“When you have kids, sex is rare and spontaneous”

You DON'T WANT to have sex after giving birth. For the first week, going to the toilet hurts and is scary. In the first month, I was scared even to think about penetrative sex. The body needs time to recover fully. That's why I'm shocked by people who have babies a year apart.

Why it's hard for me to get back to sex:

1. Hormones. I'm still breastfeeding, and that changes hormone levels — in particular, it lowers estrogen (which is responsible for arousal). In 2.5 years, I've almost never felt that I really need sex right now.

2. Time — every free minute counts. Sex has dropped out of the routine, and something else has taken its place. My daughter still wakes up several times a night. A calm, romantic evening is out of the question for now; our whole personal life happens in a rush.

As for “getting in the mood for sex,” things work a bit differently now. There's only time for sex when the child falls asleep. You know the nap will be over soon, so your focus switches very easily and quickly. Planning sex always seemed sad and vibe-killing to me. But maybe if we had planned it, we'd be having more of it now.

About the body. I used to be embarrassed by how my breasts looked and thought I was fat, somehow not right. Giving birth got rid of all my hang-ups; I really came to love my body. My breasts stopped bothering me, and I gained a kind of confidence. I think this has a lot to do with breastfeeding: I began interacting with my breasts more often and understood what they're actually for. You could say we became friends. And now I also eat what I want and don't gain weight. For someone who has suffered all their life over “excess weight,” that's a huge relief.

Before we had kids, my wife and I could devote all our free time to each other and had sex anywhere, anytime. Now they “eat up” most of our time and attention. Since the births, we've had less oral sex and more anal.

Getting back to sex wasn't hard. We even had sex a few hours before the birth and on the first day after being discharged from the hospital.*

The thought that you're just as emotionally and sensually close as before the child arrived helps stir up memories of passionate sex that you want to repeat.

I think sex has become more conservative. There's less of the extreme, and the act itself has become shorter. Besides that, my wife's desire has dropped. But we've started using sex toys more often and now keep adding to our collection. Sometimes we have to plan sex, but more often everything happens spontaneously.

Having children didn't affect how much sex we have at all — there's as much of it now as there was before they were born.

I think getting back to sex after pregnancy is hard if the birth was difficult. In my case it was: I had severe tears, and the stitches took a long time to heal. I was very afraid to have sex again and thought it would hurt.

After a hard day at work, and then time spent with the kids, sex goes down great and works on me like a sleeping pill — I sleep wonderfully afterwards. I think what matters here is that the parents don't adjust to the child; rather, the child fits into their life, which is already set up in a certain way.

Since the kids were born, sex has become better and more interesting. I put that down solely to the fact that my husband and I now know each other better. We also try to keep experimenting and coming up with something new.

But my body is my sore spot. It feels like it has changed by 70%. My second birth was a C-section, after which I got a roll of fat on my belly that nothing will get rid of, because the muscle's shape and function have been damaged. That really bothers me. On top of that, I put on extra weight that I also can't manage to lose back to where I was. I really want to get my old figure back, and I'm thinking about getting rid of my stretch marks.

My husband sometimes makes a reproachful comment about my shape. But each time I remind him what it cost me to carry and give birth to our two children, and the subject is closed immediately.

When our first child arrived, it was easy to have sex. Only tiredness could get in the way. Now that we have two kids, everything has to line up: the older one has to be at kindergarten and the younger one has to be asleep. And he can't sleep long at home — 30–40 minutes and he's awake. In a word, when you have kids, sex is rare and spontaneous.

It was hard getting back to sex after the birth. First of all, it's scary. As my wife put it: “Imagine, a whole human being came out of me not long ago.” Women definitely need to see doctors and check that everything is okay. I know that for some people recovery takes more than a year, but for us it was quicker. Plus, desire helped. And despite all the worries and routine, it's still there.