"Despite hundreds of years of negative programming, labor and birth can be a soul-stirring experience! Let Orgasmic Birth be your inspiration to claim a pleasurable, empowering birth.” Christiane Northrup, MD
Imagine that most everything you know about childbirth is in fact an artifact of fear, modern medicine and Hollywood hype, and that sensual pleasure may indeed be as likely an outcome of birth as pain. That is because key components of the neural hormones and pathways that signal pain also modify pleasure. Orgasmic birth is not a myth. In fact, birthing professionals call it the best kept secret of childbirth.
As a follow up to her groundbreaking video on the topic, acclaimed filmmaker Debra Pascali-Bonaro has published a new book, Orgasmic Birth: Your Guide to a Safe, Satisfying and Pleasurable Birth Experience (June 2010). The book, co-authored by Elizabeth Davis, provides information on the basics of childbirth and takes it one step further. It aims to prepare woman to be advocates in their own ecstatic labor and delivery experience, which medical science now admits in a normal, if not frequent, variable experience. Anecdotal studies suggest that 30% of women experience them, or sensual pleasure, during labor and delivery.
I’ll have what she’s having please
Among the topics Pascali-Bonaro and Davis discuss are the realities and hype about pleasure during birth, how to cope with pain, and what expectant parents can do to prepare for a pleasurable birthing experiencing. This book joins a growing repertoire of information behind this evolution in the birthing experience, aided by personal testimonies of mothers and professionals, and scientific discoveries on our sexual and reproductive well-being.
Carla Joly, a midwife in Italy, has witnessed several blissful births in a country more open to the sensual side of pregnancy and labor. She says that orgasms during birth are a "Great mystery for women, but the science and logic support their occurance." The likelihood depends on many factors including cultural openness, a woman's state of mind and her relationship to her sexuality and her partner. In general and in her experience, they occur most often "during natural childbirth (not during cesarean section and epidural) and depends also on how much the partner is sexually involved during the process of childbirth and nursing."
Modern Love knows that this is a revolutionary shift in thinking for most of us who take the hospital birth setting for granted. In no way is ‘orgasmic birth’ meant to replace a doctor or midwives care. Instead, it challenges the status quo, and us, to open up to new possibilities, one that includes pleasure as a woman’s right during the most miraculous moments of her life.
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Comments
This makes total sense to me. I have heard discussions about how the g-spot could exist for assisting women during birth.
Why would nature make a function of the prime directive, pro creation extremely painful?
A friend of mine that has 5 children all by natural child birth talked to me about giving your body over to the experience. She told me she has never torn or had any negative complications, that all her births were wonderful experiences because she relaxed.
I think that orgasmic birth is a case of everything old is new again.
I had natural childbirth 15 years ago, I have been told that I moaned the F-word several times (& loudly), but I was clearly not asking to BE f-'d. My BFF was in the delivery room with me --my husband was working on the Atlanta Olympics) and it has been one of my greatest joys when she tells the story of my son's (her Godson's) birth, because she sees the beauty in everything -- even a hurtin', sweaty, mid-30s mom-to-be. And the main word she uses for the event is "erotic." That's right -- with my hair in my face, my throat dry from cussing and my body about to burst, she, who has never had kids, said the whole thing was one of the most moving, erotic moments she has ever experienced.
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