the squibix family blog

That's okay, because I'd been meaning to buy a new pair of sneakers for several weeks. The current all-purpose pair lasted me through the last three months of my pregnancy, and then through a lot of runs since. Every time I got ready for the gym I'd think "I need a new pair of these soon." So not wanting to clean poop off the bottom of the worn sneak was just the incentive I needed to get my butt into the shoe store.

After work Dan and I packed up the baby and the dog and headed into Lexington center to visit Marathon Sports, the home of expensive running footwear. I brought with me the one non-poopy shoe (I have enough dignity to leave the smelly one home on the porch) and held it up to the salesman. "Another pair of these, please."

He brought out a brand new shiny pair of sneakers and I sat down to try them on. It was then that I noticed it... yellow and brown and smeared half-way up my pant leg.

"Oh my goodness, is that...?" I let slip. " I bent down to take a sniff. "It is. It's poop. I have poop on my pant leg."

I must have brushed my shoe up against my leg some time this morning and transfered the vile substance. What a realization. I had sat in poopy pants all day. And only reaized it when I was out in public, when another adult was literally standing over me staring at my leg smeared in animal feces.

"I have a baby at home" I tried to cover. "It could be from the baby." Like, as if that makes it better? Do you think it's better if people imagine that I hold a diaperless baby in my lap all day long and fail to notice when he shits down my leg?

Then the shoe salesman said something that totally redeemed the whole situation. "I can tell you're a mom" he said, "because you just bent down and smelled it. I would have puked if I saw that on my leg. But you just stuck your nose in it. When you're a mom nothing grosses you out anymore."

I know that this topic teeters on the border of inappropriate for this blog, since I know that DESPITE NO ACTION IN THE COMMENTS we are still widely read amongst our friends and family. So whenever I think of writing a blog post about sex, my initial reaction is to shut my mouth about it. (HA HA! No, seriously Leah, that's your problem!) But forreal, I would never want to give the impression that my perfect husband is anything less than a virtuoso in the love department, possessing of skills only hinted at in Harlequin romances, and ever so well endowed, and so forth. All these things obviously go without saying. Unfortunately, my perfect husband is currently cursed with an epic fail of a wife, at least in the love department. Even counting the brownie points that the recent production of an heir should award me... it's not going well. And that's why I absolutely have to write about it on the blog, because I'm desperate for validation. I just want one person to comment and tell me that it's okay. ONE PERSON, even a fake anonymous person, to say, yeah, we waited a year before having sex again. Sex isn't all it's cracked up to be. Many people go through sexless times in their marriage. Look at the Clintons. They're very accomplished.

You'd think that with my mind so continually tortured by failing marriage 101, that I would, I dunno, be able to buck up and force myself to perform at least one time in these 3+ months. But the thing about having a baby is that everything is so much work, and if you skip on having sex it's not like skipping on the laundry or the dog walking or a poopy diaper... the world continues to function after a fashion. So we'll be driving home from a party where I got adventurous and had ONE LIGHT BEER and I'll be thinking to myself in my half-buzzed state: Hey, I'm not shuddering at the thought of human contact... Maybe tonight's the night! But then we get in the house and change the baby, and the smell of wet poop is kind of a buzz-kill. And then I feed the baby, and he falls asleep in the middle of the bed, so if there's any chance of being intimate then there has to be a concerted decision to lift him up and put him into the co-sleeper, and that practically screams DESPERATE. And anyway, I'm not feeling so sexy anymore holding a burp cloth over my leaky boob.

So yes, we never have sex. And on the off chance that we try, I just can't get any into it. I'm so focused on getting it accomplished, getting it over and done, that I just can't make it happen at all, especially with my over wonderful, caring, respectful and loving husband who says feminist things like, "Um, do you even want to have sex? Because we could be doing something else."

And in reply I'm all: "For the first time in weeks the baby's sleeping and not in the middle of the bed! THERE'S NO OTHER TIME!"

Which doesn't really answer the question. Do I want to be having sex? No, not really, but I want to want to, and I want to not have it hanging over my head anymore. Which is maybe my problem, because I used to do things because I wanted to do things, not because I fear that if I don't consider it a mandatory priority it will fall into the bin of never ever happening which looks like a bottomless pit of life that is never coming back to me again. For everything. So like, Dan will say "Do you want to go to the gym?" And I'm all, "Want to go to the gym? I HAVE TO GO TO THE GYM! If I don't go, I'll stay disgustingly fat and in 5 years I'll be tottering around in a size 16 muumuu saying 'the baby weight! the baby weight! It's so hard to lose the baby weight!' and everyone will be whispering around me 'what is she talking about baby weight? She only ever had one baby and then she never had sex again!"

