The main focus of this article is to Christian mothers or mothers-to-be, although we are going to specifically focus on the challenges of sexuality for mothers who are either pregnant or in the early post-natal phase. We also believe it has relevance to the husband-wife relationship regardless of whether there are any children in the family. Pregnancy is, of course, something that is supremely feminine in character. One way we can look at it is to summarise the impacts into two categories: the physical aspect of your changing body, and the growing expression of your sexuality. Pregnancy is certainly a time when your sexuality is a more prominent feature of your life, and it is a great time to focus on how your sexuality impacts the most important relationships in your day to day life. This can contribute in a material and spiritual way to personal growth and strengthening family relationships in future years.
One of the key impacts of pregnancy is naturally going to be on your love life. That will change a lot during and immediately after pregnancy. Depending on your exact situation, there may be times when you don’t desire your husband at all and when you want him more than was the case before you got pregnant. In any case, you can masturbate when you need to, and since you’ll want to cuddle your belly as the baby inside it grows larger, combining a belly rub with masturbation during the day is a great way to affirm your sexuality during pregnancy. You’re still a sexual woman and the functions of your genitals that relate to arousal, touching and orgasm still work pretty much the same as they did before you got pregnant. It’s important to normalise your sexuality as much as possible during pregnancy because there are so many challenges to it resulting from the numerous physical changes that occur during those nine months. This means that as long as there are no restrictions placed on sexual activity by a medical professional, you should go definitely go for it.
Whether or not you want your husband at any time, your husband can certainly want you more than would have been the case before pregnancy. Men can find their pregnant wife’s round belly very desirable because of its shape, and there is also the added factor that it contains the baby that you have both been making, potentially causing your husband to want to affirm you and your sexuality as well as the baby. Hence in the times when you are kissing and cuddling together, “belly sex” can become more of a physical focus for both of you. However you may want to balance the extra cuddles with consideration of the physical demands of penetrative vaginal intercourse which are increased during pregnancy. We suggest this is a great time to make use of non penetrative sex such as masturbating together or hand stimulation of each other’s genitals, which if practised gently and sensitively with mutual respect, can really add an extra dimension to sexual intercourse, especially as the pregnancy approaches its conclusion. If there are times when you are both horny but you can’t stand the thought of being touched by your husband or you need some physical space from him, allow him to masturbate and let him affirm you and encourage you to masturbate. Perhaps you can both masturbate at the same time but in two different rooms, so that you can at least think of each other, even if you can’t quite manage sharing each other’s bodies during the session.
The post-natal recovery period just after giving birth, which can last for six weeks or more, is a time when regular sexual intercourse is not recommended as your internals need time to heal and return to normal. It’s also going to be a busy time for both of you dealing with the demands of caring for your new child. However, at least for you, it is very important to spend that time helping to get your sexuality back to where it was before the pregnancy. Mothers can find that the physical trauma of the childbirth experience really puts them off sexual intercourse, and spending the time when they have it to rediscover the physical and spiritual pleasures of their genitals through masturbation and orgasm can really work wonders for their love life. Likewise allowing your husband to masturbate during this time can help to keep his desire for you alive during those weeks, and depending on how you feel, it may be possible during some of that period to enjoy some sexually intimate times by substituting penetrative sex with mutual masturbation. Working together to facilitate sexual development of your body during this period is a great way to get your love life back to normal and bring the benefits of a healthy intimacy together back into the marriage and family life after pregnancy.
Lastly we’ll look at the controversial topic of a wife mothering her husband. This can be a situation regardless of whether there are any children in the family or not. We don’t recommend that you consciously mother your husband in everyday life, but only when you are being intimate together and very specifically limited to that context, offering him the opportunity to be reminded of the manner of his birth and early bonding with his own mother, in that he can relate to this through the specific parts of your body which parallel those events. We believe that this gives the opportunity for your husband and you to connect at a very deep emotional level that will add a new aspect to your marriage relationship. Men are hard enough to communicate with usually because they tend to bottle up their thoughts and feelings, so giving him an opportunity to relate to such a significant period of his early life can create an extra dimension of intimacy to your closest times together. Be prepared especially to offer this to him whenever either of you is going through a really tough time emotionally. At those times, the opportunity to relate to each other at such a core level can really make either or both of your days.