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Quality of Sex During Pregnancy
During pregnancy VS Pre-pregnancy
There is very little "research" on the answer to the question, "What is the quality of sex during pregnancy v.s. pregnancy?" The babycenter.com , which is a reputable organization that provides a lot of general information about a wide variety of pregnancy-related subjects attempted to answer this question. To do so, they took an online survey, consisting of 20,000 responses (17,000 women & 3,000 men) in one week. Please note, information regarding methodology or quality control were not given, and that the sample was biased due to the demographic of users of their web site. Therefore, it’s not clear whether these answers reflect the general population. But because, you are also online, it probably is similar to yourself. And most importantly what the numbers from this survey do suggest is that their is a certain segment of the population who are looking for information to help them navigate this stage in life.
The results of the babycenter.com 's survey is the following:
In summary, while some people experience better sex, most people experience no change, or worse sex.
INTENSITY OF ORGASM
During Pregnancy V.S. Pre-Pregnancy
Furthermore the results suggest that most women's experience of orgasm intensified or remained the same. The change in quality of orgasm is thought to be caused by the increase in blood flow to the pelvis area during pregnancy. Remember, during pregnancy, women's overall blood flow increases throughout her body.
According to Alex Caroline Robboy, LCSW, CAS some of the causes to increased pleasure during pregnancy
- Increase in blood flow to the pelvis area
- Belief that sex is showing love
- Excitement over the concept of having a baby
- No more worries about using birth control - the woman is already pregnant
- Security that the other person is really committed to the relationship, thus an increase in freedom to state ones sexual needs
- The belief that pregnancy is sexy
- Excitement over the need to experiment with different sexual positions, given that as the body changes, the positions that used to work may now need updating.
Conversely sometimes pregnancy may make the quality of sex decrease, this could be caused by the following factors
- Discomfort caused by growing fetus
- Orgasm may cause similar sensations of contractions - which can make some women want to throw-up
- Body image issues (either the woman feels fat and unsexy, or the partner does not find the woman's changing body appealing.
- Generalized nausea, exhaustion
- A decrease in physical comfort in 'normal' sexual positions and an unwillingness to experiment with new positions.
In addition to the above positive and negative sexual changes brought about by pregnancy many couples find themselves using the "pregnancy" as a cover to mask the sexual problems that they as a couple had.
- One person might not be technically adept at pleasing his/her partner in bed (can't find the clit, doesn't know how to stimulate the nipples etc).
- The person who is unhappy about their lovers technical skills might feel uncomfortable playing the role of "teacher" and explaining in excruciating detail how to touch her/him. partner might not be a good teacher.
- They might have poor 'sleep hygiene' - meaning their sleep habits are different from one another. One person might work the day shift while the other the night shift, leaving very little time in the bedroom together. He might view bed as a place to sleep, whereas she views bed as a place to have intimate conversations that lead to having sex. One person prefers sex in the morning and the other at night.
While the period of pregnancy and the first year or two of parenthood is a convenient way to take a "break" from bad sex, the problem often intensifies. Because now instead of simply having bad sex that the two of you are struggling to improve, you are out of practice and sex does not feel as natural. Plus, comparatively the two of you have even less free time to address the problems.