Summer is here, and it’s impossible to walk two blocks without passing a yummy mummy-to-be—a beaming, resplendent pregnant woman who looks on top of the world. But impending motherhood isn’t the only reason they’re smiling: Some say they’re having the best sex of their lives. That’s right, boys. All those rosy-cheeked bun-cookers are waking up sweaty from intense erotic dreams, reveling in their voluptuous new figures, and chasing their hubbies around the apartment demanding to be serviced.
Dawn, 34, a publicist who’s due in August, has been waking up in the mornings flushed from graphically erotic dreams. “I’ve had sex with everyone I went to high school with,” she says. “Boyfriends, best friends, both at the same time. There’s no buildup. It’s just straight to the sex. And my husband’s not in the picture. I wake up and I’m like, Whoa.”
It doesn’t hurt women’s sex drives that the current cultural climate is avidly pro-preggo, thanks to the likes of Brooke Shields and Sarah Jessica Parker, who served as highly visible, if slightly unattainable, models of how sexy pregnant women could be. (And now Demi Moore, the original prurient preggo, has raised the bar for fortysomething soccer moms.)
With more pregnant women staying fit, and increasingly chic maternity wear on the market, expectant moms have become a walking challenge to us flatbellies. With their form-fitting tees, toned upper arms, and radiant glow, they seem to be saying, “I’m pregnant, I’m hotter than you, get used to it.”
Dawn wears Seven’s maternity jeans—“low riders are a pregnant woman’s best friend”—and finds that men are vocally appreciative of her figure. “I’ll walk through Times Square and get, ‘Ooh, mama!’ or ‘Looking good!’ or ‘Can I touch?’ I’m a tall blonde woman, but it was nothing like this before. It’s kind of delightful because you don’t exactly feel like a million bucks. But people notice that you look good and healthy and full of life.”
Isabel, 31, a teacher, also noticed “increased bursts of horniness” during her second trimester when her husband was away on business. “I felt this fierce desire to have sex immediately,” she recalls, “and he wasn’t there. I almost made my first purchase of electronic help, but managed to resist.”
Richard H. Aubry, the director of academic and community obstetrics at SUNY Upstate Medical University, says the libido increase is due to hormones. “There’s a huge surge in hormones during pregnancy—estrogen and progesterone,” he says. “There is also increased blood flow to the pelvic area, including the clitoris.”
Allen, 38, a masseur, loves that his wife, Elizabeth, 37, who’s seven months pregnant with their second child, has an increased libido. “Elizabeth’s always been sexy, but she’s even sexier pregnant. She’s chasing me around the house nonstop,” he says, “hanging from the chandeliers. When I come home from work, I’m tired. Sometimes I have to say no.”
Elizabeth has been having erotic dreams, too. After her daughter recently woke her up in the middle of one, she was annoyed, wishing she could have gotten to the end. “I wake up thinking, I’d better run to the bathroom and check my pants,” she says, adding that the scenarios start out innocently and quickly turn dirty. “I’m either with Allen or with other women that I may or may not know. I think Allen plants those seeds in my head.”
When she has one of those dreams and Allen isn’t around, she has to manage for herself. “My self-gratification has definitely increased,” she says. “I don’t let the urge pass as much. He went away recently, and I turned on the porn a lot.”
Another reason for her increased drive (and his) is that safe sex is no longer necessary. “There’s this feeling of abandon,” Elizabeth says. “We don’t worry about condoms. Even the pressure of trying to get pregnant is off. And there’s an urgency, of wanting to get the sex in before the baby comes.”
She’s also been more of a space cadet lately, which helps in the sack. When pregnant, it seems, every woman’s a blonde. “Placenta brain takes the edge off,” she says. “You can allow yourself to get into sex without thinking about anything.”
Elizabeth feels especially womanly these days because she is also still breast-feeding their daughter. Allen, a pregnancy fetishist who’d probably have a grand old time on the porn site preggo.com, loves to tug at the teat. “It tastes like unpasteurized milk,” he reports. “I think it’s great that you can squeeze the breasts while you’re having sex and milk comes out.”
“I’m pretty much nursing two people,” Elizabeth says. “He finds it amazing—he loves the taste, and he finds it very sexy, just squirting it out and letting it run down his face and chest. Of course, it makes me feel very unsexy, because he’s treating me like a cow. But part of my pleasure is in knowing that I’m turning him on.”
Not all women are so lucky. Dawn’s husband is starting to get more squeamish as she nears the end of her term. “He worries it’s going to hurt the baby,” she says, “or that the baby’s going to feel it. But the doctors say it’s fine.”
There are other benefits, too—studies have shown that women who orgasm frequently during pregnancy are more likely to have easy deliveries. But preggos say the best thing about their raging hormones is the overall sense of self-confidence. “It’s very empowering to be carrying a baby,” says Elizabeth. “I am wearing this belly like a badge of honor. I think, I am woman, hear me roar.”