Pity the midwife: stop having sex at Christmas

I’ve always taken it as read that sex and overeating don’t go together. A big boozy meal is more conducive to falling into a carb coma than a seductive scene of lovemaking, surely.

But you live and you learn: apparently, for many of us the non-stop feasting (and the bloat that inevitably goes with it) that comes around Christmas is – rather than a massive disincentive – a rather powerful aphrodisiac.

Thus a stressed out midwife pleaded last week for Britons to slow down with the festive rumpy pumpy, since the results are a spike in births in September. Rather than the 1,700 births typical of Dec 26, Sept 26 sees 2,000 on average.

“How is it only the 5th of September?” tweeted the midwife Mhairi Maharry last Tuesday. “I can’t take 25 more days of this. If you know or love a midwife, PLEASE STOP S------- AT CHRISTMAS.”

Expectant mothers were duly apologetic. “As someone due in three weeks,” tweeted one, “I apologise for adding to your distress.”

I suspect that those who end up conceiving at Christmas are not doing it out of lust, but out of desperation. Trapped in an overheated house with all the family, far too much food and drink, kids misbehaving and bad-breathed Uncle Rich cracking endless bad-taste jokes, couples probably take to the bedroom as a means of blessed escape. And while a tsunami of cocktail sausages, mince pies, and roast meat have never struck me as particularly conducive to the erotic, vigorous lovemaking does burn calories, arguably helping to shift some of that festive bloat.

Perhaps it’s a mark of couples’ comfort with each other that they can look past the seasonal blubber. But I stand with the midwife: leave it alone at Christmas. ’Tis the season for digestion, not seduction.