My Kids Have Impeccable Timing When It Comes To Ruining My Sex Life

”Mommy, what’s this?”

”Hmm?” I ask my 4-year-old son distractedly as I hunt for my keys in my bedroom. Squirt. I look up to see my son shooting a clear, gelatinous liquid onto my bed from a gooey, never-used tube of Astroglide (the warming kind, no less). As I fight the flush that rushes to my cheeks and rack my brain for some plausible answer, what I’m really thinking is that the large lubricant stain now spreading on my sheets is likely going to be the only one there for a good while.

I’ve lost my keys, all elasticity in my stomach and my sex life. Where have they all gone? My children have stolen them, misplaced them and squeezed the life out of them. And whenever my kids and sex end up in the same general vicinity of thought, the memory is permanently etched on my brain. I will never be able to use Astroglide again without thinking about my son. Not a great libido booster.

Every morning I wake up exhausted but excited to start a new day. It’s summer, after all. The air is already comfortably warm at 7:00 a.m., coffee is brewing and my husband looks hot. Still, after 15 years, he’s the most attractive man I know. And when the kids wake up, we both rush to see them, and all sexual crackle is gone from our atmosphere.

I love my little people more than anything in this world. Heart-twisting, gushing, all-consuming love that makes both my husband and me smile and laugh every single day. And we have the best time together all four of us. The not-so-sexy reality of raising children has usurped our sex life. We’re happy, but we are seriously sex-deprived.

My husband I have always been like explosive fireworks together. We used to spend entire days wrapped around each other, only leaving our bed to get beer. Of course, that was before kids. It’s not lack of time that has ended those halcyon days, because now that the kids are one and four, we actually do get a few hours every night to be alone. It’s simply about trying to be intimate amid the chaos of kids.

For me, it’s because I am a shell of my former highly sexual self. I feel like a 38-year-old virgin with two kids. To be perfectly blunt, even though I’ve had two c-sections and nothing in my nether regions has been altered, sex sometimes hurts. These days, I only contort myself into previously enticing positions to pick food up off the floor. I have a hard time twisting my mind around the mommy that I am and the luscious sex machine my husband knows me to be. When we’re in our bedroom (a cool loft that unfortunately has no door), and it’s the dead of night, all is quiet. But I’m still listening for the kids. Waiting to hear if one needs me, worrying if I can’t hear them breathing… I can’t turn mommy off for long enough to get turned on.

And my most erogenous zones no longer belong to my husband. My breasts are now my baby daughter’s and they’ll continue to be for some time. I love breastfeeding her, and dare I say that it is a sensual experience to have her little rosebud mouth attached to them, knowing that we are incredibly bonded. But my breasts are no longer the sexual objects they used to be. I’m not ready to give them back to my husband. In all likelihood, she is my last baby, and I want the heady rush and feelings of love so strong I can barely stand it to last a while longer.

It’s not just me who has become mommy with no sex. Almost all of my friends with kids lament the loss of their slutty selves: the long ago days of sexy lingerie and casual hookups. We all think we should be having more sex, and the excuses of exhaustion, changing bodies and demands of parenthood don’t seem reason enough to be living a celibate, though fulfilled, life. Enter science. According to breastfeeding.com, there are a whole slew of reasons why moms aren’t having any sex.

Breastfeeding can halt ovulation for months. As much as we may not want to ovulate and deal with our periods again, ovulation increases estrogen. Take that away, and we may not be so eager to get our juices flowing. As well, the milk let down reflex can suddenly spurt during sex, and I have no interest in seeing milk leaking out unless my baby daughter is close by. The most interesting scientific reason is found in nature. Mother animals don’t often mate when they’re raising their little ones because their bodies couldn’t possibly handle another pregnancy. Are humans so different?

During the early months of my daughter’s life, I found myself addicted to shows such as I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant. Hundreds of women, some well-educated and already mothers, go into excruciating labor, never knowing they were pregnant. No puking, fatigue or kicking. No clue until the baby’s head pops out. Fear of getting pregnant again is high on my list of worries.

I have a boy and a girl, and I am so done being pregnant and dealing with the crazy days of a newborn. I’ve always gotten pregnant very quickly, within seconds really, so even with supersonic protection, I’m scared.

Does this mean I’m destined to being a sexless mother? I refuse to believe that. I know that once the kids are a little older and don’t need me as much, when I stop breastfeeding and one of us actually does something medical to ward off any errant sperm finding its way in, my husband and I will be right back at it. Until then, there’s always porn. Actually, scratch that. Even the naughty videos we sometimes watched have been compromised by my kids because every time I see a woman doing whatever it is she does, I wonder where her mother is.

But I can still help those who are not yet mommies. The most common advice I got before having my kids was to sleep more because I’d never sleep well again. Forget the sleep, pre-kid people. Have all the nasty, dirty, delicious sex you can because those memories will have to last for a long time.

(Photo: Thinkstock Images)

Similar Posts