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Chat With Themmy- How Does Having Kids Affect Your S_x Drive _w_ Sofia Ashley_
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In this episode of Chats with Timmy, the host discusses the taboo topic of how having kids affects your sex drive. He introduces his guest, a sex educator from Canada, who specializes in helping parents navigate this issue. They discuss the physical and emotional changes that come with parenthood, as well as the cultural and religious messages surrounding sex. The host admits his own discomfort in discussing this topic due to cultural norms, but recognizes the importance of having open conversations to learn and relearn about our bodies. The guest explains that the physical changes in the body, such as pregnancy and childbirth, can impact sexual experiences and may cause pain or discomfort. She emphasizes the need to understand and address these changes in order to build a fulfilling sex life as parents. Hello, hello, hello guys. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, and good night. To you, wherever you may be watching me from today, I want to welcome you to another episode of Chats with Timmy. And guys, today, the African in me is going to come out, all right? Because when I got this guest, and I'm like, this is a very interesting conversation. Do I want to have it in public? Are you having some conversation or speaking on a certain topic in front of your African friend? You know what the eyes are going to be like. Are you okay? Do you think you're grown now? You know that kind of look? That's what you're going to get, right? So today's episode, I like to call it the empowering episode or the empowerment episode. You know, on Chats with Timmy, all we want to do is inspire, empower, and educate y'all. Other episodes were educated. Of course, we're going to learn today, but I'm looking at it from the perspective of empowering. Because I'm going to do a lot of learning, and I am very sure you, too, are going to do a lot of learning, all right? So I got to talk to this amazing lady all the way from Canada. This is our second Canadian guest, okay? So all the way from Northern Canada, and guess what? We are having a conversation around something that is usually not spoken of in an African home or not spoken of so freely. It's more like it's a taboo, okay? So we're going to start. You know how we do it. I'm going to delay you a little bit, all right? So I just want to say grab your chair, grab your book or your phone notepad, grab some pens, sit down. If you're a man, sit down and hold your chair like a gallant. Sit down and shake your chest because this is going to empower you as well. This is for a man. This is for a woman. This is for everyone. This is for adults. Let's call this an adults-only episode, okay? Because kids can learn to some degree or when they get there, they'll understand. But for now, it's just adults-only, okay? This is 18 plus, all right? So we're going to be talking about something very interesting. How does having kids affect your sex drive? If you're a mother, you know exactly how this conversation is going to go. Like, okay, I've been struggling with this. Talk to me. What do I do? And stuff like that. Sometimes you have your, you know, when I had my first daughter, my body changed, my mind changed. Everything about me changed, okay? It's like once you start having kids, your life is never going to be the same again. You're never going to go back to not being a parent. You are a parent right now, right? And then you start to learn about your body in a whole new way, okay? And then before you know it, you have baby number two, just like I did, right? And then before you know it, each child comes with something different, and then you start to learn about your body in a whole new way, right? Some things may be familiar, but then you start to learn about your body in a whole new and exclusive way. So today, we have a sex educator all the way from Canada coming to talk to us about some of these things. As a woman, you may be worried. And as a man, you may think like, oh, maybe your baby girl is looking at someone else and she doesn't find you attractive anymore. Meanwhile, it's just she herself struggling to learn about her body as well. Let me not get you too much into that because she is going to do a lot of the talking, okay? I am here with my phone notepad. I'm going to be taking notes. So definitely, I encourage you to take notes because I was like, I was just asking, asking, asking questions. I'm like, you know, I better just hit record because I don't want all the juice to be for me alone. So you know how we do it. Let's get my guest on stage. Give me a drumroll before I get her up. Okay. Let's get Ms. Sophia up on the stage. Welcome, Ms. Sophia. I am so honored to have you on this show. And like I said, this topic is very, very interesting. So the African in me is going to come out today. And so I am just going to let you introduce yourself and walk us through. Sure. Thank you so much for having me. And I'm so grateful to you for saying yes to this conversation despite the discomfort that you experienced because it really takes people who are willing to do that to start these conversations, right? We have so many different cultural perspectives and cultural safety around talking about sex and sex in our relationships. And it takes going there in order to do