I know, total cringe writing that title, but it’s true. I’m thirty years old and I’ve had three children, all-natural births. It’s one of those things people just don’t talk about. It’s not polite dinner conversation to discuss the fact that your vagina has had three heads come out of it, is it?
Before I had the children, I never realised how much having a child changes you both physically and mentally. I knew about stretch marks, and I had heard some horror stories about tearing during childbirth, but I hadn’t seen many bodies post-birth, apart from my mum’s growing up, and I was shocked after my first baby when I didn’t automatically ping back into shape like the celebrities in magazines appeared to, despite the fact that I was only twenty-one at the time.
I remember taking a mirror and looking at myself ‘down there’ properly for the first time a few months after having my son. I was nervous, I didn’t know what to expect. It wasn’t too bad, I mean, I didn’t faint or anything from the sight of it, but it wasn’t the same as pre-birth, and I have been too scared to look after having two more children...
Having sex after becoming a mum was daunting. I wasn’t with my son’s father, so I was back in the dating game and it was really nerve-racking how men would find it sleeping with somebody who had had a baby. Even now I am with my husband, in a close and committed relationship, it still plays on my mind that it probably doesn’t bring him as much pleasure having sex with me, as I can feel things aren’t as tight as they were before. That’s before you factor in the stretch marks, the fact my entire body shape has changed over the past ten years and my more relaxed personal grooming now that the children take up so much of my time has me feeling anything but sexy in the bedroom.
Join Louise Broadbridge, senior midwife & the face of instagram's @thehonestmidwife for a live, online class preparing you and your partner for natural labour, birth and beyond. Enjoyed by 1000's of expectant parents like you.
I know there are options out there to help with the issues I have with my vagina if I want to take those steps. There are all sorts of devices now which can be used to strengthen your pelvic floor, some even provide pleasure alongside their more practical use. Plus these days you can have surgery for pretty much anything to make you feel more confident, and vaginal rejuvenation is definitely a ‘thing’. I just don’t know if I am ready to take that step, whether things are really that bad to warrant going under the knife to battle my insecurities.
If I am honest, by the time I collapse into bed at the end of a long day, sex is the last thing on my mind. I don’t think I have ever felt more exhausted in my life. I think having mum friends who I can talk about these things to has really helped me, especially in making me feel more normal. It’s good to know I am not the only woman out there worrying about how loose their vagina is post-childbirth, how at certain points during the month they look six months pregnant again, with the very real concern that sex won’t ever be the same again as a mother.
