a prospective cohort study. Ellie A. McDonald, Deirdre Gartland, Rhonda Small & Stephanie J. Brown, BJOG, 122(5), 672-679, 2015. Provides that pain during sex is common in the months after a birth.

Related terms

Postnatal sex belongs to the period around childbirth. The terms below place it in that frame.

• Pregnancy sex. Sex during pregnancy, the period preceding the postnatal phase.
• Dyspareunia. Lasting pain during sex, something to discuss with the GP.
• Lubricant. What makes dryness after the birth more comfortable.
• Contraception. Important early after the birth, because you can get pregnant before your first period.