Bridget, 34 is a teacher living in Renfrewshire
My husband and I began trying for a baby as soon as we got married. I was hoping for a honeymoon baby, but even though we had loads of really nice sex, that didn’t happen. We tried to get pregnant for a year after that – and sex became a bit of a chore. ‘Ordeal’ might be too strong a word but it certainly wasn’t always pleasant. I was using ovulation sticks, which are supposed to tell you when you’re at your most fertile, and we were having sex at times when we weren’t in the mood, when it didn’t feel like something we actually wanted to do.
There was a time when we were both sick with a bad cold and we were forcing ourselves to do it and it just felt a bit bleak. Sometimes, it was funny or exciting, but it mainly felt gruelling and almost unnatural. Trying to force your body into sex when it doesn’t want to do it can be tough – for men and women. I also felt resentful because I felt this getting pregnant thing was more my burden. I was the one worried about the situation; my husband was more ‘it will happen when it happens' – and that annoyed me. It was almost like I had to force him to have sex with me. I was the one with the ovulation sticks; the one reading the fertility forums.
After more than a year of trying and failing to conceive, we were sent for tests through our GP and, over the next few months, we discovered that my husband has a low sperm count and I have polycystic ovary syndrome. It meant the likelihood of getting pregnant naturally was low and we would need IVF to stand a chance. I was devastated: we both cried a lot – we still cry a lot. The only upside was that it was a relief not to have the monthly depressing sex any more. Perhaps ironically, our sex life actually improved – it went down in quantity but up in quality. We are starting IVF next month and, for now, we are just having normal married-life sex.
We actually had sex last night, but before that it was probably almost a month ago. He’d been away with work and, when he came home, I knew that we needed to have sex. A month felt like too long a time and I didn’t want it to drag on. We were lying in bed spooning each other and then we were rubbing up against each other and touching each other. He went down on me (he goes down on me way more than I give him blow-jobs, I don’t know if that’s something I should feel guilty about) and then we had sex. He came and then I used my vibrator and I came.
That’s pretty much our routine, but last night was very intense, my orgasm was really powerful – maybe because it had been so long a break. Afterwards, I actually burst into tears, which was weird, but almost immediately we were laughing and spooning each other. The mood felt light again.
If you’d like to talk to us about your last time – be it funny, uplifting, surprising or mundane – contact us at thelastime@graziamagazine.co.uk