better. Right. So hello, everyone. I'm so glad to be here. My name is Sophia Ashley. I see her pronouns. And yeah, I live all the way up in northern Canada. I think of we live in the Yukon. So I call it Alaska's cheeky neighbor. I've been a sex educator for over 10 years. I work with toddlers. I work with teens. And typically these days I work with parents, mostly around, like we said, sex drive after kids. Right. So I'm a mom of two, step mom of one. And I always just like to joke, right, like 10 years, three kids and sleepless nights later. Like, how is my libido doing? And where is my sex life? And I got into this field in particular because there is such a unique mixture of factors that are not the same. There's some overlap, but they're not all the same as people in long-term relationships who don't have children. So there's unique pieces to that. And when I speak about parenthood, I mean parenthood through adoption. I mean parenthood through childbirth. And also the changes that happen, whether you had a C-section or whether you had a vaginal delivery. Right. There's just this very unique mixture of things when it comes to your physical body, your emotional perspective, your relationship. And then what I call kind of the cultural messaging or the religious messaging, spiritual messaging that we've all received around sex. And it's understanding the dynamic at play in all four of those areas that helps us find a path forward to the sex life that we want to build. Wow. And honestly, Vicki, I must again appreciate you for coming out to say, okay, I want to talk about this. Right. And because, like I said, the African-American, I grew up in a home where sex as a word is not mentioned. So if my mom would want to say anything about sex, she would be like, spoiled, defiled, like everything else but the word sex. Okay. Yeah. And several years later, I'm married with three children. And some of these things are still in my head. And I would not openly have a conversation around this, even though I'm an adult now. Like when I saw your topic, I'm like, remind yourself, girl, you're an adult. You have three children. You've been down that road. And it has affected you in some way, right? So this is a moment to all learn, relearn, and learn new things. Okay. So that's why, guys, I said this is going to be an inspiring episode because myself, I'm just going to say, I have to feed and learn. Because I need to understand, like, what's going through my body after my first baby, after my second baby, after my third baby. Because sometimes it's like, you just go from 100% to 0% or 1%. And it's like, are you talking to someone else? Are you seeing someone else? Like, don't I look attractive anymore? Like, don't I satisfy you anymore? And stuff like that. And then you're like, well, it's just the way my body is. Like, at this moment, I'm also learning about myself. And as much as this is like a very ‑‑ I had to really decide whether I wanted to hit record during this conversation, guys. And if you're an African, African, African deep down in your soul like myself and your parents is African, African, you probably understand, like, okay. Probably my mom is looking at me like this, like, Peace, what is going on with you? Why are you talking about this thing in public, right? So, this is just me stepping out of my comfort zone to have this conversation, which I know is going to go onto the Internet that does not forget. All right? It's going to be out there for as long as we can remember. So, Ms. Sophia, what are some of these things that would, you know, I have been there, right? So, young, newly married, and then you're all hyped up, you're so much in love, and then, like, you cannot wait to explore your partner. Your partner cannot wait to explore you. And then sometimes it's a few years down the line. Sometimes it's a year down the line. Sometimes it's immediately after you get married, you get pregnant. For different people and different timelines of wanting to start having kids, right? And then it's like, now what? And then your body starts to change, and then you're learning new things about yourself. You're trying to understand your feelings and your emotions and different things like that. And especially being a proud CS mom, I'm like, oh, they didn't tell me it was going to be this way. So, can you, you know, can you educate us on some of the things that we face, especially you being a mom? Yeah. Well, let's kind of paint a picture, right? And, you know, it's a picture that people will be familiar with from different angles. But, right, like you said, you've gotten married or you're coming along. Maybe you've been together forever. Maybe you haven't been together very long and you have a kid, right? Your world is transformed. So, I like to think of it in terms of these quadrants. The physical body, right? Your body, if you're the person who carried the baby, right, your body carried a baby for nine months. Your pelvic floor, which is a huge part of your sexual response, carried a big weight and then pushed a baby through it. Pardon me. Maybe you had an episiotomy. Maybe you tore. Maybe you had a c-section, right? So, a lot of change, pressure, damage, trauma has happened to your downstairs business. And that alone can lead to pain. It can lead to numbness and it can lead to irritation, which all by themselves, if you start to have sex after baby and you're experiencing these things and your sexual experience