Having kids can affect your sex life, your view of your own desirability and leave things feeling a bit beige in the bedroom. So how do we get that spark back? Dr Nikki Goldstein, a Sexologist who holds a doctorate degree in Human Sexuality, shares her tips with host Amelia Philips on how to start feeling body positive and sexy again, how to make time for those spontaneous intimate moments with your partner and how to start the conversation about spicing things up in the bedroom.
Below is an unedited transcript of the podcast episode:
There’s a dilemma that I think every couple has to grapple with when they first bring their baby home. How comfortable do we feel having sex with a sleeping baby in the room? I can remember one morning when Lockey, our first born was still asleep next to us in the cot and one thing led to another, and Tim and I, we are getting jiggy with it.
And next thing I can feel someone staring at me, I look over and there he is in all his cuteness. Standing up in the cot, staring at us with this look on his face, like, What the hell are you two doing? And then he puts both his alarms out, says Mama Tim, Just side. Yep. Game over. And now they’re older. They just barge in at any moment, like little ninjas, our bedroom is not exactly the romantic setting it used to be.
And I don’t see things changing anytime soon.
This is Healthy Her with Amelia Phillips, and in this episode we’re going to bring the spark back into our sex lives. We’re going to work out what to do when our sex drives may not align with our partners, How not to let our changing body shape after babies affect our pleasure, and also learn some adventurous tips that we may not be expecting.
Joining me is Dr. Nicki Goldstein, a sexologist and relationship expert who holds a doctorate degree in human sexuality, plus she’s published books, podcasts, and has twice been voted Australia’s best sex educator. Dr. Nicki, I couldn’t think of a better person to speak to on the topic. . I’m everyone’s best friend at a cocktail.
Oh, absolutely. I would love to get a few drinks into you and hear some of the stories. Nicky. As a mom, there’s so many things that we are trying so hard at. We’re raising healthy, happy kids. We’re trying hard at work. Our own health. Our body, the environment is just exhausting. Now, I read some research recently that people in heterosexual relationships have sex on average of 1.4 times a week, and one in five have sex less than once a month.
Now, I’m sure this would be much lower for parents. Do we really need to be working on our sex life is just, you know, a bit of a beige sex life. Okay. Well I think just even hearing you say that, I feel. Because there is so much pressure on women these days really to have it all. And a banging sex life is included in that.
And I think it’s okay to have mediocre sex for a period of time. You know, we also need to challenge what is good and great sex. Is it multiple orgasms? Is it being able to tick off every position in the Karma Sutra and ps? The Karma Sutra is a bunch of Bs anyway. So we really also need to, I think as a society in general, challenge what it is that we are trying to achieve with our sex lives, and also the pressure that we get from all the different messaging out there that we should be having sex in a particular way.
I mean, I’ve heard that a good sex life comes down to intimacy, and I definitely agree with that. You know, it’s not just about being a screwdriver and getting it over and done with, You know, the best sex that you have is. Feeling that intimate connection with your partner. Do you have any tips for us?
Busy, tired, exhausted moms to drive up the intimacy so that it will lead to that kind of deeper connection, and then hopefully that. Much deeper desire with our partners. Well, I think intimacy is one of the reasons why people desire sex. And there are many different ones. And even if you are tired and exhausted and feeling run down, you, you might have sex with your partner because you wanna feel desired again, and you wanna feel.
Sexy and you wanna feel like you’re something else besides a milk factory. But if we’re having a look at intimacy specifically, I really believe it’s everything that you do outside of the bedroom that really helps with intimacy inside the bedroom. Because when we talk about intimacy, no one really knows how to define it anyway.
But I think the best way is explaining to people. It’s a moment where you can feel vulnerable and connected with someone. So if you can find ways during your everyday, Side of the bedroom life where you can be vulnerable with each other. You can talk about how you’re feeling, your emotions. You can let your wall down.
It might even mean having those moments where there is a touch or there is a kiss or there’s a moment. Even if it’s briefly just for the two of you, that is where you’re going to get that intimate. See that when you do get to the bedroom and you’re tired and you’re exhausted and you know you have this very small window of sleep before you’re interrupted by kids, that you then have that want and that desire to physically connect as well.
And I think this is part of the equation that we miss out on. Everybody wants a toy or a lube or something that is that quick fix. , but it’s all the things that we are doing in our relationship that really then impacts your desire and even your motivation to be physically connecting with your partner somehow.
