What to do when your sex drive grinds to a halt

would you rather curl up in bed with some brushed cotton PJS and a hot water bottle than swing naked from the rafters? Do you often feel like everyone’s up for it most of the time and you, well, aren’t? Contrary to the things your rampant friend tells you (we all have one, right?), not everyone is doing it twice a week, or every week, or even every few weeks. How do I know? Because with three children I know what it’s like to feel so frazzled at various stages of their upbringing that, at the end of the day, I’d rather stick my head in the nappy bin than put out.

Low libido, says Dr Catherine Hood, a psychosexual specialist, is really very common, and it can occur for many reasons, from being on the Pill, to breastfeeding, or being stressed or depressed. ‘What it probably doesn’t mean,’ she says, ‘is that you’ve gone off your partner.’ In fact, she has never known a couple to split up due to just sexual problems. ‘When we meet a new partner, we always want to have sex,’ she says. ‘It’s spontaneous. After a while, that goes and it’s not that we don’t want sex, but we aren’t actively thinking about it. A woman’s biggest sex organ is her brain; if our brains aren’t in the right place, we don’t want it.’ Which will explain why we can’t go from scrubbing the fat off a baking tray to Christian Grey’s red room in a hot heartbeat. Men, however, have a very different sex drive, says Hood. ‘It’s not necessarily stronger, as commonly thought, but it’s generally at the forefront of their mind a lot.’ Hood explains that, just because your libido is hiding behind a stack of work documents, washing and endless to-do lists doesn’t mean you can’t haul it out again. ‘Your sexuality is still there, you just need to work at it by being more intimate with your partner. You need to engage psychologically with sex, and think yourself into it.’

Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to do this now women’s sexuality is no longer taboo. Wellbeing brands are embracing us ‘owning’ it. There is currently a big buzz around shatavari, a herb that’s been used in Ayurvedic medicine for centuries. Sebastian Pole, Ayurvedic practitioner and cofounder of Pukka Herbs, says the Wholistic Shatavari from Pukka (£14, amazon.co.uk)

helps every element of female health, from tackling hormonal imbalance to boosting libido and keeping stress hormones under control. Then there’s ashwagandha, a herb often used for stress reduction, which is also said to improve libido and sexual arousal. Try Food-grown KSM 66 Ashwagandha Plus (£20.50, wildnutrition.com).

Meanwhile, sex toys are genuinely hip, thanks to modern, ergonomic designs. You only have to check out Goop’s offerings, which look like a selection of pastel-coloured objets d’art. The most intriguing is Eva II from Dame, £155, a pocket-sized silicone vibrator that looks like a bug with wings. The design is so revolutionary that the female founders raised $450,000 over the investment they needed to fund it. Hands-free, it won’t be long before Apple makes one and you can instruct Siri to give you your best orgasm. @susannahtaylor_