The Therapy My Husband Agreed To When I Was Pregnant

I was six months pregnant when my body stopped responding to me. It wasn’t pain or exhaustion, it was something stranger: a distance. As if the woman living inside me had moved to another address and left me the shell on rent. Lautaro noticed. We’d spent weeks sleeping wrapped around each other without anything happening, and afterwards he looked at me with a concern that hurt more than any reproach.

One morning, he got up with his mind made up.

—We’re going to see Mariano —he said as he poured me some tea.

Mariano had been our gynecologist since before the wedding. A man in his early forties, calm, the kind who speaks slowly and looks you in the eye. Lautaro trusted him like a brother, and I had learned to trust him too, though sometimes his exams seemed to go on longer than they should.

At the office, Lautaro told him everything. That I wasn’t getting to the finish. That I wasn’t even trying. That he felt alone in bed. Mariano listened with his hands clasped over the desk and then asked me to get on the examination table.

—I need to do a slightly broader exam than the routine one —he said in that steady, calm voice of his—. I’m going to take my time.

He did. His fingers went over places that, in other appointments, were just a formality. He searched for my clitoris with methodical patience, pressing, pulling back, watching my face to measure every reaction. He didn’t stay on the surface: he opened my lips wide with two fingers, parted them slowly, and touched me there again, firmly, exactly where the friction sent a shiver up through my pelvis. He moved on to my breasts. First he held them with two fingers, as if weighing fruit. Then he cupped them fully with his open palm. Finally he moistened his fingers with saliva and began pinching my nipples, slowly, watching me, until the heat made me dizzy.

—There —he murmured without smiling—. Something’s moving there.

I sat back down with a hot face. Mariano settled himself in front of Lautaro and delivered his verdict as if prescribing iron.

—It’s a matter of balance —he said—. During this trimester, the body needs a level of pleasure that routine alone no longer provides. It’s blocked. To unlock it, contact is needed, variety, stimulation that doesn’t always come from the same side.

Lautaro swallowed. I said nothing. The two gazes crossed over the top of my belly.

—What exactly are you proposing? —he asked.

—That tonight you meet at your house —Mariano said—. And that you’re not alone.

***

He arrived on time, as he did for every appointment. He brought a small briefcase and a serenity that filled the living room before he did. Lautaro had also invited Sebastián, his best friend since school, the best man at the wedding, the only man who knew more about us than we knew ourselves. He chose him because he didn’t want any new faces in my bed, and I thanked him without words.

Sebastián came in with a bottle of wine no one was going to drink. He kissed my cheek and stood in the doorway of the bedroom, waiting for a signal. I had my robe crossed over my nightgown and my hands were ice-cold.

—Don’t be embarrassed —Lautaro whispered in my ear—. He’s here because he cares about us. If at any point you say enough, it all stops.

I nodded. It was important for me to hear that sentence.

Mariano took command with the naturalness of someone organizing a delivery room. He asked me to lie face down on the bed. He took a jar of warm oil from the briefcase and started with my shoulders. His hands were firm, without hesitation, and as he worked his way down my back he narrated what he was doing, like in a master class.

—There’s a knot here —he said—. The circulation here is sluggish. Here the body still hasn’t given itself permission.

The oil smelled like almonds. Lautaro was sitting beside the bed, watching me with his elbows on his knees, not touching himself, not touching me. Sebastián watched from the doorway. When Mariano’s fingers reached my buttocks and stopped at the inner edge of my thigh, I felt a current I hadn’t felt in months. He didn’t rush anything; he opened my legs a little more and brushed the tip of his finger over the wetness already gathering between my lips. A shiver ran through my stomach.

—Turn over —Mariano said.

I turned over. The nightgown tangled around my round belly and he adjusted it with the same courtesy with which he had always arranged the paper sheet over me in the office. He started with my breasts. This time it wasn’t an exam. It was something else. The tip of his tongue, just barely, on my left nipple. A slow, prolonged suck, while he held my gaze to make sure I was still in the room. Then he sucked the other one, alternating with a hand on the mound of my abdomen, almost holding up my belly as if it were an offering.

—Come closer —he told Sebastián without turning his head—. On the other side.

Sebastián came closer like someone approaching the edge of a pool in winter. He tried first with his lips closed, then with his mouth open. He took my right nipple between his teeth with a caution he quickly lost. He sucked hard, making noise, and the difference between them drove me crazy: Mariano slow, wet, deep; Sebastián clumsier, hungrier, licking and biting with need. Lautaro held my head from behind.

