What a 'Geriatric Pregnancy' Taught Me About Menopause, Matrescence, and My Own Body
During one of my medical appointments while I was pregnant, it was casually thrown into conversation that for a ‘geriatric pregnancy’ like mine (because being over the age of 35 makes you geriatric), it is a possibility that I’d come out the other side of pregnancy in peri-menopause. This stopped me in my tracks. I still feel about 21, so to be told that I might be in peri-menopause in mere months was confusing, confronting and terrifying. I say terrifying because there is so much fear-mongering around menopause, with the social script telling women they are invisible once they are outside of child-bearing ages. If we’re not being objectified sexually, we are being objectified reproductively, as if we are obsolete if we can no longer ‘make babies’.
October is menopause awareness month, and it’s got me thinking about women's health and the general lack of research and awareness as to what the actual fk goes on in our bodies throughout the life stages. I am obviously thinking about this a lot more as I’ve recently gone through my own hormonal, emotional and body-based transition (aka chaos) during pregnancy, and postpartum.
Slightly different to my previous blogs, I wanted to share a few things that happened to me personally during post-partum that I (naively) did not anticipate would happen to me as a sex and couples therapist. I didn’t think they would happen because I feel like my qualifications and experience have afforded me sooo much education and evidence-based tools to support what can happen post-partum from a hormonal, relational and sexual perspective.
I have experienced disconnection from my self-identity, not just sexually but found myself questioning who I even am, what I enjoy and even what I want to wear.
I experienced pain with sex and anticipatory anxiety which perpetuated the pain. This happened to me even knowing all the ‘tips and tricks’ to reducing pain and stress with penetration and having the most supportive partner I could have hoped for.
At times I felt my desire was so non-existent that I genuinely wouldn’t have cared if I never had sex again. That feels absolutely wild to say as someone who has spent most of her adult life with a keen interest in nurturing sensual and sexual self identity for myself and others.
There’s something both humbling and clarifying about living inside your own clinical expertise. I have spent years sitting with clients through exactly these experiences; the identity questioning, the pain, the absent desire. I have held space for them with the steady confidence of someone who understood from an intellectual, psychological and physiological level, what was happening and why. And then I went through it myself, and my understanding has shifted.
Knowing something and living it are two completely different things. I want to be clear that this doesn’t mean therapy is only supportive if you have a therapist who has lived your experiences, because no two people will have the same experience of the same thing. What I will say is that education doesn’t protect you from the lived experience of the chaos that is life. The research doesn’t hold your nervous system steady at 3am when you feel like a stranger in your own body. And the clinical tools are well and good when you remember to implement them, which can be extremely difficult when you’re sleep deprived, stressed and hormonally fkd. This is the struggle that so many of us face; we might have all the tools in our toolkit, but there are times when we feel like we don’t have anything that can help us, or we can’t even remember what tools have helped us before. Sometimes we just don’t know what the fck we’re doing! That’s us as humans, not robots.
On Losing Myself, and Figuring it Out Again (Spoiler: I have not figured it out)
Matrescence has definitely been a buzz word lately, and it feels quite timely that as I’ve been living it as it’s become more spoken about. Matrescence describes the profound biological, psychological, social, and identity transformation a person undergoes as they become a mother. The word is framed off of adolescence, and the connection emphasises the level of change, as adolescence is widely understood to be an intense hormonal, physical and identity changing phase of life. Both reflect transitional stages of life where you no longer feel like your old self, but haven’t fully settled into the new one yet.
Unlike adolescence, the way we speak about post-partum is almost exclusively pathological or biological. Postpartum depression, anxiety, physical recovery, the ‘six-week sign off’ (don’t get me started on this). In postpartum it feels like the goal is to get back to how and who we were before, as though the pre-pregnancy version of us is ‘right’ and the forever changed version of us is a problem to be solved or ‘returned to normal’.
The issue with the way we’ve looked at postpartum for so long is that we can’t ‘go back’ to how we were. Our bodies, brain chemistry and practical lives have forever changed. At nearly 10 months post-partum, and as a business owner who was quick to return to ‘full-time’ work with my little one in daycare just two days a week (grl math), I’m still on the path to acceptance of this.
I feel grateful in many ways that my post-partum experience has not been complicated; it’s been pretty textbook ‘normal’ in terms of mine and bubs overall health and routine. What I have struggled with the most has been the identity disconnection, and attempts to make space for a whole new version of me (mumma), without much willingness from my other versions to actually make space. Losing my connection to my sexual self has been significant because of the work that I do, but more fundamentally, I’ve found myself uncertain about what I enjoy, what I talk about other than sleep schedules and work, and even what I want to wear.
