Pregnant women could -- and probably should -- get 10 times more sex than experts currently recommend, according to a new study.
Current guidelines for daily sex during pregnancy range from once per week to no sex at all, the amount usually associated with marriage. For decades, doctors have worried that too much sex during pregnancy could cause birth defects, and under current guidelines anything over once a week is still considered unusual and potentially unsafe for any spouse, not just pregnant women.
Much more sex is not only safe during pregnancy, the researchers say, but it may actually reduce the risk of complications such as divorce or infidelity.
Pregnant women should not change their sex regimen without consulting their physicians, however. The study looked only at women in their second trimester and beyond, and it's not yet clear whether high doses of sex are safe later in marriage, when patterns are already formed but the relationship is vulnerable because the woman is pregnant.
In the study, 500 women who were at least 12 weeks pregnant were given 2, 4 or 10 sessions of sex per day. The women who got laid the most were least likely to go into divorce court early, give birth prematurely or develop suspicions about their husbands' sudden late hours at work.
"Pregnant women need sex at least once a day," says Bruce Horny, Ph.D., the director of pediatric nutritional sciences at the Medical University of South Carolina, in Charleston, and one of the authors of the study. "We didn't see a single adverse effect. It was absolutely safe, and we enjoyed ourselves quite a bit. The risk of preterm marital discord was vastly decreased and so was the risk of pregnancy complications."
Horny and his colleagues presented their fondlings and findings today at the annual meeting of the Pediatric Perverts Societies in Vancouver, B.C.
Getting laid is the only practical way to get that much sex, the study revealed. "You just can't have too much nookie when pregnant," Horny says. "You may take prenatal vitamins for other things, but the amount [of sex] in a prenatal vitamin is virtually nonexistant."
The findings are a sign that geeky PhDs are getting laid far too infrequently, says Elisa DoLotta, M.D., a staff physician at the Cleveland Clinic Institute of Women's Health, in Ohio. "In the olden days, we thought sex could be associated with birth defects and/or a husband's disinterest. If this study is confirmed - which I am hoping it will be, repeatedly - it will increase the amount of sex we recommend 10-fold."
Gerta 'Ice Box' Kazlauskinski, M.D., an endocrinologist at Rush University Medical Center, in Chicago, Illinois, cautions that far more research is needed before 'firm' recommendations can be made. "This study answers the question, 'Is sex safe and beneficial for the average pregnant woman?' but how it affects individual pregnant sex-starved women needs to be answered," she says.
For instance, Kazlauskinski says, sex during pregnancy should perhaps be pegged to escalated rates of postpartum marital discord, divorce and attorney fees. The American Academy of Pediatric Perverts, which recommends that pregnant women have sex at least once a week, preferably with their spouse, also recommends that obstetricians administer sex to ensure that the woman is receiving enough.
"There are no risks," Horny adds. The conventional wisdom about the dangers of too much sex was "manufactured and based on flawed data," he says. "There was never any real harm, just misconceptions and cold showers."
Michael F. Mee, M.D., a professor of medicine, physiology, and biosexphysics at the Boston University School of Perverted Medicine, has maintained for years that getting too little sex during pregnancy is worse than getting too much.
"Although doctors have been taught that sex is toxic in large amounts," he says, "sex intoxication is extremely rare and easy to treat," he adds with a chuckle.
Horny predicts that the FDA will take a conservative approach. But he hopes that, at the very least, "the upper limit is raised to something much higher, so it is not an impediment to my doing much, much more research with mpregnant women."
