A New Mother Recovers Her Sensual Self

by Elizabeth Uppman

To fix this, the books suggest the same old stuff: Make time for sex, dress up and go on a date with your husband, buy nice underwear. This advice just seemed silly. How could movies and lingerie counteract my own body’s chemistry? Still, I felt guilty that I no longer turned to my handsome, passionate husband in the middle of the night. I knew it couldn’t be fun for him to be married to someone who was no longer interested in some of his favorite and most satisfying impulses.

I began to detect an increasing irritation in him—a shortness, a shrinking of generosity. He started pointing out my driving errors. His sarcasm got sharper. It took me awhile to connect his peevishness with my libido problem, but once I figured it out, it made sense. He felt rejected, and it made him mad. I must add that I hadn’t exactly been a peach to live with. Even a dream baby requires a lot of care, so by the end of the day I wanted Chucho not as a lover but as my own personal relief worker. Evenings, after we got the kids squared away, we took turns on the computer and went separately to bed.

When I began to look at this problem head-on, as a problem and not as another shrugging expectation of married life with kids, I realized the whole thing boiled down to resources. How much of me should I allocate to my baby, and how much to my husband? And what long-term damage might my choice inadvertently do to either? I put it this way to a good friend over Saturday lunch.

Anne is a newlywed for the second time; having endured a long, increasingly icy marriage and years of single motherhood, she is newly attuned to the pleasures and responsibilities of married life.

“Is he taking a lot of cold showers?” she asked with real concern.