Pregnancy sex is safe

You can tell Valentine's Day is just around the corner because headlines are ablaze with news that sex during pregnancy is safe (that is, if you were previously worried about getting it on before) so basically you can shag until your heart is content without fear of going into early labour.

The news comes from some Canadian doctors who published their study in the Canadian Medical Association Journal. My guess is that they basically have done a review of earlier studies (although I can't find a citation for their article anywhere)....

sex during pregnancy is still taboo to talk about as I found when I was writing an article for Cosmo Pregnancy about sex back in 2008. It seemed really strange for me at the time considering that maternity lingerie, for instance, was making its mark in the maternity market and we had already been exposed to the idea that pregnancy is sexy via celebs. I was supposed to interview women about their pregnant sex lives and let me tell you, it was hard to find women who were willing to talk and have their photos taken for the article.

Anyway, were you/are you worried about doing the deed while pregnant?

Discover 'pink or blue' with a 10 minute test

Man. Everyday I think of look for things to write about for this blog, I think to myself that pregnancy is getting way too complicated.

Not only can you now find out if you are pregnant about 2 minutes after conception, have 3D ultrasounds set to lullaby music and wear organic cotton birthing wraps during labour, thanks to the brains trust at Intelligender, now you don't even have to wait to find out the sex of your future child at the second trimester ultrasound.

The Intelligender Gender Prediction Test (US$34.95) claims that you can know the 'gender' of your fetus within 10 minutes as early as 6 weeks after your first missed period through a simple urine test.

Firstly, the name of the test is actually incorrect. Sex and gender are two different things. Sex is a biological category* (male or female) and gender refers to the social constructed characteristics that make us male or female (masculinity or femininity). The company has clearly confused these definitions purposely as a way to sell women on the idea of the test as being a "fun, affordable way to discover pink or blue."

The fact that the test even exists says alot about the developed world: not only can we not wait to 'see' our foetuses until they are born given the preponderance of entertainment ultrasounds, now, as the company claims, women 'need' this test because it "bridges the curiosity gap between conception and sonogram." Seriously, since when have women been unable to wait 16-18 weeks?! Considering pregnancy is 40 weeks, 18 weeks seems like a drop in the water.

If this isn't a worrying example of immediate gratification of needs, I don't know what is. What concerns me the most about this product is 1) that if women are testing for 'gender' at 6 weeks, how will this early knowledge affect those women who have pregnancies that end in miscarriage? It seems like this might be another way that women can feel even more devastated and disappointed if their pregnancy ends in loss. 2) What awful things can happen in terms of sex-selective abortions? The fact that this product is not going to be available in India or China suggests that there is already an existing undercurrent of worry about how the product might be misused. In fact, this only gives people more, legal and socially sanctioned opportunities to abort 'undesirable' girl foetuses.

Of the gender test, I say FAIL.

*not according to Judith Butler, but that's another more complicated story.

Cereal is not sex linked (duh!)

Back in April I blogged about a British study that suggested that women who ate lots of cereal when they were pregnant were more likely to have a boy:
http://babybumpproject.blogspot.com/2008/04/want-baby-boy-eat-breakfast.html

According to a different research team from Cornell, this is..well..highly unlikely. Using a different statistical test, the authors think that the results from the first study were largely due to chance:" By our analysis, it looked like everything was random and there was nothing special about cereal," says Stan Young, assistant director for bioinformatics at the National Institution of Statistical Sciences.

Just by the nature of a large dataset, it is inevitable that the interaction of some variable will show statistical significance. Confirming my own suspicions at the time, the Cornell group further implores the tenuous link between nutrition and gender (if there is one at all).

So ladies, you can keep eating the Cap'n Crunch but just don't get your heart set on a growing a tiny pair of testicles in your womb.

Source: http://tinyurl.com/765psy

Preserve that perineum.

According to the sensitive journos over at Psychology Today, apparently "childbirth can wreak havoc on a couple's intimate relations". So great is the toll on a couple's sex life, an entire article has been devoted to encouraged pregnant women to consider their postnatal sex lives when choosing a childbirth method. Considering my last post about caesars in Canada, interestingly this article cites a 2005 Canadian study noting that women who have caesars report less sexual dissatisfaction three months postpartum in comparison to women who have vaginal births. It looks like the difference comes down to episiotomy; women who have them report more painful sexual experiences. The tables turn, however, if women have unscathed perineums. In that case, women who give birth vaginally report less pain than women who have caesars.

What do you think? Were you worried about post-baby sex following a vaginal or caesarean birth?

Source: http://www.psychologytoday.com/rss/pto-20080604-000001.html

Keep your bits to yourself during birth

So Dr. Michael Odent thinks that men should be banned from the birthing suite? You know what I think of that.

Today, in the Daily Mail, some moron decided to reinforce that one's sex life will be ruined if a male partner sees you give birth:

"A woman needs to preserve some mystery.
It's the key to eroticism.
Far better to let him see you propped up in bed, babe in arms, looking radiant.
Let him think you do this kind of thing effortlessly.
And unless you want your infant to be an only child, spare him the gruesome reality."

Seriously. Seriously?! I'm so sick of this 'childbirth is grotesque' thing in the media that is perpetuated by women first and foremost. Why in the world would you want to pretend that giving birth isn't a badge of honour and something to be proud of? Having to worry about what your male partner thinks about your bits while you're in the middle of labour sounds like a good way to set yourself up for post-natal depression.

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=561558&in_page_id=1879

Cosmo Pregnancy: Sex and the pregnant girl

I'm excited to report that my latest feature article in Cosmopolitan Pregnancy is on the newsstands (p. 84).

You can access a preview of my article 'Bumps in the Night' in which I interviewed some fabulous women about sex in pregnancy here:

http://cosmo.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=284801