The Accidental Conception

2014

Perhaps you noticed that Jack is into skinny dipping. Jack’s kinks are all very visual. 

He likes seeing me au natural in nature. I didn’t see anything wrong with it, but then again, most of those experiences had been just me and Jack, with no other onlookers that we knew of.
But Jack wanted more. He wanted to see me nude in front of other people. He wanted to see other women in the nude. And if it meant that he had to get nude, too, then so be it. Jack’s not known for being shy. 

I had thought that our excursion to Hedo’s beach five years prior was the last of the nude beaches. I thought Jack had been as turned off by that experience as me. I even thought that fulfilling a fantasy was like wrapping up a package and shipping it out. Now onto the next thing, right?
Wrong. 

When the stars aligned for another tropical trip, Jack spoke up immediately. “If we’re doing Jamaica, let’s do Sandals Royal Caribbean,” he’d said. “They have a nude beach on a little private island.” Jack always says what he wants, quite simply because more often than not, this leads to him getting exactly what he wants.

Case in point — I agreed.

A mere week after booking our trip, Jack had me pinned to the bed, face down, under the weight of his dad bod, which, to be fair, wasn’t all that heavy at just 165 pounds. Still, it was more than his 5’8 frame had weighed in his twenties and certainly more than it had weighed when we met in our teens, but who was I to judge? 

Much of my baby weight was gone, but my giant boobs remained, only having weaned Sylvia in the past couple weeks. I was typically careful to stay just calm enough during sex so that my boobs wouldn’t leak all over. I hate sleeping on wet sheets.

Ah, but that October night. It was cold, and we were feeling confident and cuddly. We broke out a bottle of red wine, and one glass each led to two, and then we figured we might as well finish off the bottle.

I’d been pregnant and breastfeeding on and off for the past seven years. We hardly ever drank anymore. And now we were drunk.

I threw caution to the wind. We soaked the sheets with sweat, arousal fluid, and breastmilk. And for the first time in years, I didn’t care. I felt wild and free. We had active, porno-style sex. There were creative positions, there were muffled screams of pleasure into the mattress. 

I was losing my mind. I was so close to coming, again, but then Jack stopped.

“When do you ovulate?” he asked. “Do I need a condom?”

I grabbed my phone from the nightstand and opened up my period tracker app to find that I wasn’t ovulating until the weekend. Then I rolled over to my back, ready for the missionary position and my next orgasm. It was bound to be a good one. 

“We should be fine,” I slurred, not noting that it was near midnight on Friday. “You could pull out,” I offered.

He claims that he meant to pull out. I don’t blame him for not.  It felt too good, and we were too drunk. We didn’t give it a second thought.

Until I got pregnant again.
I realized this in the staff lounge at work. It was three weeks before we were scheduled to leave for our trip and the week before Jack’s vasectomy. Someone started discussing periods. Huh, I thought. When was the last time I had a period? 

My body grew warm, a wave of heat from my forehead and down into the pit of my stomach.  I was over a week late.  

No. I told myself I’d pick up a pregnancy test to be certain, and once I found out that I wasn’t pregnant, I would use some sort of reliable contraception until Jack’s vasectomy was fully effective. I didn’t want more kids. They were so much work, and my body was finally returning to normal. We were actually saving money again. We were having good sex. I was about to go on vacation.

I pulled up to the dollar store, my heart beating hard in my chest. I steadied myself as I grabbed two $1 tests. I’d learned years ago that these were just as good as the pricey ones.

My baby face did me no favors that day. I couldn’t think of anything else to buy that would signal to the cashier that I wasn’t a knocked up teen — I was actually a responsible, thirty-two year old working mother of three…albeit, one who had been accidentally knocked up. It didn’t matter in the end; cashiers don’t make small talk with nervous women buying two pregnancy tests at a dollar store. 

I was home in five minutes, peeing into a red Solo cup and using the provided dropper to move a miniscule amount of my urine onto the test, which promptly lit up two lines. Pregnant. 

I felt nauseous, and it hit me that I’d be nauseous for months. Fatigue. Hormones. An unpaid maternity leave. More work and less time, more messes to clean and more bills to pay. Chaos. What had I done?

I had to tell Jack, of course, and I wasted no time.

In response to my announcement, Jack smiled.

I sobbed as I showed him the test, and he held me while I cried. He listened while I pointed out everything negative about having a fourth child, but he didn’t falter. He didn’t buy into any of my negativity. 

He pointed out that, once upon a time, when we were high schoolers who knew nothing about anything, we’d said we wanted a big family. We had even discussed if we might want a fourth child before getting rid of all of our baby gear just months before. 

And on top of all that, he was proud.  In some ways, this was actually a turn-on for him, but not in a patriarchal kind of way. It was more primal. Jack adored my pregnant body, knowing he did that to me. He’s proud of our kids, awestruck that our lovemaking created life.

Plus, we did quite like the kids we already had. They’re a little like Jack, a little like me, and completely themselves. They make life interesting; we’re never bored. What was one more?

We still went on our trip, because who knew when the next vacation would be. I spent most of the flight breathing deeply, trying not to vomit. At the resort, our daily activity centered around finding the right comfort food for my neverending nausea. It rained nearly the entire trip, so we were only able to spend two days out on the island. I napped under a towel for much of the time. 

I only felt better when I got into the water.

I practically slid into the ocean. I was bloated, but in the water I felt weightless. I noticed Jack admiring me, and I smiled at him. I had made him happy. 

I didn’t care about the other people there. They were naked, too, big deal. I felt natural. Perhaps it was my pregnancy that evoked images in my mind of the waters of the womb. I felt connected to the Earth, to all the humanity that’s gone before me. 

I would do things differently now, I vowed. I would have a natural birth. I would savor this baby, our last. I would not lose myself again in postpartum, I would be aware and make efforts to keep the depression at bay. I’d walk and do yoga and give myself grace. I’d embrace the chaos and beauty of a family of six. I’d make a point to cultivate a strong sex life with Jack, for Jack.

And I did.