The Most Holistic Birthing Tool

How can we support a birth to progress with as much ease as possible?

There are many many tools an expectant mama and her support team can use. On the natural side- movement, massage and water can be incredibly supportive of the progression of labor.

Some common medical interventions include rupturing the membranes, pitocin, and of course the epidural.

I believe deeply in the natural process and prefer to save interventions only for when they are truly necessary. I invite you to get clear on what that looks like for you. Do your research so you can understand when and why interventions are used, so you can be really conscious about their role in your birth.

The #1 reason women walk away from a birth feeling victimized is that they don’t fully understand the potential interventions and their consequences and don’t go into their births with clear parameters.

Right now, I want to focus on how you can best holistically support the natural process of birth with PLEASURE.

You read that right. Pleasure.

Pleasure is the most holistic birthing tool there is.

How is that possible when 90% of women associate birth with pain? Well, your birthing body and your sexual body are one and the same.

Babies and birth are not separate and distinct from sex, but rather they are the culmination of the sexual process.

This can feel a little weird given our current cultural messaging which tends to categorize all things sexual as “dirty” or “perverse.” Just look at all our foul language.. an overwhelming majority of “curse words” are sexually based.

There is no doubt we need a deep cultural healing around our sexuality. Let’s begin today by reclaiming our sexuality as an integral and sacred part of our beings. It is through our sexuality that we connect most deeply with another. It is through our sexulaity that we bring forth new life into this world. There is nothing more sacred than that.

From this perspective we can revisit this idea that our sexual body and our birthing body are one and the same. A lot of the same body parts are being stimulated and a lot of the same hormones are secreted. Everything just happens at a much bigger level- the sensations are bigger, the energy flow is bigger, and of course our opening is bigger.

Sex can be highly pleasurable or… not, depending on the circumstances, right? Birth is no different.

Just like a woman can enjoy a sexual experience, or not, a woman can enjoy birthing or not.

Think about the conditions that allow you to open up and surrender to the pleasure available to you in sex…

For many women, a general list looks something like this:

Feeling safe
Dim lighting
Clean, comfortable environment
Feeling beautiful, sexy
Love
Privacy
Feeling free and unhurried

But you are uniquely you- What turns you on? Under what conditions are you most likely to open to orgasmic bliss?

How can you incorporate these things into your birth environment?

Setting the stage for pleasure is incredibly important- this is something we talk about at length in O BABY!, my signature Ecstatic Birth Training program for mothers to be.

Pleasure is incredibly calming to our nervous system and puts us in a receptive, surrendered energy which is exactly the state we want to be in during birth. Pleasure also triggers the release of oxytocin which is a major player in the birthing process.

Oxytocin is known as the hormone of love and bonding and is released during arousal and orgasm, stimulating that feeling of closeness to our partners. After birth, the body is flooded with the most amount of oxytocin a woman will experience in her life. This enables her to fall in love and bond deeply with her baby.

During birth, oxytocin triggers contractions. In fact pitocin, what is used for birth inductions and to speed up labor, is a man made attempt to replicate oxytocin. It works well to stimulate contractions, but doesn’t come with all of the goodies that our natural oxytocin brings.

Pleasure can be sourced in birth from the outside and from the inside. From the outside means that you can give yourself pleasure, and surround all your senses with pleasure. From the inside is a shift in orientation, in how you experience the world. It is the opening of your pleasure pathways from within your body, so you can always locate the pleasure within. This is a key element of the private training that I offer expectant mamas.

Take some time to consider these questions:

What are some things that turn you on?
How do you experience pleasure in each of your senses?
Under what conditions can you surrender to maximum sensual pleasure?

Consider this ongoing research with your birth in mind.

What have you learned that you can incorporate into your birth?