Hi RPW,

I am fairly new here, and I have an issue I'd like an outside perspective on.

My husband and I have been married just over a year, and together for 7. Around February we decided to have a baby, and it happened very quickly. I am currently 31 weeks pregnant and due around Thanksgiving.

We have always had ups and downs when it comes to our sex drives: one is up and the other is down. We usually make it work pretty OK, and have always had pretty regular sex not stretching more than 2 weeks between, unless he's gone for military training.

My first trimester he wanted sex much more than I did. I felt very nauseous and extremely tired so I didn't want to have sex very often at all. Second trimester I felt pretty close to pre-pregnancy. And things were good for a time until around 20 weeks, I had my second ultrasound and we found out we're having a boy. He's very excited and he will make a great dad.

The problem is, since then sex has dropped off completely. We haven't had sex in 4 weeks, and the time before that was about 4 weeks previous. This is a problem for me. I have addressed it with him and he told me he's stressed. Ok. I delved a bit deeper through this conversation and another one a week or so later and found out that he's afraid of hurting the baby. He admits this is irrational but doesn't seem interested in working on it. I asked him if he realized that not having sex until after the baby is born, and waiting a minimum of 6 weeks after birth to have sex will put us at around New Years. This didn't seem to phase him but it made me incredibly sad.

Physical touch and quality time are my love languages. It feels like he doesn't love me. I told him how unattractive I feel and he assures me that I'm not, but it doesn't go any further than that. He is not very interested in touching me beyond my belly.

I have gained about 12 pounds as of my appointment last week, and it's all baby. I still dress nicely and aside from some nice maternity jeans I don't wear any other maternity clothes because I don't need to. I have actually started wearing more make up in the past month to make myself feel better. Not too much, just eyeliner in addition to my normal daily under eye concealer and mascara, and on weekends I will wear foundation, eye shadow, and blush as well. I'm also fairly level headed most of the time as far as hormonal pregnant women go, I'm not a huge pain in the ass. I recognize that I definitely was during the initial spike of hormones first trimester though.

Tonight I walked in on him watching porn for the second time in the past week. The third time in the past 1-2 months. I'm sure he does much more often as well. I don't have a problem with porn and masturbating in itself. It's purely that he's doing that and won't have sex with me. It's very upsetting to me as it's one thing to know he's probably doing it and another to see it happening. I do it as well a couple times a week but he has never walked in on anything.

Sorry, this is turning into a longer thing that I had planned it to be. I'm not sure how to bring it up with him again, as one of the last times he told me it was adding to his stress. I have tried several times to initiate but it doesn't go anywhere and I think it just makes both of us feel bad, so I stopped trying. I'm planning on having him come to my next appointment so my midwife can discuss it with us, but I'm not sure if that will work either since he admits that it's an irrational thing.

Any advice?