When it comes to, you know, in the bedroom and intimacy time, would you have any tips for us moms that have partners that are particularly challenging to. Them to be vulnerable. . Well, when we talk about vulnerability use is not about making them confess to you the moments in their childhood that challenged them and every little emotion that’s going on in their head.
Because for some people being vulnerable is a challenge, but it could be a really small moment where someone’s able to say to you, You know what? I’ve had a really tough day and I just, I just need someone to talk to, or even being able to discuss with them how they’re feeling about a specific subject and giving them permission to express that.
It’s important not to push somebody if they do have their wall up a bit, because it doesn’t mean that you can’t be intimate with them, their level of intimacy if they’re not ready to be vulnerable. May be physical touch, and I think this is one of the challenging things for a lot of women specifically, is that men can be vulnerable and intimate through sex.
And we do feel pressured to feel like we have to have sex in order to keep the relationship going. And when there is more pressure from a men, There can be this imbalance that I think affects a lot of people. It feels like the reverse we’re being hunted down as the women we’re the ones that are having to give into his sexual desires when an actual fact his longing to have sex is his way of being intimate.
So I think we need to be very careful when we are looking at intimacy and vulnerability that if somebody isn’t able to be vulnerable outside of the bedroom and they, you don’t feel like they can be intimate all the time, that when you get into the bedroom if they are wanting to have sex with you, it’s not because they’re just horny.
I mean, they may be horny, but it’s also because this is a way that they feel that they can connect with you and be intimate with you. And I. That is the challenge. We need that intimacy, and sometimes we don’t feel like having sex, but our partners longing to have sex with us may have a lot to do with them being intimate with us.
That’s where I think this idea of expectations can be so. So dangerous for us in relationships. You know, it’s putting the expectations on someone of how they should act, how they should be romantic, even what they should be doing in the bedroom. You know, we all enter the bedroom with these expectations and if those expectations are not met, we then become disappointed and think that something’s wrong.
Really, when it, when it comes to having a healthy and fulfilling sex life and even relationship, we need to be challenging those expect. First so that we’re able to move forward working with things that are real and that, uh, Things that fulfill our needs and our wants. Not an expectation that we developed from years of looking at advertising and social media.
Well, let’s talk about expectations. Let’s talk about expectations around sex and when you are and your partners. Needs are completely different. You know, I’ve got one friend who pretends to be asleep every time her partner crawls into the bed, cuz she says she doesn’t wanna move cuz she even moves a little bit.
He counts on her. And then I’ve got, you know, another friend who, she likes to have sex at night. He likes to have sex in the morning so they never have sex. How do you coach couples that have these desires that don’t match up? Well, I think first of all, and what’s really interesting talking about your friend that pretends she’s asleep and you know he PS on her, I actually believe that women have been brought up with very negative beliefs about sexuality and we seem to have normalized this idea.
A woman is the gatekeeper and a man is the one to pursue her. And I feel like that sees a lot of women’s sexuality go silent because they do get to a point where they feel tired. They maybe taking on a different role like motherhood, and it’s nearly become an automatic thing that sexuality switches off.
And that’s okay because we are not the pursuers, we’re the gatekeepers. So I think, you know, that’s something that’s important to look at. But when we come to different sexual desires, different wants, different needs, it’s always going to happen in a relationship. No matter if you’ve just had children, if you are you newly together and just dating, we are different human beings sexually, and the biggest thing is about finding compromises, but.
When we’re looking for compromises, we also need to stop and consider why we’re having sex. So if we go back to this idea that you were talking about before with intimacy, for a lot of couples, they like to have sex because, well, it feels good. They feel close to their partner, they feel bonded with them, they feel some pleasure with them.
They feel sexually desirable. Now, if we look at ways that that can be achieved, it doesn’t always have to be penetration sex, which for a lot of people is the difficult part. For a lot of women when they’re tired and they just don’t feel like putting the energy in, maybe their bodies are not up to it.
This idea of them pushing ourselves to have penetration sex can feel very overwhelming. But if we go back to why we’re having. Which might be to bond, to connect, to feel sexually desirable, to feel intimate, then that can be achieved in other ways. You know, we don’t stop to talk and look at the other sexual acts that can be involved, that can achieve those things without having to perform penetration sex.
So, you know, that’s a great way of finding a co. Somebody like sex at nighttime, someone like sex in the morning. Maybe there’s some things that you can do at nighttime in the morning that you both have time for that still feel good and still allow you to connect. But it doesn’t have to be the whole an hour or so of rolling around and making it look all, um, you know, energetic
And it doesn’t always have to end in orgasm either, does it? No. Or either party. And we have this interesting concept for women these days called the orgasm gap, which. I love to talk about, but you, we don’t have to have an orgasm and sex can feel good without an orgasm. However, the other side of that is women’s orgasm for so long has been seen as the inferior thing.
