Orgasmic Childbirth - Unicorn, Guilt Trip, or Taboo?

Now that I've been nominated for the honor of Hottest Mommy Blogger, I guess I have to live up to it by promiscuously mixing sex and maternity in a single post.

At the New York Times Motherlode blog, Lisa Belkin unleashed a storm of debate a few days ago by raising the question of whether childbirth can result in an orgasm. Belkin described a documentary entitled "Orgasmic Birth" that will air on ABC's 20/20 on January 2. (Correction 12/15/08: The 20/20 episode will discuss the topic but only show excerpts from the actual film.) While over the years a small number of women have reported experiencing orgasm during labor, it's quite uncommon. According to its director, doula and childbirth educator Debra Pascali-Bonaro, the film's intent is not to imply that orgasm during childbirth is attainable for all women; rather, she says:

"I hope women watching and men watching don't feel that what we're saying is, every woman should have an orgasmic birth," she said. "Our message is that women can journey through labor and birth in all different ways. And there are a lot more options out there, to make this a positive and pleasurable experience."
(ABC's entire promotional summary is here.)

Fair enough. But why, then, choose such a misleading title? Okay, ABC wants to drive ratings. Pascali-Bonaro wants people to watch her film. But dang it, the title is sure to generate more heat than light. (Oops - no pun intended.)

That's not to suggest orgasmic birth is entirely fictional, even if it is vanishingly rare. More than one commenter on Belkin's blurb reports having experienced an orgasm during birth.

No, it is not ridiculous, because some of us actually experienced it, but were too embarrassed to mention it.

It happened during both of my deliveries, and it’s kind of a relief to read this and know that it has happened to others - I didn’t even tell my husband, because it sounded so weird, and I was afraid it would make him feel really insecure!

— Nell

Nonetheless, orgasmic birth also appears to be very infrequent indeed. It's also not clear that what these women describe as "orgasm" is the same sensation they'd experience during sex. Of course there are different flavors of orgasms, even as experienced by the same woman at different times. But a couple of the descriptions given by those who've been there make me skeptical that this is actually "orgasm" as opposed to some other sort of pleasurable peak experience:

Yes, actually it’s true. I had that experience, and I sure wasn’t expecting it. It wasn’t like sex at all, it was more like surfing the best wave ever.

— Catherine

Well, I guess I’m in the minority here, but the birth of my first child was actually an orgasmic experience…So much so that the first thing I said to my midwife after I could see straight was “I want to do that again! Right now!”…What I experienced was not identical to an orgasm during sex, but it was intensely pleasurable and memorable enough that I couldn’t wait to go into labor with my second baby… — rebecca

Even Tamra Larter, the woman whose birth is shown in the film, qualifies her experience in a follow-up post by Belkin:

“I never claimed to have a pain-free birth,” she wrote, “but laboring with my daughter was awesome and for the most part felt really good.” The actual “orgasmic experience” did not feel like the climax of sex, she says, but rather “sensations which were something different than sex, but similar enough I feel O.K. using the word orgasmic. It was a wonderful feeling.”

If some mild skepticism is warranted about the nature of the experience, there are stronger grounds to worry that a few women's capacity for pleasure will get blown into another benchmark for all women's "performance" in labor, much as some women's (reasonable) preference for drug-free childbirth has too often been treated as a modern norm for the Good Mother. Concerned that this film will raise unrealistic expectations, one midwife writes:

As a Certified Nurse Midwife who has worked with thousands of women during their births, I can safely say I have never seen a single one come close to an orgasmic experience. Having said that, I work in a busy hospital, not in peoples homes. Most couples do not “mak[e] out” in the hospital. I could see an orgasm as a remote possibility if someone were deeply relaxed in the comfort of their own home.

— MSW

The thing is, most of us aren't that relaxed. Sure, tension exacerbates pain, but that doesn't mean the pain itself is illusory. The ABC promo for the documentary and its director's comments imply that pain in childbirth is avoidable. It's true that a lucky few women do actually experience a pain-free, unmedicated labor.

I certainly did not experience an orgasm with either birth, but I was quite surprised to find that the 2nd stage of labor (pushing the baby out), did not hurt at all (in contrast to 1st stage, which was like a hellish version of menstrual cramps). At one point, the midwife asked me to “push into the pain.” After a few repetitions of this instruction, I told her that I had NO PAIN. I’m quite prepared to believe that the experience of childbirth differs greatly from woman to woman, and from labor to labor; and I’m sure there may be a luckly few who even experience orgasm in 2nd stage labor.

— Laurel

While pain-free birth is highly unusual (though not as exceptional as orgasmic birth), it does exist, and anyway I would never presume to tell another woman what she did or didn't experience. I don't know what causes painless birth, but I can think of a couple of possible explanations. Maybe it's natural endorphins. Maybe just-right pressure on pelvic nerves cuts off sensations. Maybe mind triumphs over matter.

I do know that given the rarity of painless birth, the rest of us shouldn't be made to feel like it ought to be within everyone's reach.