is not very positive because you're numb, you're irritated, you're in pain. That alone will damper your libido, right? You are less likely to want more sex if the sex you're having doesn't feel fantastic, right? Yes. Then we add hormones. So, if you're actively breastfeeding, you have hormones that are kind of affecting your libido. And you also have this notion of when we're intimate with another human, whether it's sexually intimate or just intimate with our kids, right? When we're caressing their faces and cuddling with their little baby hands and all that stuff, all the same chemicals are getting released in your brain. Dopamine, oxytocin, all the yummy, feel-good hormones. And so sometimes what can happen is when you've got a mom breastfeeding all day, she's getting all the stuff she would normally get from sex from her baby. Not because it's sexual, but because the same hormones are being released because she's doing skin-to-skin and she's touching and cuddling and eye-gazing with this beautiful little being, right? Yeah. Her dad comes home from a day at work, her dad comes home from wherever, and he's like craving these connection hormones. She's like, my cup is full. I don't need any more of these hormones. I'm good for today, right? So, we have these very real physiological things that happen where, depending on what's happened to your downstairs business or your bits, as I like to call them, you might be having different sort of sexual responses. And then you have your hormones, which play a big role in your libido as well, right? So, that kind of bare-bones the physical changes that we need to acknowledge. And as we move forward, I just want to speak to what you kind of said at the beginning, a lot of insecurity comes up, right? If we're not in a relationship where we comfortably – we can be having sex without feeling comfortable talking about sex, right? And talking about what we want. We just want to get to the practical about the series. Right? We don't talk about what we need. And part of this is, if we go down to the cultural messaging, when we watch movies with sex scenes, there's not a lot of communication that happens. Although, I did watch Bridgerton last night, and there was some wonderful communication that happened in one of those scenes. But it's normally just like, I look at you, and you look at me, and we smash our faces together, and clothes are ripped off, and a good time is had. And there's no, are you liking this? Do you want me to go faster? Do you want me to go slower? Like, there's no communication about what people want. Right? So, we have these ideas that it's supposed to just magically, naturally be hot and heavy and perfect. Right? And on the physical side, too, I just want to say, like, there's pieces around sex ed that people just don't get. We do not receive an understanding of the biology of libido when we are growing up or even as adults. And so, there is something called the SIS and the SES system in your body, where at the same time, your nervous system is constantly scanning for things that will make it horny. Right? Ooh, my husband's half naked, and that is making me feel good. Right? It's looking for, scanning for things that are making you feel good and yummy. And at the same time, it's scanning for reasons to hit the brakes. Right? So, if you're at Thanksgiving dinner, and you look at your husband, and you're like, um, meow, but then your body's like, we're at Thanksgiving dinner. Like, shut that shit down. Right? So, you have these two systems operating constantly, and when you've got kids in the picture, there's a lot happening to hit your brakes. That's what we call your brakes. Right? So, your body's going, there are babies in the room. There's a baby in the bed with me. What if the baby wakes up and we're interrupted? Right? So, um, and men can experience this as well, like anybody. The messaging that we have around sex, the shame that we have around sex, the experiences that we have around sex can inflame those brakes, and new brakes will show up when you have a kid that didn't exist before. Yes. Like, worrying somebody's going to walk in on you and see you that you don't want. Right? So, your nervous system has all these new things to be worried about, which means more brakes are getting jammed and your car is not moving forward. Right? Wow. And we also have this concept of responsive versus spontaneous desire, and this is a big one for, in kind of the gender dynamic of men and women to understand. Most people, and a lot of men, too, have what's called responsive desire, which means we aren't walking around like just, oh, I'm horny now. We have someone makes a move, someone gives us words of affirmation, someone touches us in a way that makes us feel good, and our libido goes, oh, that's a party I could maybe be interested in, and then we need more stimulus, and then it goes, yeah, yeah, I'm into that. Right? Yeah. So, if we're slowly trying to wake it up, and then some break happens, like we hear our baby cry in the next room, then our libido is like, oh, no, this isn't a party. You just go back to zero. Right? So, part of this is most people do not actually know the science of how their libido works and how their libido works, because some people have very sensitive breaks, like the smallest little thing and you're out of it. And some people, it could take like a whole mountain to press on the brakes. And likewise with your