Anyway, I apologize for making my friends and family slog through 6 paragraphs of trying not to picture me and Dan having sex, but I do feel better airing out our non-dirty laundry out on the internet. Because there's got to be someone else, some sexy and attractive young mother like me who also went through a period of frigidity and didn't end up murdering her marriage because of it. And if not, it'll be a nice added dimension to all our social engagements when we walk in the room and our friends go "Hey guys! How's the not having sex going?" Answer: about as well as not sleeping, but we're getting through it.

This church group is a Vineyard SmallGroup, pronounced with the emphasis on the first sylable as if it wasn't a modifier. You gotta say it as if it's all one word. The proper pronunciation is very important if you want to fit in with the evangelical crowd, so we don't want to get it wrong. Anyway, we've been spending more time at the Cambridge Vineyard church lately, on account of the rockin worship music and free bagels. So we thought we'd take the plunge and get to know some of the folks on a more regular basis. This particular SmallGroup is less intellectual and more pray-y than our normal bible study, which is fun just for a change of pace. And it's family friendly with a rotating baby sitting role, which will be helpful if I ever decide to let Harvey out of my sight for an hour.

This Friday Dan and I volunteered for kid patrol. We had a lot of fun playing with two kids who were there and with an incredible variety of brand-specific Mr. Potato Head attire. Note: it's very important not to mix the Star Wars feet attachments with Red Sox arms attachments if you're 4. Meanwhile the rest of the group watched the documentary film Finger of God, a film about miracles.

I had already seen the movie (indeed we own it) so I didn't mind missing the replay. Still, I was bummed to miss out on adult group time, so you can imagine my excitement when the kids' mom came in to get them ready for bed and told me I could join the group for the last 10 minutes of discussion. Of course it's a bit of a weird dynamic, jumping into a meeting already in session. I hadn't even introduced myself to all the people there, and when I came in they were debriefing the film, so I just plunked down in a chair by the door. The folks were talking about the types of miraculous healings in the movie, and wondering if it would be too much of a leap of faith for us regular people to try to do this stuff. Then the leader of the SmallGroup says, "So why don't we try this sort of thing out here, just to try something on a small scale. Does anyone here have some physical aliment that we could try to pray for?"

I waited a beat, and then another. Another few seconds went by as everybody looked around at each other. No one piped up. So from the back of the room I dove right in. "I've got something - I don't know if it's the kind of thing we want to pray for - but I hurt myself giving birth and I now can't have sex anymore."

Now normally I would have asked Dan permission to bring up such a topic in mixed company, mixed meaning that we don't even know half the people there. But he was still in the other room helping with the kids, and this issue has been sort of consuming my thoughts for the past month, and I can't abide a group silence, and also? Maybe I'm a little nuts. Because my brain is drowning in not-used-up sex hormones. Yeah, I think that's the way that works.

Anyway, these dear willing strangers had me sit in the middle of the circle while they all prayed for the restoration of my lady parts. Seriously and earnestly. Because that's what they're like at the Vineyard church - you should go! And let me tell you guys, my embarrassment over the whole situation was seriously counter-balanced by the fact that I could feel it working. Although, I did get a bit red in the face when Dan walked into the room a few minutes later. I couldn't see his face because I was turned facing away from him, but it was immediately apparent what everyone was praying for. And my poor long-suffering husband, I didn't hear him snicker or anything, but in my head I imagined him realizing turning a shade of purple.

As of right now this is more of a story about my embarrassing forthrightness than it is about a miraculous healing, because at the moment who's to know; the latter has not yet been scientifically tested. This was only last night, after all! And we got in late! But if we do manage a successful sexual encounter in the next few weeks I will consider it nothing less than an act of God.

I'll highlight two words from that description: PENETRATION and IMPOSSIBLE. I'll say that again for effect: IMPOSSIBLE! Like the way a pig can't fly or you can't re-freeze melted icecream. Not gonna happen - Impossible. There's something so incredibly relieving in that word. Like It's not actually my fault. It's a real medical condition.

To use a well known phrase, you can't put a square peg into a something something something my snatch is wired shut.

