Biologically, women are designed to receive physical pleasure not only during lovemaking, but during birth and breastfeeding as well. Standard hospital birth practices, from the shaving of your pubic hair to routine episiotomies, destroy much of this pleasure potential. Sexually, women are not carbon copies of men. Our sexuality involves far more than just making love, important as that is. Part of it can be the increased sexual energy a woman can feel before menstruation, the relaxing spurt of milk from her breasts when her milk lets down, and the tug of her baby's rhythmic sucking on her nipple.
Most sexual research concentrates on the study of intercourse.
But while women's other sexual functions have been overlooked in comparison, enough research has been done to help us describe some of the similarities between sexual arousal and women's reproductive functions. In both sexual arousal and pregnancy, breasts enlarge and nipples become sensitive. There's also extra blood flow and lubrication in the vagina, and hormone production soars. And, according to sex researchers Masters and Johnson, among others, masturbation is common during pregnancy, even if never experienced before. However, not all pregnant women are hovering in a permanent state of sexual arousal.