gas pedal, some people have a sensitive gas pedal and the slightest little thing turns them on, and other people have a very slow, like they need a lot of slow, gentle pressure to get their gas pedal going. And when you do not know that about yourself, you are likely expecting your body to do things it hasn't been designed to do, and then you end up at war with it. You're like, F you, body. Why aren't you working? Why aren't you doing what I want you to do? But you don't actually have the manual for your own body, and your partner doesn't have the manual for your body. And I'll tell you something after this commercial break. Okay, guys? Just a quick commercial break. Welcome back, guys. And I said I was going to say something. It's just like, you know, we all have this idea of what a wedding night is supposed to be. We all do not have the same kind of wedding night, especially with the whole, you know, it's supposed to be like right after the wedding, you guys got married. You guys were so excited to get off the altar and get into your bedroom and start your honeymoon. Sometimes your honeymoon does not start from your wedding night. Sometimes you're tired. You respond to stress different, and your body's not just in that space, right? So when people are looking for it, like, I'm looking forward to the honeymoon. Sometimes your honeymoon will be in like several days later. You need to give your body some time to relax, not even with kids, right? But you need to, because of stress and because you've just been running around trying to get the wedding together, and now that the event is over, you face real life. And you realize that you're not just all, like you said, smashing faces and taking clothes off and getting down to business. You're like, oh, but you were so excited for me before the wedding. Now what's going on? Well, I am stressed, and my body's trying to respond to this type of stress in a more different way, right? So when you said that, I was like, okay, now we all have this idea of, you know, the perfect wedding night where you're supposed to be cuddling with your partner and stuff. Sometimes some people just want to lie down and sleep. Totally, yeah. And that's another piece, which is stress is a huge libido killer or, you know, something that affects us. You see a lot in men when stress goes up at work or in different parts of their life. Maybe they're caregiving for an elderly parent or something like that, and they're not as in the mood. And so you imagine those early years of parenting. Everyone is sleep-deprived, exhausted, bickering because they're sleep-deprived and exhausted. Like, this is not an environment conducive to sex unless we're going to give it some intention and attention, right? And a big theme or a big takeaway I want for people is we think of sex, like I said earlier, as this, like, natural thing. We think of libido as I'm just supposed to be ready to go all the time, and if I'm not, there's something wrong with me. I'm broken. I don't like my partner. There's something wrong with my relationship. Like, all these insecurities come up. But they're grounded in myths fed to us by the media. They're grounded in a lack of education about how your body and romantic connection actually work. And the main takeaway is that you can absolutely be in charge of this, just like every other part of your life, if you give it some love. If you learn some things, you communicate, and you take some leadership in this part of your life, you can have the sex life that you want, right? I have a question for you, Sophia. Yeah. Can you speak from a man's perspective or from a woman's perspective to a man, like in this period? Because a man, other than him seeing the baby or other than him being involved with, you know, pregnancies are different. Some pregnancies, you're super healthy. Some pregnancies, you're just sick throughout the journey until you go to bed. Sometimes it kind of stresses them out, and they're, like, looking for where to get some fresh air. Or, you know, they're a little bit confused on how to handle their partner. Sometimes maybe she's craving this thing, and then you get her that. And then she's like, I want something else. Or then she chills up and stuff like that. Sometimes they get frustrated, right? Yeah. Because the entire thing is, the pregnancy journey is nine months. Some people get to 10 months, right, even though some people do get pregnant early under some circumstances. But then throughout that nine months, the man cannot be depressed, right? So how can they support their partner through that journey of the nine months and then immediately after the nine months, while her body is getting back to normal? Because right from month one, your body is changing. Different things are going through your body. It's responding differently. You're looking different. Your confidence, your emotions is everywhere. So much of this is about one of the biggest misconceptions we have about sex, which is, I call it the P and the V myth. So the myth is that sex equals penis in vagina, right? Sex actually equals pleasure plus vulnerability. That's what good sex is. Right. And so the thing that I love about this change to parenthood is that it's also, you're going to go through all the same things. Like if your partner has an accident and becomes a quadriplegic overnight, or like if you start going through a really stressful part of your life, your sex life and your