The Postpartum Prude

2009

The first time I went to Hedo, I was dead set on it being the last. 

We’d been dying for a vacation. We needed a reset, a week together where we focused on what got us into this parenting situation in the first place. 

Our honeymoon phase of uninhibited sexual pleasure had come to a screeching halt shortly after that positive pregnancy test. I had been so naive — thinking that pregnancy was going to be magical, that I’d be tough enough to endure those aches and pains that other women complained about, that I’d enjoy feeling “special.” 

The reality was starkly different, like a Pinterest fail. I didn’t expect the daily bouts of vomiting for the first fourteen weeks. I didn’t expect to feel this huge, nor this emotional onslaught of manic anxiety alternating with sheer exhaustion.

Sure, there was an approximate three-week period in the middle where I was cute-pregnant, with just a little bump and no vomiting. During those weeks, I was horny as hell. Jack and I celebrated with a vacation in the woods, where I swam naked in a secluded lake and read erotica to fuel my mind for our midday fuck sessions. 

Shortly after that, my libido plummeted again. My old tricks to get my mind in the game didn’t work anymore, not in this body. I didn’t feel sexy with the baby constantly squirming inside me. I couldn’t fantasize about submission as a pregnant woman; I just couldn’t. 

Jack and I resorted to spooning on our sides, him massaging my back while he penetrated me, sometimes cumming in me, other times cumming on the giant tits that I’d suddenly acquired. 

Poor Jack. I was lackluster about sex until I needed his sperm to soften my cervix at the end. 

I had previously worried that my love for this baby would diminish my love for Jack, but that wasn’t the case at all. I was exhausted when we first brought Holden home, but I craved physical affection from Jack; my love for him felt deeper. We were supposed to wait six weeks before penetrative sex, but after my stitches healed by four, we went for it. It was a quiet, gentle session on the living room couch.  

It was romantic, but it wasn’t what we were used to. It proved difficult to develop a new rhythm with a baby in the mix. Our sessions were much less frequent and often interrupted. My breasts were engorged and constantly leaking, and did I mention that I was fucking exhausted?

I had thought that Jack couldn’t have been any more turned on by my pregnant body, but breastfeeding ballooned my previously B-cup boobs up to DDs. That’s when he couldn’t have been any more turned on. If I allowed him to climb on top of me and have his way, he could cum in mere minutes just jerking off in presence of those tits. Most of the time, however, I didn’t allow it. I just wanted to sleep.

I had some serious postpartum depression, but “mental health” in 2008 really wasn’t a thing yet, and I was still a twenty-five-year-old know-it-all. I thought I could somehow “tough it out.” I declined professional help. I cried a lot. Jack was also sleep deprived, on top of feeling sexually frustrated and baffled at how to help me. 

That first year was rough. I attempted to distract myself from the hard things by thinking about the next thing. I wanted “something to look forward to.” I recalled our past Caribbean trips. Restaurant meals and unlimited drinks, lots of sleep and lots of sex.  

Jack was certainly game.

We made plans. I’d wean Holden after his first birthday, then Grandma would watch him for a week. Jack chose the resort — Sandals Negril. A perfectly nice resort, next door to a nudist swinger’s resort.

When he was fifteen, Jack saw an MTV special about that resort — Hedonism II. Maybe he was too impressionable; maybe that was the birthplace of all his kinkiest desires.

Jack has never been shy about sharing his fantasies with me, but I didn’t always take them seriously. They’re “just” fantasies, right?

“We’re allowed to just go hang out on the beach over there,” he said in a casual tone that sounded a touch rehearsed. “It’s a public beach, so it won’t be a big deal, and we can just skinny dip for a little bit.” 

I agreed, flippantly, but Jack’s fire was lit. He wanted to talk about it constantly, especially as he orgasmed, which he was getting to do more often now that Holden was weaned and a vacation was perking up my spirits. I picked out resortwear in my head while nodding in agreement with his orgasmic musings. At that point, I just wanted him to cum already. 

This would become a slight issue.

In 2009, Hedo, as it’s called, was run down and half empty. My perception of it, from my perch at the upscale yet Disney-esque Sandals, was that it was a dingy dump with creepy, strange people.
I didn’t want to go over there, through the fence barricade that separated the two resorts. I didn’t want to talk to the guard and give my name and admit where we were headed — though it was obvious — Negril Seven’s Mile Beach ends at Hedo.

