The Mother's Guide to Sex -- Enjoying Your Sexuality Through All Stages of Motherhood
- by Anne Semans and Cathy Winks

$11.20

available through Amazon

One of the sexiest times of my life was when I was six months pregnant. Everyone would coo over my growing belly, pat it, touch me in ways that friends and complete strangers never would do otherwise. I would lie in my backyard in the sun with just a bikini bottom on below the baby, and the heat would stroke my belly, my breasts, my heart, my mind, until I was sure that I was the Earth Mother incarnate and that no woman on the planet had ever been sexier than I was right then. Not to mention that I wanted to fuck all the time.

But this was all my secret, and I told no one, except for my partner, who enjoyed it but thought it all a bit odd . Nobody talked about the sexuality of mothers sixteen years ago -- there was never a mention anywhere of mothers and sex, except for the obligatory paragraphs in mommy books about how to have sex safely if you ever felt like doing so. So I kept silent, reveling in it, but I was sure that I was a bit perverse.

Now along come Anne Semans and Cathy Winks with The Mother's Guide to Sex -- Enjoying Your Sexuality Through All Stages of Motherhood . These two talented women, who also co-authored The New Good Vibrations Guide to Sex and The Woman's Guide to Sex on the Web, boldly tackle every inch of sexuality that concerns mothers, and do so in fine style, in a book that I wish I could have read a long time ago.

There are smart thoughts on the most important sexual topic that I know of: how to talk with your partner, with tips ranging from sharing amusing sex comments from your toddler to reading erotica together. Talk and communication are always at a premium with kids around, yet it's talk that gets partners through all the startling changes that come with parenting.

If sex was as easy to talk about as the weather, many of our sexual communication issues would disappear. Can you imagine this idle remark over coffee: "I'm thinking today is a mutual masturbation day." Or how about this one: "Gee, I liked last night's oral sex, but I think tonight my G-spot needs a workout."

And then when they get women talking, we find out that there are other women in the world who feel exactly the way we do, and that we're not alone:

Labor and delivery made me into a goddess. My husband actually got an erection watching me deal with contractions. He said I was getting all shimmery. We are wilder now. Delivering together busted down the last bastions of prudishness.

On the flip side, the authors tackle the more difficult feelings with great honesty -- the loss of sexual drive for many women after childbirth, post-partum depression, money, lack of time, and even how to handle chores -- which everybody who lives with a partner knows matters intensely to the success of your sex life. Women offer up their truths with humor and wisdom:

Let women know that desire does return. I thought my pussy had died after three births in three years, accompanied by seven years of nursing, but it has made quite a comeback.

One of my favorite recommendations from the book is to have a planned "sex night" with your partner. And if you think of planned sex as a bit clinical, they say, it's time to think outside the box and remember that the goal is intimacy, no matter how you have to find it.

We have designated Saturday as "sex night" -- when we hang out all night together with a bottle of wine or margaritas after the kids go to bed. That's when we have the opportunity to get into more relaxed sex or multiple "episodes" if we want. Almost nothing is allowed to get in the way of our Saturday nights. During the day we tease each other about what's going to go on -- knowing it's going to happen adds to the excitement, so that we're practically ripping each other's clothes off by the time the kids go to bed.

The book is not just geared toward traditional partnered moms, but more toward anyone involved in parenting -- single moms get some tips on meeting others; hormonal changes in non-biological moms and even dads are discussed, and the book closes with a section on talking with kids about sex, again with the emphasis on talk and more talk as the means to solving problems:

I suggest talking, talking, talking. I felt that I was the most open-minded person on the planet and was floored by my reaction to my son telling me he wanted to be a girl. Gay I thought I could handle. Kinky, of course. But he was unhappy with his gender?! After I panicked and freaked out, I took a step back, listened, encouraged, made him feel no shame, and in the process, opened my own mind even more.

I plan to give The Mother's Guide to Sex to friends who are new mothers-to-be, and I am grateful to Anne Semans and Cathy Winks for crafting such a fine and sorely needed book.

Review ©2001 by Susannah Indigo

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Susannah Indigo is the Editor-in-Chief of Clean Sheets and also the editor of Slow Trains.