Week #7—Six Month Sex Challenge
After my last blog post about not knowing whether to carry on with this challenge, I had to sit down and do a lot of hard thinking. Actually, it was three days of bouncing between bouts of crying and angrily asking myself, “Why does this have to be so difficult? I just want to have sex.”
Had some heart-to-heart chats with my husband. Cleared the air and decided together how we wanted to go forward. But then later in the week it came time to initiate sex and I didn’t know if I was going to face rejection, unresolved couple issues or what. So, as per usual, I held off until the very last minute.
A walk down memory lane
Because I’m breastfeeding fulltime, lubricant is an absolute essential as intercourse can be uncomfortable.
I’ll never forget my first son’s six week postpartum checkup. As my OBGYN inserted fingers lathered with KY jelly she said, “The might feel uncomfortable. Sometimes women’s vaginas go into a menopausal-like state if they are breastfeeding fulltime. This may make intercourse uncomfortable.”
Before having my first son, I dolled this information out to hundreds of new moms. You see estrogen which makes for a nice juicy vagina, is being suppressed by the hormones prolactin and oxytocin.
Ironically, I didn’t expect intercourse to be so darn uncomfortable. And for the first six months intercourse was, at times, unpleasant until I stopped breastfeeding fulltime. So as excited as I was to initiate intercourse this time around, I was just as anxious about if I would have to endure another six months of it being uncomfortable.
How was the intercourse?
When the time came to get down to business, I had a bottle of lubricant on my bedside table. I knew from experience that water based lubricant just wouldn’t cut it for my poor old vagina, so I went straight to the silicone based lube.
This time around intercourse was uncomfortable. Sigh. Quite disappointed but I also appreciate that it will only be a few more months of fulltime breastfeeding. I used A LOT of silicone lubricant and it seemed to help. I guess this means we can’t have wild, hanging off the chandeliers intercourse (like that happens anyway) for a while.
Afterwards, as we lay in bed wrapped around each other—such a long time since we’ve done that. Had a feeling of complete peace. Really felt like all this icky couple crap we’re going through is going to work out. We are going to be okay; not perfect but perfectly okay. Best of all, we’re well on our way to getting our sex life back on track.
Husband’s rating on silicone lubricant
He gives it an 8/10—high praise indeed coming from him. He really liked how the product worked but felt it wasn’t as slippery or lasted as long as other silicone lubricants we’ve tried. (I told him it was a trade off because this product doesn’t stain sheets like some silicone lubes do.)
Next week we’ll be trying the Jimmy Jane candle.
More Six Month Sex Challenge
My Sexual Needs Versus the Football Game
What the !?!*! Was I Thinking Trying to Have Sex
The Road to Hell is Paved with Good (Sex) Intentions
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