You know, we have normalized it for so long that women don’t have to have orgasms, but men do. So when we look at that situation, we’ve also gotta find that balance of, okay, if you don’t have time, if you take a lot longer and you don’t have, you know, an hour, an hour and a half, or however long it takes you to have sex with your partner in order to have an orgasm, that’s okay.
But if you do have the time or you can make the time, then it is important and you should be able to speak up and say, Well, this is what I need and this is what I want as well. You know, sex should be pleasurable for everyone involved. It shouldn’t be a matter of a woman’s orgasm, always taking second place.
But I think it is important when we are having a look at balancing a sex life with our partner and everything else that’s got going on in the world at the moment, that if you do engage in some form of physical intimacy without an orgasm, that’s okay. So it’s a, it’s a really challenging, uh, balancing act with this one as long as you remember that if it is a matter of.
Someone else’s orgasm feeling more important than yours. If that’s the reason why you are not experiencing one, then that’s when you do really need to speak up. I think it’s also really important to look at the changing body shape of a woman. Um, and when I say body shape, I’m not just talking physicality, but also structurally.
I mean, I had four babies, three of which were over four kilos, . Wow. And that makes some changes to your body that I don’t know if you know, uh, will, will ever come back. Said that I did work with a women’s physiotherapist, and I have to say that realigning my pelvic floor and doing a lot of rehab made a dramatic difference to my sex life and the intensity orgasms, and I have to say that for two years when I hadn’t addressed.
That issue, I found it very hard to orgasm at the same intensity. As soon as I got all that pelvic floor back, it was like, Hello, This is what I forgot it felt like. Um, so I do urge moms out there that whether you’ve had prolapse issues or you know, whether your pelvic floor might just be a little weakened to, you know, do your pelvic floor exercises because it really does make a difference.
And when we’re looking. You know that part of our anatomy, we’re dealing with muscles and nerve endings and blood flow and you know, you need to consider blood flow like with muscles in your body. If you strengthen, say your arm muscle, you’re gonna be able to increase the blood flow to that area. So if we’re able to strengthen the pelvic floor muscle, we’re also able to increase that blood flow to the area, which makes it more sensitive.
So I think that there is a lot of talk around pelvic floor issues and there’s a lot of great exercises on the market. But reaching out to a professional like you’re saying, to be able to get that extra help, I think is so important. Because I have heard physiotherapists say that it’s like getting a personal trainer.
For a lot of women, they don’t know what they’re activating and they don’t know exactly what they should be. Tensing and releasing. So being able to get the help from somebody else to be able to understand what is the right muscles and what are the right sensations to work on, I think is amazing for all women.
No matter if you’ve experienced childbirth or not, we need to understand that part of our body more to be able to understand how to work with it.
What about the aesthetics? So our changing body shape after babies. How can we enjoy sex when maybe we’re not as happy with our post baby body and you know, go as far as, you know, some of the moms I talk to say they loathe their body and they just do not feel sexy after kids. Well, I think this is a huge issue because it’s not one that’s easily resolved and.
I feel like we do need to take the pressure off women that immediately after they have birth, they’re supposed to just bounce back and look the same that they were before. I mean, that’s more of a wider societal issue, but when it comes to the individual, the work needs to be done at finding that self-confidence no matter what your body looks like.
You know, I don’t think that we’re ever completely satisfied with what our body looks like. I think back to when I was. 18, 19, 20, and the thoughts that I would have about my body that now I look back and I think something completely different. Don’t you wanna go back and just like shake yourself and just go, Are you crazy?
You are so hot and sexy. Why are you worried about your inner thigh gap or your cleavage, or whatever? And I do think that’s a similar attitude that we need to have as our body ages and as it goes through changes as it does with childbirth. Because there will be one point in our life where we’ll probably look back and think those same things and think, why didn’t we just take ourselves and shake ourselves and say, Give yourself a break.
You know, there is a journey that’s involved in this and you’re still amazing and beautiful and sexy. Just some things have changed and that’s okay. A changing body is not a. Thing. We just need to find the confidence within that. So I know it’s not. Easy thing to do and it’s not a quick thing, but a lot of it has to do with how we view ourselves and our bodies.
