Use it or lose it

This is gonna be a sex post.  Family should probably skip this one.

I naturally have a rather low libido.  I went years without having any sexual contact because I simply wasn't interested.

One of the reasons I married K was because when I met him, my sex drive soared.  It was like I finally comprehended what everyone was so excited about.  And for the first half of our marriage, we had a whole lotta fun.

Then we started the baby making thing.  My libido started to slow a little bit before that, it was on a natural decline that happens when new love becomes daily love.

We never had to do the timed sex thing.  Once we got ourselves fully tested while doing a month of clomid, we learned that in our particular situation, a lucky accident (or a well timed baby dance) simply would not happen for us.  So we skipped the months of temping and tracking and having well timed sex and went straight to IVF.

But even though we got to skip all of that responsibility sex, it still hasn't been much of a priority for me.  I'm just not interested.  And because I haven't been interested, and K is not one to push, we aren't having a whole lot of action going on.  And it's becoming a self-perpetuating problem.  The less we do it, the less interested we both become.

Not only am I not interested, but I've come to hate my body so much that I don't want to disgust someone else with it.  This thing I'm dragging around from appointment to appointment isn't a body, it's a failing science experiment.  It's a big bag of wonky hormones, too much fat, copious amounts of uterine lining, follicles to coax into producing eggs.  One thing it isn't is a hot tamale sex machine.  I'm so disgusted by this thing that I live in that not only can I not imagine it bringing me any pleasure, but when K puts his hands on it, I feel like that first date when you try to hide your fat rolls, but he's touching it so I can't hide it, ick!!!

K and I had a talk about it last night.  I want to get back to having fun with him, and I'm not sure how to go about doing that.  It takes 7 compliments to negate every insult that a person hears about themselves.  And my brain is insulting my body quite a bit whether I want it to or not.  He said that he doesn't know how often my brain is insulting my body and he just can't keep up with the compliment demand.  I told him that if I'm going to be tasked with trying to turn my libido around, he's tasked with trying to keep up with the compliment demand in order to help me feel better about my body.

We've got a few more days to work up to this.  I'm cycling right now and I'm just not going to feel sexy when I'm all squishy.  But last night as we drifted to sleep, he started the compliments and even though they were forced, and somewhat corny, and lead to giggles instead of libido, it felt good.  If nothing else, the silliness of it brings some of the fun back.

Back in the saddle again

I refer you to the Sex post on 10/16/10 if you don't know what I'm talking about.

So now to figure out how to give you an idea of how my body is reacting (because it is relevant to the topic at hand) without my husband feeling like his performance is being reviewed in public (which is not relevant to the topic at hand).

But we decided to give a nice ride another go.  We discovered that I can get to about an 8 or a 9 and then my body starts to threaten cramps.  So if we get right up to that 9 point and don't cross over into 10, I can enjoy myself without it being followed with a lot of pain.  So, yeah.  The goal for me is now about 9 so I don't really resent my husbands 10 like I thought I might.

And no upsetting aftermath like last time!  Yay!

And K was really kind of funny about it too.  Even though it was late and he had to get up early the next morning, he decided to listen to a few more songs on the tv (one of those music stations that we sometimes leave on) before turning it off and going to sleep.  He said he wanted to make sure I didn't get upset again and try to hide it from him like last time.  He was spying on me!

I'm still not quite ready to resume our standard schedule, but at least I'm not dreading it for fear of pain and tears anymore.

Sex

I'll be honest with you everyone, this post is the reason I started this blog.  I had an upsetting experience and couldn't find anyone else reporting anything similar.  So I'm reporting it myself.  It's a big topic so I'm going to cover it all at once.  You might prefer to read this at home as I can't promise it will be safe for work.

In terms of sex, I think my marriage is pretty average.  We count times per week (as opposed to times per day or times per year), the husband has a stronger libido than the wife, ya know, pretty average.

The last 2 months have not been average.  We are experience the longest dry spell we've experienced since we've met.  Here's the history:

Before egg retrieval, my hubby K had to abstain for 3-5 days.  After the retrieval, my cramps were so bad that it just wasn't going to happen.  After the transfer, I had to abstain for 5 days.

We finally get the medical green light to give it a go and make a discovery.  Orgasms trigger cramps.  So at the end of sex, my response went "Yay!.....Owwww!!!"

So not only am I exhausted from the pregnancy, but now I associate orgasm with pain.  Swell.  We hold off for a little bit again.  I test the orgasm = cramps theory on my own to see if it's just a fluke, and nope, it's not a fluke.  Damnit!!!  My libido drops to practically nothing.  Wouldn't yours?  When you no longer want to get to the end goal because it's painful, it kind of puts a damper on the whole process!