sexual desire is not a static thing because it's linked to your body and your body changes through your entire life, right? So when you just expect your body to show up like a robot the same day every day for your entire life, you're in a losing battle, right? You're in a battle with your body. You're in a losing battle. If instead you can open your ears to your own body to go, what do I need right now? What would feel good right now? What would give me pleasure and how can I communicate that to my partner? And if both partners can have their ears open to each other, that's where we can have more fun, right? And so the big encouragement there is it might be that intercourse is off the table for a little while, right? During pregnancy, it might feel uncomfortable for her. Lots of parents, both the men and the women, start to feel weird about like, am I poking the baby or like, you know, all that kind of stuff. Some men are more horny for their wives when they're pregnant. Some men are like, they become the mother, Madonna, and they're like, you're a mother now. You're the mother of my child. You are no longer a sexual being to me, right? Or there's this loss of like, I remember having this honest chat with my dad once where he was just like, you guys were born. And before that, like the boobs were all mine and I got to play with them and enjoy them. And then you guys came around and that was it. Game over. We didn't get to touch those boobs anymore, right? So there is real grief and loss and change in this. And I think when we pretend it's not there and we ignore it or bypass it, we don't give ourselves the doorway to figuring out the new solution. And so a big part is like making friends with outer course, which means hands, mouths, other parts of the body. Things like sensoriums where you're playing just with like, how can I get my partner to orgasm by just touching her with different sensations like soft things and smells and whatever, right? And it's like really expanding to what I call naked sex sometimes, which is just we are naked and we are playing. And maybe penises are going in vaginas, but maybe not, right? And we can still be intimate and connected and playful and naked without feeling like we're, quote unquote, like depriving people of things. And or it's just about having a very real conversation about like where I'm at and what I'm willing to give in my various states of pregnancy and where you're at and what you need. Because I think, I don't like thinking of it as like I owe my partner sex and I don't think of it as like depriving him of that. It's a very patriarchal way of viewing it. However, it is not fair to vilify our partner's desire and need. And it's not fair to assume he's running around with a raging hard-on that we need to deal with. And it's also not fair to just dismiss a very real and legitimate desire to connect with you in the ways that feel good and work for them, right? So that's where the vulnerability piece comes in. We're like, we got to sit and we got to talk and get real about like what is underneath you wanting to bone me? And what other ways could I make you feel good and make you feel like our relationship is strong and make you feel like my eye isn't wandering, right? And so one part of that is everyone just understanding like in particular during pregnancy in the first year, sex and particularly penetrative sex just may not really be on the menu. And everyone needs to just take a deep breath and go, okay, that might be what shows up for us in the next two years. And let's just acknowledge that and name that. What I find happens is people don't talk about it and then it's this thing that continues later than that because it becomes a habit to not. So we have this like lifeline of intimacy going and other ways of connecting and other ways like maybe you're just masturbating together. Maybe you're just giving each other permission to masturbate alone and like take care of that need and connect with each other in other ways, right? But it's kind of like what is the motivation underneath wanting to have sex or to connect? And how can we brainstorm like other ways to meet that need in particular during pregnancy in that first year when things are really challenging, right? Or can be really challenging. Like I don't want to assume it's challenging for everybody. But this conversation is definitely like if you're having great sex, you know, three months after having a kid, like you don't need my help. But if you're really struggling and you don't want to end up in this negative feedback where you're not having sex is hindering how connected you feel to each other, which is then hindering how you parent together because there's this like low grade resentment, worry, concern. Is he cheating on me? Is he going to cheat on me? Is he going to leave me because I'm not willing to do this for him? Or, you know, kids worry that of all these, like it's very real. And the more we can get vulnerable about how we're feeling to reassure each other and the more we can get present to what pleasure looks like for us in this context, then we have a formula for how to come up with a solution that works for us, right? Because the other piece here is there's just so many myths about like, I get the question all the time, like how often should I be having sex? And I'm like, there is no magic number. The number is what feels good for you. And some people are doing it once a