I have tried having sex several times since my 4 month old was born, but it hurts every time. I am still ebf and have not had my period return, had a c section and am healed but things just don’t seem to be working right.

I’ve told my husband this, we’ve tried lube and other things, but it just isn’t pleasant at all no matter what we do, so...it’s been a while and although he’s being patient, I can tell he’s frustrated with the situation.

On top of that, I’m freaking EXHAUSTED all the time. I started back at work, and I feel like all I do is work, feed, pump, and do dishes/laundry. Baby hasn’t napped in the afternoon when I have him in over a week, he eats every 2 hours during the day, and feedings in the middle of the night are an hour 1 to 2 times a night, so I’m getting like 5 hours total (at best) of sleep each day.

We went out to an event tonight and brought our kiddo, my husband got tipsy, and we came home, fed my son, and put him to bed. I was SO excited to go to sleep, and I got like 45 min of sleep before the dog woke me up scared of thunder. I got up, took care of him, got back into bed (midnight now...) and my husband started touching me and trying to take my clothes off because he was tipsy and horny. I totally get it - we’re going through a long dry spell and he hasn’t been getting a lot of attention. But all I wanted to do was go to sleep, and he wouldn’t leave me alone! I didn’t want to say no because I feel guilty that it’s been so long since we had sex, but he wasn’t taking the hint when I laid there and didn’t respond to what he was doing at all. After 10min of being groped and poked at, I finally ended up giving him a hand job just to get him to leave me alone.

He’s been super patient with everything and deals with me and my PPD, helps out with our son and housework, and is a great guy (I realize this post seems like he’s kind of a dick, but he’s not like this 99% of the time). But last night I was so over him being pushy about sex and this morning, as I sit here feeding our son and my husband is snoozing away (and somewhat grumpy that I woke him up for 5 min to change lo while I got my pillows set up to feed), I just want to scream.

I don’t think he understands that I never get a break. He thinks he’s tired too, that he’s doing everything that I’m doing and we’re equally tired, but I am getting 2 hours less sleep than him each night. I don’t get to nap in the afternoon, and I have a human attached to my boob 8 hours a day. I just don’t feel like having sex in the first place, and for some reason he thinks it’s ok to take away my chance to sleep to do it...it is just mind boggling to me. How do I explain to him that I don’t want to have sex right now without hurting his feelings? Every time I bring up how tired I am we argue about breastfeeding being too stressful and him wanting to switch to formula, but I’m not ready to give up ebf yet - it’s hard, but it’s something that’s really important to me. I’m just tired of feeling like a bad wife for not wanting to have sex, and frustrated that my husband keeps trying for it when I’ve told him all of this.

Thanks for letting me vent!