Orgasm during childbirth?! Tell me this is a lie!!

[kitegirl]

A friend of mine has a very competitive MIL. This friend has just given birth to her first, a nightmare labour with every possible intervention you could imagine (she's cool about it, bless her). Her MIL won't stop going on how amazing all her births were, saying how she just 'breathed the babies out' and how all her births were such ecstatic, spiritual experiences that she actually had an orgasm during each one!

Now I know a birth can be enjoyable, but an orgasm??? I've never heard this happening. Is this a case of one-upmanship? I told my friend that there's only one place to find out and that's Mumsnet... so what do you think?

I agree with sophable. And since when do we choose what does it for us. Sexual response is a complex physiological, physical, emotional, neurological phenomena that I personally think we have very little control over our. it's not exactly a case of "oo I like being touched there/I like that picture of David Hasselhoff/I like silk sheets and water beds I think I'll switch my arousometer up a notch." I find the orgasm during childbirth thing neither suprising nor distasteful (though not so sure about the midwives bit...)

Soph,I can question precisely because am supremely secure re lentil status.

Honestly girls,you are top MNers whose posts I always enjoy but I really think you are being a leeeeeeettle po faced here.

Even I have laughed a bit on the breast versus bottle debate (once or twice)

"disturbing and freaky?"

'just a little' though.
Hey,she is allowed to!

moondog I get it - you ARE cluckcluckcluck aren't you

How did you guess????
I was waxing lyrical about period pain relieving properties of orgasm at very early stage.

If that and my home made baby linen and cloth nappies don't put me in lentil weaver league,then frankly,what does???

whatever takes your fancy!

Personally, I loved giving birth - could do it ten times a day, but it certainly wasnt orgasmic.

Each to their own.

This is a very funny thread.

But, i have to say, i cant understand the hysteria about this. I can see how orgasms could be triggered by labour/childbirth (increase in hormones/blood supply to relevant areas etc).

Oh, and i am FAR from being a lentil weaver.......lentil weavers shun me.....

'blood supply to relevant areas etc'
lmao

im glad i make you larf MD

I hate it when im taken too seriously....

Shall we add a rabbit when someone posts asking what to take in their labour bag............?

only if we can also suggest she do magic tricks with it too.....

blimey - on the home page

I'm very sad but I am dying to know who cluckcluckcluck is
And rather envious if truth be told

Is this the place to mention Art and Lies by Jeanette Winterson? There's a bit in it where a sad lonely old doctor is reminiscing about attending a birth where he could see that everything was fine yet the baby just wouldn't come. So he, er, went down on the labouring woman and bingo, there's the baby. Really one of the grossest things I have ever read - though emphatically non-sensual, just kind of practical iyswim - and perhaps the product of the imagination of someone who's never been through childbirth. But disturbingly it seems to have stuck in my mind for about twelve years.

I had such a rampant horn all through pregnancy I would not have been surprised at having multiple orgasms during an examination, to be honest. I would imagine the reason I didn't find childbirth, or anything surrounding it, pleasurable or sensual is that I was completely tense and terrified about the whole thing.

All the right elements are there, physiologically: huge blood flow to the relevant bits of you, and a whopping great pressure on the internal parts that we are reliably informed will cause orgasm if fiddled with.

It's not going to be completely out of the question, is it? If we were more relaxed about childbirth I would imagine it would be quite a common experience, and as people on here have pointed out, anyone who does own up to it gets some teribly Daily Mail comments made, so who knows how many women do experience this and just keep very quiet about it? (or get told they were just doo lally on the G & A)

pruni

Chicken

While being less tense would be a fairly obvious help, I do think that a male doctor saying that women cannot distingush pleasure from pain is just a teensy weensy bit patronising and insulting though.

Guess what, I've had lots of orgasms, and I've been in labour (which he obviously hasn't) and I can tell the difference between the two.

I have no probelm with people having orgasms in labour...good luck to them. But I am faintly insulted by the inference that we all could if only we embrased our inner lentil weaver

And sorry but having a shag during labour....really not my thang darlink!

I don't think anyone has suggested it be made mandatory, mb. But anything that makes childbirth less scary and more enjoyable has got to be a good thing, yes?

(I am discounting tales of doctors giving cunnilingus here btw)

mb I don't think that's what F+Z was really saying, more like, look, we have a slightly odd attitude to childbirth in this society and perhaps we should be a bit more relaxed by default about it, and if we were then a by-product might be either more women experiencing orgasm, or more women admitting to it.
That's how I read it, anyway. And then grossly over-interpreted.

x posts

I wouldn't base any opinion on anything I'd read in a Jeanette Winterson novel, tbh...

You can interpret me any time, Pruni baby :)

this from the fainly dotty american website

'"This birth was not only painless, but very pleasurable. We had never read about this aspect, and it took us by surprise. As the baby crowned, I knew from Jean's look and sounds that she was having an explosive orgasm, which rolled on and on. What a long way from the pain and agony of conventional myth! Years later we asked a sympathetic doctor about this. 'Yes,' he said, 'I've seen it a few times. It may even be that many women have orgasms during birth, but interpret them as pain because the sensations are more intense than anything previously experienced and because women are conditioned to expect pain.'"
-From The Home School Challenge, by Donn Reed '

So here we do have a doctor saying that women are so brain washed they cant tell pleasure from pain.

Yes, right, and being a bloke he'd be an expert on this!

Yes but one doctor being an arse (gosh never experienced a doctor being an arse before ) doesn't mean that it is not a normal and perhaps desirable thing to happen.