There's no way out...

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month six bloggers - ALBJ, An Open Book, Delightfully Queer, More Than Nuclear, Rarely Wears Lipstick, and The Boy With The Inked Skin - will write about their views on one of them. This month, our topic is "commitment"

One criticism of my open marriage that I've come up against time and time again is that a relationship without monogamy is a relationship without commitment. Just as we're often told that your partner can't really love you if they've fallen in love with someone else, if you claim to be committed to more than one person, you are, de facto, committed to neither, and if you claim to be committed but not exclusive, you are kidding yourself. I've even been asked (several times) why my husband and I even bothered to get married if we didn't want to commit to each other. Exclusivity is seen as synonymous with commitment, rather than being one possible commitment out of many.

I can accept that if my marriage was exactly the same as it is now but with the addition of us being sexually and romantically exclusive, we would be more committed than we are now. But that means very little to me, because that commitment is not something that we value. Similarly, I consider cohabitation a significant and important commitment, but if other people see living with their partner as something undesirable, or maybe just a trivial as matter as having a housemate, then this won't be a commitment that benefits their relationship.

Commitments aren't about what we want or how we feel, though that might be why we make them. If monogamy was easy, and it was unlikely that your partner would ever be tempted to stray, then committing to exclusivity wouldn't be considered so significant. Monogamy is a commitment because it involves resisting temptation if it arises, and talking openly about your girl/boyfriend, partner or spouse is one of the ways that monogamous people make this commitment clear to other people. When we make a commitment to someone, we don't mean we'll do it because we want to, we mean we'll do it whether we want to or not. It's more than just a promise, it's an obligation. A commitment is a promise we make that would be hard to break.

This is one of the reasons why, even without exclusivity, marriage is still a significant commitment to me. My husband and I didn't just promise to be together for the rest of our lives, we did so publicly, in front of our friends and family, and we continue to do so when we make our relationship status clear to people. Even without the legal and financial entanglements that were the result of our ceremony, the open, public nature of the promise we made makes it very difficult to back out. There are others, but marriage is a pretty effective commitment device.

Living together, owning property, paying bills together, integrating our social and familial lives, and raising a child would make separating our lives from one another difficult and traumatic. By voluntarily putting ourselves in that position, we have committed to the survival of our relationship, even if it becomes hard, and even if we change our minds.

In some ways, my relationship with my boyfriend is more romantic, as it lacks the prosaic, legal structure of my marriage. Our relationship does have its promises, but we have made few of the commitments that either of us would require from a primary, "marriage-type" relationship. We are able to choose to be together every day, and are confident that the reason we still have a significant and cherished place in each other's lives is because it is what we both want. My prediction is that this will continue indefinitely, but there is very little that would force us together should one of us change our minds.

Commitments don't have much to do with emotion. You can stay committed to an unhappy relationship, or, like my boyfriend and I, be happily in love without obligations holding you together. The latter is wonderful, but would not be enough for me to plan my life around. The fixed, secure nature of my husband's commitment to me was necessary for me to even consider him as the potential father of my child.

And then, despite the value I place on my marriage, all the commitments I have ever made shrink to nothing compared to the commitment I made by purposefully becoming a parent. A human being exists because of the decision my husband and I made together, and we are totally responsible for every aspect of her life so far.

Unlike my husband, our daughter had no part in negotiating our commitment to her. She is completely dependent on us honouring this commitment, through no choice or action of her own. Thinking about it in this way, I am struck with what a precarious position children are in when they are forced to trust their parents, despite having no control over that relationship. And aside from the very basics, little of what a parent should do for their child is explicit or public enough to make it a significant commitment.

So, as an effort to correct that, here is my attempt to draft my own, public commitment to her (beyond my legal requirement not to neglect her), with you as its first witnesses:

• As long as she is dependent on me, I will make her interests and happiness my primary concern. I will always consider carefully how my actions will affect her. I will be mindful of my control over her life, and her dependency on me.
• I will always treat her with kindness. If I ever need to deny her something that she wants, restrict her actions, or correct her mistakes, I will always do so kindly, respectfully and without shaming or intimidating her.
• I will try to make her childhood fun, and I will prioritise playfulness every day.
• Most importantly, I will make sure that she knows that my love for her is unconditional and constant. Nothing she does, neither her successes nor her failures, will alter how much I love her. She will never need to earn my affection or my attention.
• If I ever fail at any of these points (which I'm sure I will), I will apologise to her, and try to do better next time.

There is more, of course, but this is what I'm working on now. And fulfilling all this, whether I want to or not, is not easy. There are days when I enjoy parenting more than others, and some days when I would really like to ditch the responsibility entirely, but the commitment I made to her means that I can't back out. She needs this stability, just as I, to a lesser degree, need the commitments that my husband made to me. None of us want a way out of this.

Nettles, by Vernon Scannell

My son aged three fell in the nettle bed.
'Bed' seemed a curious name for those green spears,
That regiment of spite behind the shed:
It was no place for rest. With sobs and tears
The boy came seeking comfort and I saw
White blisters beaded on his tender skin.
We soothed him till his pain was not so raw.
At last he offered us a watery grin,
And then I took my billhook, honed the blade
And went outside and slashed in fury with it
Till not a nettle in that fierce parade
Stood upright any more. And then I lit
A funeral pyre to burn the fallen dead,
But in two weeks the busy sun and rain
Had called up tall recruits behind the shed:
My son would often feel sharp wounds again.

from http://gu.com/p/xz2a4/tw

Who we are and what we choose

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month six bloggers - ALBJ, An Open Book, Delightfully Queer, More Than Nuclear, Rarely Wears Lipstick, and The Boy With The Inked Skin - will write about their views on one of them. This month, our topic is "orientation or choice?"

Cynthia Nixon, in an interview with the New York Times earlier this year, controversially said that being gay was, for her, "a choice".

After being accused of doing "real damage to [the] fight for civil rights", and basically being told that she is wrong in all over the place, Nixon clarified her statement. She isn't gay, she is bisexual, and she didn't choose to be gay, she chose to be in a gay relationship.

Which, I think, gets to the crux of the difference between an orientation and a choice: we can't choose what we want, but we can choose whether or not we act on it. I didn't choose to want children, but I did choose to become a parent. We don't choose to be gay, bisexual or straight, but we do choose our relationships.