Around this time, my husband gets the cold from hell.  He's miserable and could not be less interested in sex if he tried.  My husband has some stomach issues and whenever anything disrupts his body, his body responds by vomiting.  So for the first weeks of my pregnancy, he had the morning sickness misery instead of me!  *Insert evil laughter here!*

So just as he's starting to feel a little bit better and now I'm starting the cold from hell.  I start the bitching of "you did this to me you bastard!" about 7 months before that's usually shouted.  There will be no touching me for some time.

I finally start to feel decent and we get back on that horse.  Ok, we don't actually get on the horse, we get a foot in the first stirrup, but never actually get fully mounted.  Wanna know why?  Because it hurts.  It really hurts.  Even though we've made sure that everything should be ready to go in female arousal land, actual penetration hurts like hell.  And then I remember, this hurts just like a few years ago when I had a yeast infection.

Oh come on!!!  It's been weeks and now I probably have an infection making it hurt?  What deity hates us?  Oh well.  We've got the 8 week check up in a few days and we'll just wait and ask the doctor at that time.

We discover that a fertility clinic doesn't necessarily have all of the testing equipment that a standard gynecologist has.  I ask him to swab and test for a yeast infection but he isn't able to do that.  However, he does take a peek, says yes there appears to be some yeast here.  He tells me to just get an over the counter medication and all should be fine.  We stop by the store on the way home and ready to start treatment.

And again, whatever deity is playing jokes on us strikes again.  The package on the medication says to abstain from sex while on it.  And just to really fuck with me, I drop the final dose into the toilet while trying to insert it.  The toilet that I have urinated in and not yet flushed.  I sure as hell wasn't going in after it.  Since the box also says to check with a medical professional before using this product when pregnant, and since my medical professional was advising rather than prescribing, I decide to just hope I've taken enough doses to feel better and I'll double-check the status of the infection when I see my new doctor around the 11 week mark.

If you're counting along, you'll notice that we've had about 1 1/2 unpleasant sexual encounters in the last approximately 2 months.

It then comes time to get back on that horse.  And this time, we get fully mounted and get a nice ride through the countryside and a standard dismount.

This is when I had the experience that prompted me to start this blog.

I inexplicably got upset.  Really upset.  And I didn't want the hubby to know.  This is the first chance he's had to have sex in about 2 months, it's after 2am and he's going to fall asleep any minute, the last thing I want to do is spoil his afterglow with irrationally crying wife.  I head into the bathroom for the usual post coital clean up and I'm crying.  I don't know why.  He didn't do anything wrong, the experience was perfectly fine, but for some unknown reason I was really upset.  It was like my body objected to being messed with so it was triggering a raw emotional reaction.

The next day I google "sex upsetting during pregnancy" and get nothing.  I tell myself that everyone's hormones do different things to them both physically and emotionally and this has probably happened to other pregnant women, I just can't find evidence of that.

I sit K down for a frank discussion and tell him what happened.  Right now, I just don't want to have sex.  And I don't know when that's going to change.  I mean, it's my understanding that the hormones flip around in the second trimester so hopefully I'll be getting really horny at that time, but for right now, I just don't want to.  I talked to him about my fear of a year long abstinence.  I mean, it's entirely possible.  We pretty much started it about 2 months ago, and if I don't get a horny streak during trimester 2, we might be out of luck for a while.  Trimester 3, I might be told to abstain to prevent the start of premature contractions, and if I do a vaginal delivery of twins, well, let's just say my friend who delivered one child is still having some pain issues 5 months later.

And I'm sure you're thinking "but gee, just because you don't want to doesn't mean you can't perform other wifely duties so your husband doesn't have to fully abstain just because you want to.  There are other satisfying options that don't really mess with your body."

Yes, that's very true.  But there's also a resentment factor.  You see, I can't have orgasms for a while.  They hurt.  And it's not fair.  And while it's not fair to him that he should have to suffer because my body is uncooperative, it's also not fair that he get to have a good time when I can't.  So unless I get to punch him in the balls right after every orgasm so that we're even, I kind of resent the idea of providing one for him.

Yes, my goal in life is to provide my husband as much happiness as I can.  That's not a duty, that's my desire.  So I have to balance his immediate happiness, with the consequences of having a resentful wife.

And I truly have married a saint.  The last thing he ever wants to do is upset me or impose upon me.  He said that if we abstain for a year, we abstain for a year.  And I actually trust him when he tells me that.

I really hope that's not what happens.  Seriously, I don't want that to happen.  The control is now in my hands.  If I want to give it a go, I will control the pace at which we go.  And if I don't want to give it a go, he's not going to pressure me.

I'm meeting my new doctor in about 10 days.  This will definitely be one of the topics we discuss with him.