Tips for Orgasmic Birth

This article from The Independent is the most complete I've seen from a mainstream publication on the still-touchy subject of orgasmic birth.

The writer talked to several midwives and a birth center in the UK that encourage and support women in designing the birth process to be pleasurable.

"... the approach is capable of transforming birth - perceived by most women to be terrifyingly painful - into a pleasurable, even, ecstatic experience."

I recently spoke to someone from a pharmaceutical company who described labor and birth as "one of the most painful and traumatic events in a woman's life." This is an incredibly sad view of giving birth, and one that's endemic to medicine.

According to the article:

Part of the problem, it seems, is the way sexuality around childbirth has been denied. In her book, Ina May's Guide To Childbirth, Gaskin points out that doctors had to downplay female sexuality for medical men to be admitted to the birth chambers of women in the 18th and 19th centuries. This " denial" was later institutionalised when hospital births became routine.

Even today, it's a pretty taboo subject. "Lots of women would worry they'd be seen as abnormal or deviant if they admitted to feeling sexual at birth," says Carolyn Cowan, a yoga teacher and doula based in south London, who herself had an ecstatic birth.

The article also gives eight tips for achieving an ecstatic -- or at least relaxed -- birth.

See also: Labor Like a Cat, Orgasmic Birth, the Interview and  Birth, Oxytocin and Ecstasy

Comments

[R. Mullen]

Found your blog on Wikipedia, while looking at the issue of trust and empathy with respect to dispute resolution. Trust me, there's a connection and that connection is "trust."

Word-choice is rhetoric and rhetoric is about manipulation, so to be blunt, if a woman needs to feel that there is something happening OTHER THAN bringing another human being into the world, then something is very, very wrong.

The point I make is that the sexualization of birth is probably a really bad idea. The fact that babies come out of the vagina doesn't change the fact that sexual reproduction is why births happen, not descriptive of the feelings that might emerge during the process. The two only meet because we confuse the meaning of "sexual." Thus, sexualization of birth may be "bad" not because it isn't provocative and fun, but bad in that it makes one wonder who benefits. I seriously doubt it's helpful to women who already think babies are wonderful and I suspect it's downright harmful to those who are not chemically wired for baby-making.

As I understand it, oxytocin is part of a chemical pathway which gives the brain the message that "this is a good thing," instead of paying attention to other messages involved in the physical process. It's entirely possible that orgasm originated as preparation for birth, but it's equally likely that the oxytocin feedback loop was retasked to the birth process because it's a pathway the brain already knew. Have no history with this particular feedback loop and birth may be extremely unpleasant.

In this, then, it's the same as clicker training which teaches a dog that sitting is a good thing. "I get a treat when the clicker goes off and sitting causes the clicker to go off, so since I value treats more than standing, I think I'll sit when asked to do so." Simple, effective....Yet, not all dogs give a fig about getting treats, --"Ok, so I'll sit long enough to get the treat, but then it's back to rabbits!"

So, while I believe that it makes sense for most mammals to be hard-wired to want to give birth, it also makes sense, if one follows an 80-20 rule, that a fair number of women and men want nothing to do with it.

Which makes me think that the domination-submission model that seems to get applied to animals on nature shows may not be quite accurate. Maybe some pack animals "get to" reproduce (alphas and betas), not just because they're wired to want it enough to fight about it, but because others could care less about sex and more about having a peaceful group life. Successful packs need both, seems to me.

So, the problem is that once we accept the science, we must also accept that a great number of women and men are hard-wired *against* or *neutral to* birth. If that is indeed the case then we are doing harm by trying to convince anyone to have children. It harms the people who are made to feel inadequate or wrong for not wanting kids and it certainly harms the kids who are born to parents who have to struggle both with not really wanting kids, but the pressures inherent in raising them. Are we going to stop people with insufficient oxytocin levels from having sex, just because they don't want kids?? Perhaps it would be more helpful to stop the fantasy of childbirth so that the idea of children gives way to the reality of what it takes to raise a child successfully.

Back to topic, I suspect that most women find little pleasure in birth. They get through it, because of their fantasies about the future, about how their lives will be enriched by the patter of little feet. And, perhaps, that is the real issue. Birth does not need re-invention, it needs a reality-test as nothing more than a process required to further the human species. My hope is that oxytocin research helps people understand that it's perfectly ok not to have children they can't love or don't want to raise. Put differently, if the only thing a person can show a child is indifference, is it really a good thing to push orgasm as an incentive?

[C Lutz]

R. Mullen, there are more at play during the birthing process then oxytocin in the pleasure factor. As you said, "...I suspect that most women find little pleasure in birth...". There are certainly many women out there, who by the way have experienced giving birth, do find it to be a pleasurable experience. Ina May Gaskin, for example, has found many of them. Babies are birthed through the 'birth canal', an opening not only used to birth babies but it's also used during sex. A lot women find pleasure when these areas are stimulated. Not only that but but some women also find it pleasurable when uterus contracts...such as during an orgasm and during child birth; which would explain why some woman have changed the name of 'contractions' to 'rushes', b/c they didn't find them to be painful.
It's too bad that you think the sexualization of birth is a bad idea considering that babies are produced, normally, sexually, and under normal circumstances, delivered through the sex canal-so naturally speaking it would seem that birth is a sexual process. '...you suspect that it's downright harmful for [women] who
are not chemically wired for it'? that it 'also makes one wonder who benefits?' and that also 'my hope for oxytocin research helps people to blah blah....' these are not only slippery slope arguments, but also ridiculous statements. If people want orgasms they'll do it the old fashioned way-have sex or masturbate.