Your present lack of sexual drive is normal and had its origins in the physical changes that started as soon as you conceived.

During the first three months, a woman’s libido is usually, but not always, reduced. Nearly all women have some nausea and feeling sick is not conducive to either a relaxed or frenzied sex life. Urinary problems, often including urinary tract infections, are common and intercourse may make these worse or perpetuate the symptoms. The hormonal surge of pregnancy is to monthly PMS what a Caribbean hurricane is to a Norfolk gale. It is bad enough that the breasts, instead of being an erotic zone, may be so painful that someone touching them, instead of turning the woman on, turns her off. The mood comes and goes; some women are so excited by pregnancy that all is well and they are elated, others are apprehensive and volatile.

In the second three months of pregnancy most women not only become accustomed to the hormonal changes and to the idea of motherhood but many find a great surge in sexual interest. This is stimulated by changes in the pelvic circulation that lead to engorge- ment of the genitalia that may increase sexual response.

In the last three months many women feel ungainly and unattractive. It is not surprising that sex is not foremost in their minds and that they deflect their husband’s advances with assurances that all will return to normal after the baby is born.

How little do they know. The dynamics of the family have changed for ever. A close partnership of two has become a potentially difficult triangle in which the woman, so recently only a wife, is now both a wife and a mother. Her all- engrossing love for her child and her worries about it have to be concealed if she is not to exclude her husband.

Despite her desire to express the love she feels for her husband, you, like most women, feel too tired, exhausted and preoccupied to make love. You may have expected your body to have returned immediately to its old shape, but this can take months.

Although many women derive huge pleasure from breast-feeding, one hormone, called prolactin, is maintained at a high level while you are lactating. And high levels of prolactin depress ovarian function and reduce libido.

It is said that having a baby is nature’s method of birth control. In fact, it is regular breast-feeding, at under four-hour intervals, that maintains prolactin levels and reduces libido rather than the actual birth. The birth, too, may have caused some scarring that can be tender to touch. Lubrication is also reduced, another feature of high prolactin levels.

After eight months you will soon be finding that your libido is stirring. When you re-start sexual relations, initially find ways of making love, short of penetration, if that remains a step too far. Once sex play is established, extend it to penetrative sex, but use plenty of lubricant and support your bottom on pillows so that your pelvis is raised and your back is less likely to suffer. If you are breast-feeding, warn your husband if fondling is uncomfortable.

You should also forewarn him that for a time changes to your vagina may have made painful some of the actions that have been part of your ritual since you married.

SUZI GODSON

Most pregnancy literature advises pregnant women to wait until six weeks after the birth of their baby to resume sexual intercourse. Which is amusing really. Because although most new parents will, out of a subconscious sense of duty to the abstract concept of siblings, check that everything down below is still functioning, the words post-natal and sex just don’t belong together. More couples than are willing to admit it find that sex drops right off the radar for six to 12 months after the birth.