Yesterday I read an article by a ‘broody feminist‘ I wasn’t, initially, sure what one of these was, so I clicked through wondering if it might be a new faction of feminism about which I could have an opinion (I think I probably fall into the category of ‘Opinionated feminists‘, or somewhere on the venn diagram where they cross over with ‘Drunk feminists’ and ‘Feminists who like crisps’). It turns out that a ‘broody feminist’ is just a feminist who wants children. The author, Charlotte Gill, explains that:

“as feminism has progressed, saying you want babies has become deeply unfashionable – synonymous with “I have no career ambition.” On the other hand, a child-free existence has been painted as progressive and exciting, sold successfully by celebrities like Jennifer Aniston and Kylie Minogue.”

Which is interesting, because it’s not really true. Sure, it is very slowly becoming more acceptable for women to say ‘I don’t want kids’, and we’re no longer treated like we’re the gruesome offspring of the Childcatcher and Cruella DeVille. But I think calling it ‘fashionable’ is quite a leap – given Daily Mail headlines that screech at us about our biological clocks, and misguided advice by people like Kirstie Allsopp about how we should all have a baby or two before we try and get a degree. I won’t spend too long on the truth or otherwise of the argument, because I’m sure you know that while many people are fighting to emphasise that you don’t have to choose to procreate, there’s still an assumption that you will. There’s definitely not, as Charlotte seems to be arguing, a dominant feminist view that parenthood is a Bad Choice for everyone.

If I could wave a magic wand that changed our narrative around children, I wouldn’t be arguing that fewer women should choose to have them, or that we should all have them at certain times or what have you, I’d change it to this:

• Having kids is one of many options when it comes to making life choices.
• It shouldn’t be assumed that anyone either will or won’t have kids: no matter what their gender, relationship status, etc.

In short, having kids is a bit like training for a marathon – it can be incredibly rewarding, it’s definitely admirable, but it’s also a lot of effort so not everyone wants to do it. Anyway, I’m not here to talk about kids – have ’em, don’t have ’em, whatever makes you happy. Here I want to talk about silence…

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As a childless sex blogger, I’m prone to getting stuck in a bit of a bubble, in which I assume that any ‘sex issues’ are most likely to be about protection from STIs, dealing with weird fetishes, and other things that have affected me throughout my life. I forget, of course, that there are a million and one sex issues outside my direct experience which are massively important to highlight.

This week’s guest blogger, Danielle Meaney, has something really important to tell you about sex after a C-section. Something that her doctor didn’t mention, that I’d never heard of, and that she’d never been told before she gave birth.

Sex after a C-section

I have had one baby and one emergency Caesarean section. The two things are not unrelated.

I had wanted to give birth to my son in an all natural home birth, so having him delivered with the intervention of a scalpel and what felt like eighteen pairs of hands was something of a disappointment. However, I consoled myself throughout the entirely necessary surgery by loudly pointing out that at least my vagina would still be intact; nothing like fear and morphine to remove those inhibitions.

Imagine my horror then, when my husband decided to take it for a spin six weeks down the line, only to find that, never mind intact, the bloody thing had all but closed up. I had done this incredibly grown up thing in bringing a human into the world, and had had The Super Virginity bestowed upon me as a reward. I wasn’t a particularly big fan of my virginity the first time around; I certainly didn’t want it back now that I was a wife and mother. Yet here I was, on the sofa with my legs in the air, and feeling a deep, shooting pain in my pelvis that suggested my husband was trying to enter me with nothing short of a battering ram. Wincing with pain, I pushed him away from me and told him that I needed more time to heal. He’s a patient man and tearfully agreed before locking himself in the bathroom for fifteen minutes.

A few weeks later, we tried again. The pain was still there but I insisted that we push through it. I assumed that the pain was a result of tension in my muscles – it had been months since we’d had sex at this point, I was nervous – and that once we got going, everything would eventually loosen up. Only it didn’t. The pain continued every time we had sex, regardless of position or wine consumption, for a couple of months before I finally gave in and went to see the doctor. She helpfully told me that she had no idea what was causing my discomfort, but that it was more than likely as a result of some infection or another. With that firmly in her mind, she had a speculum up there before you could say “feet together and drop your knees”. After taking approximately one hundred and forty two swabs, she informed me that I may have to have the tests repeated as the light in her office wasn’t much good.