I'm bisexual and I am polyamorous. At one point in my life, I exclusively dated other women, and that was, like for Cynthia Nixon, my choice. I didn't choose to be bisexual, but I do choose whether or not to pursue someone I'm attracted to. If I wanted, I could completely ignore my attraction to women, and focus entirely on heterosexual men (which is something I expect a lot of bisexual women have done) but I would still be bi. I suppose I could also have chosen not to have children, if my primary partner was resolutely child-free, for example, but that wouldn't have stopped me from desperately wanting to become a parent.

And similarly, I've chosen to be in both monogamous and non-monogamous relationships, but I didn't choose to find monogamy restrictive and pointless. I can do it, but the monogamous aspect of the relationship will always feel unsatisfying and unnecessary to me, even if everything else is great. No matter what I choose to do, it won't change who I am.

But fundamentally, it doesn't matter whether the way I am is a result of genetics, upbringing or my environment. I can't change it, and more pertinently, I don't want to change. We want what we want. What you do with that is up to you.

Hierarchy

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month seven bloggers - ALBJ, Delightfully Queer, An Open Book, More Than Nuclear, Post Modern Sleaze, Rarely Wears Lipstick, and The Boy With The Inked Skin - will write about their views on one of them. This month, our topic is "labels and hierarchy" - visit the other blogs to read the other perspectives on this topic.

A long time ago, I read something macabre that stuck with me: a new mother held her new baby and realised that although her child's father was the love of her life, she would gladly stand on his head to keep her baby from drowning. I love my husband, but yes. I can relate.

We fit the model of primary partners (shared finances, future plans, lifelong commitment etc) but for both of us, she comes first. Her needs are greater, her demands more vociferous and urgent, and our responsibility to her trumps everything else. It isn't that I love her more than him - I don't think I could assess which of them I loved more, when loving one of them just feeds straight back into loving the other.

I know that some polyamorous people are uncomfortable with the term 'secondary' and the concept of hierarchy in relationships. They feel that labelling their relationship as secondary to another makes them feel less important and maybe even disposable. I understand why someone might feel this way. I just hope these people never date anyone with young children.

We can't can't give everyone equal time, energy or affection. Hierarchy is present in nearly all human relationship, whether we give it labels or not. You know which of your friends are your best friends, and which are just casual acquaintances, even if you don't say so. There is a hierarchy implied by family relationships as well, so much so that when this hierarchy diverges from the norm, we point it out by saying something like "my grandmother was like a mother to me" or "she's my favourite aunt". Even monogamous people do it to some extent, by using terms to make the significance of their relationship clear, whether that is "just friends", "dating", "boyfriend/girlfriend", "partner" or "husband/wife".

It's understandable, however, that people are uncomfortable with this hierarchy being overt in their romantic relationships. Not only do we grow up expecting just one 'significant other' but we don't have a model for having more than one when we do. In our other relationships, a hierarchy is so ubiquitous that we barely notice it's there, but in love, its existence glares at us.

The fact that I prioritise my child over my husband, or my husband over my boyfriend, doesn't make either of them unimportant or disposable to me. My daughter needs me just to survive, and my husband's life is so intertwined with mine that all of my decisions affect him. What makes me prioritise others over my boyfriend (and therefore makes our relationship a secondary one) isn't a lack of affection; it's just that as much as I love him, his life is conducted largely separately from mine. My secondary status in his life (and his in mine) isn't a restrictive cage we've imposed on ourselves, it's just a fact. "Secondary" still marks our relationship as one of the most valued and important in both of our lives.

But I think it's also important to remember that some of these things can change. Previously only children might have to share their parents' attention with an even needier newborn. Long distance relationships can relocate. "Just good friends" can become lovers, and more. Secondary partners might stay that way because of circumstance or design, or they might develop into co-primary relationships.

And even my daughter's dominance over my life will change. My husband and I have made a commitment to stay together for a lifetime, but my daughter will rely on us less and less, and one day she'll grow up and leave home. Having been woken up by her kisses, I'm conflicted about that, but I know I'll let her go. The shape and structure of our relationships isn't always within our control.

Choosing to miss out

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month seven bloggers - ALBJ, Delightfully Queer, An Open Book, More Than Nuclear, Post Modern Sleaze, Rarely Wears Lipstick, and The Boy With The Inked Skin - will write about their views on one of them. This month, our topic is "loss" - visit the other blogs to read the other perspectives on this topic.

I don't like making decisions. I'm haunted by the choices I could have made and the options I've closed off, so often stall making them. I find some comfort in the freedom before choosing, as if by postponing the decision I am also avoiding the loss of the option I'll reject. Silly, I know, but every decision, no matter how positive, carries with it some loss. No matter what you choose, you'll miss out on something.

I miss out on a lot since becoming a parent. I have less sleep, less time and less freedom. These aren't trivial losses to me. I expect the fear of missing out is a large part of what causes people to pause when deciding whether or not to start a family, and may be enough to put them off altogether. I agonised over the decision to have a child for years, worrying that the price would be too high.

I wonder if this fear of missing out is what prevents some people from shifting from monogamy to non-monogamy. Monogamy provides a way to protect us from jealousy, an expectation of focus and time from our partner, and acceptance and support from society at large. Losing these benefits could be undesirable or even frightening to many.

Just as becoming a parent isn't a good choice for everyone, giving up the benefits of monogamy might be too high a price for many. Change means loss, even when that change is embracing the possibility of loving more than one partner, or deciding to expand your family by giving your love to a child.

Although I think about what I've lost quite often, I have no regrets. I'm on the right path, despite what I've had to leave behind. My daughter has started calling me 'mummy' and just that makes everything seem worthwhile, let alone the rest of the fun she has added into my life. The decision to give up monogamy was far easier. I've lost very little that I valued, and gained the love of a wonderful man that has enriched not only my life, but my marriage and family.

Whatever you decide, you miss out. That sounds terribly negative, but I'm starting to find it reassuring. Embrace your loss. Missing out is the price you pay for getting what you want.

(If you want a more eloquent take on the difficulty of accepting loss, try this.)

One Art, by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like a disaster.

from Collected Poems To tie in with September's 'Poly Means Many' posts on loss.

The risks of "chosen family"

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month seven bloggers - ALBJ, Delightfully Queer, An Open Book, More Than Nuclear, Post Modern Sleaze, Rarely Wears Lipstick, and The Boy With The Inked Skin - will write about their views on one of them. This month, our topic is "Non-lovers" - visit the other blogs to read the other perspectives on this topic.

