Читать книгу Blooming Birth: How to get the pregnancy and birth you want - Lucy Atkins - Страница 23

Don’t insert foreign objects, air or water in your vagina during pregnancy. If you bleed at any time after intercourse, contact your doctor/midwife straight away.

If, after orgasms, you experience a lot of uterine contractions, check with your doctor/midwife. Oxytocin, the ‘love hormone’ associated with orgasm, can also cause mild, clenching, harmless contractions in your womb after orgasms. (During labour oxytocin is actually the hormone that makes your womb contract to get the baby out.)

If you know you are at risk of premature labour, or if you have any other concerns, talk to your doctor/midwife about whether or not it’s ok to have sex.

Sex can be genuinely beneficial (it tones the pelvic floor muscles, gets the circulation going, relieves tension) but it may feel a bit weird for you in your pregnant state. You have a greater blood supply to your vagina which can affect sensation (it may feel ‘fuller’ down there) and your clitoris may be extra sensitive. You may also feel either less or more lubricated (lubricants like KY Jelly can be helpful if sex becomes uncomfortable). You’ll hear women boast about how rapacious they were throughout pregnancy but if your libido is paltry (or very variable) for nine months try not to feel cheated. You’re swimming in hormones. You may be faintly distracted by the sight of your own body, even if your partner appears to be passionate about it. You may feel like your body has been ‘taken over’ by the baby, and you don’t want to be assailed by anyone else. You may feel constantly sick, swell up like a balloon or have loony mood swings. You may simply be knackered. These things will not make you hot stuff in bed. And that’s OK. Dr Petra Boynton, a psychologist specializing in sex and relationships at University College London says, ‘What tends to disappear is not just the sex, but the communication, comfort, petting. If you’re not feeling sexy you should at least be having rampant hand holding every night.’ We talk more about sex in pregnancy in Chapter 8: Blokes, Birth and Babies.