Labor Orgasms Called 'Best-Kept Secret'
Moms, Experts Say Relaxation Is Key to Pleasurable Childbirth
By JUJU CHANG and GAIL DEUTSCH
Dec. 9, 2008
Painful. Excruciating. Unbearable. These are the words most often associated with childbirth.
But what about pleasurable? Blissful? Euphoric?
Some women even say that instead of agony, childbirth can be ecstasy.
Amber Hartnell of Hawaii said she experienced an orgasm during labor when she gave birth to her son in September 2005.
"All of a sudden the orgasm just started rolling through and rolling through, and it just kept coming, and my whole body was spiraling and rolling, and I was laughing and crying," she said.
Hard to imagine? Hartnell and her husband, Nassim Haramein, were shocked as well. Although they had spent many hours planning for their son's birth, in a tub under a tree outside their home, they say they never planned for an "orgasmic" birth.
Haramein was amazed -- and also relieved -- to see his wife experience such pleasure.
"It made me feel like everything was gonna be all right," he said. "The experience didn't have to be a traumatic, painful experience. It could be an experience of ecstatic joy."
"It is, as we say, the best-kept secret," said Debra Pascali-Bonaro, a childbirth educator for 26 years. "I believe by women having such terrible fear. Women aren't getting the choices they need, to make the experience as easy as possible."
Labor Orgasms Are 'Basic Science'
To prove that it is possible to have pleasure in childbirth, Pascali-Bonaro made a documentary called "Orgasmic Birth."
Tamra and Simon Larter of suburban New Jersey were one of the couples that allowed Pascali-Bonaro to film their most intimate moments of labor. For their second child, the Larters wanted a natural birth with midwives at their home. They spent part of Tamra Larter's labor kissing and caressing.
"The physical touch and the nurturing was just really comforting to me," Tamra Larter said, adding that she ultimately experienced an orgasmic birth. "It was happening, and I could hardly breathe, and it was like, 'oh, that feels good.' That's all I could say really."
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I first read about this phenomenon when I was about 12 (yes, I was sneaking behind my parents' backs) in a book from the 1960s entitled
The Joy of Natural Childbirth by Helen Wessel (link is to listing for fifth edition). I was determined to secure this kind of joyful childbirth for my future wife.
Unfortunately, with our twins, there were pregnancy complications, and much against my better judgment, we allowed the doctors to induce my wife. Even with the Pitocin, however, she had entirely
pain-free contractions. Unfortunately, after several hours of labor, she hadn't dilated at all, and (almost certainly due to the Pitocin itself), the smaller baby's heartrate started to bottom out. We pleaded for more time to allow nature to take its course, but they told us that if we didn't consent to an emergency cesarean, they would bring in a social worker and charge us with neglect or child endangerment, thereby forcing us to get the cesarean. I don't know if I'll ever fully get over my anger at the way our wishes were overruled, but what's done is done. We're definitely determined to do it our way next time.
As I said, however, there's nothing new about this knowledge. In
Travels , his book of autobiographical sketches, Michael Crichton relates his observations as a Harvard medical student back in the 1960s. Back then, Boston General had well-equipped wards for the rich women able to pay and basic (charity) wards for the women too poor to way. He describes the startling differences in childbirth experiences he noted between the two wards: In the rich ward, women were able to afford every possible pain-relieving medical procedure, yet he says the women were typically yelling, carrying on, screaming profanities, and generally relating tales of anguish and agony. In stark contrast, over the charity ward, where the women didn't have access to anaesthesia, the women were generally quiet and peaceful, experiencing uneventful, even joyful labors.
Studies recently have corroborated Crichton's observations. They have revealed that women who have natural childbirths report much lower subjective perceptions of pain and emotional suffering than their counterparts who get spinals, epidurals, etc. I know this pattern has held true in my own family: My sister has had two natural childbirths and remembers virtually no pain, whereas my mother had nine cesareans . . . and to hear her tell the tale, each one was an experience of sheer agony.
During natural childbirth, the woman's body is flooded with amnesiac hormones like prolactin and oxytocin -- the same hormones that cause orgasms -- that literally block out memories of the experience, such that it's all fuzzy afterward, whereas anaesthetic drugs block the release of these hormones. If you've ever noticed that if you start touching your lover after a knock-down, drag-out fight, you suddenly can't remember what you were fighting about, you've experienced the amnesiac effects of oxytocin.