Why this midwife is urging couples not to have sex over the Christmas period

The countdown to Christmas hasn’t yet begun, but a midwife has already issued an appeal to couples urging them to refrain from having sex over the festive period.

The reason? Because nine months after December’s fun and frivolities, maternity units are delivering a heck of a lot of babies!

Having spotted an early start to the annual September baby boom, Mhairi, 33, who works as a midwife in London took to social media to ask couples to hold fire on the festive friskiness.

“How is it only the 5th of September?,” she wrote on Twitter. “I can’t take 25 more days of this. If you know or love a midwife, please stop shagging at Christmas.”

Her plea clearly struck a chord as since posting earlier this week, the tweet has been liked more than 16K times and received hundreds of comments from people sympathising with the midwife’s plight and apologising for adding to the baby surge.

“Sorry… My wife and I are very grateful to the team at Broomfield for delivering our boy yesterday though! :-)” one user wrote.

“I’m so sorry, my first child was a September baby. The midwife on the ward was nearing a breakdown. I can’t apologise enough,” one woman added.

“It’s my daughter’s birthday on Saturday and son’s the week after. Sorry. (it was a very long time ago…)” another user wrote.

And fellow health professionals also waded in on the thread.

“I know I’ve found myself near pulling my hair out mid-September-shift, suggesting the posting of condoms along with Christmas cards,” a fellow midwife commented.

“Hear hear from the Paeds doctor doing baby checks!” another health professional wrote.

The midwife went on to explain that the busiest day of the month is actually nine months after Boxing Day.

“26th sept is statistically the peak!,” she wrote.

And that was backed up by a tweet from the Office for National Statistics in 2015 that showed Christmas is the most popular time for babies to be conceived.

According to statistics between 1995 and 2014, September 26 is the most popular day to give birth with an average of 2,000 deliveries.

September 26 falls 39 weeks and two days after Christmas day. Coincidence?

However, the September baby boom may not be solely down to couples getting frisky over the festive period. Some parents actively plan to have September births to coincide with the start of the school year in the hope of giving their little one a head start over their peers.

Research reveals that children born in summer, and who are therefore the youngest children in the school year, are consistently out-performed by their older contemporaries.

The study by the Department of Education said that younger children were found to be lagging behind their older classmates by the age of five and many struggled to catch up.

The report also revealed that summer-born babies were more likely to be bullied and have more registered learning difficulties than their older classmates.

The UK isn’t alone in witnessing a September birth surge – data from the US and New Zealand shows a rise in births in September too.

So if baby making is going to be on your radar some time soon, maybe try to resist getting frisky over the festive period and hold, er, fire until New Year instead.

Your midwife will thank you for it.

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