Sometimes, I feel like I go down different forks in the road just to end up in a slightly different place. I have a confession to make – for about two months – I thought that it was time for me to leave the field of fertility and just concentrate on sexuality and my writing in that arena. After all – just like infertility – there was so much shame – and so much work to be done. But the more that I talked to women about sexuality – the more I was talking to them about fertility!
As much as we have tried in the world of reproductive medicine to keep the sheet on sexuality – it is still there. Alas – sometimes it is simply not alive and well. In many cases it is limping along!
In so many ways – the state of our sexuality effects our fertility – and of course vice-versa! They are linked together like Adam and Eve. This is not just an emotional thing – this is about blood flow and so much more. The studies keep coming at us – whether it is how we feel about our genitals, or about how conception is more likely to occur when we have red hot sex. It can get even more complicated when we remove our reproduction from our sexuality as in invitro. What then? How do we bring it all back together again our relationship to self and our partners? Where do we go for help?
My own experience of infertility changed so much in my life. One of the things that it did was alter the way that I viewed my body – and my own experience of sexuality. It took a lot for my husband and I to heal after those years of “Baby Making Sex”. That is why I worked with Circle and Bloom to create the guided meditation to help women called Shameless Baby Making – Because Baby Making Sex Should Be Hot! There are just so few resources on this subject!
It is an unfortunate truth – that our sexuality and our relationships with not only our partners but with ourselves is often the collateral damage of infertility. I was left with wounds that went so deep – that I didn’t know where to start. And a part of that is because no one talked about sexuality in the fertility clinics. I am not even sure if the gynecologist talks about sex either – except to ask what kind of birth control you are on.
So I am going to be working harder here at The Fertility Advocate to connect those dots more and more often. I hope that you can join the conversation. It’s important. It’s time to take the sheet off! There is a real body under there – and sometimes our modesty simply doesn’t get us where we want to go! Sometimes, we just to drop the sheet!
What do you think?
