SWM 039 – Anonymous Questions from January 2019 – Part 3

This is the third and final part of our January anonymous questions from our Have A Question page.  I meant to get this out sooner, but I was asked to preach in my home church last week, and it takes me a couple of weeks to prepare a sermon.  I hope to have it up on the podcast soon as I was discussing Jesus’ answer to the question “Can I divorce my wife for any (and every) reason?” (Matthew 19:1-2).

If you heard the previous two parts of these questions, I was trying to sort the questions by topic.  Today we’re tackling some questions about sex drive and then a bunch that didn’t fit into any nice categories.

So, on with the questions.

Question 19: Sex drive and pregnancy

A little over a year ago I became pregnant, and by the end of the pregnancy I’d gone from having almost no sex drive (birth control pills had killed it previously) to being very high drive. In fact it was OCD high– 2-3 times per day high– WAY higher than my husband’s.

Before that I would have been happy with having sex about 1-2 times a month. My husband and I attributed this change to the extra testosterone in my system (it was a boy baby). However it was our second son (fourth pregnancy) and nothing like this had happened when I became pregnant with our first son (eight years before–right after I’d quit using birth control pills).

Well now that I’m five months postpartum, I’m wondering if the change might be permanent, because there’s been almost no decrease at all in my drive since having our baby. Fortunately my husband has been super understanding and tries the best he can to keep up, but for me it’s frustrating feeling like having sex so ridiculously often! It has given me a glimpse of what my husband must have gone through when I was gatekeeping early on in our marriage.

So I guess my questions are, first, have you ever heard of anything like this?? Do you think it was the pregnancy that caused it, and any thoughts on whether it might have permanently “reset” my hormones? I mean, it’s fun having sex more often, but sometimes the best sex is after waiting a few… days, not hours… if you know what I mean??? Also it takes a lot of time to have sex so often, and with a new baby we’re sacrificing sleep for more sex.

All that said, I will say that through this experience, God has answered every prayer I ever said for our marriage and then some! It has in many ways been like a second honeymoon for us. We went from having a difficult marriage with lots of unhealthy conflict to a marriage where we honor, respect and serve one another. Any conflict is a healthy discussion now, and if it does get heated at all it’s just for a moment until we realize what’s happening. We’ve even started praying together about our sex life. Never, ever in a million years did I think that that would happen! We’re also reading every book on marriage we can get our hands on. I feel like we’re living proof that God really can use a vibrant sex life to totally transform a marriage.

Anyway, glad to have come across your blog, thanks for any wisdom you can share!

First off, every pregnancy is different, even so much that some pregnancies are the same, if that makes any sense (I mean, if they’re all different, sometimes the difference must be that they’re the same, right?).

So, yes, I’ve definitely heard of women’s sex drives changing during and after pregnancy.  Some go up in the first term, some second, some third, some go down during different ones,