Standstill

Argh. Hello.

I'm so in love with my baby. Time has been standing still for the last 3 months as I became immersed in being a mom. There has been so much love and joy and delight. I canNOT believe Thanksgiving is around the corner.

Everything can be so heightened during the postpartum period. I've also experienced an increase in anxiety, particularly with having vivid worries about all the things I can't control and imagining all the bad things that could happen. In my mind flu germs=DEATH. Also, I wish I had never heard of SIDS... it is totally useless to worry about it with such vivid imagery but I do anyway. I've experienced an increase in insecure and self-critical thoughts, perhaps from being pretty holed up at home without much structure these past months.

I don't know if it is related but it seems to put me back in the mindset I was in a few years ago, before O and I opened up so much to fantasies and other couples. (As it is, we've had it all in back of the back burner for a year now anyway.) Lately I've also noticed that I've been dwelling on the situation with Hera sometimes and having sort of belated reactions of resentment and insecurity. Even though O has done plenty in the past to reassure me and he has always kept our marriage as his top priority.

I know he is careful to keep his interactions with Hera strictly platonic, but there is still the intensity of their attention to each other and as soon as they are alone together they slip into much deeper, more intimate conversation. I don't relish feeling like a third wheel with my husband and someone else. I feel left out and lonely for that type of connection with someone. However, this is my own stuff that is getting triggered. I know the friendship has been fulfilling for O.

An interesting twist, in a good god life is so weird when you think about it kind of way, Athena and Poseidon and their family have become good friends with Hera and her family. We've all sort of evolved into a big support network of friends. It is amazing how our little sex blog in cyberspace has led to these fundamental changes in our everyday life.

Body post baby- the stuff no one tells you

I've been meaning to take some pictures, but haven't yet. I did a lot of reading about pregnancy, but there's not much info out there about what happens after you're not pregnant anymore. I'm sure it is different for each person. For a week after birth, I still looked 6 months pregnant, as it takes some time for the uterus to shrink down. I gained 35 pounds during pregnancy, it was all baby and water weight. It is now 6 weeks after birth and I weigh three pounds more than I did before I got pregnant. I'd say a pound and a half for each boob is a fair estimate as to where those 3 pounds reside.

However! My belly got all stretched out and it is definitely not in the same shape as before. My pants fit, but there's a pooch. Hi there muffintop! Since it is not fat, just stretched skin, I'm not sure how to make that go away. Maybe it will gradually on its own but I don't know. I read about a body shaper and ordered one from amazon. It's basically a corset, and it works fantastic, smooths and slims the belly right down. It makes my body look incredibly sexy. I feel like a fake wearing it though, probably not unlike how I would feel if I got a boob job. Inauthentic. However, great to use if I want to go to some event and want to look extra nice. Supposedly, if I were to wear it consistently, it claims it would make my 'pooch' go away permanently.

The stretch marks, which materialized like a spider web around the bellybutton in the last couple weeks of pregnancy, are still red. The line from pelvic bone to belly button to rib cage that darkens for a lot of caucasian women during pregnancy is still there. I guess it takes several months for all that to fade. I lucked out (actually that wasn't luck, thanks to the 'pounder') and didn't need stitches after the baby was born, but a part of left side of the outer lip of the birth canal took a beating and stung like HELL for two weeks after birth whenever I peed. I looked at it using a mirror and there was a red welt there. Now it is healed, but now shaped a little differently than before, at least to the touch. I don't know if the difference can even be seen.

O found some great lingerie that he ordered for me. The lingerie plays up the big boobs while discreetly covering up the midsection. O LOVES the big boobs. I'm a little nervous to think about when I stop breastfeeding at some point and they shrink down. They won't look like before either.

I do not regret it for a second though. These are my battle scars that I gladly exchange for something so incredible and amazing as my daughter and the bond I have with her.

Sex post-baby is great. I wondered if I would feel a lot different to O but he says I don't. Interestingly, I feel much more sensitive. Before, the act of penetration was the most stimulating part and then once the cock is in the canal so to speak I didn't feel it much. I would just feel the thrusts. Now I feel O's whole cock, bottom to the tip, the entire time. I'm also really loving my orgasms these days!

Opening Up

A while ago I read Opening Up by Tristan Taormino. The unique thing about this reading experience was that I had had the experiences first, THEN I was reading about it. For most other significant experiences in life- schooling, sex, marriage, pregnancy, birth- I had read and heard about it first. However, open relationships was a complete unknown that I went into without any previous knowledge or in depth conversation with anyone who had done it before.

