How to Best Navigate Intimacy after Having Children

The demands of newborns and young children can have a dramatic effect on a couple’s sex life. Relationship experts say it takes trust and openness for parents to discover new ways of being intimate with each other. “People are unique, and everyone responds differently,” she says. “However, if you’re the one who has given birth, you may be experiencing an overhaul of your hormones as well as all sorts of physiological changes and, more often than not, desire discrepancy will arise. In heterosexual couples, it’s not unusual for men to feel rejected in this scenario and women to feel they are not understood,” says Drury. “Pressure can start to mount, and communication becomes fraught.”