can't believe I'm asking this..

[Jasper]

Giving birth as a SEXUAL experience? Surely there must be some mistake! I have just been to a website www.freeborn.com ( or was it freebirth?) where many of the women ( who are into giving birth with NO medical/ midwifery help at all- YIKES!) go on about how sexual the last moments of childbirth were for them. Honest, I am not making this up.Many claimed to orgasm as the baby emerged. Now I can agree that the birth of my babies was wonderful, empowering, awesome etc. but it was at the same time extremely painful! Sexual? Orgasmic? Surely not! This website claims women may experience what is really sexual pleasure as pain during labour because they are tense!! It sounds barking mad to me.
What do you all think? Am I being incredibly narrow minded?

I would just like to say that I bit through the mouth piece for the gas and air, so dh would have to take his life nto his own hands if he suggested abj

Well, out of my small smampe of friends, none of them had an orgasom during delivery!

SK as said that hiving birth is a sexual expereince tho.......Always thought some of ideas were a bit loopy!

sunchowder, pmsl!

Thank you FMF, I was feeling very underappreciated today!

It is true however that orgasm can relieve period pains,so I can see the logic of this (sort of......)

Sorry, but Ina May Gaskin is a bit of a hoary nutter. And this said by a fellow American...

I bet they're also confusing the incredible relief of getting it over with, with orgasm.

Or lying.

lol MI.
Well remember that 'Thank f---k for that' feeling while lying exhausted in a pool of blood 'n gore.

ive got to say, my birth was quite relaxed and natural but a no point did i mistake the ripping and tearing of my nether regions for an orgasm!

i find it highly inappropriate that not only could a mother be stimulated to orgasm be her infant (disturbing but not impossible) but that she would be proud of the fact?

As if it wasn't bad enough hearing someone request "Suedehead" on XFM because "it was playing when they were born", now you resurrect a thread that I remember from first time around. God I feel old.

haven't read all the posts but the men breast-feeding is interesting. I read a very good article about a tribe (I think in the Americas but could be wrong) where the men let babies suckle for comfort. They take them to the village "pub" in the evening and sit around having a beer with baby sleepily nuzzling while mum bets some peace. sounds like a damn fine idea to me.

I notice some people say they don't know anyone who've had a sexual experience in childbirth. Not actually sure you can say that with certainty. Not exactly one for a dinner party piece is it?

hmm I think the mums GET peace. not something to be gambled with is it?

I gave birth to Dd in water and without any drugs. Although the contractions were painfully from the moment I started pushing I felt no pain at all. Not even when I tore.

I believe this was due to the amount of endorphins surging around my body, after all inbetween contractions during transition I fell asleep. If a women has a hugh amount of endorphins I can see how this could happen.

As for giving your parter pleasure for your painrelief I have only one word - NO. Dh wouldn't have believed the response he would have gotten.

Ah but in that 20% of people that have an orgasm at 'some point during labout'.. are they including those that deliberately kick-start their labour having DIY orgasms one after the other? Because this works... but only as a means to an end. Of the pregnancy!

I think men breast feeding IS remotely possible. Have read articles on it before. Men have breast tissue not at all disimilar to ours.. they just have a lot less of it. Adoptive mothers have sometimes been known to lactate. Men doing so is something along those lines. With persistant stimulation, breast tissue will sometimes do what it is supposed to do.

I loved the comments from the man on the Freebirth website who said that he could tell from the look on her face that his wife was having an 'explosive orgasm' while giving birth. I wonder if he has ever realised that she'd probably been faking it all along.

wow! I just read this thread and .. wow. I have a friend who claimed that at some point in labour she wanted to have sex, she's a bit of an exagerator though so took that with a pinch of salt.

I think the reason that women apparently orgasm is because the hormones are the same, when you orgasm your body produces seratonin, which is the same hormone you produce when you give birth, and, strangely enough, the same hormone you produce when you eat chocolate! As for having sex during labour, while I can't imagine wanting to do it, there could be a natural reason why women do. Cemen contains the hormone prostaglandin (not sure if that's how you spell it) which is the same hormone that helps to dilate the cervics, which is also why they recommend intercourse as a means to inducing labour. The human body is a remarkable thing, and maybe it is just possible that the body knows what it needs in order for labour to progress more quikly.

Think I'll settle for slower labour though and an epidural rather than sex shudders.

As for men who breastfeed, it was a pigmy tribe in Africa who used this method. very common apparently.

I certainly didn't during labour. But I do remember seemingly feel the midwifes I can only assume, trying to assist DS out, kind of rubbing around there IYSWIM. It brought relief anyway, whatever they were, or I thought, they were doing. FWIW they could have talked me through it all. By that time I was off me head.

It's a tried and tested pain relief method to stimulate the clitorus in labour. Some MWs will do it for you, I was never offered it and I think that DH would have objected!

I have often wanted to ask DP. He was observing all that went on down there. But then, on the other hand, I have also never asked him if I pooed. So on balance, I just rather not know anything that went on down there, really!

of course there is the other theory .. essentially, you forget the pain of childbirth, sure you remember that it was painful, but you do forget exactly how it felt, so maybe we all just forgot we had a orgasm! lol!

seriously though, I just can't imagine how anyone could think of orgasm at that stage. When my DS was born, the first thing I said was "is he ok". at that very moment when he was born, all the pain, all the complications, everything seemed just a distant memory, and all I can remember is my baby crying and me asking if he was alright. I don't even remember feeling the pain of being cut and stitched again afterwards, although afterwards it was very apparent how many stitches I had :D.

Having said that, I also can't imagine ever having one of those lovely natural births with music and candles .. although I'm sure that some women do experience them,

Am a regular poster but have changed my name for this one because some people know me in RL! I was born in the US and in the 60's they were big into breathing exercises as a form of pain relief. Mum said that because of the breathing she experienced an orgasm while giving birth to me. However my siblings were born over here and she said that there wasn't the same emphasis on breathing and she had forgotten most of it and labour was just downright painful! By the way, my Mum is not big into talking about orgasms, usually, just your regular granny, down-to-earth! So there could be something in this but I would caution anyone pg not to get your hopes up too much, it's not usually that good!