Sex and Procreation

[altarflame]

It's been a struggle for me on a lot of levels, let's say that. I started out pretty mainstream and liberal and, I don't know...I was raised by agnostics who preached birth control and surrounded by people at school who assumed you aborted if you got pregnant as a teen, let's say that. I had all the standard pop culture influences, plus a few extras, as an avid Motley Crue fan (*dies*...I was 11, I didn't know better!). I was also "doin' it" (which makes me get LL Cool J caught in my head to say that way, doin it and doin it and doin it well...)on a pretty regular basis starting at 14. One thing I'm grateful for now was that I was fairly monogamous from a really young age, and only ended up sleeping with two guys. Both of whom, lucky for my std stats, were virgins at the time. It's also nice that I made it through counseling and high school before I became a mom - I would have been a very different one, otherwise.

I've ascertained some things that are true in my life, "the hard way" and as they came at me, over the past 13 years, such as (and in approximate chronological order):

-condoms somehow ruin the experience of intercourse for me almost completely; it's partially a psychological thing, I'm sure, and partially a sensory thing, but the bottom line is that when I am trying to experience the ultimate in intimacy I don't want a "barrier"

-Combined hormone birth control pills cause extreme side effects for me, ranging from rapid weight gain to almost unbearable leg pains and even chest pains

-you can't trust teenage boys who say they're going to pull out, not even nice ones who are above average in every other regard

-I can't trust myself to abstain on fertile days

-I really believe in a spiritual component to love making, in a big way - that it's a joining of souls, that it can and should be a sacred thing, all that...which led me to a long battle with really believing I should be married and committed through Christ to someone I was having it with, which led me down a lot of circular paths leading to repentance before my wedding

-and also lent a certain clarity to my regret at having confused my body and soul (and CHILDREN) by being with more than one person, which wouldn't have happened if I'd waited initially

-I also believe I have a strong connection to any unborn child inside of me...I've known I was pregnant before testing, and known the sex long before getting an ultrasound, and experienced the vibrant and wild dreams pregnancy brings, and really think it's because I had two souls in my body at those times

-I can block that love and connection out, if, say, I am contemplating an abortion out of desperation, or my last pregnancy ended in a horrific miscarriage and I'm scared to get too close

-I could never actually have an abortion. I don't even think I could do it if my life was on the line.

-It really turns me on that sex makes babies...that making love can create new life, that something amazing can spring from a union. I just really dig it in a huge way, and it deepens the whole experience for me in a way I can't really separate anymore.

-These beliefs and my identity merged at some point - I see my rampant fertility and my huge libido as one in the same, and my huge breasts as an outward manifestation of my huge maternal instincts.

-I am PROFOUNDLY grateful that it has been up to God and not me when I've gotten pregnant and how often, because I am overwhelmed with love and joy for and from each of my children, and am ashamed to say I don't think I'd have chosen to conceive a single one of them in the circumstances I was in at the time; so much so that when we found out about Jake and Elise, despite trying to make the whole NFP thing work with breastfeeding, we didn't even waste time worrying and feeling tense and just got straight to the "WOO HOO!!" and accepting it.

-I do not believe that procreation is the only God-sanctioned purpose of sex...I think it also serves as a way to keep couples strong and close, and as a revelation of divinity and a metaphor for Christ and his church (if this is too religion-heavy to even make sense for you, I got some of this from former-Pope John Paul's Theology of the Body, which rang very true for me)

-I'm not sure I can accept the Catholic/Orthodox standard that anything but penis-in-vagina is wrong, or the loop-hole that anything but ejaculation-in-vagina is wrong. For three reasons; 1. I am not ready to alter my behavior as such, 2. When I picture God putting two people together on a deserted island and them being in love and in love with Him, without any cultural influences or whatever, I imagine them exploring each other's bodies and experimenting as they gain in trust... and 3. I also don't see enough scripture to back up these doctrines

-Likewise I can't even wrap my head around the idea of masturbation being a "mortal sin". Thirteen year olds who don't even understand what their bodies are doing yet? Engaged people trying to wait? Even husband and wife separated by long distance and I don't know, I just can't get it to feel real to me as an idea. I DO think there is a line, like, porn, fantasizing about your husband's best friend, doing it to the exclusion of getting anything else done - there are ways to sin while you masturbate, sure. But that the act itself is not just sin but Sin wigs me out. Perhaps this is an easier concept to swallow for people with less voracious sex drives.

