Study: Sex won't bring on labor

There is a widespread belief that sex during the later stages of pregnancy can jump-start labor, but that doesn’t appear to be so – at least according to a study from Malaysia.

The researchers, whose work appeared in BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology, found that there were no differences in the timing of delivery between women who had sex near term and those who abstained.

“We are a little disappointed,” said Tan Peng Chiong, an obstetrics and gynecology professor at the University of Malaya and one of the authors of the study.

“It would have been nice for couples to have something safe, effective and perhaps even fun that they could use themselves to help go into labor a little earlier if (they) wanted.”

Tan said that many women believe intercourse can induce labor, and scientists have proposed plausible biological explanations for why it might help.

For one, semen contains a hormone-like substance called prostaglandin, which is used in synthetic form to induce labor. Breast stimulation is also thought to hasten labor and orgasm can trigger uterine contractions.

“Labor induction for prolonged pregnancy is common and many women are also tempted for a variety of personal reasons to trigger labor in the very later stages of pregnancy,” Tan said.

The researchers invited more than 1,100 women to participate, all of whom were 35 to 38 weeks pregnant and none of whom had had sex in the previous six weeks.

Roughly half of the women were advised by a physician to have sex frequently as a means of safely expediting labor. The other half were told that sex was safe during pregnancy, but that its effects on labor were unknown.

The researchers then tracked the women to determine how long their pregnancies lasted and whether they required any medical intervention to start labor.

They found that about 85 percent of the women who were encouraged to have sex did follow the doctor’s advice, while 80 percent of women in the other group also had sex.

Women in the group advised to have sex also had it more frequently for the remaining duration of their pregnancies – three times versus two.

But the rates of induced labor were similar in both groups: 22 percent of those advised to have sex and 20.8 percent of the other group, a difference so small it is likely to have been driven by chance.

Tags: health, shesays