But I also think that when we look at doing something to make ourselves feel confident, those acts that are considered self care. And I used to feel really guilty cuz I’d say things like, Wow, I love, you know, when I get. My hair done or a spray tan, or I got my teeth whitened the other day and I felt sexy when I got my teeth whitened.
And someone pointed out to me recently that it’s not about the physical look of those things, it’s the fact that I’m doing something for myself. And I learned a lot from that. And I think that that’s when we have a look at with our confidence, it really is about taking a little bit of time to do. That gives back to ourselves and that we can find confidence that way.
Um, I’m also a fan of sexy lingerie . I think that it goes, it goes a long way and for some people they want to feel a little bit held in, and that’s not a matter of being ashamed of our bodies, but with the physical acts of sex and. Moving around a bed and things tend to wo a little bit more for a lot of women.
They’ve said to me, You know, I like to wear a nice bra. It doesn’t have an underwear, but it’s got some lace and it just feels like my boobs are in place, , and they’re not getting outta control. Things like that can really help when it comes to feeling more secure in your body, in the bedroom as well. But I think it also needs to be, have a conversation that you have to have with the person that you’re having sex with, right?
If you are feeling, you know, you are struggling with your sense of self worth in the bedroom. Then you need to share that thought with them because it’s their view on you that may also help you let go of that. If your partner’s able to touch you and say, You know, I think you’re sexy just the way that you are, this is all in your head.
Then it also might be a shifting point that you need to realize that you are sexually desirable. You just need to challenge these negative thoughts that do pop into your. Do you know what really helped with my confidence? Um, in doing research for this episode, I came across a porn site and it’s almost like an Instagram for couples where they’re posting, you know, pictures and videos of themselves in action.
And I must say I fell down the rabbit hole for quite a while. , uh, endless scrolling and watching. And what I loved about it was it wasn’t a produced pornography where they’re all size six with fake boobs. It was real people. And yeah, there were a few where I’m like, Whoa, hello. But all shapes and sizes and there were girls out there that you would not call conventional sizes or anything like that.
And they were getting into it and just having the best time. And that actually. Really refreshing and shocking at the same time, watching all these different couples, but I actually really liked that as opposed to the stylized, filtered, unrealistic porns that you see out there. But there is a lot of porn these days.
It’s very empowering to women and I feel like. Different bodies are represented and that’s what we need to feel better about ourselves is to see somebody that we identify with, getting it on and looking sexy and enjoying themselves. And it probably would help if we saw that I think more in mainstream media as well, so that we don’t have these expectations to look a certain way.
The more that we see of that in society, I think the more. Women will feel confident about their own bodies, and it is important to see that diversity, whether it’s porn or whether it’s in other areas of our lives. So for us mum’s sitting here thinking, You know what? Yeah, it is time to lock the bedroom door, keep the kids downstairs and spice it up a little bit.
What are some of your top tips? We mentioned porn. I don’t know if you’re for it or against it. Um, hit me with the expert tips, Nicky. Well, I am porn positive. For starters, I think you need to be. Looking at something that makes you feel good, not something that makes you feel shameful. So definitely don’t shy away from that if that’s a fantasy for you.
I think the biggest thing that people don’t talk about is Lu Blue, Blue, blue lu, um, and the right lubricant. You know, as we go on in relationships and as we do age, you know, the idea of penetration sex can sometimes feel uncomfortable because. There is more friction. There’s not a, there’s not as much natural lubrication as there used to be.
It doesn’t mean that you’re not getting as turned on, but a nice lubricant. So things don’t become uncomfortable is super important. I think also to taking charge of an ownership of your sexual pleasure. So women are taught often that it’s the responsibility of someone else. So like I was saying with orgasms, you, if there is something that you want, you.
Speak up. And that might be something like a sex toy that might be saying to your partner, You know, I’d like to have more orgasms, and 80% of women achieve orgasm through clitoral stimulation. So that might mean bringing a sex toy into the bedroom. So you have every right to say to your partner, I want this to be more enjoyable too.
You know, I think let’s go and invest in a sex toy that will help me to have an orgasm. But also, I think it’s just finding some one thing different to do in the bedroom, and you’ve gotta look at those. Usual routines that you get into. And it may be that routine of put the kids to bed, jump into bed, your partner rolls over, kind of gives you a bit of a poke from behind and you think, Oh, okay, let’s, let’s do this.
And it’s a routine that happens, breaking up that routine. So it could be. Trying something new in the bedroom, like a sex toy. It could be wearing lingerie one day just to change the dynamics that you feel sexy about yourself and you feeling sexy about yourself allows your partner to see you in a different way too.