From Stalin Ate My Homework, by Alexei Sayle:

'One year one of the members [of the Communist party] told me he would make me a toy fort for Christmas... It took a long time to arrive but finally, wearily, right on Christmas Eve he deposited it at our house - and it was magnificent. It had all the things I had specified: a drawbridge you could wind up and a working portcullis and a little light bulb that worked off a battery. Then he stopped coming to the meetings and I never saw him again. That was one problem with having a family that wasn't based on blood ties - people often inexplicably vanished and you weren't supposed to miss them.'.

I'm expecting to read a few posts about how polyamory can build a "chosen family" and about close emotional ties with metamours this month. I'll enjoy reading them, but that's not what I'm going to write about. Partly because I think the other bloggers will pretty much say what I’d say anyway, partly because I've written it already but mostly because there is something else on my mind, which is how all this will affect my daughter. Because although I am sold on the benefits of chosen family, the polyamorous tribe and the added love that she will experience because of our extra lovers and metamours, the above passage from Alexei Sayle’s autobiography gives me pause. So too, does the onetime blogger PolyMom who believes strongly that polyamorous parents should stop dating when they have children because those children “deserve to grow up with minimal changes to their family configurations.” I don’t agree that the only way to provide stability is to stick to a rigid set up, but she does have a point.

Friends and lovers have drifted in and out of our lives. Some good friends moved overseas, some just stopped calling, and since having a baby, we’ve built a new social circle of other parents who understand and share our experiences. I expect that as time goes on, we’ll see some friends more often, others less. Not all of these people will be considered part of our tribe or family, but of those that do, not all will remain so. When you choose your tribe, it isn’t stable. And, as Alexei Sayle found out, when your parents choose it, the people who you might consider family aren’t there because of you. Chosen family is risky.

Despite the title of my previous blogpost on the topic, real tribes aren’t chosen. A tribe is based on kinship, not friendship. Teresa Pitman wrote a guide for those interested in building a tribe in the style of the Continuum Concept and advises people not to be too picky: “People who actually live in tribes are born into them”, she says. “And I suspect that if we lived in tribes there would be people who we would get along with easily and those with whom we wouldn't mesh quite as well.” When we choose our family, the reasons that caused us to choose them might change. The success of tribal living is perhaps the lack of that choice.

I don’t want to sound defeatist, because I really am sure that Small will benefit hugely from the love that both my boyfriend and my husband’s girlfriend have shown and will continue to show her. Not to mention my boyfriend’s girlfriend, my husband’s other long-term lover and several other wonderful metamours, friends and lovers. These people who enjoy her company as well as ours will bring nothing but good things into her life. I don’t think that cutting any of them out would benefit her or improve the stability of our family. But these people, no matter how much they love her, are there primarily because of us, not her. Her grandparents, on the other hand, would still be her grandparents no matter what. If we fall out with our parents, they would still want a relationship with her. If we lose touch with one of our lovers and Small is especially close to them, what then?

While I think PolyMom does have a point, I don’t think that polyfiedilty or monogamy solves the problem or necessarily creates any more stability. After all, Alexei Sayle’s parents were monogamous. But it is still something I think about, and I haven’t decided what, if anything, we should do about it.

She is still very young, of course, and the only adults she shows clear signs of bonding with are those she sees at least once a week. So even our biological family aren't really family to her yet, no matter how much they love her. So at the moment, this isn't something I worry about. But it won't be long before she'll start asking about people she's met, learning to recognise names and faces, and enjoying the company of some of the people we love. Maybe by then, I'll know what to do.

Until then, if anyone has an answer, I'm all ears.

Reflected love

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month six bloggers - ALBJ, An Open Book, More Than Nuclear, One Sub's Mission, Post Modern Sleaze, and Rarely Wears Lipstick - will write about their views on one of them. This month, our topic is "Love" - visit the other blogs to read the other perspectives on this topic.

My husband and I thought that having a baby would mean that some of our friends would drift away. Babies aren't everyone's cup of tea, and so we thought that some people might lose interest in us now that our lives revolved around one.

In fact, the opposite happened. It turns out, some of our friends were so interested in Small that they wanted to spend more time with us. Both of us have made new connections since Small was born, and those people seem to enjoy spending time with her as well as well. So we were wrong: having a baby seems to have made spending time with us more desirable, not less. We're surprised and lucky to have such an amazing, loving, child-friendly community around us.

And I love that people love her. I love nothing more than seeing people enjoying her company, not to mention investing time and effort into connecting with her. I love her so much that any kindness shown to her warms me as much as kindnesses offered to me directly.

Other parents will recognise how it feels to bask in this reflected love, but so will the polyamorous, I think.

I love my husband so much, that I warm to those that love him. When someone is enchanted by him, as I am, and wants to be in his company, that makes me happy. Monogamous people are sometimes baffled by this. They don't understand how my husband and I can not only put up with the fact that we love other people, but be delighted by it.

I don't know if I can explain it, because I find it hard to imagine being any other way. For me, love is, I think, fuel for more love.

5 tips for supporting your partner when they have a baby (and it isn't yours)

If you're visiting a new baby, this article at Offbeat Mama is a good starting point. But if one of the parents is your partner, it's probably not enough. You're not just visiting a baby, you're meeting an important new member of your family, and the worries about overstaying your welcome, or intruding at an emotionally vulnerable time probably don't apply. So, what should you do, and what can you expect?

After attending PolyDay for the second time, I'm aware that this might be an increasingly common situation in my community. You might be years off starting a family of your own, still looking for your perfect co-parent(s) or even be resolutely child-free, but the more relationships we have, the greater the chance is that one of our partners is at a different stage of life, or makes different decisions to us.

So you might not be ready to have children, or even want them at all, but now you have them, by proxy at least.

Either you are supportive of your partner's choice, and try to be involved with their new family member, or you risk drifting apart. Evolution gives new parents a one-track mind, so unless you're part of this, there's a good chance that they just won't have time for you.

So, if you decide you want to be a source of support, and a part of your partner's new family, how should you do it? You're in a better position than most of their friends, as not only do you probably know them better, but the intimacy that you have means that they may be more comfortable accepting your help and falling apart in front of you. My husband advises new parents to have no one around for long unless you would be comfortable crying in front of them, but you probably fall into that bracket, right?