-I realized in my early twenties that it touches something very deep with me, and opens up all these emotions and trust I'd never be able to get to otherwise, to be submissive and even masochistic. I don't expect a lot of people reading this to get that or like it, and I'm sure a lot of people will instantly get all kinds of ideas that aren't even what I'm talking about...all I can say is that it works very well with the way my brain works and my relationship is set up.

-I've also come to accept, though, that we live in an imperfect, "fallen" world, and that my perspective can be warped in any number of ways by my own baggage and experiences. I think God understands that, too, though.

-which is also part of why it's easy for me to watch Sex and the City and talk with totally liberal friends who have a different boyfriend/girlfriend everytime we catch up, and tons of general "drama" surrounding it all...it might not match my worldview but I can step out of my worldview, if that makes any sense, and meet people where they're at and try to see things through their eyes

-and I have more than one person in my life at this point who has had an abortion; one who hasn't looked back and one who has to deal with a lot of guilt, and we're all honest and I think it's a tragedy and it was a death but not that they are murderers....when I get mad about either instance, it's usually at the other people in their lives who made them feel it wasn't safe or acceptable to have the baby

-I am very confused about my own stance on abortion politically. I am horrified and saddened by the reality of the procedure. And yet...there are so countless many people out there devoting their whole lives to "choice", who feel so passionately that women's "right" to have an abortion is a paramount part of a free society and are fiercely invested in a struggle to keep it safe and legal - it makes me step back confused because while I DO want to campaign for the unborn...I'm not always sure it should be up to me what other people do. God entrusts us to each other, He doesn't take away a parent's ability to neglect or abuse their born child or a spouses ability to cheat or to walk away. He moves in peoples' hearts and he leaves it up to them. Then again, killing of born people is not legal regardless of what God allows to happen. I go around and around about this, and it is all MUCH harder for me because to legislate for life is to drastically limit birthing rights and options, which also hurts so many women and babies, and is a cause very near to my heart, and I'm not really sure if there is any way to separate them.

-I am pretty sure I would go through a big mourning period and then experience a lot of depression and loss of sex drive, if either Grant or I ever got sterilized.

-It feels very natural and right to be in a rhythm that involves there basically always being a baby and a toddler in our house, and to experience pregnancies and to have diapers in the laundry and milk on tap.

-I am resentful and angry about having found Theology of the Body and gotten involved with Humanae Vitae and Quiverfull families online and in real life only to find I need to quit having kids

-I am bitter and frustrated that every Christian person I knows talks about "trusting God" and conceptions only happening with His help and blessing and He knows what's best, but they still think I need to do something to keep any more babies from happening. It seems to me like you can't have it both ways.

And yet we live in a world where Protestants don't even think there's any problem with birth control at all, and most Catholics only give it some lip service, and so even priests I talk with are like, yeah, of course you can and should use some kind of birth control now. This is in real life.

Online Catholics and Orthodox people say I should master NFP and/or not have sex anymore, if additional children are not an option. I don't feel capable of one of those or at all willing for the other.

So I arrived at this copper IUD decision with a lot of hesitancy and research, over the course of almost 2 years of pain, trauma, surgery, ptsd, brain injury, ER visits, GP visits, nightmares, fear...etc. I understand bitterness when I realize I'm just NEVER GOING TO GIVE BIRTH.

I've tried to work my way around to the silver linings in never having another baby. Having more time and attention for the kids I have. Getting into shape. Doing more independant life things (like writing, swimming at the Y, more social interaction, whatever...) and adult relationship things (like the weekends away together and date times) earlier on. Keeping us more portable as a family for travel and in-town activities. They are significant but they can still bite my ass, because I didn't get to make the choice that our family was complete.

There is a part of me that still thinks, what would be so bad about it if I DID get pregnant again? Dr McElrath said my uterus looked great when he got in there to Elise. Scar perfect, no thinning of anything, not nearly the amount of adhesions I thought I had. I'd have to make some insane horrible decision with the stakes higher than ever, to have MORE surgery or try AGAIN for a vaginal birth, but chances are the baby and I would come out of that alright. So my abdomen would be more herniated and disfigured and wack. Is that even possible? Who cares, at this point.

