‘Pregnancy sucks the nightlife out of you.’
– Laurie Perez, The Power of Amie Martine
Since deciding to document the sexuality of my pregnancy on this blog, I’d planned to write a blog post about sex during each of the different trimesters. Thankfully, the first trimester is over but, now that it’s time to write about it, I have been hesitating. At the risk of putting the punchline in the introduction, first trimester sex is really boring and it’s likely that this is going to be a really unsexy post! But never mind, here I go…
My experience of first trimester sex can be summed up in a sentence – there wasn’t much of it as I was always asleep!
When Tabitha Rayne’s 30 Days of Orgasm Fun started at the beginning of April, we’d just discovered that I was pregnant and naively figured that it wouldn’t make that much difference. I loved this month long orgasm fest last year and had big plans to keep proper spreadsheets and notes this time around. I knew that the books said that I would be tired during the first trimester, but I’d been tired before. Surely it wouldn’t be that different?
Oh my, how little I knew! We gleefully and joyously embarked on our daily orgasm fun but it only took about 8 days, and the fifth week of pregnancy, for me to essentially fall asleep on the job. Luckily for EA, I don’t mean that literally but I certainly found myself falling asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow, struggling to stay awake until just 10:30 or 11pm despite early evening power naps. For a night owl who usually has to convince myself to go to bed at 12:30 or 1am, this was quite a change!
And it wasn’t just that I was going to bed earlier. I was absolutely exhausted all of the time and it was a different exhaustion from the sleep deprivation that I have become used to over my years of shift work and poor bedtime decisions. I was so tired that I could barely think straight, could barely construct a meaningful sentence, could barely stay awake, let alone think about sex!
My body felt different too. My tits had swollen to previously unseen enormity but I couldn’t make the most of this as they were so tender that I had to wear a bra all the time and any jiggling was uncomfortable. Although I was fortunate enough that I didn’t suffer with severe morning sickness, usually only vomiting once per day, this was often triggered by brushing my teeth and suggested that my gag reflex was on such a hair trigger that it didn’t feel sensible to test it! And as I wrote about in a recent Sinful Sunday, all of these changes – the tiredness, nausea, bloating and general urgh-ness – made me feel too much like a baby making machine to feel sexy. It had a definite and noticeable effect on my sex drive, separate from the tiredness issue.
Not every day was so bad. The first trimester is three months long after all and even this hurricane of changes couldn’t completely crush my libido, but the sex we had was more consciously planned (if only as it was often much, much earlier in the evening than our usual pattern!) and more consistently simple than before. Slow, intimate fucks before I went to sleep, positions that we knew well and knew worked. The frequency with which we had sex didn’t dramatically change but it certainly required more thought and active initiation from EA than before. But EA was amazing – no pressure or no disappointment when I was almost constantly snoozing, which made it much easier to just wait it out. It was reassuring to know that I shouldn’t feel this crappy forever!
(Oh, and as an aside, we still used a lot of sex toys! As a spoiler for a future post, I intend to write more about this after more, um, research.)
So there you have it – the first trimester sucks…and not in a good way.
Bring on the second trimester and, fingers crossed, a return to a more normal level of sexiness!
One down and two to go. Best of luck through the rest of your pregnancy. (And lots of good sex too!!)
I love that you’re documenting this. The first trimester is definitely an “urg-y” time. I’m so glad that EA has been supportive and adaptive in the changes you need (not that it’s surprising in any way, but really lovely). As your belly gets bigger, you might find that you seem to be stuck in a list of 2 or 3 positions (ours became sideways positions with an under-bump pillow for support and a lot of dirty talk while Mr. took care of himself), but as you mention, it’s the intimacy level that stays consistent. I’m also super looking forward to the toy list!!