Sure enough, a week later I was in with the nurse and her head torch, explaining every symptom again in painstaking detail. She looked up at me from between my legs and sighed.

“You do know this is normal, though, right?”

I wouldn’t have thought that the position I was in at that moment particular suggested that I was aware of it being normal, but I bit my tongue and kept my knees relaxed. She finished what she was doing and clicked off her head lamp, before informing me that painful sex after a Caesarean was absolutely to be expected. I was slightly flummoxed; why hadn’t the doctor mentioned this to me instead of poking my cervix with cotton buds? Did she just not know herself?

Here’s the thing about Caesareans: they’re usually the last resort to a problem that is making a vaginal birth difficult. Quite often, they’re performed unexpectedly, as in my case, and in those situations you don’t really have a lot of time to research the future effects on your sex life. In fact, I think that us women give so much thought to what happens to our vaginas once when we push a human through them, that we completely neglect to give any thought to what happens if one comes out of the sunroof. Like me, I think that most women assume that everything below the incision will remain completely as it was before, and that just isn’t the case. The lovely nurse at my surgery explained that the incision is actually very low – my scar is about an inch below my bikini line – and goes through seven layers of abdominal tissue. Not only that, but they make it as small as possible and then stretch and pull until it’s big enough to get a small head through. How on earth did I ever expect for there to be no effect on my lady parts, sitting mere inches below and connected internally?

More alarming than my own ignorance is the fact that none of this was mentioned to me by any doctor or midwife. After a cursory search online, I found that I am far from being alone. In fact, many women report far more difficulty with sex after a C section than with a vaginal birth, and yet it is a subject that isn’t being discussed by the professionals. Instead we are left to worry that we’ve somehow been left damaged or infected, suffering hideous speculum examinations and endless trips to the toilet with sample pots.

It’s now eight months since I had my baby, and sex is just about back to normal, albeit with the addition of plenty of lube. If you’ve had a Caesarean and you’re worrying – you’re not alone. You haven’t closed up, your bits aren’t broken and you probably don’t have infection, but at least now you’re armed with the facts if you do need a check up from your own doctor.

Take your time and ease back into it; I promise you, it will feel good again.

If you’re struggling to have sex after a c-section, Dani’d provided a couple of links that explain the issues, and give you some tips on how to ease back into sex. Please do check out Dani’s parenting blog too, because it’s ace.

Women: what will you do first – have that glittering career you’ve always dreamed of, or get babies quick-sharp before your maternal need reaches a shrieking climax and you’re left yearning for the children that will make your life complete?

Kirstie Allsopp has been in some pretty hot water today over comments she made about life choices. She pointed out (quite rightly) that if you have a womb and ovaries, your chances of using those to make a baby drop sharply after a certain age. That’s obviously common sense. Unfortunately, she then used that to say that if she had a daughter she’d advise her not to go to University early in life (i.e. shortly after 18) and instead focus on having a family and saving studying and a career for later.

She’s taken a lot of crap for saying this, and has taken a lot of agreement, too: from people who did have children young, or those who wish they had.

Here’s the problem: Kirstie gave what is essentially some good advice. If you want kids in a certain way (and if you’re able to have them in that way), you have to plan relatively early. Unfortunately, this good advice was presented in a way that rested on a huge number of assumptions. It’s not the advice that’s bad, it’s what it rests on.

She has, in no particular order, assumed that:

– All women want the same things (career and babies).

– All women are biologically capable of having children and will want to have biological offspring.

– A career is always a choice, as opposed to something many people do because they need to put food on the table.

– Women shoulder the responsibility for the propagation of the human race.

Can women ‘have it all’?

