Sara Buckley's social media sex challenge made her a proud baby daddy

Jul 07, 2023

Starting an internet seven-day sex challenge wasn’t an intentional thing for comedian Sara Buckley. But what began as an ongoing conversation on “Not the Worst Marriage,” a podcast she hosts with her husband, Sterling, birthed some pretty unexpected results on social media.

Buckley met her future husband at age 12, married him at 18, and by 21, they had three kids. After being together for 21 years, she became well-versed in the ins and outs of family life.

“We used to do live Q&A’s on the podcast and would get a lot of questions, especially from women, on how to keep your sex life going when you are trying to raise little kids,” said Buckley, 36, who lives in Las Vegas. “We’ve been really open about our sex life, so I would just give little tips and tricks like, lock the door and sexually pursue your man. Send sexy texts, put the kids down for bed early one night — sometimes, you just have to make time because the kids aren’t gonna let mom and dad have their special alone time.”

“A lot of us have wonderful husbands and they’re great partners. Our philosophy is, if it’s not something you make time for, you’re not gonna have it,” Buckley said. “You must be intentional about it, so I just did this challenge as a fun way to encourage women.”

Buckley told her listeners to take time to get in the right headspace to mentally commit to sexually pursuing their partners for seven days. It’s not all about sex; it’s about whatever the norm is for you, just “amped up a little,” she said. “Initiating sex, sending sexy text messages or a sexy picture, complimenting his body, pulling him to the side for a quick make-out session — whatever you’re comfortable with.”

She made it clear that this challenge only applies if you have a man who deserves to be pursued in good taste and made to feel sexy. “Don’t do this for your husband that never helps you with the kids or thinks that watching his children is babysitting. No,” she said.

Of course, committing to being sexually spontaneous isn’t for everyone, but there sure did seem to be a lot of women on board.

“By default, it’s usually the men asking or initiating, and that’s totally normal,” Buckley said. “To flip the script, I think it was really exciting for some women. It’s something that they might not have done on their own. It was 2020 when I posted this challenge on my Instagram story and I don’t think I had a TikTok at the time, so it didn’t go viral. It was just for people that watched my stories and were maybe fans of the podcast. I thought it was really just the women that knew me, but all these women out of nowhere were participating in the challenge worldwide.”

While stories of husbands letting wives sleep in, partners with an extra skip in their step and magical feedback on spouses doing dishes without having to be asked 10 times started rolling in, she knew her growing audience was getting the sex advice they needed at the right time.

“Sex advice can be hard for some women to hear, depending on your situation,” Buckley said. “Some women get defensive, and that’s why I feel like this was so successful with the number of women that were like, ‘You know what? I’m down!’ It’s only seven days — it doesn’t have to be sustainable! A sexual relationship is kind of like, if you don’t use it, you lose it. The more you have sex, the more your drive will pick up.”

After a few weeks, Buckley started posting success stories. The result of her simply encouraging the act of “making your partner feel special” quickly turned into a match that lit a dynamite wick that resulted in a boom — of the baby variety.

“All of the sudden women were like, ‘Listen, we were done having kids and now I’m pregnant,’” Buckley said. “At first, I was just like, ‘Oh, that’s so wild,’ but then more and more pregnancies started to roll in.”

Women didn’t just do the challenge in those exact seven days either. People got wind of it and started it a week later, a month later — there was some ovulation participation going on and Buckley was starting to crunch the numbers.

“First it was 10, then 20, 30, 50 — I couldn’t believe it. I should have made a spreadsheet to keep track of it, but I never thought I would have to! I also didn’t think I would have to give a birth control lesson,” Buckley said. “I felt like I was talking to current wives and mothers so I’m like, ‘Your fertility is your problem. I may have paved the way, but y’all got yourselves pregnant!’”

Buckley began asking for updates, and pregnancy stories streamed in. “Some people were saying they had been trying to conceive and sex had become a job. It wasn’t even fun or hot anymore, so they let go of the pressure of looking at an ovulation calendar. It became all about the actual sex.”

And these updates weren’t just from her friends and regular followers: They were worldwide. A challenge that had nothing to do with pregnancy, fertility or trying to conceive in any way shape or form turned into women pouring their hearts out to Buckley, and then some.

“There were some DM’s that were really funny like, ‘Our youngest is 15’ and I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, that’s on you. I don’t know what to tell you!’ There were women who had recent miscarriages and who thought, ‘Maybe it’s not gonna happen for us,’ and then they got their rainbow baby. There were also women who struggled with infertility and ended up getting pregnant.”

Katie Stewart, from Montana, was one of them.

Stewart began following Buckley on socials around 2017 because her words felt relatable and she felt they were cut from the same cloth when it came to humor. When she was diagnosed with breast cancer, she was out of commission and pretty much avoided all social media. Unsure whether she would survive, Stewart and her boyfriend couldn’t stand the thought of not being married, so they were wed in their living room, three days after her third surgery.

About six months later, when she started feeling somewhat better, Stewart hopped back into the social media world and saw Buckley’s seven-day sex challenge post. “I decided it was time to start trying to have some (gentle) sex again,” Stewart said. “I didn’t tell my husband when I started the challenge, and the doctors told me I’d be infertile, so we didn’t use birth control. Within a month, we were pregnant. I was told I couldn’t get pregnant, so I’m pretty sure Sara owes us child support or something! I mean, she made this happen, so she’s probably a witch!”

What began as a baby boom joke talked about here and there got even more real when, a few weeks ago, someone randomly asked Buckley about “Sara’s Tots,” which is what she dubbed them. Having not talked about it in a few years, she posted a throwback story and also put it on her TikTok.

“All of these toddlers started to show up in my DM’s. These beautiful little babies! There are so many sets of twins too. I think there are at least 12 sets of twins that I saw! It really is all in good fun and the fact that everyone got pregnant is just so f— wild.”

In all, Buckley confidently estimates the total number of Sara’s Tots to be more than 150. If you have seven days and the pluck to keep up, Buckley’s challenge to spice up your marriage is forever ongoing, and online, because there’s nothing wrong with a healthy dose of love. And even though she didn’t mean to, some good intentions and some good loving saved the day in many ways. And in return, Buckley would like one thing: for this feel-good story to have another happy ending — in Vegas.

“What I propose is a brand like Huggies, Pampers or Walmart fly all of, or a lot of, these babies to Vegas for a meet-up. It would be hysterical. I want to hold every single one of these babies. That to me would be such an incredible campaign. All I did was tell these women to f— their husbands and it turned into all of these babies! It’s so bizarre and beautiful!”