Baby-making can add a great deal of pressure to a couples sex life and have a detrimental effect on relationships and health as sex becomes more of a chore than a pleasure. Fertility expert, Acupuncturist and author Emma Cannon explores the dos and don’ts of sex when trying for a baby.
DO….
Make sex a priority. Regularity of sex is important and not just sex at the fertile time. Regular ejaculation is thought to produce fresher sperm, rather than saving it all up to the fertile time of the month when the sperm would have been hanging around the rest of the month in the testicles and may not be the best of the bunch.
Be intimate and take time. Sex creates intimacy – vital for a person’s emotional well-being.
Be discreet about your period and fertile time, you are in this together but it does not mean you need to share every detail with him. You need to be gently aware of your fertile times and not overly fixated.
Have fun and keep some joy in the relationship. Orgasm for a woman and man is important. In a woman it propels the sperm further up into the cervix which are actually quite tricky to pass. In a man it ejaculates sperm from further back in the testicles where the sperm is fresher and more recently manufactured.
Emma says “At my clinic it is not uncommon to see couples who have dramatically changed their lifestyles, are abstaining from alcohol, eating ‘all the right foods’, doing the right amount of exercise but actually having very little sex. I would rather see couples be more relaxed about diet and lifestyle issues and have more sex. As I said to one couple the other day ‘diet may make a difference and so might feeling relaxed but the one thing we know for sure is that having sex will increase your chances of conception’. It sounds obvious but you would be amazed how often this is over looked”.
DON’T….
Pressurize your partner to perform at the ‘right time of the month’ – men need women to want to have sex with them for them and not just to make a baby – I have seen so many times how timing sex to try and conceive can damage a relationship and ultimately not result in a pregnancy.
Let him know when the ovulation monitor has a smily face – keep a bit of mystery about your sex life.
Over work so that you are both exhausted…Many couples now work very long hours and are tired and depleted in energy. The knock on is that they suffer from a lack of libido and add to that the pressure to perform it is not hard to see how this can quickly become an issue for couples.
Become so obsessed with diet and lifestyle issues that you take all the joy out of your life and kill your libido. Don’t forget that diet might make a difference but sex definitely does.
THE AUTHOR
At Emma Cannon’s Clinic they are able to help support couples through every stage of their fertility journey including ways to improve libido and optimize chances of conception. In cases of blocked tubes, poor semen quality and in some other cases increasing sex will not make a difference and patients may need to look into assisted reproduction. They are also able to offer assistance in these instances. www.emmacannon.co.uk