—Look at me —he asked.

I looked at him. And in that moment, while two mouths pulled at me from below, I felt a strange heat welling up from inside. One warm drop, then another, soaking me between my thighs. Lautaro’s eyes widened as if he were seeing snow for the first time.

—It’s happening —Mariano said, almost in a whisper—. The body is responding.

***

They made me get on all fours in the middle of the bed. Mariano and Sebastián were still on my breasts, taking turns, careful, never stopping watching my face between each movement. I couldn’t speak. I could only moan and laugh without knowing why, as if the block had broken and everything was pouring out through the crack at once. My skin had become sensitive everywhere; even the sheet brushing my thigh left me breathless.

Lautaro settled behind me. He kissed the back of my neck, put his hands on my hips, and spoke in my ear.

—I’m going to touch you in a new place —he said—. Only if you want.

—I want to —I said, and I didn’t recognize my own voice.

I felt the cold of the lubricant and then the pressure of a finger, slowly, as if he were introducing me to someone. He slid it in just a little, pulled it out, went back in a bit farther, opening me with short, precise movements. Then a second. Then a third. Every so often he would go still and ask if I was still with him. I was. Mariano let his voice fall into my free ear.

—Breathe deeply. Relax your shoulders. You’re opening a new channel, don’t rush the body.

When Lautaro entered me there for the first time, he did it with a patience I didn’t know he had. He didn’t thrust. He stayed still, waiting for me, letting me settle around his shape. The pain turned into a liquid excitement that ran through my whole body. It was a new sensation, with no memory before it, no comparison. I felt my pulse in my throat and in my vulva at the same time, as if everything had lit up at once.

Mariano guided me so I could lean forward.

—Sebastián will be underneath —he said, like someone explaining a dance step—. Slowly. You don’t have to do anything.

They lowered me onto him centimeter by centimeter. Two different bodies inside mine at the same time, each with its own rhythm, each caring for me in its own way. I felt Lautaro’s tension behind me, going in and out with patient cadence, and beneath that Sebastián’s firmness, opening me further and filling me with short hip thrusts. Mariano was still on my breasts, now with both hands, drawing out the warm milk the pleasure was releasing for the first time. He sucked it, swallowed it, then squeezed my nipples again until another moan escaped me. I didn’t know where to look. I closed my eyes.

The room filled with sounds I had never made. Cut-off breaths, skin against skin, a wet sway of bodies colliding and separating again. Sebastián held my waist so I wouldn’t lose the rhythm. Lautaro kissed my back, my neck, my shoulder, and whispered beautiful things in my ear, things I won’t repeat here because they were ours alone. Mariano directed with monosyllables, correcting angles, asking them to ease up or push a little more, until everything in me began to tighten into a single line.

—That’s it —he said—. Now don’t hold back.

When the end came, it was a synchronized explosion. First I came apart, trembling from head to toe, my belly taut and my cunt throbbing around the burn. Then Lautaro pulled out in time and marked my back with his hot release, sliding between my thighs. Sebastián held back one second longer and finished over my round belly, with a care that surprised me, avoiding the center as if avoiding a flower. Mariano stepped back and looked at the three of us with the expression of someone finishing a symphony.

They left me lying on my back, exhausted, satisfied in a way I hadn’t remembered since before the pregnancy. A tear slipped down my face without my knowing why. Lautaro caught it with his thumb.

—You’re here again —he said.

—I’m here again —I repeated.

***

Mariano washed his hands in the bathroom with the same calm with which he washed them in the office. He came back drying them on a clean towel and gave me the last instruction of the night.

—You’re going to sleep naked —he said—. In the early morning, Lautaro is going to seek you out again. The body needs to repeat the path to lock in the response. We’re staying downstairs, on the couch. In case your breasts need help again.

I nodded. I didn’t have the energy to argue, and deep down, I didn’t want to. While Lautaro tucked a pillow under my hip and covered me with the thin sheet, I heard the footsteps of the other two going down the stairs. They were talking softly. Sebastián was laughing with that restrained laugh he’d had since he was a teenager. Mariano answered in monosyllables, professional to the very last minute.

That night, when I was alone with Lautaro in the dark and he rested his hand on my belly, I knew the blockage was gone. That it wasn’t coming back. That my body had learned a new language and that I was going to speak it for a long time.

At five in the morning, his mouth on my neck woke me. I didn’t ask anything. I just turned over and let the treatment continue.