My Pregnancy Vaginal Itch Was Driving Me Crazy — Until My Husband Helped

Mum Sex Diaries is a first-person, confession-style series that creates space for mums to share honestly about sex: the longing, the uncertainty, the awkward bits, and the moments that are unexpectedly funny. From pregnancy and postpartum sex to exploring intimacy solo, these stories reflect the realities many of us live but rarely say out loud.

My husband and I have been together for 13 years, married for five. This was my first successful pregnancy. We had a miscarriage before, with work stress being a contributor. So when I found out I was expecting again, I decided to quit my job.

Since I was approaching my mid-thirties, I figured being unemployed for a while was worth it if it meant having a stress-free pregnancy and successfully giving birth to a healthy baby — preferably while frolicking around with a cute bump and sipping mocktails at a Sentosa beach on a weekday afternoon.

Except my pregnancy wasn’t quite the dreamy, smooth-sailing version I’d seen on Instagram. I lowkey felt that all those mummy influencers baring their bump on their Bali babymoon without a care in the world totally lied.

Well, these mumfluencers didn’t warn me that pregnancy came with other glamorous side effects like nonstop vaginal discharge. Midway through my second trimester, I realised I was changing pantyliners multiple times a day.

Even simple things like going to the supermarket downstairs felt gross because I was hyper‑aware of how damp everything felt down there.

At first, I panicked. I thought excessive discharge might mean that I had an infection. I got it checked with my gynae, but the results came back clean. He said it was normal pregnancy leukorrhea. For the uninitiated, that basically meant that my body was producing extra fluid to keep things clean and balanced.

Normal or not, it made me miserable. The discharge was a bit too acidic, and my skin couldn’t handle it.

Everything down there felt irritated — raw, itchy, and constantly wet. No, I was not turned on.

Even taking a walk under my block started to feel like torture. I was slapping on balms, switching liners, changing underwear, and still feeling uncomfortable.

It was also awkward to talk about. I mean, I didn’t really want to tell the whole kampung that “my vagina won’t stop itching”. You’re supposed to “glow” during pregnancy, but here I was, waddling like a penguin and obsessing over pantyliners.

Relief arrived unexpectedly

That was until one random night towards the end of my second trimester, we spontaneously decided to have sex (because yes, pregnancy doesn’t stop a girl from having needs).

Honestly, I wasn’t expecting much out of the love-making sesh. I just wanted to get some after not having any for the first trimester. But — and this is where it gets weird — after sex, the burning stopped. The itch was gone. The next day, the discharge was noticeably less. I thought it was a fluke, but after we had sex again, I realised it was somehow helping.

Of course, my husband was more than happy to assist. But he was also careful because that whole area had turned more sensitive than usual. We didn’t do anything wild or out of the norm — just kept it simple, stuck to the usual missionary/cowgirl position, used some lube for comfort, and made sure I was always in control of what felt okay.

I can’t say it was sexy in the way most people imagine pregnancy sex, but it was strangely healing.

It was an aha moment, feeling desire again after weeks of irritation and discomfort. The cherry on the top? I could walk without wincing.

After that, whenever the itching got bad, I’d turn to sex as my unofficial fix. It was a win-win for my husband and me. Those moments brought relief and some sense of normalcy back into my life, even as my belly kept growing.

I also started forcing myself to bring up my pregnancy peeves casually with my gynae and in my girlfriend group chats — not because it was fun to talk about, but because pretending everything was “glowing and magical” made me feel even more alone. Joking about the unglam parts of pregnancy made things feel a bit less heavy.

Now that I’ve delivered, I can laugh about it. Out of everything I expected from pregnancy — swollen feet, morning sickness, back pain — I definitely didn’t have “sex as anti‑itch therapy” on my bingo card. It helped more than any ointment or cooling gel I tried, but it also reminded me how rough pregnancy really was on my body and mind. 

And yes, it’s our inside joke that my husband was my “medicine”.

*Name changed to protect privacy

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