The research reminds me this is not unusual, but the living, breathing, human in me feels a bit pissed off by it. I’ve recently come to realise that underneath my frustration that I haven’t bounced back to my social, sex and business life is actually grief. Grief that I can’t make independent and spontaneous decisions in the same way I used to. That I can’t work late into the night to get shit done for the business, can’t binge watch Love is Blind or Real Housewives, or have sex any time of the day that I feel like. Having a child is absolutely the best thing I’ve ever done, and has taught me so much already in 9 months, AND being a mum is also the most inconvenient thing when it comes to everything else I love. It is complicated. Two polar opposite things can be true at the same time.
On pain, pleasure, and what is actually possible
After feeling so sure that my professional interest in working with sexual pain would shield me from it, I experienced a very rude shock when I found myself in the trifecta of pain, anticipatory anxiety and avoidance of sex. This happened even knowing all the ‘tips and tricks’ to reducing pain and anxiety with sex (particularly penetration), and having the most supportive partner I could have hoped for.
Post-partum and breastfeeding place the body in a hypoestrogenic state, meaning low estrogen directly affects vaginal tissue, lubrication and pelvic floor function in ways that can make sex, particularly penetrative sex, uncomfortable or painful. The evidence-base for supporting these symptoms includes extra lubricant, vaginal estrogen, pelvic floor awareness and more ‘foreplay’ or build-up of arousal before attempting penetration. It also includes open communication about what is happening for you, not pushing through the pain (which will in fact make it worse), and considering what is possible from a pleasure perspective. Pleasure is certainly accessible to us, should we want to explore sensually and sexually during this phase of life, but maybe it doesn’t include penetration or anything that feels uncomfortable or painful for a period of time. There are heaps of ways to connect sensually that aren’t PiV (I even wrote a list of ideas here).
Intimacy doesn’t require sex, and giving yourself genuine, unhurried permission to explore what feels good in that moment rather than trying to recreate what felt good before, is both clinically sound and revolutionary. I want to acknowledge that unhurried feels like an oxymoron when it comes to parenthood with a child who naps for a max of 30-mins at a time, but the point still stands.
On desire’s disappearing act
When I wrote that at times I genuinely wouldn’t have cared less if I never had sex again, I meant it. For someone whose professional identity is built around sexuality and pleasure, that felt enormous. It felt like a loss of something fundamental. The research confirms this experience is both common and clinically significant. Studies tracking sexual function from pregnancy to twelve months postpartum consistently showed a gradual increase in desire over time, with the lowest point being 6-8 weeks post-partum. Importantly, more than half of birthing folks still meet a clinical ‘dysfunction’ threshold at six to twelve months postpartum, meaning they are significantly impacted sexually well into the first year of parenthood. For those who breastfeed, the hormonal suppression and loss of body agency reduces desire even further. The more you breastfeed, the longer estrogen remains suppressed which impacts lubrication, arousal and contributes to pain. This can last for months after weaning off breast-feeding, so we are talking well beyond the first year for those who continue with breastfeeding after the first few months.
I spend my days talking about how desire is complex, multi-faceted and often responsive (meaning you need sensually and sexually relevant ‘content’ in the environment for your desire to turn on). What postpartum adds into the equation is not only low estrogen, but loss of body autonomy, changes to the ‘function’ of nipples and other erogenous zones which can feel very un-sexy. Throw in sleep deprivation and you’ve got yourself a fck-tonne of sexual brakes.And that doesn’t even account for anyone who experiences any type of physical or emotional birth trauma!
What supported me was open communication with my partner about what was happening with my desire (or lack thereof), extra effort from both of us to get my brain and body turning on, and a genuine no-pressured acceptance that this was where I was right now. Emphasis on both of us, acknowledging that issues impacting the couple's sexual dynamic are a couple issue to resolve. I gave myself permission to not feel like sex, and knew that if at some non-definitive point my desire did not return,, I would be intentional about creating space to explore my new sensual identity. I decided this because desire and sensuality is important to me first, and the relationship second.
Cumming out the other side
I write this blog from what feels like the edge of the settling chaos of postpartum. This feels in large part thanks to a scattering of nights where I have been able to get more than 4 hours sleep in a row. A bit of extra energy alongside the return of my cycle and going back into clinical work has shifted me from survival to reconnection with myself and my relationship with my partner. It’s still a work in progress for me when it comes to the integration of the mum part into my whole-self identity, and that’s okay!
Whether you’re currently in the thick of it right now, or feeling like there’s some space to explore who you are on the other side, remember you don’t have to go ‘back’ to who or how you were. You don’t have to want what you used to want on the same timeline. We can use this time to get to know ourselves again by being curious and not assuming we will want or like what we used to.
If you’re navigating postpartum identity, desire, or sexual wellbeing and would like support, the team at Good Vibes Clinic work with individuals and couples through all of it. We approach this with warmth, curiosity and no judgement in sight. Reach out if you’d like to connect with us.