For a period after birth, and sometimes longer, intercourse is on hold. Healing, medical advice, exhaustion, breastfeeding hormones or the need to postpone pregnancy can all play a part. This pause can feel like a loss. It can also become a time when a couple discovers how many other ways love has to speak.
Intimacy is larger than intercourse
The marital act is a unique and beautiful expression of married love, and the Catechism teaches that its pleasure is good and willed by the Creator (CCC 2362). Yet marital intimacy is much wider than one act. Spouses share a name, a home, a bed, prayer, secrets, laughter, worry and now a child. Pope Francis writes that married love includes tenderness, a love that delights in the other and treats the other with care (Amoris Laetitia 127). Tenderness does not need a doctor's clearance.
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Sources
- CCC 2362 Catechism of the Catholic Church, Sexual pleasure in marriage
- CCC 2337 Catechism of the Catholic Church, Chastity as integration of sexuality
- CCC 2352 Catechism of the Catholic Church, Offenses against chastity
- Humanae Vitae 12 Humanae Vitae, Union and procreation
- Amoris Laetitia 127 Amoris Laetitia, Tenderness in married love
- 1 Corinthians 7:3-5 Saint Paul on mutual care between spouses