S-E-X

When Charlotte was born, Chris and I had just celebrated our tenth anniversary as a couple. Naturally, in that time, we had experienced our fair share of sexual peaks and pitfalls. First came the exhilarating and necessarily clandestine stolen moments of two people living in the respective homes of their parents. We had to be creative, which was frustrating, but also exciting. We had sex in his car, in my car, up against his car parked in front of my mother’s house (Sorry, Mom. Too soon?). This was that “have to have you right now no matter how likely it is that we’ll get caught by our parents, a cop, or some stray cats” stage in our relationship, and it was awesome!

By the time we were engaged we had been living together for a year or so. I had sunk into a mild depression, and it was not uncommon for Chris to come home to find me still in my pajamas at 5 P.M., unshowered, and drinking milk from the carton. Needless to say this was not the highlight of our sexual career. Nor was the infertility sex, laden as it was with fertility monitors, calendars, basal body temperature thermometers, and everyone’s favorite aphrodisiac: despair.

So, it was a nice surprise when, after my second failed in-vitro cycle, and we had decided to stop trying for a baby while we regrouped, our sex life became rejuvenated. It was like being teenagers again, only this time we were drunk! Suddenly, we were going at it in the back of the car again. We spent our fourth wedding anniversary at a bikini bar, slipping dollar bills into g-strings. Together! As a team! Sex was fun again. And just as it was getting really good, when car rides home involved foreplay, when we rarely made it as far as the bedroom, when every shower turned into a quickie, I was pregnant.

We were elated, of course, but while we were celebrating the news that we were finally going to have everything we always wanted, we also quietly mourned our renewed lust. Nausea, fatigue, and paranoia entered the scene, and nine months later I could count on my fingers the number of precariously positioned, gently maneuvered, brief rolls in the hay we had managed. And once the baby was born? Forget it.

About two months into parenthood, when I wasn’t feeling completely overwhelmed and wasn’t as convinced as I had been in the past that Charlotte would surely stop breathing unless I was looking at her, I decided it was time to get back in the saddle, as it were. We needed to be a couple again, not just a baby squad. I may have had spit up in my hair and poop on my shirt, but I was still a woman, damnit!

So, one day I splashed on his favorite scent, a thong, and put the baby down for a nap. But not in that order. That would be creepy. I walked up to Chris, pressed my body against his, and whispered into his ear, “I’m not wearing maternity underwear”. At which point, he took me in his arms, looked deep into my eyes, and breathed back, “Don’t say maternity”.

We’ll probably never be quite where we were a year and a half ago, but it’s all worth it. And it just keeps getting better and better.