breast feeding and non-existant sex drive?

[mariekitt24]

I'm breastfeeding and my baby is about 4 months old now. I'm wondering if its common to lose your sex drive while you are breastfeeding, and when people have experienced it coming back. We had to stop having sex while I was pregnant because sex was painful, and were so looking forward to getting back into it after having the baby. Four months later no matter what I can't get myself to physically want or enjoy sex. Also, I got my period already, at 3 months, and still no improvement! It's so frustrating and I feel sorry for my husband who has been so patient! What are your experiences? Thank you!

[justKate]

Yep. Same here. At first i thought it was related to DD's traumatic birth, but its definitely the bfing hormones.

[Engineering_Mama]

From everything I've read and experienced its pretty common. It doesn't last forever though, at least not in my experience. Things gradually got better and then got a lot better for me when DD was about 10 months.

[LindsC]

I've noticed the same thing since DD's birth.

I can't remember how long it took after DS was born, but I had a very long recovery after his birth and I think that had something to do with it.

[AFWife]

My doctor recently told me that EBFing puts your body in a sort of "menopausal" mode...it's all hormones.

[3girls1boy]

Oh yeah, been there many times. For me, until I got my period back, I pretty much had to talk myself into it. I told my husband he had to take time getting me warmed up. It took quite a while, maybe several months after my period came back, before I wanted to initiate. It's hard, but for us, anyway, it forced us to communicate about it much better than we ever had before kids.

[rightkindofme]

I'm 16 months postpartum. Every once in a while I'm 'into' sex enough to feel like, "Well.... ok. I guess. If you want to." I used to be a borderline nympho. This sucks.

[InMediasRes]

With DS, it took a little over a year. With DD it was back with take-me-now pregnancy force at 6 wks PP.

The two births and the two babes were very very different though.

[mamazee]

I think this is more a postpartum thing than a BF thing. Anyway, it lasted a year with #1, and I didn't have that problem with #2.

[MamaJenese]

It was totally that way for me. I think it is a combination of the hormones and just being generally touched out. After a day of nursing one or two babies all day long I just didn't want to be touched. Gradually my sex drive did returned. In the early months I would need some alone time to shower relax and be on my own more then I needed sex KWIM. After I was able to get some time like that my body warmed up to the idea of sex.

[EMS]

Yup, that's me. Glad I'm not the only one.

[Red Pajama]

I felt more like myself after about 6 months, and when my period came back at 12 mos first time, 10 mos. second time, I felt like my (almost) old self.