At every turn it seems like anything to do with coconut and coconut oil is the answer to whatever ails you. From cooking to curing cancer, all anyone seems to talk about is coconut oil. 

Now, before you go and get too excited,  this is not going to be a post about 101 ways to use cooking oil in your everyday life, although I am sure that I could google that, re-format and add my own flare and then pin it and get about a million and two hits on Pinterest … 

… wait a minute, maybe that is what I should do so that this blog can become an overnight success and I would have followers out the wazoo. Maybe that is how I will “make it” and then I can write a post about how to grow your blog overnight and feed off the single article … 

NAW.

That’s not my jam not is it ladies. Not that I wouldn’t like this space to become something amazing and serve a very wide community of women and mothers who just need to know that they are not alone and that they are doing a great job even when they feel like they are drowning. 

>> get to the point woman!!! 

PS – if you don’t want the background on how we conceived in a neat little list without all the “fun deets” click here to skip to the dry spell that shook me to the core.

Alright, you’ve held on through that interlude. I KNOW you are my people and so let’s get to the point. 

I’ve said before that I never thought I was missing out by being a boy mom. For an entire year before we found out we were expecting our bonus baby, I had settled into a groove of being a mother of sons. I figured that this was a safe path for our family and I couldn’t possibly screw up boys too much. 

I mean, I was raised by a man, only had a brother, and I excelled at life as a Tom Boy in our community. I got boy things. Even in high school, I would spend more time surrounded by guys than I would chatting it up with the ladies. 

Sure, I paid the price in awful rumours that were spread. But I knew where my loyalties lay and I knew better than to let lies define me. 

I fit in with the guys. Laid back, no judgement, safe. 

And I figured that I would do great as a boy mom, 

And then we found out we were expecting a fifth. LADIES, hear me now, the pull and pray method … DON’T DO IT. Not when you have already been part of. the minor statistic of failed birth control before. 

For those of you who want a good laugh and who need a little perspective as to why sex in our home brings with it a tinge of PTSD here is our history:

After almost a decade of being on the pill, one missed week of contraceptive and an ill timed “romp” found us expecting our first. 

The following year, on our wedding night (you know … the night you are supposed to save sex for) while breastfeeding and no sign of aunt flow, my NOW husband and I found ourselves alone for the first time in three months. In our hotel room / one night “honeymoon” without a condom. 

One night, one time ^^ all it took, even with no previous cycle thanks to breastfeeding. 

Fast forward to the following year, trying the foam << not fun BTW. I mean, picture it, you are about to get romantic and exciting and then you have to steal away to the bathroom where you inject your lady bits with a foam that has a peculiar “sterile” smell and you jump back into bed. Frothing at the bits … now there is no more foreplay, the mood is altered, and you smell of a hospital more than a woman in “heat”. 

Needless to say, you quickly wrap things up, even if you don’t actually WRAP things up … and BAM baby boy #3. 

Fun fact, we “tried” for our fourth to round out the crew. So … one month we decided to give it a try and I can literally tell you the day we got pregnant. I was even at the zoo with a friend when I told her that I was about 1,000% certain that I had implanted that day. Discharge and all. 

(I share a lot with my friends, I apologize ladies, but it’s me – messy and awkward nd all)

Anyway … fast forward to baby #5 who I blame solely on my girlfriends little owl eyed beauty. Her coos and the way she settled in my arms the day after being born, after giving her parents what for in the hospital, set my ovaries into overdrive and BAM. Preggo. 

AGAIN.

>> I’m not even sure we did the full deed, to be honest. <<

For full disclosure purposes. 

And so it was, I was expecting my fifth in as many years. And, as much as I was excited for this new life. I knew that this meant another dry spell in the bedroom. 

Nine more months of … desert, wastelands, destruction. 

And then, if you know the age gaps in my boys .. you will be able to discern that we got pregnant very shortly after “jumping back in”. Which does something to the mind. 

Especially when you couple our return to coitus and the frequency and “ease” with which we conceive. 

I mean, I am almost certain that if he winks at me as I am changing from my frumpy PJ pants into my spit up stained and unwashed yoga pants, that I will get pregnant again. 

When people ask if we know how it happens I am tempted to say, “no, we haven’t got a clue. Why do you think we have so many kids?”

So you can imagine, a lack lustre sex life when I am growing to the size of a small whale with a not so little person inside of me, combined with how quickly we wind up pregnant again even with using “protection” … messes with the mind and the libido. 

Before long you have a PTSD with love making and an awkward conversation with a midwife that leaves you scratching your head and wondering … is that what we need now?

A little help?

Some “natural” assistance from the apparent WONDER PRODUCT of the 21st century.

Coconut oil. 

I mean, I know you can cook with it. It is an oil after all, and not one that you run your car on. 

