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How's Your Sex Life?

Great Sex Matters When You're Trying to Conceive

By Jane Merrill

According to The Yale Guide to Women's Reproductive Health (Yale University Press, May 2003), 15 percent of infertile couples are diagnosed with unexplained fertility, to which sexual dysfunction is a contributor. The authors recommend copious sex. Every other day is good, as more than once a day lowers the sperm count. Sperm count is high for Orthodox Jews, who have many children because the wife abstains for the first 12 days of her cycle and then intercourse is prescribed.

Evidence-based medicine would discredit the idea of building up lust. However, a study of a group that waits and then enjoys spontaneous, passionate coupling, versus the "Come sperm donor; do your thing" scenario would be very interesting, as the results would acknowledge the role of enjoyment and high-intensity orgasms in getting the woman pregnant.

Can sexual position help? From India comes indigenous medical manuals that say yes – not Kama Sutra twists but just some gentle hydraulics.

Getting me pregnant took my first husband 10 years. The month we were giving it one last try was when I conceived. Knowing we were about to call it quits, our fertility specialist imparted some extra advice. We should get into the sexual act as heartily as possible, despite its being on command, and I should prop myself up on a pillow, with my legs raised, for at least five minutes after receiving the sperm.

In the 1970s, a Japanese doctor of traditional medicine, a housekeeper in Iran and a professor of endocrinology at Harvard Medical School all gave me the same advice. Had I listened, I might have saved myself from som harrowing circumstances. The Japanese doctor, a celebrity of alternative macrobiotic diet, examined my eyes and fingernails and asked about my diet, exercise and sex life. To warm up my hormones, he prescribed a daily appetizer of spicy umabashi plum. I tried it once but scoffed. Living in Iran, I tasted the torshi, a hot pickle the housekeeper made, but forgot to take it consistently.

Once, as a patient at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital under the care of an endocrinologist associate with Harvard Medical School, we attempted to trace the cause of my infertility. This doctor said I could have children. He said something like, "But you must ripen like a juicy tomato." He advised a lot of slow touching and massage of my partner. The concept of heating up my inner fires seemed hopelessly indirect.

Fast forward to the late 80s. The conception of Julia, following a cozy Thanksgiving afternoon that included turkey, pecan pie and a bit of frolicking, surprised quite a number of us – all except my Aunt Bernice, who confided that she finally had my cousin (her only child) at 40 by following the doctor's counsels: Hot baths, bedtime hot cocoa and waiting under warm quilts for my uncle to come to bed and embrace her.

In D.H. Lawrence's story The Sun