I’d be less angry about comments on careers and children if it weren’t for the fact that it is always presented as a choice that women – and only women – need to make. Incidentally, as I stand up loudly and proudly and state that ‘not all women’ want to have babies, to correct this incredibly common assumption, I look forward to the men who recently commented on my ‘sex entitlement’ blog to join in with me, correcting those gender assumptions they so hated when they believed them to be directed at dudes.

Sarcastic asides over, men are never asked ‘hey, are you sure you want to have this career now? Shouldn’t you have kids first?’ Of course no one ever asks men this, because society has an inherent aversion to male child-rearing, and feels that kids are the sole preserve of women. This puts massive undue responsibility on women, and leaves men standing on the sidelines being patronised by strangers when they take over the duty of ‘babysitting’ their own children. Not to mention it makes women like me really bloody angry when they keep having to answer the same tickbox list of questions.

Conversations about my potential future offspring fall into two broad categories:

a) relevant and interesting conversations (these are the ones I have with my partner, where we discuss our thoughts on The Future)

b) totally unnecessary, irrelevant and intrusive conversations (the ones I have with every other twat who thinks they know better than me what I think)

The latter type usually consists of a friend or family member telling me in syrupy tones that one day I’ll just wake up and – BAM – suddenly I will want a baby so hard I will be unsure how I can ever have wanted anything else in my life. They tell me that having children is the best thing that ever happened to them and that, ergo, it would be the best thing to ever happen to me. It might be, I don’t know. I’m not a fucking psychic. All I know is that right now – right this instant – I don’t want one. And you nagging me about it is unlikely to make me start ovulating. So, if you’re one of those people who likes to tell people to have kids, pay attention.

Five things people need to stop telling me about children

1. You’ll change your mind one day.

I’ve been fairly open about the fact that I don’t really want children. I may well change my mind one day: I’m a human, and we have a habit of doing that. But you don’t get to tell me that unless you have actually lived inside my head. That’s not only impossible but undesirable – it’s a terribly sordid place.

2. It’s the only real purpose for us in life!

By ‘us’ do you mean ‘people’? Because sure, it is a purpose of the human race to survive. And we, as a species, need to make sure we don’t die out any time soon. But there’s a huge leap to be made between ‘survival of the species’ and ‘my individual choices.’ If I’m one of the last people on Earth this argument might hold weight, but given that there are around 6 billion of us, I don’t think my uterus is the vital pivot on which our survival depends.  I no more have a moral responsibility to breed than I have a moral responsibility not to die.

3. Your biological clock is ticking…

I’m getting older, if that’s what you mean, but I’m fascinated as to how you have such an in-depth insight into the state of my reproductive system. For all you know it might not work. For all you know I might not have one.

4. Oh, you must hate children then.

They’re OK, I suppose. They are like adults, only smaller and they say hilarious stupid things sometimes, and also if you have a child you have an excuse to do things like play with the Brio train sets in the Early Learning Centre without being asked to leave. I bloody love some kids (usually ones I am related to, or particularly well-behaved offspring of my friends) but there are many kids who are – let’s face it – twats.

I don’t ‘hate’ or ‘love’ kids. As with adults, I will form my opinion on them based on discussion with the individual in question, and possibly a Frozen singalong. Only then can you get the true measure of a person.

5. Don’t you think it’s a bit selfish to choose your work over children?

No. Nor is it selfish to choose travel, hobbies, or sitting on the sofa staring blankly into space for forty years. All of these things are legitimate life choices, no more or less selfish than the decision to have children. You know why? Because I haven’t had children yet. That’s the beauty of it! If I did have children then certainly I’d be pretty selfish if I ignored them in favour of writing angry blogs and eating ice-cream at 11 am on a Monday for no reason. Given that I don’t have them, my choices can only be selfish or unselfish in relation to how they affect the people I know: people who actually exist right now, as opposed to some possible future person who may never even come into being.

So there you go. Some thoughts on kids. If, like me, you are a 30-year-old cis woman and people are constantly nagging you about your biological clock, feel free to shout this in their face until they stop talking to you.

Kids: have ’em, don’t have ’em, dither over your decision for years before you make it – it’s none of my fucking business.