NO SEX, PLEASE... WE’RE IN LOCKDOWN

THINK carefully before getting pregnant while stuck at home on lockdown, Nicola Sturgeon and the Chief Medical Officer have advised.

The First Minister was asked yesterday whether the Scottish Government is expecting a rise in mothers-to-be as a result of people being confined indoors.

Miss Sturgeon replied that the situation ‘falls into the category of the many things I never thought I would be standing here as First Minister advising the public on’ − and passed the question on to Chief Medical Officer Dr Catherine Calderwood.

Dr Calderwood, a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist, said couples with ‘time on their hands’ should consider contraception.

At the Scottish Government’s daily media briefing in Edinburgh, she added: ‘The labour ward is always much busier nine months after Valentine’s Day, so we have that to consider.

‘Almost all maternity services are emergency services − they can’t be time limited, you can’t pause like elective surgery.’

She added: ‘It has been suggested to me that we talk to people about contraception. About 50 per cent of pregnancies are unplanned, so perhaps think about whether this is the right time to have an unplanned pregnancy.

‘This [coronavirus outbreak] will last for some time. The emergency services, the maternity services, will continue to run, so we have planned for all babies that would have been born to have exactly the same care they would have had outside of this pandemic.

‘We would always encourage people to think, “Is this the right time for me, am I in the best of health, is this a good time for me to start thinking about having a baby?’’.’

Dr Calderwood said women who are already pregnant should ‘have their scans, have their antenatal care’, with maternity services also offering ‘virtual clinics’.