I first came to orgasmic birth through research about physiological birth.
It was then that I realized that the natural hormones of birth endorphins, DMT and oxytocin were all present and part of creating that fabled “hour afterglow” of bonding and love that so many mothers (myself included) have distrupted by medical birth.
I now like to call the successful achievement of that afterglow a Joygasmic moment of birth.
Talking to Debra Pascali-Bonoro helped me realize that orgasmic birth is a whole spectrum, from any moment of pleasure in birth to the famed birth orgasm.
I then realized that (just like sex) seeking after an orgasm in birth is likely not the best way to get there.
I’ve looked to the surrender of hypnobirthing to the waves of surges, the stories of mothers who have had painful births, then processed their trauma (and past sexual trauma) and gone on to have beautiful births, and drawn the conclusion that trauma stored in the body and unprocessed leads to some of the pain in birth.
In focusing on sharing stories about orgamic birth I like to think I am breaking the box of painful birth mythos. Many women are only seeking a pain free birth and are missing the very beautiful biological fact that birth is meant to be a pleasurable transcendent marathon of love.
Are you kidding me? Birth HURTS!
Having given birth to my son vaginally I know the intensity of birth and had a hard time conceptualizing that those sensations could be seen as pleasurable untill I heard Amber Hartnel’s story about having learned to transmute pain into pleasure as she was beaten as a young child. I could see how this then naturally translated into her famous and giggly orgasmic birth video.
Like great intimacy, sometimes birth requires us to sob, ask for help and brings us to our knees. That doesn’t mean it can’t also be pleasurable at other moments, and to ignore one or the other is to deny the totality that is birth.