But that is dangerously simplistic and not completely true, so don't bother trying to talk me down from the ledge...as I tried to convince my therapist, I'm not actually considering having another baby, I'm just going through my denial phase of grief. Or whatever.

Because now we have a big house and two paid off cars, now we have a support system and childcare help, now BLAHBLAHBLAH. Argh.

So anyway yeah, IUD. My main moral concern with it has been the idea in some circles that it is an abortifacent - meaning, it allows a sperm to fertilize an egg every month, but then the fertilized egg can not implant and dies. On the one hand, all birth control is to some greater or lesser degree an abortifacent when you define it that way - I mean, the pill and the shot and the implant and the ring all can keep fertilized eggs from implanting. As well as emergency contraception and who knows what else. You could say it's all just really early abortions. On the other hand, I'm not comfortable with causing this situation to be going down in my body regardless of how commonplace it is. I tried to be, I thought maybe I should be or I have to be, but it just didn't work. The IUD's information packet, website FAQs, messageboards - nothing was giving me concrete answers, the overwhelming concensus seemed to be that one of the ways the IUD works could in fact be keeping fertilized eggs from implanting, and maybe that could even be the primary mechanism. For the record, I don't know what I believe a fertilized egg is or if I think that it has a soul or is a pregnancy or whatever. I learned in my research that it is very very normal for a great many fertilized eggs to fail to implant naturally, with a woman never being aware.

BUT THEN. I found a veeeery interesting article with a great many study citations, about the IUD. That conclusively proved that the primary mechanism of the copper IUD is to create an environment inhospitable to sperm - that in the presence of copper ions sperm die, become disfigured, never make it into the uterus, etc etc. A secondary mechanism of the Paragard IS to make it harder for a fertilized egg to implant, BUT - when they study the fallopian tubes of women who have never had an IUD, they have way more evidence of higher numbers of "wasted" fertilized eggs. Women who have IUDs, in other words, are shedding way fewer fertilized, unimplanted eggs than women who do not have IUDs. So it could happen from time to time. But less often than it would if I DID NOT have the thing. And while the IUD is highly effective bc, there are babies born who were conceived with them...it's not as if that is unheard of or vanishingly rare. Which leads me to a sort of "God can make that work" outlook, which is sort of dumb because if I think that why don't I think God can just not have me get pregnant if I shouldn't, but whatever.

It's really late and I have a lot of latent anger about many things, and I really want to be writing about other stuff but I have to get this entry out of the way first. So excuse my typos, flippancy and irritable tone.

As I navigate through messageboards and LJ communities on birth control choices and IUD stuff, I keep being struck by all sorts of things...like icons that have an IUD in a uterus and it says, "The Only Thing Allowed in my Uterus". That grosses me out, I don't want to be associated with that sentiment. But...why not? I am putting the thing in there to keep anything else from being in there...right? *sigh* There's been a lot of praying about this. And long long talks with my husband about what we think is right. I'm glad my initial consult appt was set so far off (Feb 18) because we needed the time.

The other thing that gets me that I haven't really considered before, is women's priorities where birth control is concerned. For instance, there are apparently a ton of women who base their choice of bc on wanting the one that helps control acne. Who knew? And, I read again and again about women who opt for the Mirena IUD (hormonal) because they don't want to deal with heavy periods from the Paragard. I deal with heavy periods either way; that's just life. But hormones? How can women who buy organic meat raised without hormones take birth control pills? Am I missing something? Lots of women talk about how a method they've used in the past "was great, though it killed their sex drive". This is a crazily common thing to hear. How can birth control be great if it kills your sex drive?! What is the point of even being on it if you don't want to have sex?

So I started thinking about my own priorities. Not the obvious things like it has to actually work and it'd be nice if I could afford it, but the perks and side effects and things. I would straight up, flat out never take anything (unless it was life or death or something) that:

-contained hormones
-caused me to gain weight
-changed my moods
-killed my sex drive

Side effects I can totally live with include:

-heavier and/or more painful periods
-initial painful insertion
-occasional cramping

I can sort of see how some people would have the opposite perspective...I guess. Things I don't even consider that are major players for others include:

-cycle regulation
-the acne thing, obviously
-disease prevention