It might be a different time of day. It might be a different room in the house. I think bathrooms need to be sexier because it’s probably the one place where you actually can lock the door and pretend like you’re both having a shower or one’s having a shower and the other one’s brushing their teeth.
You need to get out of those usual routines that you do so that you don’t get bored with them because. If you were to walk to work the same way every day, you would get bored. If you could take different roots on some days it would be more interesting and that’s how liken in the bedroom as well. You need to do some different things instead of getting into that usual behavior pattern, because anybody, no matter if you have kids or not, if you get into that usual behavior pattern, you will eventually find it boring.
For those of us a little bit out of the loop, what is the best lube and the best sex toy that we should be using at the moment? Or where do we go to find these such things? Well, you’re very lucky that you’re talking to the right person because I now have an, um, online shop selling some of these products, and that was really born outta the frustration of wanting to create a.
Base for people where they weren’t inundated with products that were harmful for the body. And also a lot of options. You know, some pages you could get 7,000 vibrators and who knows what the right vibrator really is. So I’m really passionate about products that are body safe. So I think whatever product that you are using, and there are a.
Great, high reputable brands on the market. You need to really make sure that it’s made from a body safe product. So that might be glass, ceramic, silicon glass, glass down there. Is that safe? Yes. Mykel floor is pretty strong these days, honey. You can get solid glass. Still do. Um, and I promise you, they don’t break.
They’re, they’re very strong. And you can also get crystal as well. You know, the options are endless. But it’s just making sure that you don’t use plastics that have what’s called a fate in them, which is a chemical that makes them more soft and mallable, but it can break down and it is linked to cancer.
So making sure that it’s body safe also with lubricants. If you do have a sensitivity, because for a lot of women, they think that they are, um, experiencing thrush from what they’re experiencing is skin sensitivities. And our skin’s reaction to something that is going on might be close to a period. It might be associated with friction during sex, but it’s really important that if you do have sensitive skin or a sensitive vulva area, That you use a lubricant that has the least ingredients possible.
So you can get a lot of lubes on the market that are vegan, that are, um, organic, but check the ingredients just to actually see how much is in them. Because the more ingredients you get, the more complex it can be. So opting for an organic loop, yes, but just making sure that you read over the ingredients and make sure that it is more on the basic side.
Um, I think the right lubricant in that capacity can really help. One final parting tip for us moms who may be struggling to feel as confident and sexy as we did before kids. The one thing I can tell moms is that you have to be creative. And when I say creative, you need to think outside the box when it comes to sex post children, because you might not have the time, you might not have the energy.
So it does need focus in your life. And a great example of this is, You know, commonly have a lot of people say, Well, we don’t have time for sex because we put the kids to bed. They wake up during the night or they get up early. There’s no time for us. But I challenged one couple once and I said, Well, isn’t there this window that when you put children to bed and when you go to bed, That most people end up on the couch watching Netflix or some show that’s on TV or doing some chore around the house.
And this couple said, yes. I said, Well, maybe if you put the kids to bed and they don’t wake up till later through the night and there is that hour or two where they’re asleep and there’s chores to be done or interesting things on tv, instead of doing those things, maybe you could go be physically intimate with each other.
And they kind of looked at me. Actually, we’d never thought about it like that. So maybe Netflix is one of the things that is dangerous to us, because instead of numbing ourselves out or doing things around the house, we need to find those moments and put priority on our sex life and be creative in those moments to say, Okay, instead of doing the washing, I’ll keep it till tomorrow instead of watching Bachelor in Paradise, which I know would be very hard to miss.
You know, I’m going to have sex with my partner. Put priority on that intimacy time with each. I love that and I love the other two messages that you had, which was around intimacy is cultivated outside of the bedroom. I think that’s a really important point for us moms to remember. And also your point around taking charge of our own sexuality where.
It’s actually up to us to feel sexy. And if it’s spying, lingerie, if it’s watching something, if it’s being a little adventurous, you know, we have the power to spark our own sexuality back up again. And it actually, I’m really excited it, it motivates me now, it brings the control back to me, which I love, which is how we should be educating women about sex in general.
And it’s one of the biggest frustrations that I have because it often, When women get to the point where they’re struggling with their sexuality post children, that they then have to go and really explore and challenge what their sex life means. So wouldn’t it be great if we could empower younger women to say, You are in charge and you’re in control of your sexuality, and what you want is up to you, Rather than wait till they get to that.
On behalf of all the mums out there. Thank you, Dr. Nicki, and the partners as well. , it’s been enlightening. Thank you for having me.
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