One Motherlode commenter implies that if you do feel pain, it's because you're, well, a tight-ass. Or too tight somewhere, anyway.

Of course it [orgasmic birth] makes sense. Women’s bodies have been birthing babies for eons. When they are truly open, and energy is flowing, anything can be ecstatic, orgasmic. Same nerves, just have to be stimulated in a system that is open. There can be uterine contractions, but if the emotions are not contracted, of course it can be orgasmic. Proof is in the example given, and in the case of many.

— Robbie

Um, yeah. Those nerves need to be stimulated, all right. How they're stimulated matters very much. Most women have fairly specific preferences about how they like to be touched even under ordinary sexual circumstances. Most of us don't prefer levels pressure otherwise achieved only by pneumatic tools.

An advocate of hypnobirth who believes labor pain is merely a self-fulfilling prophecy chides us for forgetting our animal roots:

Watch animals in the wild who aren’t taught what to expect. They don’t cry out in pain. For others its the most painful thing they ever experience. I believe this is mostly due to that expectation combined with the way many hospitals pressure one to push and to see the whole experience as medical and anxiety producing.

— Erika

Well, wild animals don't generally walk on their hind legs, which necessitates a smaller pelvic outlet. They also don't spawn absurdly big-brained progeny. If you want to appeal to nature, let's be honest about our natural differences from other beasts. We're operating with a system with very narrow tolerances and no real clearance whatsoever. It's a tight fit, and sometimes the fit is simply too tight.

That's why for most of us, childbirth really does hurt like a sonofabitch. We're not deluded, uptight, or removed from nature. We're just responding to pressure on nerves that I'd be tempted to call inhuman if it weren't so characteristically human. Some Motherlode commenters compare labor pain to a root canal without anesthesia. Others just said it was excruciating. I sort of related to this description:

My first birth experience I’d liken to be turned completely inside out and then having a very large tractor run over me back and forth for 30 hours.

— Jenna

In my own experience, even the pain of early labor had nothing to do with mere cramps, whether a "hellish version" or not. When I had my first child, I had debilitating back pain within the first half hour of labor. It didn't feel like cramps. It didn't feel like the regular, five-minute-apart pains that all the books described. It was a wall of continuous pain.

I was one of the best-educated first-time mothers I've ever known, and yet, I had only one thought as I crouched on all fours on the bare linoleum of my apartment's hallway at 4 a.m. and waited for my husband to haul his butt out of bed: I am clearly dying. There was no point in timing contractions, because either I was in labor or I was in mortal danger. Either way, the hospital sounded like a brilliant idea.

Then there was the nausea. More surprisingly, there was the uncontrollable chills and shaking. By the way, that's another experience neglected by the What to Expect squad: the not-uncommon uncontrollable trembling that can occur during labor, and not just during transition. There's a world of difference between this and shuddering in ecstasy.

The other main objection to this documentary that Motherlode readers express is disgust at the idea that the birth of a baby could be a sexual experience (and not just the result of our sexuality). This reaction doesn't come just from defenders of the medical model of childbirth. Even some commenters who chose "natural" (that is, unmedicated) birth are repelled by the idea of orgasmic birth:

I’ve given birth three times. One in hospital, one in birthing center, and one at home. All were so painful I lost my voice. Orgasm during child birth seems gross and weird. Not to mention the midwife/ doctor/ nurse/ whatever around while you are giving birth and who would want to have an orgasmic birth with people watching you. Giving birth is hard enough, let along with people around watching you and then expecting you to orgasm while you are in the most insane pain anyone could possibly imagine. How intrusive and bizarre. I can’t even get my mind around it.

— Jennifer

Everything else aside, I feel like it’s going to be really awkward down the road when Baby Larter reads in The New York Times that he entered the world to his parents “kissing and caressing,” and he may have actually given his mother an orgasm. On camera.

— Ben A

It seems almost self-evident that the "gross" response is rooted in our incest taboos. People are icked out at the idea that you could get an orgasm from your very own baby. I suppose it might sound like it carries a whiff of pedophilia too.

Of course, this is nonsense. It's not as though women set out to have a baby because they think it'll be a sexual thrill to push it out. (Well, at least now they don't. Let's see what happens after this documentary airs!) Nor do women forgo pain relief in hopes of an orgasm. Those who do experience sensations they label "orgasmic" actually sometimes express confusion about it (like the first woman I quoted, who wondered if telling her husband about it would make him feel insecure).

More commonly, women experience sexual pleasure and sometimes even orgasm while breastfeeding. We don't talk about this, either, because it feels vaguely incestuous. Yet it's a widespread enough experience that taboos and silence only condemn women to feeling shame.

But this taboo is the real shame. It alienates women from their bodies, makes them feel freakish, and tries to shore up an untenable line between our experiences as parents and our existence as embodied creatures. That's a conversation I'd love to see this documentary inspire: how can our culture move beyond its anxieties about parents as sexual creatures? Unfortunately, the chance of that happening is about as likely as, well, a woman actually having an orgasm in childbirth.

