A looooong blog post, befitting of the size of my husband's endowment which is also herein mentioned
I just learned this morning from my in-house gossip mill (that would be Judy taking phone calls while rocking the baby and then me screaming up the stairs: WHO WAS THAT? WHAT DID THEY SAY? TALK TO ME I'M DESPERATE FOR HUMAN CONTACT!!!) I learned that an acquaintance couple of ours is pregnant with their second set of twins, and with two singletons in between that brings their family up to 6 kids God willing and the crick don't rise. It's funny that I got this piece of gossip this morning, because I had just been thinking about them, thinking about their 4 kids under 5 years old, and I was wondering: How do they do it? How do they do - not the baby raising part, or the constant pregnancies, or even the financial piece. But the sex part. How do they do it? Like, at the end of the day do all those kids actually go to sleep? at the same time? and then the parents look at each other and go, "Hey, I've got a good idea..."
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.
comments
You are certainly not the only person out there. I definitely had a lack of desire for sex. It's totally normal. Especially for nursing women (lots of work, lots of very intimate activities with someone else, oxytocin, etc). See this:
http://www.babycenter.com/404_will-breastfeeding-interfere-with-my-sex-drive_11809.bc
I think that so long as you and your husband don't stop talking about it, doing what feels good (even if it isn't sexual), and enjoying each other, than you are doing just fine. In fact, you're probably ahead of the game.
You're not alone. It's only been 3 months. Having a baby come out of down there takes some time to recover from. Nursing is also part of nature's birth control method. I totally know what you mean by wanting to want to. It gets better over time and you'll find yourself wanting to here and there.