Of ‘Birth-gasms’

The other day I came across a news clipping about a new mom who claimed to have had orgasms during her delivery. I was intrigued. All the retellings about the birth experience from friends and acquaintances have been stories that would make it straight to a horror anthology, blood and gore included, with some so terrifying they could be used for birth control propaganda. Orgasmic childbirth would be an oxymoron, right? Perhaps not.

French psychologist, Thierry Postel, conducted a study asking 956 midwives about the birth experiences they had witnessed. The midwives stated they saw mothers showing signs of pleasure during childbirth in 668 cases. Barry Komisaruk, professor of psychology at the Rutgers University, New Jersey, who studied orgasms, reports that the intense stimulation of the vaginal canal during childbirth might in fact block pain, even though the stimulation is non-sexual. A medical paper, ‘Birthgasm’: A Literary Review of Orgasm as an Alternative Mode of Pain Relief in Childbirth, by Mayberry and Daniel, explores the potential of orgasm as a mode of pain relief in childbirth and outlines the physiological explanations for its occurrence.

Childbirth is far from a pleasant, private affair. For one, it is a circus of attendants and interns around you, constant poking and prodding to check dilation levels and franticness of trying to remember breathing techniques. The constant stern reminder to push, push, push, when all one wants to do is give up the ghost right there, and curl up into blissful sleep, never mind the baby frantically trying to emerge into rarified fluorescent light of the delivery room at the end of the birth tunnel. And there is the pain. While every woman has a different threshold for pain, a different equation with child birth, whether curiosity, fear, or wonder, but the fact is that giving birth is a natural, primal experience and orgasm during childbirth is a definite anatomical possibility.

But these blissful births aren’t really something most folk talk about. Put it down to the fact that orgasms are associated primarily with sexuality by our cultural conditioning. Motherhood and childbirth, on the other hand, are considered pure and ennobling, unsullied by the faintest tinge of the sexual, never mind how one actually came into being in the first place. But when we do explore alternate therapies for childbirth like hydrotherapy, water births, breathing techniques and herbal remedies for pain relief during childbirth, how wonderful would it be if we could work with the body and use orgasms to make the process of childhood as blissful as they built it up to be when they convinced us to reproduce.

As for me, I think going all numb and fuzzy when the epidural took hold of me was my version of the birth orgasm. And now, having being done with all the reproduction I planned to do, I have no courage to test drive this theory. I prefer my orgasms the regular way.

Kiran Manral is the author of six published books across genres. She is also a recovering Nutella addict

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