Update 12/15/08, 1 p.m.: Laura Shanley, a proponent of "unassisted childbirth" who appears in the 20/20 show, has contributed her perspective in comments, so be sure to check them out. Also, to see a trailer for the documentary, go to its website, Orgasmicbirth.com. If you're at work, make sure your computer's sound is muted or pop on your headphones, because the trailer's soundtrack is pretty much what the title implies.

Also, if the film's publicity is not meant to play up its potential sensationalism, then it's doing something wrong. From its website:

Joyous, sensuous and revolutionary, Orgasmic Birth brings the ultimate challenge to our cultural myths by inviting viewers to see the emotional, spiritual, and physical heights attainable through birth. Witness the passion as birth is revealed as an integral part of woman's sexuality and a neglected human right. With commentary by Christiane Northrup, MD, and midwives Ina May Gaskin, Elizabeth Davis and other experts in the field . . . and stunning moments of women in the ecstatic release of childbirth.

It's hard not to read this as a blurb for soft-core erotica. Nothing wrong with erotica, mind you, but this way of framing the film won't focus attention on the larger issues of home birth, support for women, etc. that are supposedly the film's broader agenda.

Abortion and Moral Complexity

Earlier this week, journalist and Feministing blogger Courtney Martin published a piece at Alternet in which she discussed her own reservations about abortion. She begins with the story of how she accompanied a friend who was getting an abortion. While in the waiting room, she was disturbed by the apparent lack of remorse of a woman who was chatting on her cell and herding her toddler. Martin remarks:

I was unequivocally pro-choice, but I hated that woman in her 30s because she seemed (I didn’t ask) to have such an uncomplicated relationship with abortion. I was jealous. Past my conviction that abortion should be legal and safe, my own feelings were a mess.

Martin admits that her reaction wasn't necessarily fair, but she still uses this woman as a projection screen for her own doubts and anxieties. Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon rightly takes her for task for this.

My own reading of the scene Martin describes is that of course the woman appeared ordinary and unruffled; she was waiting for a doctor, and that's just not a situation where most people allow themselves to lose it. I'd bet no one saw how conflicted Martin and her friend may have felt, either.

Having spent tons of time in oncology wards and waiting rooms - not as a patient but as a caretaker - I've been repeatedly amazed at how calm people are even in the face of medical catastrophe. You'd think you'd occasionally see someone rant and rage against the dying of the light, but no, people sit stoically, chit-chat about mundane things, and wait.

I can imagine that a similar dynamic obtains in abortion facilities, too. Whatever turmoil a woman might feel while she waits, be it sorrow, guilt, or even happiness, she'll put up a impassive front because anything else violates the norms of medical institutions.

That's just one more reason why Courtney has no basis for her projections - apart from the fact that she didn't know jack about that woman and her situation.

Still, I'm frustrated by how hard it is, even among feminists, to discuss the moral complexities abortion holds for some women. This issue seems to rear up every year or two. One year it's Naomi Wolf who urges us to ponder the morality of abortion, then it's Frances Kissling, and now it's Courtney. Feminists should be able to discuss the morality angle without immediate accusations of betraying our own cause. Amanda Marcotte's protestations to the contrary, the comments thread under her post on this topic already shows how quickly feminists feel judged by fellow feminists. (I posted an earlier version of this on that thread and fully expect someone will pounce on me.)

I myself find abortion morally unproblematic in early pregnancy. But I worry that if feminists can't acknowledge and address other women's qualms, we end up preaching to the choir and alienating people who are in the mushy middle, where a majority of young women (and men) find themselves.

As a teacher of women's studies, I have both the opportunity and the responsibility to promote real dialog on this. Most of my students say they wouldn't choose abortion themselves (though of course some of them will decide otherwise when faced with an actual pregnancy). But most can also be readily persuaded that women, rather than government, ought to make the decision. While I in no way view my role as providing "conversion experiences," I'll admit I'm glad when young people who initially say they're pro-life realize their actual position is more complex. If they learn to distinguish the personal level from policy, it's real progress.

Here's an example of where feminists should reasonably be able to concede that moral complexity exists: While I agree that it's ludicrous to endow a fetus with personhood, I'm wholly unconvinced when Marcotte equates a fetus with a tumor or with the whole universe of children-never-conceived due to birth control.

The vast majority of abortions are performed when the fetus is basically brainless, and thus those abortions have the moral weight of removing tumors or tapeworms. The potential person argument has no sway over me, because if not allowing a potential person to come into being is wrong, all forms of birth control, including abstinence, are wrong.

Unlike a tumor, a fetus is at least a potential person. And unlike the "unconceived," a fetus is not an abstract and infinite potential person, it's a concrete, specific one. It's got DNA and it's human, though it's not yet an actual person, which is of course a crucial distinction. Its gradual development toward fully realized personhood is one reason why even most staunchly pro-choice people see a difference between abortion at 2, 12, 20, and 30 weeks. We should be able to acknowledge this without fearing that it hurts the case for abortion rights.