Before I married the , I read a book called by Dalma Heyn. It’s one of those self-helpy books about how marriage can change womennot just for better, but for worse. It was sobering and not a little distressing, but I thought it important to pull my head from the clouds for a brief prenuptial moment and think about the real changes ahead. Of course, the only passage I now recall from the book was about sex.
It went something like this: Antonia and Jonathan had a fiery, passionate, and healthy sex life before getting married. It was even a bit kinky; Jonathan was the first lover with whom Antonia was totally comfortable and totally uninhibited. In fact, it was one of the many reasons Antonia was convinced Jonathan was Mr. Right.
But then, as soon as this happily-sexed couple wed, they lost the spark in bed. It seems that, along with the new crystal and china crowding their house, some big, bulky Wife Baggage had been shipped in too. And poor Antonia was no longer able to talk dirty to her (gulp) Hus-band. (Remember, all you married moms, how weird it felt calling him husband for the first few months?)
Now, lets play a little word association game. Draw a line from the word on the left to match the word on the right: OK, scratch that. Due to formatting limitations, draw a line from a word in Group X to match a word in Group Y:
Group X
Girlfriend
Wife
Mother
Mommy
Mom
Grandma
Group Y
Senile
Strict
Sweet
Supportive
Sensible
Sexy
Now, the web rainbow of lines each of us comes up with might look a little different, but I think its likely that nobody felt a natural compulsion to match sexy with grandma.
Senile with (new) mom? Maybe.
But not sexy with grandmaor wife or mother or mommy or mom for that matter. I’m not saying wives, mothers, mommies, and moms AREN’T sexy. Heck no! I’m just saying those aren’t the first (or tenth) words that come to mind when SEX is mentioned. (As an aside, can someone explain why every time I hear the word wife, the image of June Cleaver assaults my visual cortex? SCARY.) Now, the only role that seems a knee-jerk fit with sexy is girlfriend. And, frankly, lots of us moms exited girlfriend stage a long time ago.
So, going back to our original story, if Antonia’s unconscious Good Wife Baggage was able to waylay her sex life for a good long while, just imagine what kind of detour that U-Haul-full of Good Mom Crap could inflict on ones sexual psyche. I mean up until now, lots of us probably thought, Eww, gross, moms and sex, blech!at least when thinking of our own moms or our friends moms or our moms moms. Parental sex is just weird. (OK, sorry, now you’ve got a visual of your parents having sex. erase erase erase)
And so its only natural that there might be a bit of fumbling in the dark while we try to figure out how the various roles in our lives compete and intersect and diverge and balance once we become moms. Because thats the thing about motherhood. You dont just have a baby, brush off your hands, and go back to business/
relationship/sex life as usual. Becoming a parent affects all the roles in our livespartner, lover, friend, worker, daughter, roller skating diva. It shuffles them and rubs them up against one another in ways that feel decidedly odd. I mean, having mad, passionate, kinky sex while the is sleeping in the next room? Mmjust feels different.
Which is why, when I head to the bedroom tonight, I need to remind myself to check my Mom Hat at the door. Because that hat, well, lets admit it, its a bit like a mental pair of : doesnt exactly make me feel my sexiest. But if I can recall the mysterious, passionate, playful, self-indulgent, generous, sexy woman I was before becoming a Mom, then maybe Ill be able to close the bedroom door, turn down the lights, turn off the baby monitor (OK, maybe just turn it reeeal looow), and find some miraculously untapped reserves of energy* to turn on just about everything else.
*OK, so THAT’S a topic for another post.
It is so true.
And don’t even get me STARTED on what giving birth does to the used-to-be-sexy-and-mysterious body parts.
1) boobs: start leaking fluid. then there’s the most unsexiest appliance known to woman kind: the BREAST PUMP.
2) hoo-ha: large slimy infant and more fluids come shooting out. Ripping. Stitching. PAIN.
3) skin: stretch marks.
4) hair: unexpected WIRY ones show up in new and revolting places.
5) eyes: bags under
and it goes on and on. These new changes that motherhood brings are NOT SEXY! There’s no way around it.
Then there’s the sleeplessness. The hormones. The stress. The endless line of diapers and spit-up. The “isn’t it YOUR turn to get up?!”
It’s no WONDER we don’t feel sexy!!
And, from my vast experience, not feeling sexy becomes a habit. Even when our body shrinks and stops emitting fluids and mostly gets back to normal, we’ve lost the vibe. Our mojo is gone.
Help us Janna!!!
I’ll check my mom hat if he checks his work hat. That’s an even trade, don’t you think?
Great post!
Good post, thanks. We actually just talked about this yesterday at my moms’ group. Most of us have really little ones, so just looked confused at the whole thought of sex. It’s so important to stay close to our husbands, but so hard to find the energy/motivation/courage to remove clothing and display post-pregnancy body! Looking forward to your future posts on this topic.
And I laughed out loud at the comment from Bananas. I just finished pumping and made my husband avert his eyes when he walked in the room. Pumping is unattractive on so many levels.
This really rings true for me, even as someone who did not have sex before marriage. I felt sexier before I was even sexually active, before I was the mother to my children. I was somewhat mysterious and desireable before we were brushing our teeth together and discussing finances.