Finish It Off As You Began! One Age-Old Pregnancy Myth Busted

We love busting myths… but we’re not too sure how people will feel about this one.

According to the latest research, scientists have disappointing news for couples, making love does not bring on labour.

Up to now, pregnant women who have been keen to jump-start their contractions have relied on traditional remedies such as eating a hot curry, or getting jiggy with the dad-to-be…

A study from the University of Malaya in Malaysia found no differences in the timing of delivery between women who had sex near term and those who abstained

“We are a little disappointed that we did not find an association,” said author Dr Tan Peng Chiong.

So are we Chiong!

“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 labour a little earlier if (they) wanted,” he told the Daily Mail.

However, it’s not all bad news, the team said having sex is usually perfectly safe before the woman's waters have broken.

Dr Chiong said in the past scientists have proposed a number of plausible biological explanations for why sex could induce labour. For one, semen contains a hormone-like substance called prostaglandin, which is used in synthetic form to induce labour. It was also suggested that orgasms could trigger uterine contractions.

Chiong's research team busts one of the biggest pregnancy myths...

However, few studies have ever investigated whether sex really can start the birthing process and the small amount of existing evidence has been inconclusive.

In the latest study, published in the journal BJOG, the team set out to see whether advising women to have sex during the final weeks of pregnancy could help them avoid an induction.

“Labour induction for prolonged pregnancy is common and many women are also tempted for a variety of personal reasons to trigger labour off in the very latter stages of pregnancy,” Dr Chiong said.

The researchers invited more than 1,100 women to participate, all of whom were 35 to 38 weeks pregnant (the typical pregnancy lasts 40 weeks) and none of whom had had sex in the previous six weeks.

Women in the group advised to have sex had it more frequently.

But the rates of induced labour were similar in both groups. Twenty-two per cent of those advised to have sex and 20.8 per cent of the other group had inductions, a difference so small it is likely to have been driven by chance.

Pregnancy also lasted an average of 39 weeks for both groups.

“Human pregnancy has to be robust to a little adventure like intercourse and unfortunately for our purpose, it seems pretty robust to the very end,” Chiong said.