Story | C-Section Scar and A Sailor

How an Open Relationship Helped Me Feel Desirable After Childbirth

I had to run for the streetcar if I was going to make it to my date on time. My daughter had refused to take a bottle and instead just started screaming at me. When I was in the room, she wouldn’t accept milk from anything but my boob. So, I was late. I showered in minutes. I was out of body wash, so I had to choose between my son’s’ watermelon shark 3-in-1 wash or my husband's Old Spice body wash. Smell like chemical fruit or a man? The fruit won. I didn’t do my makeup. I was wearing a very old swimsuit on top of a sports bra and my skiing long underwear. I still can’t believe I would dare to go on a date in long underwear. No one in the world—especially someone four months postpartum—looks good in those. Knowing that I also had to wear my water shoes (which resemble black duck feet), I had pretty much given up control over any outward impression I could make, before I proceeded to pack everything including my breast pump in my diaper bag. My husband, Rich, hugged me goodbye with our daughter squeezed between us as I handed her to him and ran out the door. 

I met Adrián a few weeks ago. He crewed the catamaran at our office party. I was attracted to him right away and on that day, under the Golden Gate Bridge at sunset, the wind blew away all my inhibitions, and I had an urgent need to impress him. I laughed when he laughed. I showed off my ability to tie knots and used sailing vocabulary like it had been only days since I last stepped on a boat and not years. After the boat docked and a few of us headed to a bar, he joined us. And in a dimly lit corner of the bar filled with black and white photos from San Francisco prohibition, when none of my colleagues were nearby, I kissed him. Quickly. Like it didn’t count. Like it wasn’t the boldest thing I had done in months. Then I gave him my number and pretended it didn’t matter if he called or not. 

But he did call. He invited me to go sailing with him. Just him.

My confidence receded as quickly as it came in—this could be the first time I would fool around with someone other than my husband in the past year. And if he saw me naked…he would see my scar. 

When I was thirty-five weeks pregnant with my daughter, I had emergency surgery for a cyst and twisted fallopian tube. The doctors didn’t want me to go into labor, so she was born via cesarean two weeks later. Right after her birth, I saw my three surgery scars and C-section smile line as a badge of honor. A testament to the amazing things my body could do. The nurses cheered me. My husband adored me. My mother and I bonded over our matching scars from when I was born via cesarean. And although I was proud, I didn’t want anyone to see them. I felt marked. Damaged. A c-section scar is the opposite of a tramp stamp. I might as well have tattooed “MOM” above my vagina. And rather than a symbol of sex and pleasure above my ass, in my mind, my scars were symbols of function. Something that rendered my body utilitarian, used and no longer desirable. 

As I climbed out of the Lyft at the sailing club, Adrián was getting out of the car in front of me. As soon as he saw me, he ran over and gave me a huge hug. The sky was clear blue with a steady wind. I hadn’t sailed since I was on my college team, which wasn’t really a team as much as a drinking club that found sailboats cheaper places to drink than bars. On board, he gave me the tiller and control of the main sheet and made me sail. Despite my minimal experience, my nerves settled, and what little I knew of sailing all came back. How to steer. How to tack. I was all smiles within minutes. We spent the next two hours actually getting to know each other. 

He was originally from Puerto Rico but moved to the Bay Area after college. He had studied acting, then marine science and psychology, but was never excited enough about one thing long enough to pursue it. He had grown up sailing, and when a friend told him about the job working on a tourist catamaran, he flew to Miami to take a chance on it. He bought a beat-up car and drove across country, seeing as much of the US as he could along the way. He had never lost his love of learning and at the moment was studying mycology, joining mushroom foraging groups on the weekend, while also pursuing his massage therapist license. I told him about my experiences living abroad, then moving to the Bay Area, and about my daydreams of living on a sailboat, which I hadn’t thought about in years. But suddenly, those dreams resurfaced with possibility. 

Adrián made tiny adjustments to the main sheet and placed his hand over mine to move the tiller a little to the starboard or port. His knees brushed mine when he shifted, I stiffened and then relaxed. The wind picked-up and he sat beside me, his body pressed close to mine so our combined weight would keep the boat from tipping too much. I laughed, the sound lost in the wind, and when he turned back towards me, he kissed me. Briefly, but it was enough for me to lose control. He corrected the boat and again, letting me steer. The salt water splashed us both, and I was suddenly thankful that I hadn’t had time to put on mascara. I threw my body further over the hull than I needed too, simply because it was fun. We stopped talking and just sailed, letting the wind take us to the edge of the harbor before turning back. 

