We’re trying to make a baby, but sex is not fun anymore

* My husband and I have been trying for a baby for four months, and it is stressful. I’m enjoying sex less now because it’s functional.

How can we make it fun again?

>>If you don’t have fertility issues and you are doing the right things, you will see that second stripe on a pregnancy test whether you are dressed in your sexiest lingerie or beating yourself over the head with a copy of The Baby-Making Bible.

Sex is meant to be fun, not functional, and once you get pregnant, there’ll be no booze and no bikinis, so pack all the hedonism into the next few months. Play strip poker and drink cocktails. Plan an aphrodisiac and fertility-boosting picnic of oysters, curry, figs, walnuts, chocolate and champagne. Go camping and have sex under the stars. Take a holiday somewhere hot and swan around semi-naked.

Change the time of day that you have sex. It is frustrating that sex and procreation are interdependent, yet at odds. To have wild sex, romantic sex, experimental sex, languid sex, you need to immerse yourselves in the physical.

All too often, once people decide to have a baby, sex becomes a means to an end. Although initial sex is fuelled by expectation, as the months pass anticipation is replaced by apprehension. A man might feel like a service provider. A woman might obsessively calculate the number of days since her last period and, instead of post-coital cuddling, she engages in after-sex shoulder stands. Every time she menstruates there is profound disappointment, but they keep trying. Again. And again. Until hope turns to despair and sex becomes a secret dread.

It is a shame that so many couples become so stressed about conception, because the anxiety is unwarranted. Within six months, only 60 in every 100 couples who have sex two to three times a week will have achieved pregnancy. By the end of that year, 84 couples will have hit the jackpot, and within two years 92 in every 100 couples will have conceived. A two-year delay is peanuts compared to the pain and expense of IVF, but when you want something badly it can seem like an interminably long wait, particularly when you are doing everything to assist conception.

Not getting pregnant creates a great deal of stress and this relationship may be reciprocal. It is hugely annoying to think that stressing about “not getting pregnant” might be the thing that is stopping you from getting pregnant, but research from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, has shown that high levels of the stress hormone, cortisol, are related to difficulties in conceiving.

Whether you believe they relieve stress or not, exercise, acupuncture, cognitive behavioural therapy, massage and yoga certainly won’t do you any harm and they may do you a lot of good.

One of the best ways for both of you to relax is to have sex, because orgasm releases a smorgasbord of neuro-chemicals that lessen anxiety and create feelings of satisfaction. Your orgasm also provides helpful suction for your husband’s little swimmers, so you’ll be wanting one every day, or every other day at least.

When you are having a lot of sex, using lubricant is helpful, but regular lubricants impede conception. By contrast, Pre-Seed, Zestica and Conceive Plus lubricants have been designed to increase sperm motility and your chance of conception ... thereby decreasing future opportunities for rampant, unrestrained sex. At least until your child goes off to college.

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