Let's talk about sex

I mentioned to my therapist yesterday that I had a low sex drive and that sex wasn’t really all that fun anymore. She fixated on this point - wanting to know when we last “made love”. I had to restrain myself from snickering.

I’m not sure I’ve ever been a fan of the phrase “make love” but especially now that our sex for the past however many months has been focused on trying to get pregnant, I can’t do much more than call it sex. When we first started TTC, we could still think of it as BMS (baby making sex) or the ever-so-cheesy BD (baby dance).

The first time we “made love” after we decided to try to get pregnant was magical. We knew we might have problems, but at that point those problems were off in the distance. We were caught up in the possibility that we were, at that very moment, conceiving a child. It was wonderful. (Well, the missionary position isn’t so great, but the moment was wonderful.)

But now that we’re old hands at this, the BMS has lost its magic. Sure, I still stay lying down for a while afterwards, just in case that helps move things along. But overall, it seems like one more chore to do in the whole process - something that happens on schedule so I can put it in my chart.

I think it’s because of all this that I’m strangely hopeful about the (probable) upcoming IUI. It’s not so much that I think it’s going to work (of course I WANT it to, but I’m trying not to get my hopes up about that right now) but that it will change the way we think about sex again. Of course, I’m sad about the IUI, since it makes this whole process seem so clinical - moreso than Clomid and frequent wanding and bloodletting. But I’m hopeful that by freeing us from the BMS we’ll be able to reclaim the idea that sex is “making love” and not just another procedure.