Sexual healing

I used to relish the challenge of being good in bed. I read the Kama Sutra with steely discipline, confident there wasn't a skill I couldn't master. Then I had a baby.

By Mary Elizabeth Williams

Read more: Mary Elizabeth Williams, Sex, Childbirth, Life

Illustration by Mignon Khargie / Salon.com

Jan. 28, 2006 | When it comes to sex, I've always been an overachiever. From the moment I crossed "lose virginity" off a youthful to-do list like it was taking the SATs, I relished the challenge of being good in bed. In my adventures I've experienced earth-shaking lust and utter abandon. Still, I realize now how often the thrill of sex was tinged with something else -- the triumph of conquest. I read the Kama Sutra and sex books with the steely discipline I applied to yoga class, confident there wasn't a skill I couldn't master with limberness and resolve.

Then I had a baby.

I don't know if it's true what they say about sex during pregnancy being incredibly hot. That's how I remember it, but now that I'm a mother the memory of any kind of uninterrupted, unexhausted encounter seems like the apex of ecstasy. I do know that as my belly expanded my libido went right along with it. When certain moves involving weight on my big, big midsection became logistical absurdities, I cheerfully learned new ones to compensate, flipping onto my sides, enlisting chairs and bedposts for support. My hormones were amped up to previously unimagined heights while my puzzle-solving brain relished every obstacle. It was perfect. In the back of my mind, however, I was worried about what would happen next.

I'd heard stories of couples who'd gone at it like gangbusters until an 8-pound bundle of joy killed their sex lives. I saw once recklessly sultry friends get sensible haircuts and saggy bellies, preoccupying themselves with sippy cups and singalongs. I became determined not to commit the sin of letting myself go. I was screwing like a condemned woman.

So it came to pass that precisely six weeks after pushing a human being out of my body, I lay on my back in the doctor's office awaiting the go-ahead to put something else in it. My middle was a vast expanse of squish. My breasts were tender and aching from the infant who'd clamped herself on me in the delivery room and had barely come up for air since. I was so sleep deprived I'd hallucinated a few times. And below deck? Pure wreckage. I had been torn, and was still bleeding. I had hemorrhoids, the least sexy condition ever invented. Yet I was considered normal for all I'd weathered, and had reached a deadline matter-of-factly referred to in pregnancy guides on the "How soon can I have sex?" page. So it didn't surprise me in the least when the doctor removed the speculum, peeled off the gloves and declared, "You're fine to resume sexual activity."

I took the words not as a suggestion but an imperative. It was what I was supposed to do. My body had been pronounced capable; my psyche didn't even stop to question why it was less enthused. Besides, I figured that after our longest period of marital abstinence, my husband was deserving of -- nay, eager for -- my lustful embraces.

I went home and informed him that as soon as the baby was solidly asleep, we were to commence fornication. He gave me a weary thumbs up. Had I not been too tired myself to pay attention, I might have noticed that his work-all-day, up-half-the-night-with-the-baby schedule hadn't exactly been stoking his fires.

The baby's sleep was still as easily and noisily set off as a car alarm on a Sunday morning. At the first sign of her buzz-saw-like snore, we plopped her drowsing form in the other room, where fitful gurgles told us we'd better try to wrap it up as soon as possible.

We undressed quickly and he fondly touched my breasts, a pair of old friends he hadn't seen in a while. I cringed. His hands felt like sandpaper on my raw skin. It wasn't just that it was painful, though; it was worse than that. After having the baby on them all day, I wanted them all to myself for a while. They'd gone from sex props to utilitarian devices, and the thought of having somebody else needing my tools filled me with dread. I swatted his hands away with a grimace. He looked at me, a mixture of hurt and concern on his face. So much for foreplay.

It didn't get any steamier from there. "How do you want to do this?" he whispered huskily, while I paused to contemplate my options. I climbed aboard, figuring that would afford me the greatest measure of control.

It was agonizing. You'd think that after delivering something the size of a Thanksgiving turkey, a woman would feel like she'd just added a lane or two to her private highway. Instead, I'd lately been looking at my ultra-slim tampons and thinking, Oh God, no, never. My earliest sexual exploits had been awkward and a little uncomfortable, but full of fun and foreplay. This? This felt like the Amityville Horror, my husband in the role of unwelcome interloper and my lower half ominously commanding, Get out!

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