1. Offer to help with nappies
If you've had a baby, you'll understand why I'm saying this. If you haven't, you'll probably be scared of the yuck and of doing it wrong. But most new parents haven't had a great deal of experience with this skill either, and now they have to do it 6-10 times a day. It's terrifying. So, if you're confident, offer to change a nappy, perhaps asking for supervision. If you're unsure, offer to help or ask to watch, so you can do it on your own next time. Even with poo, it's not that bad, I promise, and once you've done it (and the baby's parents can see you can do it), you'll feel much more comfortable with the idea of baby care, and become a much more useful source of support.

The parents might turn down your offers of help. Maybe they're uncomfortable having other people care for their new child, or maybe they're trying to be polite. They will definitely appreciate the offer. There won't be many people who feel comfortable or willing enough to offer, so it shows your commitment to both your partner, and keeping involved in this new person's life.

As time goes on, the parents will become more confident, and nappies will become less of an issue. But your early involvement will be a sound investment in keeping your bond with your partner and their child.

2. Feed the parents.
If you're visiting the new baby in hospital, after the birth, bring food. The mother and her birth partner(s) will be starving, and struggling to survive on hospital rations. Giving birth is hard work, even for the people who are just there for support, and it's likely none of them had a chance to eat much (or sleep at all) during labour. If you don't get a chance to ask them what to bring, cake and biscuits are usually safe. This is not the time for salad.

If you're visiting at home, bring food. New parents struggle to find time to eat, let alone prepare food. It can be hard to accept care from friends or even family, but you're probably used to caring for your partner, so they will probably be grateful of a cooked meal, or even a sandwich. Recovering from birth and beginning breastfeeding takes a tremendous number of calories just to keep on an even keel, so I guarantee that help in this area will be welcome, whether your partner is the mother, or just the co-parent who is trying to care for her. I had people bringing me plates of food, snacks and hunks of cake continuously for the first four weeks, and dear God it was amazing.

You know your partner better than most, so you'll know what sort of food they'll appreciate. Just make sure it takes little or no preparation, and if possible, can be eaten with one hand.

Oh, and if you ever see someone breastfeeding, offer her a drink.

3. Help around the house.
New parents might still feel like they have to 'host', but hopefully, you'll be close enough to both of them to be able to pitch in without them becoming uncomfortable. Someone did our washing up without asking when Small was two weeks old, and I'm still grateful. If you see any little jobs that need doing, just do them, and if you have the time to do anything more, ask if you could run a hoover around, or hang the washing out. Again, this is the sort of help that would make most people uncomfortable, but it's much easier to accept from someone you love.

4. Get comfortable with your new family member.
Get comfortable cuddling them, making faces, singing songs, patting and rocking them to sleep. Cuddling them as you dance around works with most newborns. The more confident you get with these new skills (and calming and keeping babies happy is definitely a skill!) the easier you'll find it both to support your partner, and stay an intrinsic part of their family.

Personally, in the first few months, I was usually desperate for a break from the dratted child (sorry, Small...) so was much happier when someone offered to hold her so I could throw on some washing, than if they had offered to help with the housework. Sometimes, what I really wanted was to have a bath with the bathroom door closed, so it might feel that just holding the baby isn't enough of a help, but your partner might be both grateful of the break, and happy that you want to spend time with their child.

5. Be aware that the ground has shifted
If your partner has just given birth, you'll know not to expect sex for a while, but even if your partner is the mother's co-partner, you might not be sharing a bed. The baby is the parents' priority, and newborns need parenting 24 hours a day. Everything is different now, and the space the two of you had before has gone. It will take time to work out how things have changed for you both.

It's not easy to predict how the recovery will affect the intimacy between you and your partner, even if your partner isn't the one recovering from the birth. The first few weeks are overwhelming, but it will get easier. There is a reason everyone tells you that they grow up so fast. It's a cliché, but they really do. It may seem almost impossible for you to find space to be with your partner now, but things will change incredibly quickly. The two of you can find a way to reconnect, but you'll need to be patient and gentle with the parents, and don't push it.

There is also no exaggeration to the cliché that your life is never the same again after having children, so you can't expect your partner to give you what they used to. But don't see this as a bad thing. Supporting your partner as they settle into parenthood will bring you closer in a new way, and when they're able, they will be even more delighted to support you with your life changes, whatever those will be.

Being a part of a person's life right from the very beginning is a peculiar and rare privilege, and so even as things between you and your partner are changing, new opportunities for love are blossoming. Enjoy it. They grow up so fast.

Demeter by Carol Ann Duffy

Where i lived – winter and hard earth.
i sat in my cold stone room
choosing tough words, granite, flint,

to break the ice. My broken heart –
i tried that, but it skimmed,
flat, over the frozen lake.

She came from a long, long way,
but i saw her at last, walking,
my daughter, my girl, across the fields,

In bare feet, bringing all spring’s flowers
to her mother’s house. i swear
the air softened and warmed as she moved,

the blue sky smiling, none too soon,
with the small shy mouth of a new moon.

from The World's Wife

Where do you find the time?

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month six bloggers - ALBJ, An Open Book, More Than Nuclear, One Sub's Mission, Post Modern Sleaze, and Rarely Wears Lipstick - will write about their views on one of them. This month, our topic is "Daily Life" - visit the other blogs to read the other perspectives on this topic.

"Where do you find the time?" This is the question I'm most often asked when I tell other mothers about my relationships. I don't always manage, I tell them, but this is why it is worth it

There are several different ways and places that we spend time together. Tonight, it works something like this.

My boyfriend and I have a date. Before I became a parent, this would mean I would go to his place, he would cook dinner, we'd have sex, plan to watch a film, talk too much, realise it was too late, cuddle up, and go to sleep. We rarely went out together. Now, it works differently. I check with my husband, (as me going out means he must stay in), and I put the date into our calendar.

Before my husband and I were married, when we lived more than 50 miles apart, I would plan our time together carefully in advance. I would think about food, drink, clothes, hair and makeup, daydreaming about that first touch, that first kiss. We took care to show each other our best faces, and tried to make our limited time perfect. After many years of living together, we still plan our time together in this way, but only rarely. We see each other every day, and so our days are filled with little, unplanned moments of intimacy that make planning ahead less of a necessity. In some ways, my relationship with Jemmy is locked into the old model: even though we have been together longer than any of my other relationships barring my marriage, the structure doesn't change much. Our time together is always precious, rarely casual. The terminology the polyamorous use to pin down these differences rarely seems satisfactory, but whether you call it primary and secondary, domestic and non-domestic, live-in and not, the two are just different. With my husband, there is always tomorrow, but with Jemmy, there rarely is.

