Chapter 6: No Love Lost

Shea tries to understand her body and sexuality post-baby.

I wish my children could appreciate how simple their lives are right now. They have no idea how complicated life will be.

Jasmine

3 Months Old…

“Ya wanna?” Everett asked and wiggled his eyebrows at me. I knew what this meant. Every woman knows what this means. In response, Zoe woke up crying and I shrugged. Not this time, buddy.

“How often do you have sex now that you have the kids?” I asked Riley and Jasmine the next day over coffee. The kids were lined up next to the table in their car seats.

Riley laughed.

“Okay,” I admitted. “Probably not the right person to ask.” I turned to Jasmine. She looked up at the ceiling, counting.

“Once,” she said.

“A week?”

She raised her eyebrows at me. “Since I had the twins.”

I gasped before I could stop myself. “And here I came in today looking for sympathy.”

“How about you?’ Riley asked.

I shrugged. “Once every week or two.”

“That’s not bad,” she said. “Why are you asking?”

“I don’t know,” I said and took a sip of my coffee, considering my words. “I guess sometimes it just doesn’t feel like enough.”

“Mija, you have a baby,” Jasmine said. “You can’t expect to have sex as much as you used to. How many times did you do it before?”

“At least twice a week. Sometimes up to four.”

“Now you’re just showing off,” Riley scoffed. I laughed.

“I think the real question is why you’re worried about it,” Jasmine said.

As close as Riley, Jasmine and I were, it was easy to forget we’d only known each other for four months. They didn’t know me when Everett and I got married. If they did, they would know there was a very real possibility the only reason Everett and I got married is because I was pregnant. Everett always assured me we would have gotten married anyway, but it was hard to accept I would never really know for sure.

“Sometimes it seems like it’s not enough for Everett,” I said. I didn’t say how much deeper my fears ran--that Everett would regret marrying me, that he would regret staying for a child he never planned for, that one day he would leave.

“In most cases,” Riley said, “I would say screw him. Any man who doesn’t understand what your body has gone through and how hard it is to take care of a baby all day is an a*s. But I know Everett.” She squeezed my hand. “He loves you. He would never want you to push yourself further than you were ready to go.”

I nodded. I wished it were that easy for me to believe. “I just don’t feel like myself anymore,” I said, my voice shaky. “I don’t even recognize my own body. I don’t feel comfortable in it.”

“Mija, trust me. I know what you’re going through. I carried double what you did,” Jasmine said.

My laugh was throaty.

“It’ll come back,” Riley said. “You’ll come back. It’s going to take some time to adjust. It took you ten months for your body to expand. You can’t expect it to shrink back down in ten weeks.”

“What about my mind?” I asked.

“Well, that could take even longer.”

That night, inspired by our talk, I set out to seduce Everett. I would find my pre-pregnancy vixen if I had to hunt her down and drag her back by the hair. I made pasta, about the easiest romantic food I could manage to whip up, and lit candles. I got Zoe down for a nap five minutes before I expected Everett to be home and at the last minute, decided to throw on something mildly sexy, though none of my old lingerie fit anymore.

Note to self: do not try on pre-baby lingerie before sex. Not a morale booster.

Instead I put on one of Everett’s favorite outfits that, luckily, covered up all the features I so desperately wanted to hide. If only there were some way to have sex without taking the outfit off.

When Everett walked through the door, he noticed something was different right away. Not because of the romantic setting, but because I met him at the door with a beer, which I hadn’t done since the first week we lived together. Half of it was already gone.

“Why do I feel like you’re about to tell me you’re either pregnant again or your parents are coming to live with us until the end of time?” he asked.

“I can’t decide which of those is scarier,” I said.

“So you can imagine my concern.”

“Can’t a woman make dinner for her man just because she loves him?” I handed him the beer in case his answer was no.

Everett looked around dramatically. “Please tell me you didn’t trade our baby for booze.”

“She’s sleeping.”

“In that case,” he said and kissed me softly, “a woman can make me dinner any time she wants.”

I took off his jacket and led him to the dinner table. I had to admit, with such a quiet house and wearing clothes that didn’t smell like spit up, I did feel a little more like myself. I got us each another beer, and we sat down to enjoy our dinner.

“What’s the special occasion?” he asked.

Slowly, I said, “I thought it was about time we...” I trailed off and wiggled my eyebrows. He knew what that meant. Every man knows what that means.

“The baby won’t be down for long,” he said. We stared at each other. “Maybe we ought to...”

We both smiled, dropped our forks, and headed for the bedroom.

It felt like old times at first. We pulled off each other’s clothes with the same ferocity we did our first time together. Everett and I had never been bad at the sex thing. It helped that he was quite possibly the most gorgeous man I’d ever seen in real life, even better looking than some celebrities. I didn’t kid myself that he thought as highly of me, but I must have done something right.

