The first time I banged the wife after the baby was born, she kept yelling “Ardor! Ardor!”
Oh wait…
Can you use it in a sentence?
“After viewing my child’s birth, I could only continue making love to my wife when I used the ardor.”
I’ll bet that this is true for certain men. There seem to be some men who are kind of squicked out by vaginas. They don’t want to perform oral sex. They flip out at maxi-pad commercials…you know the type. They want to use the thing as a penis receptacle and maybe look at it a bit, but they don’t want to hear from it other than that. I can imagine that these men would have a lot of trouble maintaining their weird vaginal prudery if they were faced with a vagina doing the most dramatic thing a vagina can do.
It’s not surprising that it was an older man who expressed these views. These attitudes seem to be dissipating over time. But you know that there are still some vaginaphobes with child-bearing wives out there.
If it ever talks to me, I can assure you I’ll listen.
Seriously, though, I was in the delivery room with my wife (C-sections both times.) Sure, it was messy, but I found it fascinating and it didn’t diminish my word-of-the-thread one bit.
I dated one for two years. 
You youngin’s may not be aware that the female lead of Flesh Gordon was named Dale Ardor*. And Andy Offutt has a quite good book called Ardor on Ardos.
The wordhound must look everywhere for his words.
- Or so I recall. I’m sure as hell not going to google that movie at work. The X-rated version shown in theaters was far better than the bowdlerized version out on VHS - I’m not sure if the restored version exists.
Make up your mind. Either your husband’s interest hasn’t quelled or he’s learned not to fuck with you. Which is it?
Oni no Husband agrees with this guy…he says that, for the sake of our love life, he will not be in the delivery room if/when I produce offspring.
I pointed out to him that, if he’s so squicked out by looking at the bits-with-the-kid-half-out, he can still be in the delivery room but stay more up by my head so he doesn’t have to look. He’s taking it under advisement.
He’s not vagophobic - however he is really squicked out by pregnancy and birth. The idea of creating another person who then feeds on you and grows until it is expelled with great blood and pain and risk (and then continues to feed on you for a year or so afterward) makes him more than a bit hinky.
I love that man beyond thought and reason, but he’s just weird about this topic.
Oni, my husband and I had that identical discussion before our first daughter was born. He was also convinced that I would be in horrible, horrible, screaming agony. (Thanks, mother-in-law.) He became convinced by me* that he WAS going to be there, and that he didn’t have to look at anything he didn’t want to look at. There was no arm-twisting required for the second daughter, and I overheard him telling a prospective first-time father that it was the greatest thing in the world and that he should definitely be there.
- This was 30+ years ago. I was very anxious about the possible effects on the new baby of the sedating drugs commonly used in deliveries at the time. Lamaze, a new thing then, was the only way to avoid being subject to those drugs. And you could only do Lamaze birth if you went through classes, had the father accompany you to those classes, and be in the delivery room. So I told Mr. MLS something along the lines of “If you refuse to accompany me, then fine. Just know that in that case they will probably give me drugs I don’t want, and that could be bad for the baby. And if anything goes wrong because of that it will be totally your fault and I will lose all respect for you as a human being. But you do whatever you want.”
That’s what I did during my son’s birth. I sat and focused on my wife’s face and hand, and left everything below the waist to the professionals.
I was in the DR for all three of my daughters. I’m still up for it any time, any place.
Dearly Beloved has been known to become faint at the sight of blood. It is a very strange reaction, because while I have seen him demonstrating nerves o’steel while performing first aid on people bleeding all over the place, I have also seen him turn pale and have to sit down while people are donating blood. He was secretly really worried that it would ruin our sex life, he is a very visual person with a most unfortunate imagination and had heard that said also.
The midwife said she would kick his crumpled form out of the way if he fainted as we would be busy, and that the other story was just plain BS.
So nevertheless he attended both births* and retained consciousness the whole time. And it had no appreciable effect on our sex life.
- technically he missed Youngest’s birth, which went from uneventful delivery to emergency c-section during the time it took for him to park the car. So Youngest was breathing air by the time his father made it. But technically I missed Youngest’s birth also as I was the one who was unconscious.
My grandfather went AWOL during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 to watch his firstborn’s birth. They had two more daughters and yes, he was in the room during all three births. Apparently, since Grandma always used the same midwife, he only had to loom and say “if I was strong enough to make that baby, I’m strong enough to watch it arrive” once.
Just a me too post. Was in the delivery room for my daughter. No issues here.
Dumb theory.
I was there for the first c-section and the VBAC the second time around. The second time I was able to catch the baby and cut the cord. The first they said I could cut the cord, but wouldn’t let me. Hasn’t changed my interest in sex yet.
I have a girlfriend married to a wimp. They drugged him. In fact, several of my girlfriends have gone through drug free deliveries while their husbands were on Valium - in the delivery room, not really caring too much about the squicky parts.
Note that if your husband is likely to require drugging, it might not be a bad idea to have a backup labor coach (girlfriend, doula, sister, old boyfriend who has coached his wife three times - Dio sounds up for it) on call.
Our 2nd child was an emergency c-section and I wasn’t allowed in, but I was at my wife’s side for the birth of our first, which was a vaginal delivery. Saw the whole thing. I will admit to a fleeting concern when I saw the delivery doctor’s arms inside my wife up to the middle of her forearms, but it certainly didn’t decrease my interest in spending as much time as possible down there once she was ready for it.
Obviously you’ve never seen the Ping-Pong Ball Trick or the Change Sorting Trick. Compared to those, watching my son’s birth was a walk in the park.
Heh heh…DeathLlama said something very similar after I delivered RuffLlama with a high dose of pitocin helping augment contractions, but not a drop of pain meds or epidural in my system. (Honestly, it wasn’t that bad, but I think the hell that my back put me through makes all other pain pale in comparison.) Although, his words were, “I shall never mess with her, as she can clearly kick my ass.” He still likes to fuck with me, heh.
I linked hubby DeathLlama to this thread. He said, simply, “Lame,” then added I could go ahead and speak for him. Suffice it to say it did absolutely nothing to affect his desire for me, as RuffLlama 2.0 is on the way. He was a bit alarmed at what I looked like after–I tore–and I remember him telling me how bothered he was by how my “cookie” (as our doula called it) looked afterwards. “I’m sorry,” I said, thinking he’d been squicked out. On the contrary, he said, “No, no…it looked painful, and I just want them to fix it.” Awwww.
While sex was out of the question for a few weeks, we did give each other some mutual hand-lovin’ a day after I got home from the hospital–so no, he was definitely not turned off.
Now I have no intention to get pregnant, ever, but I will say, I don’t think I want him looking, either. If he is going to be in the delivery room - and to be honest, I hadn’t thought about it in much detail - he can sit by my and hold my hand. He doesn’t need to see what’s going on down below.
Does anyone ever videotape? You hear about that a lot. I’d break the camera - and his head.