Stand and Deliver!: And other Brilliant Ways to Give Birth. Emma Mahony

and roundedness of women in the early and middle flushes of pregnancy a real turn-on. So don’t you dare confuse your own feelings with those of your partner. Men are conditioned by nature to fancy fertile women, and you are a walking example of voluptuousness.

      Pregnancy is the time to buy some postcards of Rubens’ paintings to stick on the fridge, with white fleshy mamas breastfeeding cherubs and muscly men hovering in attendance. It’ll remind you that heroin chic wasn’t always fashionable.

      Not Tonight, Josephine

      Men do sometimes go off the idea of sex at the very end of pregnancy, however, usually when we women have finally reconciled ourselves to our fulsomeness and are suddenly prepared to test the theory of carpet burns. They also harbour fears of harming the baby in some way during a bonk, as if their huge member will puncture the amniotic sac like some Roman spear (just how big do they really think they are?). You may want to let them know as early as possible that this has never yet happened in the history of humanity. If you need to get technical, explain how a baby is protected by the amniotic sac and the walls of the uterus, and that the sperm cannot get through the mucus plug. Only if the mucus plug has come away at the start of labour should you need to refrain from making love.

      Some men (and fewer women) can also find the presence of the baby off-putting in some way, as if there are three of you in on the act. This is another fear that should be winkled out and explored as early as possible, because that presence ain’t gonna go away for a while, and will be making itself known much more vocally down the baby monitor than it is now. This might be the moment to book a dirty weekend away in some bed and breakfast in Brighton. Having nothing better to do than eat, sleep and make love should flush out this fear in full.

      Above all, you can no longer take your sex life for granted in your pregnant state. If you as a woman decide to take charge of the bedroom in pregnancy, and love your body in order to give birth the best shot, there is plenty of work to be done. As all the heightened hormone level shows, your body is willing if your mind will follow. Forget feeling guilty about missing the yoga class, and substitute it for a candlelit dinner for two instead. Swop the phrase ‘pelvic floor exercises’ for ‘romp on the floor’, and put a smile back on your face. Sex got you into this mess, and sex can help get you out. So what are you waiting for? Let’s go shopping.

      What to Buy to Feel Sexier in Pregnancy

      One friend bought pregnancy massage oil, ostensibly to massage the area under her bump that became sore at the end of a working day (the hormone relaxin softens the muscles and can sometimes cause a bit of grating around the pelvis). Asking her husband to do it as an evening ritual, she found one thing used to lead to another. (For pregnancy massage oil visit www.activebirthcentre.com.)

      Another bought a good push-up bra to accentuate that great pregnancy asset – big boobs. Even if you have always been a firmly buttoned-up sort of girl, try leaving one more shirt button undone around the house, à la Sophie Dahl, during these nine months just to experiment with your new curviness. At the very least it will get you in training for breastfeeding.

      Allegra tried perineal massage during pregnancy, done with her partner, using olive oil. (The perineal area is between your bum hole and your vagina.) Not a very British thing to do, but she admits: ‘We just ended up laughing, it was so funny, I would kind of lie on the bed and he’d watch TV over my shoulder. That was towards the end, during the last month.’ (For perineal massage oil visit www.activebirthcentre.com.)

      Pregnancy tights are difficult to find and uncomfortable at the worst of times, so buy some stockings or lacy hold-ups instead. Emma did this during pregnancy and used to flash her husband as they walked out of the door in the evening, and then enjoy his extra attentiveness in the cab and during dinner. All men live in hope.

      Rosie suggests buying one really sexy evening dress for the pregnancy. She invested in a designer dress, and found the designer adored doing something different for her shape. The final outfit was a skin-tight satin under-dress with a cutaway claret velvet dress coat over the top with extra emphasis in the cutting on the cleavage. Says Rosie: ‘It made me feel so sexy, and everyone said they wanted to be pregnant to wear the dress.’

      Exchange your dad’s-old-shirt-as-a-nightie for a grown-up satiny or, if someone else is buying, silk negligée. While your gamine legs might have looked great from under the shirt before pregnancy, winceyette won’t work if the legs become tree trunks. The negligée may only need to make an appearance when you are feeling in the mood, but just wearing it usually produces a male Pavlovian reaction.

      Lying in bed in New York, pregnant and waiting for her husband to come home, Lois found that surfing the channels for the soft porn became a useful evening ritual. ‘The sight of all these nubile young men parading around in my bedroom always seemed to get me in the mood,’ she admits.

       CHAPTER 3 My Body Is a Temple

      Elizabeth Gilmore set up an $800,000 birth centre in New Mexico, had the midwives employ the doctors, and brought the C-section rate down from 35 per cent to 4 per cent in the town of Taos. It has the highest out-of-hospital birth rate in the United States. I visited Elizabeth out there, interested to hear some of her Wild West views on birthing better. Here’s what she said:

      Have you ever seen an auction of expensive Arabian mares? I happened to catch one on the news the other day. They are raised in beautiful stalls, lovely fields full of grass, woken up every morning with hot mash. They get massaged and washed and played with, and swim in these special tanks. Because these mares are worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and a foal up to a million dollars, they get pampered and spoiled, with ribbons woven into their hair. What if we thought that each pregnant woman was worth a million dollars, and we treated her like a princess, like an Arabian mare, and that her baby was worth millions of dollars because that baby was going to be a contributor to society?

      Just imagine. Because no one else is going to do it for you. Pregnancy is your time to pamper and spoil yourself.

      If you are a working mother looking after a small child at home, or a working mother commuting to and from an office, then there is even more cause for some Arabian-mare treatment. If it helps to think that you are doing this for the good of your baby, rather than yourself, then so be it. Whatever it takes to keep you looking after yourself. Any of the therapies you choose to have will help you during the birth, but in ways that you probably can’t see from where you are sitting now. It may be that they give you time to focus on your body, or teach you how to relax, or remind you how well you can cope with a little pain and discomfort – like my recent reflexology session taught me when I went in with blocked sinuses.

      Eat Well and Multiply

      Because indulging in good food is one of the few vices left to women once pregnant, I am including it as a therapy. I am not going to patronize you with lectures about the benefits of healthy eating, you know the rules. Just don’t do as I did in my first pregnancy and use the lady-with-a-baby excuse to binge for nine months on chocolate and snacks. I put on two stone and produced an 8-lb baby. Second-time around, when I binged on fruit, vegetables and anything healthy from the deli, I put on no extra weight and produced two babies weighing a total of 13lb. That’s more like it.

      Maternal nutrition is going to matter in the run-up to the birth (and in recovering afterwards), so do think carefully about what passes your lips. Imagine you are training to run a marathon and eat accordingly. You want to be as fit as possible for labour and new motherhood. In the first couple of months of your pregnancy you want to eat ‘nutrient-dense’ food because the placenta, a national-grid-like infrastructure supplying the baby, is developing.

      Placenta Matters

      The