“I want to show you somewhere for sunset,” he said, taking control of the tiller and deftly maneuvering us back to the dock. The beer and his closeness made me forget one of the first rules of sailing: don’t jump or overstretch your legs when docking. Unlike on solid ground, when you use the boat to propel yourself forward, the boat goes backwards. And you don’t go as far forward as you think you will. Which is exactly what I did. I overstretched and I fell straight into the water. I was soaked up to my chest, my feet trying to get traction in the muddy bottom. If I had ever looked like I knew what I was doing on the water, the myth was promptly dispelled. He tied off the boat in a swift motion, jumped out just as quickly, then reached out to take my hand and helped me out. Despite washing the foul weather gear, my long underwear, and water shoes in the changing room, by the time I attempted to put on my change of clothes, I still had trails of mud dripping down my legs. Even if I was embarrassed about taking my diaper bag earlier, I was very thankful to have a full pack of baby wipes with me then. 

I followed him to a back area, where the sailors had constructed a makeshift ping pong hall from old windsurfers and tarps, complete with black light decorations and a beer cooler. He pushed me against the wall and started to kiss me. He nipped at my neck and ears. But there was an orange glow about the entire place, and I couldn’t help thinking my son would love this place and this is about the right shade of orange to paint his Dusty the Crop Duster Halloween costume. As if in a rush, Adrián grabbed my hand and sped toward the pier. 

As far as romantic walks at sunset go, the view from the pier offered a spectacular display of San Francisco drenched in oranges and reds with a sliver of moon popping out from a dark sky. It was beautiful. Adrián stood behind me and put his arms around me. He’d also had the forethought to pack whiskey—that and body heat were the only two available supplies of warmth that night. But these moments of tenderness and intimacy are always the hardest to navigate in an open relationship. If I had been single on this first date with Adrián, this moment might have felt charged with a different kind of potential. Under different circumstances, the overt chemistry might have suggested a more long-term intimacy, rather than the ephemeral pleasure of a hookup. Moments that are truly romantic are tricky. It’s hard to completely enjoy them. Maybe it’s because they are the closest to feeling like I’m “cheating”.

I had mentioned twice to Adrián that he should take me back to his place for a hot shower, but I was starting to sense that he didn’t want to go back to his place. We jumped a fence, taking turns to throw our bags over the gate. There was a large rope jungle gym, as if someone had tied four oversized hammocks made of thick rope together. He held me up against one side and told me to hold on, hands above my head, as he proceeded to take off my pants and underwear. I later told him to do the same in order to give him head. If anyone had walked by, we would have looked like two Pooh bears wearing nothing but T-shirts. I was thankful the dark would hide my scars. 

By the time Adrián finally did take me to his house, it had been over six hours since I last pumped. He lived in a tiny studio cottage where nothing separated the bathroom from the bedroom but a thin curtain. I was trying to figure out where and how to pump without destroying the mood. So, I asked for ten minutes alone in the shower, where I was able to hand pump out what was most likely very alcoholic breast milk. I squeezed the milk out as fast as I could, but once my body recognized the release, my breasts swelled more, and the pain was overwhelming. Tears ran down my face but mixed with the water overhead, so that when Adrián pushed the shower curtain aside, he couldn’t see that I was crying. He asked if he could taste it. When I nodded my head yes, he sucked the last little bit of milk out. He kneeled down, kissing me from naval to C-section scar to between my legs. I still can hear the sounds he made as he buried his face in me; I still can feel the sensation of hot water, his hot tongue, and the cold tiles on my back. In those moments, I experienced a complete confusion of thoughts: to push him away, to pull him closer, to laugh, to cry again, to pretend that this was all absolutely fine, or to confess that I had no idea what I was doing. I was so overwhelmed that my mind blacked out. 

That night, I started to fall back in love with my postpartum body again. 

When I think back on that night, I can only remember individual moments. One soft kiss that he placed directly on the middle of my C-section scar. Over the next few months, Adrián would massage the scar, breaking apart invisible adhesions with his deft and delicate fingertips, allowing the muscles and fascia to stitch back together. I think of his eyes on my body when I peeled off my shirt. He’d kept still, just taking in as much as his eyes could devour before he moved toward me. Every time we were together afterwards, I expected the look of hunger to disappear, but it was still there. I started to believe his desire was for me, and my body, despite the scars. And although still prominent on my body, the scars began to disappear from my mind when we were together. 

And then they disappeared when I was with my husband. When Rich told me I was beautiful, the words became louder, clearer. More articulated. I could hear them again. Years later, my C-section scar has almost completely faded, now just a faint purple line, invisible beneath my lacy underwear. A raised thread, only discernible with a soft touch from fingertips.