Sex and Pregnancy: The Naked Truth Revealed

Naps over Nooky

By the time a woman reaches the final weeks of her pregnancy, making love is usually the last thing on her mind. It's hard to get excited when you feel tired, breathless, and enormous. "Sex was basically non-existent during the third trimester," Troy recalls, "I was too exhausted after working all day. All I could do was come home and lie down to rest."

Even if the woman is up for the task, her partner might feel like a fish out of water. Troy's husband Craig admits, "I found the belly to be very intimidating during the third trimester—I wasn't sure how to work around it." While there are lots of positions like woman on top or rear entry to get around the belly, spooning seems to be the favorite among the women who graciously agreed to describe their pregnant sex lives for this story. Vasquez laughs, "I've read suggestions about wife on top, but I was so big and ungainly that I feared I'd smush my husband, and I honestly couldn't move around up there very well. Any position, like spooning, that allowed me to move as little as possible was good!"

Whisper sweet nothings in her ear and you'll probably get . . . nothing. But tell her you'll drive her to the hospital afterward and you might have a willing partner! If there's anything that will entice a heavily pregnant woman to have intercourse, it's the hope that it will bump up her due date. Can love lead to labor? "It actually can," Dr. Spetalnick reveals. "Sex at term and the accompanying contractions might be just the fuse that that last step needs. I would certainly rank it higher than any of the other home methods to induce labor." So if long walks and spicy meals aren't doing the trick, it might be time to try handholding and candlelight!

Virtuous Virgins and Foxy Mamas

While the majority of women's sex lives take a temporarily nose dive during pregnancy, there are two types of expectant mothers that absolutely must be mentioned: the Virtuous Virgins and the Hot Mamas!

Celeste Van Orden, mother of four, was one of the former. "I just felt so maternal and special, like I was part of a miracle, that sex seemed inappropriate under the circumstances," she explains. "I even went so far as to wear only white underpants and bras and started making homemade bread and growing my own herbs." Nuroft went through a similar post-conception transformation, "Sex seemed dirty; I felt like my body was for the baby, not my husband." And what were their partners' reactions to living with this pure vessel of motherhood? Most were troupers. Troy's husband explains, "I was okay with the frequency of sex being decreased during pregnancy. I knew that that was just the way it was."