So reading Opening Up was a reverse experience. The book repeatedly brought up insights and points that I had already worked out in my own thinking, experiencing, and writing before reading the book. It was pretty wild to realize that while reading it! This book covers a lot of the different set ups and preferences and arrangements that people have and how they arrived at what worked for them and how they addressed the issues that came up along the way.

I'm recognizing that a lot of readers have been left with unanswered questions and they have speculated upon what "really" happened with me and O and A and P, etc. For a long time it was, and some ways it still is, a mixed up jumble. I think I am gradually beginning to clarify this in ways that make more sense of such confusion.

First of all, getting to know others, especially in intimate ways, online is a double-edged sword. Online you can quickly bypass elements of communicating and relating and ways of getting to know others that is present in person. In one way it is more freeing- cutting out the BS, getting quickly to what seem to be much more in depth, meaningful, honest ways of relating. However, it also bypasses the whole person. The very subtle nuances. The way they come across in person, the way they exist in a spontaneous social context where they are not able to shape and present themselves through thought out words. You can't see their living space, the environment in which they are embedded. You can't see how they are in the world, and even when they tell you honestly and openly how they are in the world, you easily put your own spin on it so it is not really how it really is.

Online stuff is rife with opportunity for projection and idealization and fantasy, fueled by infatuation. It is easy to imagine deep connections and melded minds only to stand before each other in person and realize you don't get this person at all. If the online stuff stays online, it is fun and harmless, comfortable and safe. If you decide to meet in a neutral location, such as a vacation, that compartmentalization can still be preserved. If you enter one or the other's real life, temporarily or permanently, that is when things can get really messy.

I think it is entirely possible for it to NOT happen that way and for everyone to continue to easily relate and understand each other and for the feelings to continue unabated from online to real life. I'm sure it has happened.

The other piece, which I'm sure I've written about before on here somewhere, is the difference between "here we are adventuring and experimenting with this other couple we've met and like and trust" and "here we are living a poly lifestyle of some sort that we have to keep secret from others on a daily basis." The first one makes me like myself and feel kinda proud. I wouldn't mind my friends knowing that I've been adventurous and experimented. The second one makes me cringe. I do not want to live that kind of life and I would be ashamed if anyone knew. I resent having been put in the situation, even though I willingly did it because I didn't yet know what it would be like. It is one of the resentments I just have to work through and accept.

Unfortunately I didn't know until A and P actually moved here. They moved here and we all expected it would move along sort of like our vacation experience. At this point two things happened- the collision of how we experienced them online versus how we experience them as people in real life. This, in addition to making the shift from 'hey experimentation crazy fun' to 'hey why don't you go over to some other house and hook up with this guy who isn't O on a regular basis'. I suppose the second option could sound kinda fun to you, but I was really overwhelmed and uncomfortable with all of it. I lost all interest and attraction and desire. Guilt, shame, and inhibition became stronger than curiosity and desire. I tried to fight with that for a while before accepting that was just how I felt.

So there were reactions and confusion and emotional blowouts as we all tried to make sense of that. I also have to weed through a lot of resentment, I'm realizing, through no fault of anyone. I resent that what was fun and exciting online moved into my real life and became threatening and stressful. I resent that connections and impressions of others online can change so much in person that you find yourself holding it against the person even though if you had just met them originally in person, you wouldn't have. I resent having to be continually reminded of all of it, which results in reverberating through the past and it taints (haha, taint) the whole experience, which originally was quite fun and positive and enriching. Ultimately, it just seems easier to shut it all down and chalk it up to a phase in our lives. But then some resentment, because if it hadn't changed like this, it might still be fun and ongoing somehow. But then I remember, no, when you do this stuff online it always eventually reaches the point where you feel like you HAVE to meet this person or couple. Online stuff isn't fulfilling in any long term way.

I care about A and P and ultimately I am glad that they are in our regular, everyday lives. But the truth is, I do have a jumbled pile of resentment and mixed feelings that I have to work through still before I can openly welcome their presence in my life in a completely free, friendly and positive way.

Not to speak for O, but my sense is that he doesn't have the qualms that I do and is generally more accepting of the situation as a whole. He doesn't want or need it to be any different. He stopped posting at this point in time simply because he stopped feeling the need or interest to do so. It is not at all due to any dissatisfaction or hard feelings. I guess it doesn't seem relevant to his experiences right now and he petered out like so many other sex blog writers do at some point. He wants to focus on our baby blog instead.