And like I used to when my husband lived far away, I daydream about our time together. I imagine how he will smile when I open his front door, how it will feel when I touch him and take him into my arms. My husband and I rarely embrace the way he and I do any more, which might sound sad, but it's not. It's bittersweet to see your lover after a separation, even if it's just a few days, and so this fervency makes up for lost time that I don't lose with my husband. With him, there is no bitterness to make up for.

If Jemmy and I are going to have dinner together, this means my husband has to handle both dinner time and bed time for our daughter. There's a strange pull of freedom and guilt to that. In any case, the last thing I do before leaving the house is feed Small, and I do so, praying that she will go to sleep easily without me. She's usually had her dinner by this point, and might even be in her pyjamas ready for bed, depending on when I leave. I say goodbye to them both, and my husband sends Jemmy his love.

I still don't leave my daughter often, or for long. Evenings at home are not the same; even without considering the knife-edge of awareness that she is asleep upstairs and could wake up at any time, there are always things I need to do. At his house, I'm off duty, but still at home. He cooks me dinner, he fetches me a drink, and I can't spend the time with the housework of parenting, preparing for the next day. There is no baby upstairs. We would like to spend more time all four of us together, as a family, but sometimes, I need this. It's worth making the time for.

The evening probably passes much as you imagine it would, with the subtle differences that make all relationships unique. At some point, I start to become more aware of the time. There are consequences to staying out late. My daughter might need help to sleep; my husband has work in the morning, and I don't want him to be tired, or to feel that my time with Jemmy creates a burden on him; and I rarely get more than a couple of hours sleep at a time, so feel an urgent pull to bed as the evening wears on. And I won't be sleeping at this house.

As we say goodnight, he tells me he wishes that I could stay, and we talk about the indeterminate future, when the demands of parenting will have lessened enough for this to be possible. We remember waking up together, lazing around his house over breakfast before getting dressed. But not tonight. It's a wrench to leave him after so few hours, but I'm running out of time.

Back at home, my husband is waiting up for me, and I think how incredibly lucky I am to be loved by these two men. Our daughter is asleep beside him, and I climb into bed between them, taking care not to wake her. Without any conscious thought we find ourselves in each other's arms, the high-pitched sounds of her breathing behind me. It's strange and beautiful to leave them both and come back with fresh eyes. Although just a moment ago I was wishing to be elsewhere, now, I wouldn't be anywhere else.

No rules? No such thing.

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month six bloggers - ALBJ, An Open Book, More Than Nuclear, One Sub's Mission, Post Modern Sleaze, and Rarely Wears Lipstick - will write about their views on one of them. This month, our topic is "Rules and Boundaries" - visit the other blogs to read the other perspectives on this topic.

Most of what is written about rules in polyamorous relationships concerns rules designed to limit secondary relationships or to protect the security of a primary relationship. A particular (and valid) concern is that sometimes rules are put in place before the secondary relationships even exist, and so at least one of the people who will be subjected to them can't be consulted and it doesn't seem fair to place restrictions around a relationship that doesn't even exist yet.

A couple might decide that they will go on dates no more than once a week, or maybe just that they will never organise dates on a Friday. They could insist that they will never allow their primary partner to sleep alone, that they will each have the power of "veto" over the other's new relationships or maybe that potential new partners must be actively approved. There are all kinds of rules that people in polyamorous relationships (especially newly non-monogamous ones) might create to protect their own relationship by limiting their others.

I'm not going to write about those sort of rules, because we don't have them and we don't want them. The stability of my marriage has honestly never concerned me and so we didn't design any rules to protect it. And now, my relationship with my boyfriend and my husband's relationship with his girlfriend bring nothing but good things into our lives, so why would we want to limit them with rules?

But there are limits around them. We haven't purposefully chosen rules or boundaries to limit them, but they do exist. The most obvious ones are there because we have a baby.

Having a baby means that my husband and I need to ask the other's permission before we go out on dates, because the other will be on their own with the baby. It means that we can't go away for more than a few hours without creating a serious imposition on the other. It means that I can't stay at my boyfriend's place overnight as I used to, or even be away from my daughter for long. She certainly can't be left alone, and more specifically, she can't get through the night without me. Becoming a parent has placed all kinds of limits around my life, and the more I try to pin down exactly what those limits are, the more they look like that list of hypothetical rules that I said we didn't want.

We may not feel the need to restrict our secondary relationships, but they've been restricted anyway.

I think that the goal of trying not to restrict relationships before they begin is a good one, but I don't think it is always as practical as some people think. I think everyone has limits in their lives that can restrict or even stunt the success of their relationships. Some of those limits might be there for practical reasons, like a mortgage or a demanding job, and some might be there by choice, like the desire to become, or not become, a parent, or the desire to spend a certain amount of time with an existing partner.

Things change. My boyfriend is being patient and understanding with these restrictions around our relationship, partly because he knows that they are reasonable and necessary, and partly because he knows that Small won't be a baby forever. Life changes, and so the space we have for other people changes too. If you want an unlimited amount of space so your relationship can take its most natural, unrestricted form, it's probably best not to date parents, or the polyamorous. And definitely not both.

Personally, I don't want that. The limits that restrict my relationships are there because of the shape of my life, and I want my relationships to be with people with equally full and interesting lives. I know that my boyfriend and my husband's girlfriend love and cherish my daughter, despite the limitations she has created. The things that restrict your relationships might also be the things that make life beautiful and interesting.

Jealousy and breasfeeding

I'm late to comment on Erica Jong's article in the New York Times, Is Sex Passé? but one thing jumped out at me: when listing all the various ways that women have supposedly given up sex for motherhood, she says that if you 'breast-feed at all hours' then your partner 'knows your breasts don’t belong to him.'

Well of course he knows that, I thought. He doesn't need me to breastfeed to know that my breasts, like the rest of my body, belongs to nobody but me. Is this real? Do people really think like this? When we're in a committed relationship, do our partners 'own' our bodies?

To some people, it seems so. Rabbi Shmuley Boteach on Beliefnet goes so far as to compare breastfeeding to adultery, as the mother 'gives her breasts to her son and takes them away from her husband'. So only one person can use your breasts at once, and if the baby gets them, Dad will just have to go without.

