‘Do your duty as you see it, and damn the consequences.’
– George S. Patton Jr.

It should be just a usual fuck. Nothing out of the ordinary; a usual, delicious and comforting early evening fuck. The sort of sex that is satisfying in its familiarity.  We know each other well enough to know which buttons to press, and when and how hard, and it is so good!

Except that when I can tell he is about to come, I suddenly have a moment of panic. Trying to make it sound sexy and not like a freak out, I lean up and whisper in his ear ‘No, not inside me. Come on my tits instead!’

Which, of course, he does. And it’s super hot. I love watching his whole body as he comes – the tension, the focus, the movements of his hands on his cock, and then the look and feel of his spunk shooting all over me. Damn, I love it!

But that’s not why I asked him to do it, and he knows it.  It was because earlier that week I’d had my contraceptive coil removed and I was currently in the fertile period of my cycle.  It was because, despite all our conversations and plans, I freaked out at the last minute and didn’t want to become pregnant. Not just yet.

Later he asks me if I’m OK and if I want to talk about it.  I apologise, admit to my panic, and try to justify it by reminding him that we weren’t supposed to be seriously trying yet.  But we both know it was a freak out. Our decision to remove the coil and for us to start trying for a baby was the end point of a long and in-depth plan.  Would we do it any other way? My fears and reservations are well known, but so is my reliance on logic.  Once we’d decided that we definitely wanted to start a family together, it became a matter of timing.  Is this the best time in my career?  How would it fit in with my training program? And how stable is his job right now? Are we in a good financial place? When all our various considerations were fitted onto our timeline, it became clear that if we didn’t do this now, we may have to wait two or three years before there was another good time…

…so we should do this now, shouldn’t we? Gulp.

***

My body is very good to me in many ways, but the most pertinent for this post is that my menstrual cycle runs like clockwork! I had been keeping track of my periods on a tracker app and they could be predicted with an accuracy that seemed genuinely magical despite my confidence in science and biology.  And so I had no reason to suspect that ovulation and the recommended times of best fertility weren’t similarly accurate.  That first freak-out fuck was smack bang in the middle of a fertility period and, despite our carefully laid plans, I wasn’t ready.

But the window is only 10 days long and we were back in safe territory before we next had PIV.  ‘Maybe we’ve made a baby!’ he said, but I knew better.  Science, and my regular cycle, were on my side this time! He was right though – it wasn’t entirely impossible and that was oddly liberating.  EA and I have been fluid bonded for years so it shouldn’t have felt different, but it did in a way that I can’t really explain and I certainly didn’t expect.  This is no longer just for pleasure; this is for procreation!

But never mind that – getting pregnant means having a whole lot of sex and I was definitely not going to complain about that! 10 days when we need to have as much sex as possible? Every day? How about twice today? Yes please! It was hot and exciting and intimate, and I got over my immediate fear that this might actually make a baby pretty quickly, caught up in all the sex and orgasms and delight. Except that I actually couldn’t forget that other purpose entirely and couldn’t quite ignore its weight.  Sure, the sex was awesome but suddenly there were very real consequences.  Exciting and wanted consequences, sure, but unavoidably life-changing and terrifying consequences nonetheless.

Then that cycle came to an end and my period appeared exactly on time. Damn.

I was so afraid that I wasn’t ready for a baby that I was caught by surprise at how crushed I was that it hadn’t worked out. Obviously, I know the science and statistics. It doesn’t mean anything that we didn’t make a baby on that first try.  And am I really complaining about having to have a lot of sex again next month?

But in a small way, I was.  Sex was different and, with each passing month, the functional purpose of sex became more of a focus.  I shouldn’t have been surprised – baby-making sex cannot help but feel different because simply wanting sex or being horny is no longer the main drive to fuck.  It’s not fun in the same way as having a lot of sex on holiday or because you’re both really horny. There are the days when we need to have sex and we both need to come for the best chance of success and that’s that. Days when we need to have sex even if we’re tired. Or sick. Or if we have other plans. Or if we’re actually not in the mood.  And we can’t do fun different stuff because we need to at least end with PIV. No more come on my tits or in my hair. No more anal or facials or mutual masturbation. Not during those particular 10 days anyway. It became oddly dry. It would clearly be a lie to say that I didn’t enjoy it, but I was surprised by how quickly the novelty of needing to have so much sex wore off.

I began to simultaneously feel so much sympathy for everyone who has become pregnant by accident and everyone who has struggled or ultimately failed to conceive.  When you’re trying to conceive, it suddenly becomes really hard to do! There are so few fertile days and, even then, pregnancy is not guaranteed. What terrible luck for that one night stand or one broken condom or one poor decision to fall on that one specific time!  And equally, I was floored by how disappointed I was with each passing month as my failure to make a baby bled out of me, and it broke my heart to imagine feeling that way for month after month or year after year.  EA and I were lucky – we didn’t need to try for that long and yet I was already catastrophising failure and the ruination of our sex life…

***

I’ve been editing and rewording this post almost from the moment we saw that positive pregnancy test and I decided I wanted to write about baby-making sex.  It’s been a surprisingly difficult topic to write with a tone that achieved what I was trying to say.  I worried that this sounds like I spent those few months having sex that I didn’t want to have or that I didn’t enjoy it at all, which is absolutely not true.  I also worried that my complaints belittle the longer struggle that other women have suffered when trying to conceive, which were described so eloquently in this article from The Pool.  I haven’t had a miscarriage, although that’s still not entirely out of the realms of possibility. We haven’t had to try assisted conception.  We didn’t really even try for that long!

But, despite that or maybe because of it, I wanted to write about this because it is true that even in this short time and even with such a short period of trying to conceive, I have struggled with my own change in purpose ever since we decided to have a baby. When I changed from a person who likes having sex to a baby making machine.  This shift from women to mother, from selfish individual to protector of someone more important than me, is one aspect of impending parenthood that I was expecting to have to navigate but had thought it was a bridge that I would have to cross later.  I had not expected to feel so different so soon.

The simple fact that the sex we were having was primarily to make a baby felt like a blow to my agency, a dent in my value and purpose, and this happened almost immediately.  It wasn’t sex for me or for us or for pleasure.  This not yet conceived baby was already more important than that, more important than me, and that really shook up how I saw myself and how I felt about my body and my sexuality. It’s strange; I never knew that I was so selfish, so intrinsically self-serving, and that realisation has also taken time to process.  I didn’t know it could feel like that.

***

Luckily, we were forced to stop actively trying for a month.  A poorly timed course of antibiotics for non-specific urethritis put a stop to unprotected PIV sex for a week, which crossed out 7 of the 10 fertile days, including my projected ovulation day. Bugger. Another month wasted, but it was at least a month when we could be ourselves again. When we could relax, and not worry about when and how we fucked. Getting off while staying faithful to our PIV ban meant once again exploring some of the hot, hot types of sex that aren’t compatible with baby making. And, wow, it felt so good! Thank Christ for that, sex is still awesome!!

When ovulation day itself arrived, we almost missed it. I was checking my phone for something else when I saw the widget for the app, its bright blue circle highlighting the day on the calendar. Why not, I thought? Let’s defy our ban just one time. We’ve almost finished the treatment, I’m sure the risks are low.

So we did. A quick, delicious PIV fuck with the added frisson of feeling forbidden and sneaky. Fan-fucking-tastic!

When the end of my cycle rolled around, I waited patiently for my period to start, confident that this wasn’t our month. Except it didn’t; the app had got it wrong for the first time.

***

Three days later, I give up waiting and took a pregnancy test.

It seems that really all it takes is one well timed fuck…!