I think, if I had read Opening Up, beforehand, perhaps it might have prepared me a little better for the experience with A and P when they arrived here. (Ironically, it specifically warns against moving across the country based on infatuation :) However, despite all the rocky bumps in this road, we have worked and are working our way to a positive place.

Women and sex

Soon after I took the picture, I told O I needed some prostaglandins on my cervix. He was happy to help me out, and an hour and a half later, labor started. O juice is some powerful stuff!

Thank you for the congrats and well wishes, everyone!

We have been busy adjusting to life with a newborn. As many of you warned me, sleep has been scarce. I had not expected how much biology pretty much makes me the primary nurturer these first weeks. I pretty much have to take a boob out every 20 minutes (it feels like) and I can't give her to O for very long. O is freed up to go hunting and providing. I'm beginning to see firsthand how gender roles got created early on in our culture's history.

I wanted to comment on Athena's entry over at Athena and Poseidon and realized the comment would be long enough to warrant an entry over here. I thought it was curious that she felt many women primarily viewed sex as an opportunity for power, control, and/or gain. My own knee jerk reaction is that the type of woman who uses sex to consciously manipulate men and/or circumstances are a small subset of the population. My feeling is that for a lot of women, sex is about insecurity, inner conflict and guilt. These are the women who have been conditioned by the mixed messages and double binding expectations out there.

Sex becomes about giving the guy what he wants.
Sex becomes a choice between being good or being bad.
Sex is about hoping the guy likes you, being so insecure that you 'give it up' at the expense of the higher morals and values that you're 'supposed' to have in the situation.
Sex is about deciding what and how much to give to maintain the balance between being being good or being a slut, giving a guy enough so that he is happy and still respects you versus giving him too much so that he thinks you're a slut and talks about you to his friends.
Sex is about thinking you're not good enough, so you just give it up to whoever wants you so you feel affection and as if you're liked.
Sex is only really right if it is about love. If it is not about love, then you should feel guilty about it.
Sex is about giving in, and then feeling guilty afterwards.
Women are not supposed to "want" sex, like "that." If she does, she does so at the expense of being looked down upon by most people. (At least in young adulthood. If she's married and has a voracious sexual appetite, then the husband's just lucky.)
And most of all, for a woman, sex is mostly about being desired, not about actively desiring.

I don't necessarily believe anything I wrote above, but that is what came out in my 'free association'. This reminds me of an entry I wrote a long time ago, ah, here it is. Haha, I found it by typing "passive" into the search thingy.

Somehow Athena bypassed all that stuff. According to her, she loves sex, loves having a good time, loves giving others a good time. So she just went for it. No complex whatsoever. I admit, there is a strong part of me that has red flags go up at the idea of an 8th grader having sex with older men. I see red flags, I start questioning what was going on for her that led to those circumstances.

Then I try to step back and truly try to see it as pure and simple as that- sex is great, there isn't anything dysfunctional at work, she was having fun and wasn't being taken advantage of or trying to find affection lacking from her father or whatever. It is curious how often there are associations between sex and dysfunction if sex doesn't fit a certain prescribed category. These days there certainly would be all kinds of alarm and judgment if word got out about an 8th grader having sex with much older men, not to mention the fact that it is considered illegal and those men could go to jail. Is it really possible that it could be a truly benign activity, all in sweaty fun, that becomes distorted and dysfunctional in the eyes of others? Were those really decent men who had sex with an 8th grader? Would they deserve to go to jail? If Athena had caught the attention of adults at that point in time, would she have ultimately come to view those sweaty fun times as traumatic because of all the alarm and concern and punitiveness that would have been thrown her way?

She has the ability to view sex as recreation, as a fantastically good time with her partner and others, without guilt. Because she lacks guilt, she could freely own and express her sex drive and sexual assertiveness from the very beginning. I don't know how she managed to do that.

Oh another thing in reference to Athena's entry, O and I can't have sex if there is any sort of discord between us. Again it has nothing to do with control. The mood permeates us and neither of us can suspend it or put it aside. How can you enjoy sex with someone if the connection between you isn't right? How can you do something so intimate when you're not in harmony? I'm not sure if it has to do with views on sex or whether it is just personality or temperament. Sometimes I do wish we had that ability to have make up sex! But we always have to be fully 'made up' before sex is possible.

Baby is on the boob again. She's been awake all day, let's hope that means she sleeps all night!

Happy news!