This is partly a problem with the oversexualisation of breasts (as I blogged about before) but I think some of this comes from an over-enthusiastic application of monogamy: for some, sexual exclusivity translates into ownership.

When I ran this idea past my husband, he was genuinely baffled. The idea that my breasts ever 'belonged' to him, as Jong said, or that he might be jealous of our child's access to my breasts was something that hadn't crossed his mind. Of course, seeing as he doesn't ask for exclusive access to any part of my sexuality, it's hardly surprising that non-sexual contact with my body doesn't bother him. But I hope that you don't need to be polyamorous to have a problem with this level of entitlement. Surely you can be monogamous without expecting your partner to actually belong to you?

Ultimately, I don't think this is a problem with monogamy, but I can see that perhaps a more open-minded attitude to relationship structures might help. When, like Jong and Boteach, your monogamous principles are challenged by the normal, healthy act of breastfeeding, it probably isn't the breastfeeding that's causing the problem. If people had a broader view of the different kinds of ways in which we can love, perhaps they'd be able to choose monogamy without feeling conflicted when they use their breasts to care for their child. (And as we're so far away from the WHO's goal of exclusive breastfeeding until 6 months, and continued breastfeeding until at least 2 years, we need all the help we can get.) Then, maybe, we'd be able to ditch the old-fashioned notion that sexuality and motherhood are somehow antithetical.

Needs and wants

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month six bloggers - ALBJ, An Open Book, More Than Nuclear, One Sub's Mission, Post Modern Sleaze, and Rarely Wears Lipstick - will write about their views on one of them. This month, our topic is "Needs/wants" - visit the other blogs to read the other perspectives on this topic.

When it comes to our relationships, what do we need, and what do we merely want? In most cases, I think it's a false and maybe even unhelpful distinction.

Babies don't know the difference. Gina Ford, The Baby Whisperer and other parenting experts advise against feeding babies whenever they cry, because if babies got what they wanted, they might end up being fed so often it exhausts the mother. They just don't need milk this often. Far better, they say, to stretch the distance between their feeds to 2, 3 or even 4 hours to make sure that they are really hungry, and will take a sufficient "good" feed.

Two weeks ago, a study was published that suggested that scheduling or stretching out their feeds in this way might actually lower their IQ. Babies who were fed on demand (whether than was with a bottle or the breast) performed significantly better at school, even when their parents only demand-fed because they couldn't handle sticking to the routine. Feeding to a schedule is also associated with childhood obesity, as babies are trained to take in more milk than is comfortable to encourage less frequent feeding.

So if you have a baby like mine, who fed erratically, often more than once an hour, is satisfying this hunger just a want, or is it a need?

The same study found that to a certain extent, Gina Ford and The Baby Whisperer were right - feeding your baby to a schedule results in mothers who are better rested and who report feeling less tearful and overwhelmed. Making their child wait made them more likely to get what they wanted.

So, to put it bluntly, as a parent, you have a choice: sublimate your own desires, or stunt your child's intelligence and health. When it comes to going to the toilet, waiting for a more convenient place to pull the car over, or leaving my dinner to burn, I sometimes choose me. But what having a baby has taught me about my own needs and wants is that a lot of things I thought I needed, like unbroken sleep, I could actually do without. I still want more sleep, of course, but I'm surprised at how little I actually need.

Which is why I think that when it comes to romantic relationships, the distinction between wants and needs is misleading. Some of the things that you thought you needed, you may discover that you can do without, as I discovered I could do without sleep for my daughter. But if you don't want to do without them, do you need to reframe it as a "need" to make that desire valid?

When people ask us why, if my marriage is so happy, do we need other partners, I say that I don't. It's not that I need other partners; I just don't need monogamy. I could do it - I just don't want to. Why is it necessary to need other partners for me to seek them out?

There is a risk, I suspect, that separating out what you need from what you merely want could make it easier for you and maybe even your partners to to treat these things as "not important". Just because you don't need something, (whether that is a daily phonecall or a regularly cleaned bathroom) it doesn't mean that it isn't important - as I've shown, ignoring what babies want might have very serious consequences. Fellow "Poly Means Many" blogger, Polly Oliver has written about how she values a certain degree of selfishness in her partners, and I think she's right. It's healthy to want things. My daughter wanted food more often than I was told she would, and it turns out, she had good reasons.

But just as giving up what you want can be a bad idea, you might need to put aside some of the things you had previously labeled as "needs" to keep a relationship that's important to you. It can be so so worth it, as becoming a mother has shown me. I have so little of the things I thought I needed, but am happier and more fulfilled than ever. Even if I still wish I got more sleep.

Jealousy

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month six bloggers - ALBJ, An Open Book, More Than Nuclear, One Sub's Mission, Post Modern Sleaze, and Rarely Wears Lipstick - will write about their views on one of them. This month, our topic is "Jealousy" - visit the other blogs to read the other perspectives on this topic.

March's topic was on Jealousy: a very common topic when discussing polyamory. I wasn't able to take part, but please have a look at those who did!

"You just haven't met the right one yet."

Poly Means Many: There are many aspects of polyamory. Each month six bloggers - ALBJ, An Open Book, More Than Nuclear, One Sub's Mission, Post Modern Sleaze, and Rarely Wears Lipstick - will write about their views on one of them. This month, our topic is "Explaining polyamory to the monogamous" - visit the other blogs to read the other perspectives on this topic.

When explaining polyamory to the disbelieving or curious, it's common to use the analogy of a parent's love for their children: nobody doubts that you can love more than one child , so why is it hard to believe you can love more than one partner?

Ahh, the disbelieving monogamists will say, but parental love is different. You just haven't met the right one yet. When the right person comes along, that love will be so strong that you won't want any others, and you'll want to be monogamous, too. You can't love two people the way you can love two of your children.

And of course it is different, but it's not as different as people think.

In some of the early research into the links between our relationship with our parents and our romantic relationships as adults, Hazan and Shaver noted that both lovers and parent-child pairs "play with one another's facial features and exhibit a mutual fascination and preoccupation with one another". This tender gazing into each other's eyes and stroking their hair or cheek, an act so linked to romantic love it is little more than a cliche, is something very familiar to parents. Sally Read, in her poem Latching On, describes the look on a newborn's face as 'like a lover's eyes'. The last poem I posted on my blog is a love poem, but it's there because I am often reminded of it when I look at my daughter's face. It looks right, as Muir puts it, as if hers is the perfect human face and all others lack for something. I have had that feeling when looking at a lover, but never this strongly.

