It Happened to Me: My One-Year-Old Stopped Thinking I Was Sexy

By Elizabeth Sawyer

April 23, 2015

It’s every new mom’s worst nightmare. You think your relationship with your one-year old child is perfect. You stay up all night taking care of them, nursing them, and attending to their every need. But there comes a day when you realize that there’s something missing from the relationship that you used to treasure: your one-year-old no longer thinks you’re sexy.

Most women dread the moment they start to become their own mothers, undesired sexually by their children, but until it happens to you, you can’t understand what it’s actually like. One moment you and your child have the same easy, casually erotic relationship you’ve always had, the next moment something is different in their eyes, and you know they aren’t looking at you the same way they look at Elmo.

There are countless self-help books and internet columns dedicated to this problem. Some experts think it happens as your child goes from thinking of you as a sexual object to simply thinking of you as a mom. Others say it’s just inevitable, that after knowing each other for so long it’s impossible to maintain the unique sexual chemistry you once had with your infant.

And how do you add the sex appeal back into the relationship with your one-year-old? The first suggestion is always to try spicing things up in the bedroom, perhaps trying out new nursing positions. This can help some, but in the end it’s futile to fight the inevitable.

Relationships between people change over time, whether it’s the fiery, passionate one you have with your newborn, which may fade to hours spent in silence watching Barney together, or the loveless marriage you have with your husband, which is gradually turning to open hostility. Whether you still consider your one-year-old sexy or not, you should learn to appreciate the new reality of the love between you and your child. Remember–if you look for it, sexual affirmation can come from anywhere.