A beauty contest for pregnant women held over the weekend in the city of Yekaterinburg tried to send the message “pregnant is beautiful” to a country where the population is declining catastrophically, daily Novye Izvestia reported on Monday.

Forty-five contestants, all under the age of 25 and at least five months pregnant, sang, danced, recited poetry and paraded in evening gowns before a panel of judges in this city 1,700 kilometers (1,000 miles) east of Moscow.

“Our goal was to promote healthy, happy, desirable motherhood,” Novye Izvestia quoted Larisa Rozhnova, Yekaterinburg’s chief paediatrician and the contest’s organizer, as saying.

The three winners were awarded with jewellery.

“My real prize is in my womb,” said winner Yekaterina Krushinskaya.

Some Russian doctors took a wary approach to the contest, however.

“Future mothers risk suffering negative emotions during the contest, and the stress could harm the foetus. Pregnant mothers would do better spending their time calmly, taking walks outside, going to the theater or visiting exhibitions,” said psychotherapist Alexander Polev.

Russia is facing a grave demographic decline. The country’s population has fallen by 5.8 million people since 1993, hitting 142.4 million in the middle of 2006.

In May, President Vladimir Putin announced a series of measures aimed at raising birth rates, including paying women to have more than one child.

Minister of Heatlh Mikhail Zurabov told Putin on Monday that demographic trends had taken a slight upturn in the first nine months of the year, with birth rates rising one percent and mortality dropping five percent over the same period last year, ITAR-TASS reported.