Sylvia Plath's poem You're is about her unborn child, but was published in The Nation's Favourite Love Poems. Just as the polyamorous will sometimes use a parent's love for their children to explain how you can love more than one romantic partner, it would be difficult to explain how I feel about my daughter without making it sound like a grand passion, and many poets have done exactly that.

Other similarities that Hazan and Shaver noted (summarised here) are that both lovers and parent-child pairs 'feel safe when the other is nearby and responsive', 'engage in close, intimate, bodily contact', 'feel insecure when the other is inaccessible, 'share discoveries with one another' and of course 'engage in "baby talk"'. Of course there are differences (sex being the most obvious) but so many of the key features are the same, that many psychologists now think that our relationship with our parents can work as a sort of test run for our adult love affairs. We learn how to form loving relationships of all kinds from our parents, and children who are securely attached to their parents, find romantically attaching themselves to others easier as adults.

When I am separated from her, I feel her physical absence keenly, and can easily fixate on how much I want to hug her. My husband sometimes holds her hand while she is asleep. The comfort and joy we share when we hold her, kiss her, nuzzle our faces into her neck, blow raspberries on her belly and pretend to eat her toes is not at all unlike a romantic passion, and, as Kate Saunders puts it, it is definitely the stormiest love affair of my life so far.

And quite honestly, I struggle to imagine loving another baby quite this strongly. Wouldn't this powerful love stunt the growth of any love I would feel for a second child? How could I possibly love any other in quite this way?

But of course, I know that I could. I see, all around me, parents in multiple loving relationships with their children, so although I sometimes struggle to conceptualise it as possible, I know that it can be done

Perhaps the difficulty people face in comparing multiple loving relationships between parents and their children and between the polyamorous is simply this lack of good models. Conducting relationships openly this way is not the norm, so when people feel that they couldn't love another, the way that new parents often do, where do they see polyamorous relationships modelled the way I see parents loving more than one child? Our society's prevailing narrative of love comes down as strongly on the side of the "one true love" story of romance as it does on the multiple love story of parenthood.

It would be offensive in the extreme to suggest to a mother or father of multiple children that they just "hadn't had the right child yet", and when "the one" arrived, they would naturally lose interest in the children they had before. It would be unconscionably rude to doubt a parent when they say that they love all of their children, and that they have no desire to have a one child family.

And if you can imagine how it might feel if someone said that about you and your children, you can probably imagine how I feel when I'm told I just "haven't met the right one yet".

'Motherbaby'

Rachel Cusk, in her unflinching book about motherhood, A Life's Work, describes the new mother and her infant as 'a composite creature, best referred to as mother-and-baby or perhaps motherbaby.' 'I feel like a house,' she writes, 'to which an extension has been added.'

In the nine months she spent in my womb, my baby grew from a single celled life-form into a human being. Until birth, she did even need to breathe or eat, as my body did everything or her. She emerged still attached to me, needing to be physically severed by her father with repeated attempts using a pair of medical scissors. It was as she resisted our separation. And although the cord was cut, this did not mark her separation from me, just the beginning of it.

After birth, my womb felt huge and empty, leaving me with a hollow sensation that made me all the more aware that the symbiosis of pregnancy was over. Now, when she sucked at me, my stomach cramped around her absence, shrinking back to what it was before, when I was a single person. But I wasn't that single person then, and I'm still not.

I sometimes imagined that separated existence pained her, and periodically, she needed to be brought to back to me and plugged in, not just for food, but to recharge our connection. We never knew how long a gap was acceptable between these dockings: sometimes enough for a bath or shower, sometimes (thrillingly) enough for me attempt something as risky as leaving the house without her. Because although her father had an enormous arsenal of tricks that calmed and delighted her, there was one thing only I could do, and it never seemed far from her mind. Gradually, she accepted longer and longer periods of time without me, and then finally, started to shift from parasitically relying on me for nutrition to eating solid food.

Now, at more than half a year since her birth, the separation of motherbaby into just parent and child feels like a plausible future. This separation is something that I both long for and dread. I still ache for her when we are apart, though the ache takes longer and longer each time before it bothers me.

Our relationship is like a love affair in reverse. We began with our lives impossibly tangled together, and now we are gradually growing apart. She spends less and less time in my arms, and one day, she'll leave me.

For Jemmy, the more that Small and I grow apart, the more of me he can have back. Parenting is not something we share as it is with my husband, and so this early intensity has pushed us apart, despite his importance to my family. But for her father, this story is very different. When he cut the cord, that was the beginning of his ability to parent without me. During pregnancy and early infancy, taking care of his child often meant taking care of me. Just as I am feeling her ripping away from me, I am also needed less and less as an intermediary in their relationship.

And ultimately, this was the plan all along - not an extension to myself, but a child that we can raise as a family.

The Confirmation, by Edwin Muir

Yes, yours, my love, is the right human face,
I in my mind had waited for this long.
Seeing the false and searching the true,
Then I found you as a traveller finds a place
Of welcome suddenly amid the wrong
Valleys and rocks and twisting roads.
But you, what shall I call you?
A fountain in a waste.
A well of water in a country dry.
Or anything that's honest and good, an eye
That makes the whole world bright.
Your open heart simple with giving, give the primal deed.
The first good world, the blossom, the blowing seed.
The hearth, the steadfast land, the wandering sea,
Not beautiful or rare in every part
But like yourself, as they were meant to be.

Breastfeeding

I was not prepared for how much I would enjoy breastfeeding. Leaving aside the health benefits of breastfeeding (or the health risks of not breastfeeding, depending on how you'd rather phrase it), it is about far more than food: it makes her sleepy, soothes her, comforts her and distracts her when she is bored. It is the lazy mother's best parenting tool.

From the first time that my daughter ejected the nipple from her lips with an audible "pop" and collapsed onto my bosom, nipple pressed against her cheek, wrapping her tiny arms around my breast and falling peacefully and beautifully asleep, I was utterly sold.

But, oh sweet Jesus, is breastfeeding ever a bind. Neither Gaius or I believed that parenting tasks should be doled out according to the vagaries of gender, and he passionately rejects the restrictive notion that a father's job should revolve around "breadwinning". We were emphatically committed to sharing the duties of parenting. But this is something that we cannot share. It does not matter how much of a feminist you are, how committed you are to equal parenting, how dismissive you are of gender roles: if one of you is breastfeeding, your sex will result in you being utterly tied to that child in a way that no one else can share. You can fight the patriarchy, but you cannot fight biology: biology is not concerned with equal rights.

