A Surprisingly Sane Blog

Some days manage to stand out in your mind for one reason or another.  Your wedding day.  Giving birth.  Waking up to the horrific, tragic news on September 11, 2001.

For me, Mother’s Day holds a special significance, and it’s not just because I happened to birth two ginormous monsters out of my vajayjay.

It’s because I lost my virginity for the second time the night before, and I woke up on Mother’s Day feeling more loved and closer to my husband than I ever imagined.

Hypothetical virginity, that is.  It was my first time doing the deed after having a baby.

I think sex after having a baby is one of those things most women (and a lot of men) fear.  Will it hurt?  Am I going to feel the size of a baby’s head?  Ohmygod what if I lost the ability to orgasm?

After turning down James’ first couple attempts to make love again once my midwife gave me the go-ahead, I was the one who initiated it that night.

Giving birth left me an empty black hole.  While most mothers gaze in awe over the magnificent creature sucking at their boob and oogle over their incredibly tiny fingers and toes, I had the opposite experience.  I felt scared and alone instead of full of excitement.  Every time my baby cried, I felt stressed and incapable of dealing with her.  Breastfeeding was a nightmare even though I didn’t suffer through bleeding nipples or pain.  I just hated having something suck on my nipple- it felt horrible to me.  I felt no attachment to my daughter, just the motherly instinct to take care of her needs because it was my duty.

I didn’t feel like I loved her, and I felt incredibly guilty.  Here I had done everything I could to give her the best start at life- natural birth, breastfeeding, baby-wearing, etc., and I still managed to be a terrible mom.

What I didn’t know then was that it was severe postpartum depression, something I should have received treatment for immediately.

But anyway, after surviving seeing a curly-black-haired baby emerge from my stretched-to-horrific-proportions vagina and ripping in half, I thought there was no way in hell my husband’s fifth appendage was ever going anywhere near me again.  And my poor breasts, which had morphed into porn-star-sized tits and turned into fire hose nozzles at random moments, screamed in agony if James so much as looked in their direction.

Add all that on top of the severe anxiety and insomnia that I was experiencing, and it was no wonder why I was terrified that I’d made a horrible mistake by not adopting out my little spawn.

After seven miserable postpartum weeks, I was lying in bed sobbing and begging God to give me the ability to actually fall asleep the night before Mother’s Day.  I didn’t feel blessed to be a mom, I felt like I was dying the slowest, most miserable kind of death imaginable.

A few hours later, James came into the bedroom to find me drowning under a torrential downpour of tears and panic, and he immediately wrapped me in his arms to assure me that everything would be okay.

Suddenly, I had the desperate need to know that I was still a human being.  I wanted to know that everything really would be okay, and that I was going to get through the nightmare I was experiencing.  Without even knowing what the hell was blurting out of my mouth, I whispered to him, “Can you do something for me?”

“Whatever you need.”

“Make me feel beautiful.”  I sounded so small and faraway that I didn’t even recognize my own voice.

He hugged me tighter, planting warm kisses all over my swollen eyelids and puffy cheeks.

And then I said something that I didn’t even know I needed, “Make love to me.”

What followed were the most intimate moments I had ever imagined up to that point.  It was, sadly, the first time I had ever actually asked my husband to have sex with me in the five-and-a-half years we’d been together.  The first time I ever made love without feeling a touch of Catholic guilt for using a condom or wanting it solely because I needed to have sex with the man I loved, dammit.  And much to my pleasant surprise, I had never seen my husband so turned on as he was at that moment.  He really did still see me as beautiful, and he really did love me.

It was truly amazing for both of us.  And it was also a relief to know that my parts all still worked the way they were supposed to.

That was the start of a new beginning for me.  Although I rebelled from religious control just like a majority of young Catholic-school-girls-gone-bad do, up until that point, I had never been able to surpass my guilt long enough to, heaven forbid, actually enjoy sex.

My fears of what first-time-sex-after-baby was going to be like were completely overshadowed by the fact that for the first time since having my daughter, I felt beautiful, incredible, and so unbelievably loved.  The pain from where I tore and the scar tissue from the stitches were completely bearable.  Not painless, but still just a part of the whole experience.  Afterward, I was so exhausted that I fell asleep for several blissful, dreamless hours still wrapped up in James’ arms.

The next morning, I woke up knowing that things really were going to be okay.  I suffered through the depression, through pain caused by that awful tear, and through all kinds of other trauma while adjusting to motherhood.  But everything ended up being better than alright, even though it took awhile.

Despite my rough start to motherhood, I can now honestly say that it is most certainly one of the most incredible journeys I have ever experienced.  I love both my girls more than I ever thought possible, and I ended up being a pretty good mom after all.

Well, most of the time, anyway.

Current Mood: Cool

Tags: motherhood

This entry was posted on Monday, May 11th, 2009 at 3:50 pm and is filed under Make Me Smile, My Girls, Pregnancy and Birth. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.