First Comes Love, then Comes Marriage…

2007

We conceived Holden not quite two years after our wedding day. 

Jack likes to say that we conceived two of our kids by accident, but that’s just him being dramatic. No, our first was not entirely planned, not like our second and third babies, but he wasn’t totally unexpected. We knew the risks when we pulled the goalie.

Jack and I are work-hard-play-hard kind of people. After my undergrad, I immediately started on a Master’s degree in Library Science. Then Jack graduated, and we started making some money — Jack in finance, me as a librarian. We bought a tiny urban bungalow while engaged, but we didn’t cohabit until our wedding night. 

We made more room for play after that. We came home from our Carribean honeymoon and promptly had sex in every room. We spent most weekends having sex, starting with an early morning session — Jack’s favorite. Then, we did it again in the late afternoon before walking downtown for dinner. We’d wrap up with another round before bed. 

When Jack’s begging got the better of me, we’d even have sex on the backyard lounge chairs — most notably one night in the pouring rain. I have a lot to say about why I do these things for Jack, and why Jack likes being exposed like that, too. But I’ll go there later. This chapter is about the small blip of time that Jack and I were a married, childless career couple, and how we bid adieu to that easy freedom.

I finished my first Master’s and started on my second.

We traveled.  In San Francisco, we stumbled across an erotica in a bookstore. Anne Rice’s Sleeping Beauty gave me the words to describe my darker desires to Jack. He responded by setting aside his inner Golden Retriever and adopting Alpha Wolf. I’ll go into more detail on that later, too. At that point, we were only scratching the surface.

We camped on summer weekends. If we found a swimming hole, we’d jump in naked if no one else was around. In England, we had sex that shook the walls of our bed-and-breakfast. In Amsterdam, we spent our evenings walking through the red light district and one day visiting the Sex Museum.

In Jamaica, I entertained Jack’s penchant for outdoor nudity by tanning topless on the resort’s beach, then stripping down at the nature preserve next door. He was proud of my confidence, but I didn’t see the big deal. Nobody else was around; I wasn’t going to get in trouble.

I had other things on my mind, namely my twenty-four-year-old maternal clock. Our mothers both had their first babies at twenty-five, so wasn’t this the natural next step? Hadn’t I done enough traveling and fucking around? 

I was nervous that I’d be one of those women who couldn’t conceive. I have endometriosis, with my symptoms being painful periods and sometimes painful sex. The Pill eased those symptoms, but it also turned me into a raging bitch for much of the time I used it. Jack doesn’t disagree. My head felt cloudy, as if I couldn’t think properly. As if, you know, I had anxiety over the possibility of not being able to conceive a baby, even though we weren’t quite ready yet. 

Once we were married, Jack accompanied me to my gyno to talk about my pain as well as other options for contraceptives. We’d finally figured out condoms, but we both hated the way they felt. I had already vowed never to use Spermicide again. Other options didn’t give us the flexibility to pull the goalie when we were ready. In the end, my gyno assured us that it could take my body several months to get “back to normal” after stopping the Pill. We could figure out a new plan then. 

For now, we went with the Catholic route. We’d keep track of my cycle, we said, and we’d time things so that his ejaculation would go to the appropriate place — pussy or condom or tits. We’d make that decision month by month, depending on what we were feeling about potential babies.

It never got to that point. 

I came home late from work for the third night in a row only to find, as expected, a horny Jack. 

Here’s something to know about Jack. He has ADHD. He depends on routines and structure for his overall wellbeing. So the break from our then-typical nightly erotic encounter was quite unwelcome to him. 

Meanwhile, I was tired, and I had hoped that he would take care of himself that night. I had hoped that he would scour the Internet for his favorites, some amateur porn of, say, two natural, naked women making out under a cold stream of waterfall, whatever would make them squeamish and their nipples hard. 

Another thing about Jack is that he doesn’t really enjoy masturbating, never has. Don’t get me wrong, he’ll jerk himself off, but he likes an audience when he cums, even if it’s just me. He’s an extrovert to the extreme, as later evidenced by the whole swinger, exhibitionist thing. 

Anyhow, when I got home from work, I could see it in both Jack’s eyes and pants that he wasn’t going to take no for an answer. And yes, I’m a bit of a submissive slut. I take it as a compliment when he gets pushy. 

In general, I think our marriage works so well because Jack and I are masters of communication and compromise. That night, he communicated his need, and I compromised. “Okay, but this one is for you,” I’d said, indicating that I was going to just lube up, with no expectation of my own orgasm. 

So I did just that. He pumped into me, doggy style. I had an orgasm or two, but this round wasn’t for me, so it was all relatively quick. After Jack came, we cleaned things up and went promptly to sleep. “Now that’s efficient,” Jack likes to say, as if it was a mere transaction. God, he had no idea.

Three weeks later, I was submitting the final paper for my second Master’s and getting ready to go out celebrating. It occurred to me that I had missed my period the week before.

I took a pregnancy test. Positive.

I went to the grocery store and bought two more, because apparently I still had money to blow at that point. Positive. Positive. 

A couple hours later, I frantically met Jack at the back door as he came home from work. Jack and I don’t keep secrets from each other, ever, and the two hours that I knew about this baby and he didn’t felt like a lifetime. 

The moment he closed the door behind him, before he could even put down his bag or take off his shoes, I dropped the bomb. “Jack, I missed my period so I took a pregnancy test and it said I was pregnant so I bought two more and they were both positive, too.” And then I stood there, staring at him.

If you know Jack, you know how shocking this statement is: for a moment, he was speechless. Jack talks to everyone, everywhere, and my main complaint of him is that sometimes I can’t hear myself think while he’s vocalizing every thought that comes to his mind, as it comes. 

Sex is truly the only way to shut him up.

Well, that, and telling him he knocked me up. 

He stared back at me. I could see him trying to wrap his mind around the fact that his house looked the same, his wife looked the same, his life had been just exactly the same as it had been that morning, except now…everything was going to change.

My own shock momentarily shifted to anxiety. Oh God, had I screwed up big time? Had I pushed too much about the baby thing, had I been reckless with our timing? Would Jack accuse me of duping him into this? After all, he was the one who kept suggesting that we wait a little longer.

No, Jack’s not that kind of guy. Jack is dependable, sturdy, perpetually happy as long as you’re not a dick to him. He shook himself out of his stupor and rushed forward to hug me. “Wow,” he said. 

No, Jack wasn’t mad. Jack was embracing his new alter ego, which he affectionately dubbed Super Sperm. 

He was a man who made babies now, and I was about to be a MILF.