I also didn’t want Jack to pester me about going over there anymore, nevermind be able to call me on my bluff. To be fair, I wasn’t bluffing when I originally agreed to skinny dip at Hedo while we were staying at Sandals — I just said that “it would depend.” I think a lot of things really depend on the situation, the timing, the mood. And I tend to like possibilities more than absolutes.
It’s possible that we could quit our jobs and move south, if it all falls into place. It’s possible that I might write a book about my sex life, if we get the time. And in 2009, I told Jack it was possible that I’d visit Hedo, get nude in front of whomever happened to be there, and then go frolic in the ocean. All possibilities.
Jack is the opposite — if I say it’s possible, he takes it as absolute. I have to tread lightly when I discuss ideas, be they house projects or sexual situations. If he doesn’t like the idea, he won’t even consider it. If he does like the idea, he’ll slap his right fist into his left palm and proclaim, “Let’s do it!”
So Jack had brought up taking a dip in the nude at Hedo, I said maybe, and now Jack had focused our entire trip on that one small excursion. Jack also has some OCD issues, and now they look over. There was no way that he would allow either of us to relax and enjoy the trip until I conceded. So off we went.
We wore our swimsuits at first, of course. Our room was only a stone’s throw from the northernmost point of our resort, and right on the beach. In less than twenty steps, we passed Hobie Cats and a giant pile of seashells next to a cabana, arriving at a chain link fence surrounded by tropical foliage. A security guard took our name, but I’m not sure why and it made me feel weird. It felt like an admission of guilt to verify my identity.

“Ya know it’s a nude beach over der, right, mon?” the security guard boomed in his Jamaican accent. “Ya gotta be naked over der!” Sigh. Fine.

At this point, Hedo was still under the old ownership. It was neglected and near empty, a far cry from the garish grandeur of Sandals. The beachfront rooms that we first saw as we walked through the narrow fence opening were perhaps once a calm cream, but now just drab, resembling a Soviet compound. The beach was unkempt and desolate. Clouds uncharacteristically covered the sun as we trudged through the sand, hovering long enough to color this experience gray in my memory.

Jack pushed us to walk down a little further. On the south side of Hedo’s long stretch of beach, it’s “clothing optional.” This side is also known as the “Prude” side, where people vacation pretty much like “normal” people, in beachwear. The north side of Hedo is “clothing prohibited,” known as the “Nude” side. No clothes are allowed, which is actually quite nice, now that I understand the idea. But I wasn’t there yet, philosophically speaking.

I’d made it there in the physical sense, though. On the north side of the beach, we set our things down on an old white lounge chair. Jack didn’t seem quite as confident any more, but still he challenged me. “You ready? You’re not going to chicken out on me?”
“I’m fine,” I lied. 

There was a fifty-ish-year-old couple sitting further back on the beach. Naked, of course, with crisp orange tans and dark bushy hair on their heads…and down there.
I took off my bikini top, acting bolder than I felt. I do have extreme willpower. 

Jack took off his bottoms. 

I took off my bottoms, showcasing my carefully maintained mons. I’d started getting Brazilian waxes for all of my vacations beginning with my honeymoon a few years prior, so maybe it looked like I knew what I was doing.

We’d chosen a chair close to the water, requiring only a few seconds of naked darting across the sand before we were shrouded by the dark ocean. No one could see much of me at all, but I suddenly felt exuberant. Without garments to restrict the sensations, I felt everything and yet nothing in the warm, salty water. Few things in life feel as natural as swimming nude in an ocean. 

I relaxed a little and let myself have fun. Fine, Jack, you win. We giggled, kissed, swam, played, and floated. 

The couple on the beach watched us the whole time. I watched them back from the corner of my eye. When it looked like they were about to join us in the ocean, I abruptly ended our swim. “I’m done, Jack. Let’s go back.”
We left a little quicker than we came, but a little bolder, too. Jack was happy; we’d fulfilled one of his fantasies. Check?

More like line. Two of them. At the end of the month, I took a pregnancy test. 

Catherine was on the way.