As it happened, this picture was taken approximately 3 hours before labor started! Twenty something excruciating, amazing hours later, I had a healthy beautiful daughter in my arms. O cried at the sight of her. He had been wanting to meet her for so long.

I did not tear, surprising all the docs and nurses, thanks to the pussy pounder! I didn't think I had gotten up to a large enough size, but it still worked. My poor belly, however, is an aftermath battle zone. I wonder if it will ever return to somewhat normal! And breast feeding hurts so much right now, owwww. I know that part will get better soon.

We have looked at our own baby pictures and our daughter's resemblance to O's baby pictures right now is amazing. I can't wait to see what color eyes and hair ultimately emerge. I thought newborns just cried loudly, but she makes all kinds of noises, sighs and little bird calls and kitten cries. She has the roundest cheeks. I could (and do) just look into her face and delight in her rapidly changing facial expressions for hours. We are in love. We are happy, blessed parents.

Not a butt plug

Not that kind of plug...here's a blog plug for my friends Justin and Betty over at Seducing the Gods. They have recently started an excellent blog to explore their sexuality and find out what their fantasies, thoughts and feelings mean to them. I was surprised when I found myself feeling nostalgic while reading it. It reminds me of the early days of this blog when these concepts were exciting and new and a tantalizing prospect. Not only that, but also the thrill of posting pictures and sharing such intimate details so openly.

This again made me think more about where I am at and what has changed. I suppose it could be attributed to pregnancy but I know I also reached a point where I became overwhelmed and actively needed to distance myself as well. Although I wonder if part of my nostalgic reaction is coming from the fact that I am lumbering around in the tail end of my pregnancy. I miss the energy of those days, when blogging and meeting others was thrilling, comfortable, fun and flamed sexual desire. I don't think there really is a way to "go back" to those circumstances in a similar way that you can't go back to your first sexual experience or your first love. However I wonder if there are other possibilities and outlets for fueling and channeling those feelings.

I think overall this tends to follow a pattern for couples who open themselves up in the spirit of adventurous experimentation. First: the tintillating conversations and/or entries and general venturing into these topics. Then there are email exchanges with a like-minded couple and 'neck down' pictures. After corresponding, sharing intimate details, fantasies, flirting, etc for a while, there are 'neck up' pictures. If things continue to go well, things heat up. Explicit chatting, pictures, experimentation and more correspondence ensues. Then a point is reached where either it peters out or maximum fun has been had everyone is dying to meet each other and make it a real experience in person.

So you meet up in person and then... that's usually things get pretty kablooey. There are the initial enjoyable experiences in the light of curiosity and throwing away inhibitions. Then what? I guess we have experienced the three out of four main possible outcomes. The first is becoming amicable friends without continuation of the sexual aspect. The second is having a painful falling out because somehow there was a glitch or miscommunication or red flags that went unheeded. The third is having a couple actually move into your lives in order to be close by and willingly continue things wherever they may lead. In a roundabout way, the third option, for us, led back to the first. We are now good friends.

The third option, if continued in a straight line, would lead to a polyamoric existence. The fourth option, I suppose is more of a swingers existence. I imagine that option as "friends with benefits" in a very laidback, intensity-free and drama-free kind of way. You hang out once in a while, enjoy mutual chemistry without any one person being particularly attached to one or both of the other couple in order to get needs met, and enjoy playtime whenever the mood is right. This sounds appealing in the abstract, but likely would make me anxious and overthink things every time we make contact. I'm always overthinking.

So back to the feeling of "I suppose that is it then" and the counterfeeling that goes "But...really? That's it?" I suppose there's nothing wrong with that. It doesn't have to be settled, labeled and fit into a category in order to let go. Maybe it will just be a somewhat ambiguous cloud and someday a situation will occur that fits the pieces I really liked in a comfortable way and makes it all clear and easy.

However, I do not need for that to happen. O and I have a whole new adventure ahead of us. I also know that exploring these topics and meeting new friends through this blog has always been positive and this I do want to continue.

Waiting to see

I think "hiatus" or "new chapter" may be better phrases to use than "the end". There may be new topics that arise that I would love to write about but wouldn't feel comfortable doing so on a regular 'daytime' blog. Such as sex and parenthood. Or sexual fantasies. Or ways to keep my libido alive and kicking in new and not yet discovered ways. I think this is something where I have to wait and see if inspiration strikes.

I hesitate to say that anything is set in stone. I don't want to say that anything will be in any particular way forever. I hesitate to end the blog altogether. I think it will change form.