How To Keep Your Sexiness, After Your First Child
Where Sexiness Comes From
Sexiness shines forth from inside out. Sexiness is an attitude, a feeling that comes from within. While sexiness can lead to sex, sexiness is not sex. You can hold your sexiness without ever engaging in sex. The right haircut, clothes or makeup may make you feel good about yourself, but they won’t by themselves, make you sexier. Neither will saying the right words nor moving your body like a male or female dancer on the Las Vegas strip. No, your sexiness comes from your attitude and your attitude is determined, moment to moment, by the mindset you hold about sex and sexiness.
Not Feeling Sexy Right Now?
You are either reading this because you understand and want to keep your sexiness or because you are curious and wondering if there is anything that can help you feel sexy again. You just had a baby and may feel like you don’t have the bandwidth to deal with being sexy. This is because all mothers, and especially new mothers, are full of feelings of love, joy, confusion, discomfort, and fatigue. This combination of emotions can lead to overwhelm.
Men too, will have a number of emotions after a new baby. Daddy may feel more than a little awe struck over what his woman's body accomplished in the delivery room. He might see mommy’s body in a whole new light, a vision of fear and admiration. However, more often than not, daddy is filled with so much love that his libido is in overdrive. Her overwhelm and his overdrive can lead to intimacy problems at this stage. Just remember, no matter who you are or what you are feeling, it’s important that you regain your sexiness after a new baby.
Why New Parents Lose Their Sexiness
First time parents tend to lose themselves because they become absorbed in their titles of mom and dad. This absorption happens most seriously in women. Even after several years of motherhood, women can find themselves totally out of touch with themselves. If you ask a young mother what she desires for herself, she may be at a complete loss. A crushing loss even. It is as if she looked in the mirror, and no reflection came back.
Parental absorption happens to men of course too, just not as severely. Men, more often than not, suffer from jealousy, but this is an article for another time. Severe parental absorption is a level of disconnection that is nearly impossible to overcome without real effort and assistance.
Why Is Feeling Sexy So Important?
Feeling sexy is always important, even more so after your first child. Why? Because sexiness, that turned-on feeling that comes from inside of you, is a direct link back to the woman or man you were before you became a parent. Staying in connection to that pre-parental man or woman is a way you keep continuity of self. No matter how chaotic your life gets as a new parent, it's important for you to stay in touch with the person you were and not lose yourself. While you stay open to knowing the person you are becoming as a parent.
How Does Sexiness Keep Me In Contact With Myself?
As a first time parent you and your partner share mutual feelings of love, joy and happiness. You are also sharing mutual feelings of responsibility, fatigue and worry as well. It’s all awesome! Congratulations! However, sexiness is something that only you can feel. You can’t share sexiness. You and you alone are the originator and recipient of this juicy internal feeling.
Sexiness Makes You Feel Alive
When you feel sexy you are fully aware of it because your conscious mind is engaged with the sensations in your body. In other words you know when you’re feeling turned-on. Turn-on is a warm feeling of self acceptance. Sexiness produces sensations that let you know you are alive. When you sit in your sexiness, your body acts like a divining rod, guiding you to deep pools of truth within yourself. Sexiness helps you “know thyself”. Look at sexiness as a wonderful tool for self actualization.
Why You Don’t Feel Sexy?
As a mother or father, it’s easy to lose yourself in your new child. As new parents you spend a lot of time being spit-up on and pooped on. At times you feel like a burping machine and a pooper-picker-upper. Breastfeeding and pumping mothers often complain of feeling an entirely new sensation, that of being a milk cow. None of it adds up to sexy, especially when you’re sleep deprived too. So what can you do?. What can you do when you lose contact with the woman or man who was horny enough to conceive the little rascal? What can you do when you feel less and less contact to the woman or man you were?
Six Ways To Unlock Your Sexiness
I want to acknowledge it’s hard to unpack your sexiness when the only bags you have are the ones under your tired eyes. But keep this in mind, your mind is strong. Sexiness is a mystery to an untrained mind, but a well trained mind can unlock these mysteries. Here are six ways to unlock your sexiness as a woman or man after your first child.
Make A Note To Yourself
Many people think of parenting as the end of their old lives and it is. But the end of carefree you doesn’t have to be the end of sexy you. You are more than just a mom or a dad. You can wear more than just one hat at a time. You can be the hot mom or the hot dad. Well maybe not right away, but you can certainly feel like you are today.
I suggest you start with writing a note to your pre-parent self. Write a note thanking the old you for all the fun and joy you had before becoming father or mother. Then write a list of traits you want to keep from your old life and implant in your new life.
Make sure you add a description of your new sexy mom self and your new sexy dad self.
You might find that your desired sexy self and your old sexy self aren’t that far apart. Or you might find that your new role, of mom or dad, has taken up all the room had for sexiness. No matter what you find, please write your sexiness back into existence.
