Never, Ever Have Unprotected Sex

I’ll be off the blog for the next few days - I’m taking my sister on a 16^th birthday road trip to visit colleges for the weekend.  I’ve been looking forward to this since I had the idea for it about a year ago, and am even more excited now: the open road will be a welcome escape.

Obviously my sister is much younger than me, and I vividly remember the day that my mom told us she was pregnant.  After the announcement, she turned, looked me in the eye, and said (with great drama), “It happened on the first try, so never have unprotected sex.”

I was 12, still had all my baby fat, and most of my sex knowledge came through the V.C. Andrews books I swapped with my cousin, which titillated me but also taught me that whoever you did it with would inevitably turn out to be your long lost brother. So, while mom’s words made an impression, it’s not like I had any opportunity to heed her advice except by default.

When high school rolled around I was still firmly ensconced in my awkward phase, so I spent those four years the same way that every awkward, slightly chubby, sarcastic girl does: hanging out in the closet with the gays.  My freshman year homecoming date ended up coming out in college; my sophomore year was spent in a tortured romance with someone who would come out the next year; my junior prom date was secretly gay (but so attractive that the pictures were worth it); and by senior year I just gave up and went to prom as the “date” of the openly gay theater star.  Needless to say, nothing was ever consummated.

College was the chance for this valedictorian and perpetual beard to embrace her sexuality, which meant wearing horrendous “going out” shirts and too much eye makeup.  A few months spent making out with strangers at frat parties were followed by my first real boyfriend the second semester of my freshman year, but my Catholic guilt and my mother’s warning prevented me from ever giving in to penis-vagina sex.  The poor guy.  Not having “real” sex didn’t prevent me from being convinced I was one of those "I Got Pregnant In a Hot Tub" stories from Seventeen about, oh, once a month, so I at least got all the worry that comes with being sexually active. The funniest part is that this whole time, I was on birth control.  My boyfriend was a saint.

We broke up sophomore year (and I know what you’re thinking but no, I initiated it) and the rest of college was relationship-free, though the non penis-vagina sexual stuff continued with a few different partners.  During this time my friends lost their virginities in various pleasant ways, but still no real sex for me. Since I didn’t do it with that first boyfriend, the rule was that I had to wait for someone better.  This logic made sense for a while after college, but eventually my virginity started to feel like an albatross around my neck.  I wanted to lose it within the confines of a relationship, except who in their mid-twenties wants to be in a relationship with someone who has the baggage of being a virgin?

This is about the time I met Henry.  I’m not going to go into too many details here, but let’s just say that our first few dates had less to do with a magical connection and more to do with him needing to rebound from a failed relationship and me needing to get rid of that damned virginity.  But the connection did, to our surprise, grow, and for the next several years I went back to my monthly routine of being convinced I was pregnant despite never missing a birth control pill.

As my and Henry’s wedding approached, I started counting down the months. “If I accidentally got pregnant now, I wouldn’t be showing by the wedding.”  “If it happened now, we could pass it off as being a little premature.”  Once the wedding passed a surprise pregnancy wouldn't have been a big deal, although I continued to be careful with my birth control pills.

When we knew “trying” was eminent we discarded the pills, but thanks to my type-A charting and a condom stash we never took chances until the day we were prepared to celebrate a pregnancy. Mom would be proud: before that day I never, ever had unprotected sex.

You’d think I’d be resentful that my mom’s advice caused me so much anguish that turned out to be unnecessary, but her long-ago fertility actually gives me hope.  Maybe if I can just get that egg in there, my genetically-awesome uterus will do the rest.  If I get pregnant on my “first try” with IVF, I’m counting it – and I’ll definitely be terrifying my kids with my success. Maybe even my sister, too.