Pleasure in Birth: Is there a limit?

The purpose of Ecstatic Birth is to raise awareness that birth is not just something women have to “endure” or “survive.”  In the Ecstatic Birth Training Sessions, leaders in the fields of birth and female sensuality — including Dr. Christiane Northrup and Ina May Gaskin — have coming together to share everything they know about how a woman can ENJOY birth — mind, body, and soul!

AMALIA BY AMY WOODRUFF

The idea of an “Orgasmic Birth” is definitely becoming more prominent, especially with the beautiful documentary created with that name (Orgasmicbirth.com). Women are coming forward to share stories that they might have been embarrassed to tell years ago. Many expectant moms also want to know how they can create this sort of experience for themselves.

An orgasmic birth is intriguing because it is the antithesis of what we have culturally understood childbirth to be — a potentially excruciating experience.

That said, it is interesting to note how much of a trigger “sensuality” or “orgasm” can still be for a lot of people. A recent thread on Dr. Northrup’s Facebook page included a woman declaring that the whole idea of pleasure during childbirth is “sick.”

The more disconnected we are from our bodies, our sexuality, and our sensuality, the more perverse we might label the whole idea of pleasure in birth.

Saida Désilets, Taoist Sensual Educator and a featured teacher in the Training Sessions, describes our current situation as this: if human sexuality were a person, we, as a society, are currently stuck in its adolescence. There are few, if any, widespread and fully mature models of female sensuality in our culture. Instead, we are presented with a stark dichotomy of “virgins” and “whores.” In the most mature sense, female sensuality is about a woman’s connection to herself, her body, and inner wisdom, and how that translates into her experience of the world around her — in this case, her experience of childbirth.

The physical pleasure of orgasm is only one end of the spectrum of what is possible in birth — dancing, laughter, spirituality, empowerment, connection, LOVE… all of these can be brought into birth and are strangely absent from most labor and delivery rooms.

If you have the choice, why not prepare to ENJOY birth, rather than endure or survive it?