Being a mother or father is compatible with being a sexual being. In your note to self, add traits like “spontaneous”, “fun loving” and “hot” to your description of yourself. You can have it all!, just with a few constraints like feeding time, play time, and household duties. Just remember, your Sexy Parent Manifesto can be anything you want it to be. The only requirement is that keep in the sexy part.
Take Time To Groom
You won’t feel sexy on the inside if you’re not well groomed on the outside. I’m not talking about wearing make-up and or even shaving. I am talking about simple things like cutting your nails, and keeping the fuzz in between your eyebrows from connecting into a unibrow. I am saying, if you want to feel sexy, then do a little maintenance. “I don’t have time” you might say. Well ask for an hour of time per week. Between your partner, grandparents and caregivers, you should be able to take one hour of interrupted grooming time.
I can hear you saying “I don’t need an hour”. Take an hour anyway. An uninterrupted hour can give you a chance to get back in touch with your body. (Remember your body is the divining rod to deep reservoirs of truth hidden within you). As you preen, trim and towel massage yourself, comune with yourself. Done right, a grooming ritual can be quite luxurious. Taking time to buff and shine your body, makes you feel clean and refreshed. And clean and refreshed is a feeling you won’t often feel with a baby, so take the time needed to make this a ritual.
Let Yourself Be Seen
It may feel funny to be fully or partially naked, but it’s good for the baby (skin to skin contact), and it’s good for the libido. Even if you don’t feel like your body is where you want it to be, just being present in your body as it is, allows frayed nerves to come back together. Allow your body to luxuriate in the sun as you sit on your bed or sofa in an open robe. It’s sure to excite your partner. Nakedness is natural and offers great benefits for mind and soul.
Use A Sex Ritual
Ritual sex is a great way to slowly draw your mind out of parental worry and into sexual bliss. Many eastern traditions understand this. While a quicky is an important shortcut to staying connected, taking time for ritual sex, is like eating a three course meal instead of microwaving a meal.
There are plenty of Tantric light books out there that can help you explore slowing sex down and finding a soul to soul connection with your partner. You can also try healing crystals, Epsom salt baths, massage and other forms of exquisite touch to bring awareness, sensuality and attention to your sex rite.
Just Roll Over
When all else fails, simply go for a roll in the bed. There is nothing wrong with sleep deprived parents having sleepy sex. This is not the type of nourishment a couple can live off of. But just like snacking in between meals is healthy, sleepy sex can fill you up and give you quick satisfaction in a time crunch.
Sleepy sex is different than a quickie. Sleepy sex is unselfconscious sex. Sleepy sex happens when we are still in a relaxed state of partial awareness. Both partners are semi conscious and semi unconscious at the same time. Sleepy sex occurs in that span of time out of reality, that span of time just before our worries flood our mind. Optimally, sleepy sex occurs before the baby is aware that mommy and daddy are awake.
Put On A Uniform
Clothing can help you feel good about yourself. While it’s not prudent to wear your best outfits around a spit-up machine (baby), it is a good idea to have some clothing that helps you evoke your sexiness.
I had to learn this the hard way. My first child wiped out my collection of $200 shirts (adjusted for inflation).I eventually replaced my expensive button downs with gray colored golf shirts that I wore everyday. When she spit up it just blended in.
I know, baby daddy golf shirts aren’t that sexy, so I suggest you have a uniform for those moments when you want to wear clothing and you want the clothes to help you feel sexy.
Maybe a colorful mid thigh t-shirt with nothing else or a pair of yoga pants that emphasizes the assets that your partner really likes. Maybe you want to wear a sleeveless undershirt, or a comfortable pair of sweatpants.
No matter your style, find a set of comfortable clothes that also helps you feel proud about your body. This is a confident, sexy thing to do and it will make you feel good too. Just remember your clothes don’t have to be expensive and they don’t have to be new. Just pick something that you can wear regularly around the house, something you feel good about wearing.
The Recap
Sexiness allows you to feel yourself. This is important because sexiness puts you in direct contact with that part of you that existed before you became a parent. Sexiness is an inside job and doesn’t require a desire for sex. When you feel sexy you take off layers of parental titles like “pooper-picker-upper”, “baby rocker” and “milk cow”.
Sexiness is a mindset that you create. Create an intention to be sexy with a note to yourself. Ask yourself “what parts of my old self do I want to keep alive in my new self?’. Rituals, nakedness and uniforms can help you inhabit your sexiness better. And finally, it’s a good idea to remember that “this too shall pass”. Parenting a newborn is an exciting challenge, but it’s also a phase in life. Enjoy this phase while you can.
Let's Help Each Other?
Let me know if you have found your own ways to keep your sexy after your first child. I am sure we could also use some of your sage advice. And if you want more personal advice from me you can take a Relationship Inventory. To learn more click here.