Of course, I wanted to make sure that I wasn't just getting a trumped up diagnosis of "your junk is nuts" so I asked my midwife, "Is this a real thing? This isn't like restless leg syndrome, is it?" But she assured me that yes this is a very real medical condition, something that doesn't affect very many people, but still if I start treating it right away we may be able to have sex in two months, but if I wait to see if it resolves on its own I could still be waiting a year from now.

And I'm all, no two months is long enough, thank you. No need to get too extreme with the "y" word. Don't need to be throwing "a year" around. I'll do whatever it takes; what can I swallow, inject, or apply in gentle salves?

Well, it turns our there are various therapies for vaginismus, including Cortisone shots to the affected area, topical numbing creams, or even Botox. OMG, slow down, too many jokes! A Cortisone shot to the twat would make me feel like a professional athlete in the "doin' it" league. Hmm, a topical numbing cream... that should make sex feel AWESOME! Botox Botox Botox... I have always been concerned with the wrinkly appearance of my intimate area... will the injections return my lady parts to a teenage level of youth and vigor?

Not that this is a laughing matter... the pursuit of a healthy sex life now suddenly involves needles and that's really not the kind of thing I'm into. But no decisions quite yet. For now I have to wait a week to get a second opinion from a local gynocologist who would be the person to prescribe or administer such therapies. And it's got to be drugs, because the other option is a rigorous course of physical therapy, which I can tell you right now that I will never do. Seriously, I can barely force myself to do ten crunches after a workout. Can you imagine me washing up at the end of a long day of work and saying, "Wait, before I go to bed let me stick my fingers in my vagina for five minutes to increase dilation." No, I'd rather bring on the numb sex!

Over the weekend Dan did some work outside closing down the garden for winter. I was upstairs folding clothes while the baby napped. Suddenly Dan flung open the back door and stomped triumphantly up the stairs. "I've dug a hole" he said. "I'm ready to bury the placenta."

Yes, dear readership, it's been four months (Happy four month birthday Harvey!) and all this time this bizarre remnant has lurked in our freezer, terrorizing those who go in looking for the bag of raspberries which is RIGHT NEXT TO IT - OH DEAR LORD WHY ARE THE TWO ZIPLOCK BACKS OF RED FOOD AND NON-FOOD STUFFS RIGHT NEXT TO EACH OTHER IN THE FREEZER?

It's not like we were hanging onto this thing for sentimental reasons. It's just that, well, taking care of a baby involves many non-hole-digging related tasks, and we're not the quickest to jump on non-necessary chores, witness the IKEA shelf which has been propped against the wall in the bedroom for six months, and you realize that four is not a terribly long time to take to bury an organ.

Anyway, we headed out into the garden with the accusing looking ziplock bag, which frozen felt actually quite heavy. I pealed back the plastic from the frozen mass as gingerly as I could, trying as best as possible not to touch the thing, because I know I should be like a crazy hippy and all, but still, eeeeeeeeeeeew!

Then I dropped it into the hole and Dan covered it up with dirt. The last remnant of the "first pregnancy" part of our lives. In some bizarre way I was sad to see this little part of me disappear under the ground. Harvey is getting so big and smart and human, it's like he's his own person or something. I want to remind us both: "Hey! I know you! You used to be inside of me, little thing. I'm your momma."

Which is not to invite criticism on my husband's sense of humor. The sleep situation may be a factor in the interpretation of puns.

It must be because I am evil incarnate that I cringe at the thought of other people's happiness. No, that's not it. Dial it back a few notches and it is revealed that I'm just jealous. Jealous that someone else is getting all the attention that comes when you're pregnant with your first baby, the caring nurturing spotlight you bask in before you actually become a mother and your identity drops off the face of the earth. Or jealous that someone else is leaving on maternity leave, and it means more mornings and evenings away from my own baby because I now have to work harder.

So much for the good sorority of motherhood.

I've long believed that becoming a mother does not make you a better more compassionate or empathetic person. Ha ha, no. If that were the case, then mothers would be better drivers, less gossipy at the bus stop, less rude to the baristas in Starbucks. It's a constant battle to ensure that motherhood does not turn me into a judgmental self-protective she-wolf, clawing others to the death for the protection of her own family. Although, as I look at that list of examples, (and imagining the huge SUVs in front of Starbucks) it might just be living in the suburbs that makes you a mean person.