I know you can moisturize and clean with it in terms of opting for more natural solutions. 

I even know that you can use it as an antiseptic for wounds or as a diaper rash cream alternative. In fact, when we found out that we were expecting a young lady my husband and I turned into kind of crunchy parents and have opted to use natural products on our little lady’s bits.

But … that … 

And would using it to “help” things along, as my midwife suggested, mean that we had to admit that things weren’t firing on all cylinders anymore? 

I mean, there was time when our relationship was largely just that. Sex. Making love (I know my girlfriend is cringing at that terms but WOMAN, it its what us old fogies call it!)

We had little else to our relationship at points, little more than the conical visits that were the glue holding things together. Barely, as family fought to separate us. 

It was a weird Romeo and Juliet situation in which no one was winning. 

But before I get sucked in to the rabbit hole that is describing the mind messery (that would be a worse word but I elect not to swear in this space … too often … but if you know me that would be a f-ery) of premarital sex and the shame and insecurities that accompany those choices … just know that at one point we had no problem between the sheets but a WORLD of pain elsewhere. 

And now. 

After five children, a sex life whose frequency I could count on all my digits over the last half decade, and this inner turmoil of not feeling sexy … I find myself sitting in the midwives office being recommended coconut oil. As if it is the Franks Red Hot Sauce of modern marriage.

As if a dollop of the stuff that clears up a baby’s butt rash or flavours chicken beautifully will solve the problems that have unearthed in the bedroom. 

Problems seeded in a very LONG dry period. Fertilized by insecurities of a body that has failed to live up to my expectation of what it would look like postpartum. 

Issues that are taking root in the desire to create a lifestyle that is perviously unheard of. One that requires us to do things that are drastically different than what society thinks is normal and one that needs us to stretch beyond what we believed was previously expected.

And it is hard.

Hard to admit to my husband that years of feeling like I wasn’t worth it while we dated, while we struggled to convince family that we were right for each other had taken it’s toll. Difficult to swallow the impact of multiple pregnancies and postpartum recovering and working out with little result. Impossible to articulate how empty the bed sheets feel and how much I hide behind co-sleeping with our daughter, grateful for her congestion which requires her to be elevated as opposed to sleeping on her back.

But it is where we are.

And coconut oil may or may not be the solution.  

What I do know is that this is a season, and identifying it as a drought … as a tough spot … does not mean that we are failing or that things are on the brink of disaster, it just means that we have some work to do. 

Some demons to face that were better hidden away behind the guise of being pregnant or being sore after birth. Even the ones that fester at my feet, being insecure and feeling unsexy in this postpartum body. 

And trust me girl, I have looked into getting this body stitched and repaired. I have googled and watched EVERY.SINGLE.NETFLIX.SURGERY.SHOW available and the cost to repair the damage done is outside our means at this moment (and I am not talking about getting a breast augmentation or even a tummy tuck for aesthetic purposes, I am taking about simply reintroducing my abdominal wall to it’s neighbour again). 

It is a learning process, a healing and growing process as we both strive to build something we have never built before. As we work towards chasing a dream that others won’t even speak into existence. 

This is a bump in the road, one that may be smoothed by coconut oil but not remedied. One that will take time and dedication to talk though, touch though, and now *apparently* taste through. 

And here’s the hope. 

These little things, or BIG ones depending on how much pressure you put on the sexy time … the things that we struggle with, are not unknown to the God who loves us. 

He hears our pain when it comes to a marriage on lean times. 

He knows our insecurities as we face a body that seems unknown. 

He is well aware of the struggles and the baggage we bring into each new season. The “lessons” engrained on our hearts that the enemy whispers into our ears, reminders of our brokenness. 

But we are not to bear the burdens and the shame on our own, we are not meant t struggle through while grinding our teeth, we weren’t even meant to slap some coconut oil on it and slide our way through the season. 

No.

In order to move ahead with the life that He promises, we must first unload the burden. Place it on the shoulders of the One strong enough to bear it and capable of erasing it. We must release the death grip and the hurt of pains in our past, ones that we can’t rectify if we clench to them in an attempt to define ourselves by them. 

We must release the death grip that has dried us up like the fricken Sahara. And relax. Talk. Trust. And move forward with grace afforded only to those willing to admit that this is a hard time. 

So breathe, grab some coconut oil and froth it up in your coffee (it is better for you than sugar *so I’m told*) curl up with your diary and release all the hurt onto the One who loves you through it. Share it all, admit it’s been a 6 year dry spell when you feel the only time you will get any action is when your ready to be bread. And laugh. 

Appreciate the blessing of fertility *or whatever you have that caused you this uncomfortable season* and look forward. 

No one who moves stays stuck. 

And if you feel stuck, I’m told a little coconut oil can help.