We kissed and touched and caressed, and it was at right at about the same point since giving birth that we got stuck.

“Ow,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” he said and pulled back. “Did I hurt you?”

“It’s okay,” I urged. “Try again.”

He did, slower and with more concentration this time.

“Ow,” I whined again.

Everett sat back and looked at me. “We don’t have to do this,” he said.

“No. I want to.”

He gave me the “Are you sure?” eyes and I nodded. Even slower this time, he lowered himself down on top of me. I squeezed my eyelids together and started to cry. He stopped immediately and in a rush, pulled me close to him.

“It’s okay,” he whispered, comforting me like he comforted Zoe as he put her to sleep. He said, “It’s nice just to be close to you,” which only made me cry harder because I knew it was a lie.

***

“What’s wrong with me?” I cried to Riley over the phone.

“Honey, you’ve got to stop thinking so much into this,” Riley said, clearly irritated with me.

“Why does What to Expect stop focusing on the mother after When You’re Expecting?” I said, flipping through What to Expect The First Year on my lap.

“You can’t find the answers to life in a book.”

I sighed and tossed the book to the floor. I leaned back in my rocking chair and looked to the ceiling. “It hurts, Riley. It still hurts a lot.”

Riley sighed on the other end of the line. “You body went through a lot that day. It’s not uncommon to still be sore.”

“Are you?”

Riley gave a dry laugh. “Hell if I know. I still get a twinge here and there, though, if I sit the wrong way.”

“Should I see a doctor?” I asked.

“Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe you just need to relax. Sex is just as much an emotional thing as it is a physical thing. If you're tense in your head, you’ll be tense in your body, so it will hurt.”

“I’ve been tense in my head since the age of seven when I first learned about germs while watching The Magic School Bus.”

“If there’s ever a time to relax, Shea, it’s when you’re doing the dirty.”

I laughed. “Don’t call it that. I don’t ‘do the dirty’ with my husband. We make love.”

“It doesn’t sound like you’re doing much of either at the moment.” When I didn’t respond, she said, “Sorry, bad joke.”

“No,” I said, “you’re right. So how do I relax?”

“Confront your fears about sex. And let them go.”

***

I sat in the rocking chair with Zoe half asleep in my arms when Everett got home. I heard him moving around the house, putting his briefcase away and taking off his shoes, before he snuck into the nursery to kiss me on the forehead.

“How was your day?” I asked. He rolled his eyes dramatically.

“How was yours?” he asked. I nodded. “I’ll go get dinner started,” he said and moved for the door.

“Everett?” I said, just above a whisper. He turned back to me. “I’m afraid you don’t think of me the same way you used to.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I’m afraid you don’t see the woman I used to be. Young and sexy. Carefree.”

Everett frowned and sat on the edge of the toy box in front of me. He stayed silent.

I looked down at Zoe and swallowed. “It’s hard for me to relax with you because all I can think about is everything that’s changed.”

“What’s changed?” he asked. I smiled at him. He had such a simple way of looking at life, one of my favorite things about him.

“I don’t look the way I used to,” I said, “and I don’t feel the way I used to, physically or emotionally. It seems like you haven’t changed that much at all while I feel like a completely different person. And...well, what if I’ve changed into a person that isn’t sexy to you anymore?”

Everett sighed. He reached out a hand and brushed his fingers on my cheek. “You aren’t the same person anymore, Shea. You’re a mom now. And I’m a dad. Maybe you don’t think I’ve changed, but I think I have. Parenting doesn’t mean a baby shows up on your doorstep, and you do the best you can until it's eighteen when you go back to being yourself again. Parenting is life changing. It’s soul changing.”

I couldn’t help it. I started to cry. It was exactly how I felt. Changed down to my soul.

“I still see that girl I fell in love with,” he went on. “I see her in your smile and the way you look at me. The way you sing really badly when you think I’m not listening.”

I laughed through my tears, and he smiled.

“I see the new parts of you too,” he said. I wiped my tears.

“Like what?” I asked. He moved closer to me.

“Like the way you put others before yourself and the way you love more deeply than ever. And, yes, your body has changed. I happen to love those changes. They remind me of the beautiful gift you’ve given me. No one else in the world can ever give me that gift, and I love you even more because of it.”

I started to cry again, embarrassed about worrying so much when all he wanted to do was love me. Everett and I stood up and held each other. Zoe slept between us, oblivious to how much she’d changed us--how much for the better.

That night Everett and I made love. He undressed me and I let him see, really see, everything--the parts of me that were the same and the parts of me that had changed, for better or worse. He kissed me everywhere. My lips, the same as always. My breasts, larger and softer from breastfeeding. My tummy, the skin thinner and rounder from carrying his child. My stretch marks, one by one. He loved even the most changed parts of me and because of it, I loved them a little more too.

Author's Note

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