Yes, I could express milk so someone else can give it to her in a bottle, but expressing milk takes longer than actually feeding her; then you've got to wash and sterilise the pump and the bottles, and then you've really got to pump when you would have fed her anyway to make sure your body keeps producing the right amount of milk. And yes, we could give her the occasional bottle of formula milk, but not only is there a good chance that she will refuse it (it just doesn't taste as nice), but that really would be putting my desire for freedom above her health, as it could endanger her virgin gut. The path of least resistance in this case is just to go with the flow and end up, as in our case, with one parent staying at home with the baby, and the other going out to work. Oh how are the mighty rejecters-of-traditional-gender-roles fallen.

For the first few months of her life, it felt like she was on elastic - I'd pass her over to someone else, but it was usually only a matter of minutes before she would ping back to my nipple once more.

I have cried because I couldn't get a moment to myself. I have fantasised about a measly four hours of uninterupted sleep. And from a polyamorous point of view, I have resigned myself to not being able to leave my baby for more than a few hours at a time, day or night, for a long time yet. This does not make my relationship with Jemmy easy.

Gaius, on the other hand, is able to be far more flexible. He can sleep with his other lovers in our spare room. He can go out on dates in his evenings. He has even spent one or two nights away from us! Amazing! All of this is rare, and completely with my blessing, but I would be lying if I said that I wasn't intensely jealous - not for the time he spends with other women, but for the time he spends without Small.

We had a New Year's Eve party this year. At about 2am, I left the drinking and the laughter of some of our dearest friends downstairs, and crawled into bed next to my daughter. I pulled her close and helped her to latch on. I nestled my nose into her warm hair and wrapped my arm around her, listening to her grateful swallows. And then, when she had finished and fallen into a deep, satiated sleep, I didn't immediately return to the party; I stayed to feel her warm face pressed against my skin, to listen to her soft breathing and smell her warm, milky breath. Jealous as I am of my husband's freedom, I know he would swap with me in a heartbeat.

We don't say it often, but we both know that biology has given me the better deal.

P.S. If you or someone you know is struggling with breastfeeding, please encourage them to get help. Don't rely on support and advice that isn't working. Good places to start are the NCT and La Leche League. Breastfeeding can be hard, but it is so, so worth it.

Postnatal Polyamory and Sex, Part I

There is an awful lot written out there about what to expect from your sex life after childbirth, and an awful lot of it didn't apply to me.

For one, "sex" in this context nearly always means vaginal penetration with a penis, and it is equally as frequently is limited to "between the baby's parents". There is also an assumption that physical healing and sexual desire will neatly match together. And as none of that applied to my sex life as a whole, I'm going to try writing something that does.

My husband and I began to talk about how much we missed sex within a few days of Small's birth. I think it was more of an urge to reconnect other after such a tumultuous change than it was sexual desire, but it was still reassuring to me to know that the hormones hadn't caused fatal damage to my libido. (The hormone shift from being pregnant to not being pregnant is dramatic, and made me tearful for a few days.)

Physically, however, I just couldn't, and I'm not just talking penetration. It took nearly three weeks before I was able to properly inspect my frightened genitalia, and that ended with a trip to my GP to weepily ask if it was "normal". It took four weeks for the bleeding (lochia) to stop, and that, combined with hot flashes, leaking (sometimes squirting) nipples, smelling slightly of cheese, wee and babysick, and sweating like a runner, meant that I just felt gross and chronically unsexy. I wanted a sex life, I just couldn't do it.

Which all makes it very strange when the advice about resuming sex after childbirth is all about the vagina. Putting anything inside my vagina was the last thing on my mind, but sex? I still wanted that. I think I involved my vagina in sex three or four times in the first six months. (And six months is also, roughly, when it felt like it had returned to normal function, and any lingering effects from birth finally faded.)

And then there is polyamory. In the early weeks and months of Small's life, being polyamorous meant that there were two men that I wasn't having sex with.

It was different with them both. I touched on this before when discussing how different co-habitating can feel from having lovers who live elsewhere. But there is more to it, as Gaius and I are no longer merely cohabiting, we are now co-parenting. This bond has given our relationship a new focus, intimacy and importance that only makes the contrast between what we have and what we have with our other lovers sharper.

The result of this is that it took me a little while before I felt comfortable being sexual again with Jemmy (well, it was a couple of months, but that felt like a long time), and longer still before I could do anything with anyone else. To be honest, I'm still not quite "there".

From talking to other new mothers, I know that the drop in my libido is completely normal, but for me, it has amounted to not being as interested in sex with people outside of my two main relationships. This is not something I've ever seen discussed on Mumsnet.

A great deal of this is practical. When does sex actually happen? It can be difficult to find time for sex when you are breastfeeding a baby, and when you do find that time, sleep can be a far more attractive option. Exhaustion is a very effective libido-dampener. Especially if you know you can't just "catch up" on sleep the next day, (or the day after that, or the day after that...) When you don't live with your lover, there's a good chance that you won't be together when an appropriate window for sex pops up.

But that's probably not a sex-problem that would get me much sympathy in the normal world, is it?

Sex and pregnancy - part 2

Early pregnancy really knocked my libido. As you can probably imagine, the nausea and exhaustion did not make having sex easy or desirable. The very sensitive gag reflex didn't help either. Towards the end of the first trimester, I managed to control the symptoms with extra sleep and peanut butter sandwiches, and then, the awfulness just faded.

In late January, the three of us hosted what we were pretty sure was going to be our last house-orgy for a while. I was more than 5 months pregnant, so right in the middle of pregnancy: the sickness was just a memory, I no longer needed afternoon naps and early nights, and I finally actually looked pregnant, as opposed to just waistless.   I felt great, my friends were openly appreciative and interested in my changing body, and I suppose I felt special.

Late pregnancy is different. Like a Weebl in reverse, once lying down, I was down for good. Moving around the bed was hard work. Even cuddling required creative problem solving. Plus, starting from around the middle of pregnancy, penetrative sex felt less and less good, until I just gave up on it entirely. I wasn't expecting that.

Putting my other post on sex and pregnancy together with this gives a balanced perspective on my experiences: it was awesome and it was terrible, but in new and unusual ways.