The New Sexual Paradigm

Today a client who was very frightened at the possibility of being pregnant asked me, "so did you and your husband plan this pregnancy?" I had been trying to assure her that the things she felt going on in her body were normal and healthy by relating my experiences of early pregnancy. To her question I gave a smile and an immediate, "yes." As her eyes turned downward and her fear began to show again, I thought about what I had just said and was startled to realize that I had told a lie. My surprise wasn't coupled with conviction because I knew that I had no ill intent when I answered, and I was confused by the falsity. I corrected myself without hesitation and explained to her our method of birth control (charting ovulation) and why we weren't entirely surprised when we found out because we knew it was a possibility and how that makes this feel unlike what she thought of as an "unplanned pregnancy."

After she left I discussed our conversation with my director and after reflection came to an understanding of my response. When my husband and I decided to use natural birth control we had a long discussion about the possibility of becoming pregnant. We knew that there would be nothing between us and conception but timing and that this increased the "risk" of becoming pregnant without "planning." We had to accept that possibility and be content with it before we could move forward. The news was easy to accept 9 months later having already had that discussion.

Which leads me to a realization that shocks and saddens me: In general, we no longer directly associate sex with pregnancy. Of course we all understand where babies come from, I'm not saying we've experienced a drastic erosion of our understanding of anatomy (though I might be able to argue that in a different context), but we no longer see the two experiences as being inevitably correlated. Pregnancy is one possible outcome of sex, but not one that we view as a real possibility most of the time. I have a job because society views pregnancy without some concentration of effort to conceive as a "crisis." The bottom line is that sex naturally leads to pregnancy. We might find loopholes that allow us to prevent or destroy that association temporarily, but the nature of it remains.

Obviously sex is joyous for reasons other than procreation and it is perfectly fine to enjoy it for those reasons. It just blows my mind that most of us (I am including my past self) go through life with some vague notion that we have to want to get pregnant for it to happen. The reason this saddens me is that it could rob us of experiencing the joy of the miracle of conception and pregnancy because we are so busy dealing with the "crisis" we are "unexpectedly" faced with. In reality, my husband and I absolutely planned this pregnancy. The decisions of marriage and sex that we made prior to conception had consequences we were fully aware of and we chose the consequences by making those decisions.