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Home › Articles › Personal and Couple Time › Fertility Treatments and Sex

Fertility Treatments and Sex

Taking the Chore out of Sex for Conception

By Teri Brown

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Fertility treatments can be a time-consuming maze of to-do lists:

  • Do take your temperature at a certain time.
  • Don't let your husband wear briefs.
  • Do eat well to prepare your body for pregnancy.
  • Don't forget your many doctors' appointments.
  • Don't forget to have sex when you're supposed to.

Don't forget to have sex? You know you have a problem when your sexual experience becomes another item on your daily directory. Tamra Orr, mother of four from Gresham, Ore., remembers all too well what that was like. When she was undergoing fertility treatments a number of years ago, sex became another item to check off on her to-do list. "Sex started feeling like a chore," she says. "We paid more attention to the calendar than our libidos. It was difficult and very regimented. I mean, having sex fairly often was nice, but spontaneity was completely lost."

A Common Occurrence
Like many people trying to get pregnant, sex became a means to an end rather than an expression of how the Orrs felt about one another. Andrea Braverman, Ph.D., director of psychological and complementary care for Reproductive Medical Associates in New Jersey, believes this is a very common problem for couples trying to conceive. "It is quite common for couples to report that they are having difficulties while going through infertility," she says. "For many, sexual intimacy is replaced with sex for procreation. Timed intercourse, reporting on intercourse frequency and intercourse as a chore rather than pleasure contribute to these difficulties."

According to Braverman, the pressure to perform can lead men to have temporary difficulties. Men can often feel that their role as intimate lover is replaced with the role of being the sperm provider. For women, feelings about body image, femininity or sexuality can be directly affected by going through infertility. "All the pressure of needing to have sex within a particular window of time, because otherwise a month [or] cycle could be lost, can be enormous on both partners," she says.


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Fertility Treatments and Sex by KRiSSy on 03/04/2010 10:22AM

When is the right time to have sex?

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