Dr. Ruth's Pregnancy Guide for Couples

Love, Sex and Medical Facts

Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer, M.D. Grunebaum

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780415919722
• eBook ISBN: 9781000143393
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This book offers helpful tips, case studies, and question and answer features about sexual activity, getting pregnant, being pregnant, delivering a baby, and keeping sex alive before, during, and after pregnancy. It focuses on maintaining a healthy relationship and sex life during pregnancy.

CHAPTER
1
GET READY, GET SET, BEFORE YOU GET PREGNANT

UNTIL recently, most books about pregnancy began with a traditional discussion of conception and ended with the birth itself—as if your pregnancy was unrelated to your lifestyle before conception or after delivery. In this book, the expecting couple will see pregnancy from a different perspective. We want to revolutionize the way you look at pregnancy, from the first moment the glimmer of the idea of becoming pregnant crosses your mind.

Our main focus is how to maintain a healthy relationship and stimulating sex life during pregnancy. To do this, however, the couple needs to understand what is happening to the mother's body and developing fetus during those nine months. The more you understand these changes, the more comfortable you will feel emotionally and physically, and the more the expecting couple can enjoy the experience of pregnancy together. A healthy relationship during pregnancy will also enable that relationship to grow after the baby is born. In the past, the father stayed in the background during pregnancy, but now he can no longer be viewed as a junior partner once conception occurs. Both parents need to be active and informed participants, whose needs and concerns are understood and addressed by each other and their health care provider.

Thus, this book includes information that every expecting couple will benefit from understanding, beginning with the importance of a healthy lifestyle for both parents before conception. We then take you through conception, a trimester by trimester explanation of physical changes and challenges, the birth itself, and what to expect once the baby is part of your lives.

Although many books about pregnancy discuss intercourse as a means of conception, we see it as far more than that. Getting pregnant may have been your ultimate goal in having sex before you got pregnant, but your sex life should remain active and fulfilling even after conception has occurred. In fact, sex is an important element in the whole experience of being pregnant.

Creating a family should bring two people closer together. However, it's hard for that closeness to develop if your sex life diminishes during the nine months of pregnancy and becomes just a dim memory once the baby is born. You begin this process of conceiving a baby as lovers; we want to see that you continue to be lovers through your pregnancy, parenthood, and grandparenthood.

This shouldn't be a revolutionary attitude, but sadly it is. Although your doctor or medical caregiver may expertly guide you and your developing child through a healthy pregnancy, he or she may not be as helpful when it comes to helping you maintain a healthy sex life. Medical schools teach doctors more about nosebleeds than about human sexuality. Even when prodded with questions about sex during pregnancy and childbirth, many doctors won't give more than superficial answers. That indifference may rub off on their patients. Couples begin to expect that sex during pregnancy—and for a long while after—is an aberration rather than the norm. As a result, many couples don't see the point of making the extra effort to keep it going. We feel strongly, however, that the opposite is true: Pregnancy without sex is the aberration.

We're not saying that pregnancy does not change your sexual relationship. Your sexual relationship during pregnancy will not be the same as it was before, nor will it return to the way it was before the pregnancy after the baby arrives. The very fact that your sex life is going to change, just as many other aspects of your life will change, is one reason you should focus on your sex life during pregnancy. The good news is that if you consider preparation for sex during and after pregnancy as vital to the overall process of having a baby—as essential, in fact, as going to Lamaze classes—then those changes need not mean a less rewarding relationship. They might even possibly improve your sex life significandy.

For these reasons, our book combines the expertise of a sex therapist with that of an obstetrician and gynecologist. We can offer you advice not only on the medical aspects of your pregnancy, but also on its

Websites for Pregnancy Information

http://www.babydata.com

This site has interactive tools that enable you to create a personal ovulation calendar that calculates the likeliest days for you to become pregnant. It also enables you to create a calendar for your particular pregnancy.

http://www.lalecheleague.org

Sponsored by the Laleche League, this site provides information about breastfeeding.

http://www.lamaze-childbirth.com

This site provides information about childbirth classes.

http://www.modimes.org

Sponsored by the March of Dimes, this site provides information on how to have a healthy pregnancy and how to prevent birth defects.

http://www.nlm.nih.gov

Sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, you can search for pregnancy-related information.

http://www.noah.cuny.edu

This is a great site for reviewing most pregnancy information.

http://www.plannedparenthood.com

Sponsored by Planned Parenthood, this site provides information on pregnancy and birth control.

http://www.pathfinder.com/ParentTime/Ask/dr_ruth

Read and hear Dr. Ruth answer questions about sex and pregnancy.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER 1 Get Ready, Get Set, Before You Get Pregnant
• CHAPTER 2 Go! Making the Most Out of Making a Baby
• CHAPTER 3 Now That You're Pregnant
• CHAPTER 4 The First Trimester: The New You
• CHAPTER 5 The Second Trimester: Feeling Like Yourself Again
• CHAPTER 6 The Third Trimester: Ready and Waiting
• CHAPTER 7 Complications of Pregnancy
• CHAPTER 8 Labor: The Time Has Come
• CHAPTER 9 Delivery: The Big Day
• CHAPTER 10 Life after Childbirth
• CHAPTER 11 Keeping the Romance Alive: Sex after Children
• INDEX