Article by Julie Revelant, health journalist and a consultant who
provides content marketing and copywriting services for the healthcare
industry. She's also a mum of two.
The grueling, intense pain that (can) come along with labor is something
pregnant women are warned about and told to prepare for and fear. It’s
how childbirth is almost always portrayed in movies and a part of most
women’s birth stories.
Some women however, say labor and childbirth doesn’t have to be this way and the experience can be pleasurable— even orgasmic.
When Kenya Stevens, of Asheville, North Carolina,
went into labor with her first child, she was prepared to use
meditation— which she’d practiced for years— to help her through her
planned home birth.
Something the now-42-year-old hadn’t prepared for
however, was that when it came time to push, her contractions stimulated
an orgasm.
“I was laughing and crawling around the room as if I
was intoxicated,” Stevens recalled. “I am in bliss,” she recalled
telling her mom during the birth.
With her second child, she labored quickly but the feeling was the same.
“I felt like a tiger in the forest, just pushing and enjoying the flow,” she said.
When she gave birth to her third child, Stevens
labored in the shower and enjoyed the water running down her back and
the pleasure that ensued.
“Because I had the breathing techniques and the understanding, I could easily shift into orgasm the third time,” she said.
Orgasmic birth and “birthgasms”
“Giving birth is a part of our sexuality as women,” said Debra Pascali-Bonaro,
director
of the film “Orgasmic Birth,” and co-author of “Orgasmic Birth: Your
Guide to a Safe, Satisfying and Pleasurable Birth Experience.”
“The term ‘orgasmic’ also includes all kinds of
pleasure from experiencing birth with joy, ecstasy, intimacy, connection
[and] bliss because so much of our language around birth is about pain
and fear and we don’t give voice to the many other emotions that can be
felt,” she said.
Not only are there women who say they have orgasmic
births, but some report having an orgasm during birth or as
Pascali-Bonaro calls it, a “birthgasm.”
According to a survey by the Positive Birth Movement and Channel Mum, 6 percent of women said they had an orgasm during birth.
Midwives say they’ve attended approximately .3
percent of births where the mother had an orgasm, according to a survey
published in the journal Sexologies.
Although it’s not entirely clear how an orgasm is
possible during birth, experts say it makes perfect sense from a
physiologic perspective.
“You have a baby that’s moving down, through our
bodies, through our vagina and many times hitting the G-spot, which is
certainly a place, as women, many of us know from bringing great
pleasure that can also sometimes trigger orgasm,”
Pascali-Bonaro said.
Although a “birthgasm” can be triggered by a kiss or
the touch of a partner, most occur from G-spot stimulation while the
baby descends or as the baby is delivered. Some women may even choose to
masturbate and use a vibrator.
“Pain and pleasure really travel on the same pathway.
Women are literally taking things into their own hands,” Pascali-Bonaro
said.
Instead of reporting pain, these women describe labor as “intense” or “challenging.”
Hormones also play a significant role. Oxytocin, also
known as the “love hormone,” is the same hormone responsible for both
bringing on labor and having an orgasm.
To get labor moving, midwives will often give the
couple privacy to kiss, and have the partner stimulate the woman’s
nipples and sexually arouse her.
“Often that will initiate regular contractions,” said Dena Moes, a certified nurse-midwife and writer in
Chico, California.
Experts agree that in order for women to experience
an orgasmic birth or a “birthgasm,” they must feel safe, unobserved and
given the same level of privacy they would have while being intimate
with their partners, whether that’s at home, in a birthing center or at a
hospital.
“We should be creating environments and giving women
and their partners more intimacy and birth would be easier,”
Pascali-Bonaro said.
In fact, when women feel afraid, they are more likely
to feel tense and experience more pain, something that’s referred to as
fear-tension-pain syndrome.
Pascali-Bonaro said. “Giving birth is an incredible day in our lives and
every woman— however birth turns out for her— I hope she feels pride in her
achievement to bring life into the world,”