month or once every three months and that feels great in their partnership and everyone is good. And some people are doing it every day or multiple times a day, right? Like this is about you and your partner together deciding what does this look like for both of us together? And I think as women in particular, we can shut down our men's vulnerability by, it's fair because we've been cultured as we can feel like sex objects for a lot of reasons, right? And like that in our relationship, we can have a resistance to that and a shutdown of like, F you, your needs are not valid. And like, I'm not here just for your sexual pleasure, right? And that is very true. And at the same time, what is underneath his desire to be boning you all the time? You know, I mean, when we get into the emotional quadrant, right? Like we talked a little bit about physical, emotional is like body image, huge. If I'm not feeling sexy anymore, if my body has changed drastically, like this has been a huge one for me where my husband looks at me and he just thinks I'm so sexy and he just wants to rip my clothes off. And I'm like, how do you even see me this way? Like I do not, my self concept is not there. And so it's almost weird for me. And so rather than it being a turn on when he comes on to me like that, it's almost a turn off because there's a gap between how he sees me and how I see myself. Wow. And at the same time, there can be the opposite where our partner struggles to, we struggle to see our sexual identity, right? We get stuck in mom mode and we lose. Who is Sophia, the sexual woman? Who is Sophia, the sensual woman, right? And amidst all my other identities. And my partner may also lose that and become very fixated on me as mother and not be capable of seeing my sexual needs and identity anymore either. So we have to like work on that. We could talk forever, but like we want to be aware of postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, postpartum rage. These are hormone driven. So she's got like massive fields going on. You know, the biggest thing for partners is to give lots of space, lots of grace and to talk, right? What is going on for you? How are you feeling? What is going to make you feel good, connected, loved? And when you can do that for her, she's going to be way more likely to open up sexually. Right. Wow. Guys, you can all bear me witness that this is more like a master class, all right? This is a very intimate room and it's just moms and dads learning on how to support each other on the sexual journey after life has happened to them. It's different having a kid, losing a kid. Like that journey affects you in a whole different way, right? Thank you so much, Sophia, for taking time off to just educate us and, you know, share your wealth of wisdom. I really took a lot from this conversation. I need to learn these things, right? I mean, it's practical. My baby didn't fall from the sky. I gave birth to them. So my body has been through a different, you know, period throughout the three experiences I've had having kids, right? Definitely, guys, if you want to connect with Sophia, follow her on Instagram at thehappybproject and learn. So, guys, you can learn how to be more graceful and more patient, more loving, more supportive to your partner. And then you can get your partner to also understand your needs or your view of things from that standpoint. If you're complimenting her after she does not be beautiful after giving birth to a child, you can let her know how your wife and how your compliments is very much genuine. And if you're attractive to her in a certain way, even if she doesn't feel beautiful, you can let her know it's coming from a safe space and you're being honest with her, all right? That makes her comfortable. That makes her want to say, okay, you know, life happens. This is what life is about. She's still amazing in as much as she may not love the stretch marks on her belly. She may not love the fact that, you know, her skin is soft. Her body is trying to get back in shape and stuff like that. Thank you so much, Sophia. This is very educative and empowering. I enjoyed every second of you talking, okay? That's why I didn't want to interrupt you. I appreciate you having me. And I always say if people want, I have like a little assessment. Okay. People can DM me on Instagram, but it just helps people to map out what specific things, like are you more blocked in the physical realm, in the emotional realm? Like it helps you to figure out which three things are really blocking you. And how to move forward with that. Because I find mostly the women in particular, and the men supporting, you're just like I have no desire and I have no freaking clue what to do about it, right? And so we need to get a sense of what in particular is getting in your way so that we can map out what the steps forward are for you. Wow. Guys, this is so amazing. This is such an empowering conversation. Thank you so much, Sophia, for giving me your time and educating us and just sitting here to say you want to talk to us and educate us, right? Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Guys, until the next episode, I hope you use this tip, strategies, and information to steer your life in the right direction so you can have a positive and healthy sexual relationship with your partner. Your partner, okay? With your own partner. So take care and I'll see you in the next episode. Bye-bye. Bye. Bye.
