So, recently I wrote an essay about a time I was given a sex toy, instead of cash, in exchange for teaching a class.  (Funnily enough, just around the same time, there was an article on TDB about sex toys not only going mainstream but even being marketed for Extremely Religious People.  Isn’t it weird how a topic gets into the ether?

 Now, my essay wasn’t an x-rated review of sex toys, nor was it in any way explicit about my own sex life.  Really, it was about navigating the way one’s identity changes over the course of a long relationship and after parenthood.  Nevertheless, the Surprise Guest Star of the essay was a vibrating cock ring, and in response to publishing it, I got a lot of reactions that basically boiled down to:

“!!!”

One of the reactions was from a friend who expressed concern that using sex toys would “desensitize” a person to “regular” sex, become addictive, and, generally, transform something that should be wonderful and natural into something artificial and bad. 

I found I had an immediate, visceral reaction to this, which was, just, NO. There are lots of things can be used in a harmful way, but that doesn’t make the thing itself bad or dangerous. 

I said to her, “I think it doesn’t have to be that way.  Like, usually, I make roast chicken plain, but sometimes I change it up and use lemon and oregano.  The fact that sometimes I use oregano doesn’t make me not like having it plain anymore.”

My friend looked at me like I’d just thrown the easiest out-of-the-ballpark homerun pitch ever and said, “Mer.  Sex is not like chicken.”

I thought about that for a long time.

I concluded that in fact sex is quite like chicken:

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So yeah, once I was teaching a class about what happens with sex when you become a mother, and they gave me a cock ring — instead of money — for payment.  And then I wrote about it for Brain, Child: The Magazine for Thinking Mothers,* and now you can read about it on Huffington Post — here.

*Do you know about Brain, Child?  It is the only literary magazine out there that publishes thoughtful, smart essays and features about motherhood, and it is so good, and also funny.  You should subscribe immediately.

Recently I had dinner with a friend, who told me, in rather elegant detail, how she and her husband had recently got their freak on in a cab.  Date night, FTW!  We also talked about her new business venture and about my work, and about a recent Supreme Court decision and a few other things. 

When it was time to leave, standing on the street corner outside the restaurant, I said, “Oh and how are your kids?” 

There was a pause and then a lot of laughter at the irony.  A decade ago, she and I met not for drinks and sex chat, but for playdates.  Back then we discussed night-weaning and infant slings, and whether “time out” was a good discipline method and the evils of High Fructose Corn Syrup.  I remember several lengthy conversations about the color of our infants’ poop.  It made us both happy, then.

Isn’t it interesting how things change? 

 It’s this that makes me feel so weary of Erica Jong. 

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MOMs (Meeting Other Mothers) 

This is a place where you can be real: messy, and unshowered some days, energetic and fresh-from-the-gym other times, deeply inspired one week and filled with doubt the next.  MOMs is a place to sort it out and to find like-minded women in the same life-moment. Some of the people you meet here will be friends for life.   

Scroll down for schedule and registration 

Topics include

• dealing with crying and fussy behavior
• establishing routines
• getting your body back
• co-parenting with your partner
• “myths” of motherhood
• sex and intimacy and parenting
• feeding, and sleep issues
• dealing with parents and in-laws
• coping with normal new mom anxiety and doubt

UPCOMING DATES:  

• CHELSEA 6/1 - 7/6, register here 
• TRIBECA 6/27 - 8/1, link to come

• ONGOING MOMS — if you have completed a group with me previously, contact me directly at meredith (at) amotherisborn (dot) com to join an ongoing moms’ group.

TRIBECA:  2-4 at 46 Warren St (downstairs classroom). $180

CHELSEA: 12-2  at 247 W 26 Street  $180 

<Joining a group is best, but for moms who can’t, I do private parenting consults on these issues as well>

ONGOING MOMs Series.  Moms who have completed the initial six week MOMs series are invited to join an ongoing weekly or monthly group.  This is an opportunity to gather as a group with new friends and an experienced facilitator, and explore some of the topics that come up beyond the haze of the early newborn stuff.  Topics combine concrete factual information about infant development, breastfeeding, sleep, and routines with a broader discussion of motherhood.  Our focus is on the way that being a mother — not just having a baby — shapes your day and your life.  Contact me for more information.

 Look at all these happy moms and babies!

One thing I love about my job is that at the new MOMs groups I facilitate there is often crying and laughing all at once.  Just recently, for example, during a discussion of post-birth bodies, sex and intimacy, one new mom described her scramble to unlock her apartment door one day when she had to pee.  Moms’ lives can get busy: she’d been out with her baby doing a thousand errands and “holding it in,” till she reached emergency levels, and now that she’d made it home, her key was nowhere in sight. 

I think the rest of the room knew the story would end “and then I sneezed/coughed/laughed… .”

Standing outside your apartment door with a crying baby on one hip and pee in your sandals, that mom pointed out, is not the sexiest thing.

I know you’re now madly doing a dozen kegels while you read, because you know they improve perineal tone and reduce the stress incontinence that is common during and after pregnancy.  But perhaps you’re one of the many women who blow them off except at moments when the word “kegel” is uttered.  Because — do you really need one more thing on your to-do list?  

On the other hand, do you really need to pee into your sandals?

So but here’s an alternative: the Je Joue Ami, a PC muscle exercise toy.  I learned about the other night at a workshop for childbirth professionals at Babeland.

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Even after the newborn stage, there’s more to learn about this wild ride of parenting!

In YOUR CHILD AGE 0-2, we cover:

• intellectual and emotional development thru the 2nd year
• dealing with food fights, bedtime battles and the word “NO!”
• side-by-side play and friendships between older babies and toddlers
• new-sibling issues
• nutrition, growth and physical development
• separation anxiety and transitions, and
• whether my daughter, (pictured above) had a meltdown about which bagel-half to eat first. 

         (just kidding)  

Contact me for dates and to register, at meredith (at) amotherisborn (dot) com.

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Development in the First Year is a workshop that covers the cognitive, physical and emotional milestones of the first year, as well as corresponding parenting skills as your baby grows.  

Contact me for dates and to register, at meredith (at) amotherisborn (dot) com.

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In the Older Baby Workshop we cover:

• cognitive and physical milestones from 6-15 months
• nutrition, solids and weaning
• baby-proofing
• appropriate play for your older baby
• beginning discipline issues
• repetitive and annoying behaviors
• nap transitions
• separation and stranger anxiety, and one-parent-preference

Contact me for dates at meredith @ amotherisborn dot com.

Private Classes are available, in your home, at work or by phone.