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 havent read every single post (its gone midnight and I should be asleep!) but...

although I have one child, I had a C-section birth. Before finding out I needed a section, I hadn't been looking forward to the birth bit due to hottor stories people had told me, not just about things going wrong but mostly the things that happen when your guard is let down, including peeing and pooping on the delivery bed. So, I had a major panic that it would happen to me. So now when I plan my next child and hopefully have a natural birth, I not only have to worry about pooping and peeing and being sick everywhere but also having an orgams in front of a load of people I dont know!

I wonder if DD would mind being an only child?!

pmsl "hottot" stories should be "horror" stories!! Must go to bed, or learn to preview posts!

Rhubarb you said that this is just another stick to beat women with

• this was exactly my point when I started the thread. My friend's MIL is implying that she is better at giving birth than her because, not only did she manage a natural birth without pain relief, she actually had an orgasm. I think the birth myth that is being propagated is that you can create a perfect, blissful birth and that if your birth is not like that, you have failed as a woman - it is your fault. Like us mothers need any more things to feel guilty about.

Well then kitegirl, your friend's MIL is a bitch.

masturbating during childbirth debases it.

i feel my whole original argument coming round again.

i really don't know how you can say that rhubarb...talk about beating women with a stick! so if you masturbate you are debasing this pure and wonderful experience with your tainted perverted over sexualised weirdness. and anyway you're only doing it so your male partner can get off on it as it's all his idea anyway.....

actually i think it is this stance that is debasing both of women and of childbirth.

agree that the MIL sounds like a total cow.

apologies for having not read this read apart from a handful of posts. Sex made you pregnant and so although it's not something I'd fancy doing during childbirth, logically speaking I cant see whats wrong with it.

Has this actually ever happened? Do we have scientific evidence to back it up?

is posters who we have no reason to disbelieve coming on here to say it has not enough monkeytrousers? why is it so unbelievable? and by scientific evidence what do you mean? a labouring mother hooked up to devices monitoring for orgasm just in case she does???

I know I am going to get jumped on for this, but I have to say I'm not comfortable with the idea of someone being actively sexual during childbirth, and felt a bit ill at reading that website and those women talking about how good and sexy it felt to have the baby slide out of them. I do feel that you should have a mental barrier between anything sexual and your child!

If anyone bothers reading this far before leaping on me and beating me soundly, I can 100% see how and why your body could trigger certain responses, that seems perfectly rational and reasonable. As I posted on Friday 9th – 2:39:05PM.

It’s the 2nd discussion that is running on here, tangled hopelessly in with the other, more reasonable one of natural physical responses to stimuli, that has me cringing. Namely - actively seeking sexual gratification and being aroused by the birthing process and having sexual feelings in relation to your baby like that website appears to be on about! And go on, I'll say it, that website feels to me like it’s advocating using your baby as an aid to masturbation and I think its pervy and vaguely paedophilia-esque.

"- this was exactly my point when I started the thread. My friend's MIL is implying that she is better at giving birth than her because, not only did she manage a natural birth without pain relief, she actually had an orgasm. I think the birth myth that is being propagated is that you can create a perfect, blissful birth and that if your birth is not like that, you have failed as a woman - it is your fault. Like us mothers need any more things to feel guilty about."

Kitegirl- you don't need to rubbish women who have experienced a different sort of childbirth, your friend needs to ignore her silly MIL and stop feeling so competitive about what she "achieves" during birth. I think that this competitive attitude is the real culprit that make women feel guilty! It's not a game and she wont win a prize if she ticks all the right boxes for goodness sakes! Why can't we all agree that whatever you need to get you through labour and birth, whether it be orgasm or epidural, is OK? Why does someone need to be "wrong"?

It just sounds highly improbable Soph, that's all. Not impossible; nothing is impossible, but it rather has the ring of an apocryphal tale..

But sex is a natural and normal response to physiological stimuli. There's nothing wrong with feeling pleasurable sensations while breastfeeding or giving birth - we are not paedophiles, we don't have to constantly guard ourselves in case we are going to suddenly abuse our children - but we are animals and we are going to sometimes experience sexual feelings in situations that society might have deemed inappropriate - in this case, who really cares? It isn't harming anyone at all or damaging any children or really any of anyone else's business as far as I can see.

Paedophile panic has led to some ridiculous curbs on our natural sexuality IMO.

dizietsma, but we live in the real world, and humans are competitive over many things. And stuff like this is manna to the media gods. There are many stories in the media about childbirth, what was it last month - women should have to pay for epidurals..the logic being the pain of childbirth was 'natural' so pain relief wasn't a right of all. Utter rubbish.

We live in a mysoginous world, and we need to debate stuff like this for that very reason.

"namely - actively seeking sexual gratification and being aroused by the birthing process and having sexual feelings in relation to your baby like that website appears to be on about! And go on, I'll say it, that website feels to me like it’s advocating using your baby as an aid to masturbation and I think its pervy and vaguely paedophilia-esque."

Isn't it a bit of a long and convoluted way for a paedophile to go about getting their jollies, though? If I were a paedophile (!) I think I'd find a more efficient way to go about it than getting pregnant and giving birth! It's not exactly like they're advocating you use your child to masturbate with after it's born are they? Do you feel that sex during pregnancy is "pervy and vaguely paedophilia-esque"?

what website? - can someone post another link please

The main arguments against it seem to be boiling down to:

it's pervy, possibly paedophiliac, and debases childbirth

and we should not aspire to do anything in a 'better' way (by better I mean easier or more pleasant in this case) in case it makes someone else feel bad

This is just nonsense, surely?

"dizietsma, but we live in the real world, and humans are competitive over many things."

Yes, but it shouldn't be encouraged and people shouldn't censor what they do and say just in case someone gets a silly competitive idea in their heads!

"childbirth, what was it last month - women should have to pay for epidurals..the logic being the pain of childbirth was 'natural' so pain relief wasn't a right of all."

Yeah, but it'll never happen, this was just another sensationalist story picked up by the media to stir up shit and achieve nothing, trust me.

"We live in a mysoginous world, and we need to debate stuff like this for that very reason."

We need to debate issues like this, yes, but just censuring is not helpful. Kitegirl's friends MIL is ridiculous for insisting her DIL have the same birth as her, but would be equally ridiculous if she had a c-section and insisted her DIL have one too. It's the attitude she displayed that was unacceptable, not her experience of birth.

I wouldn't phrase the 'anti' (if that's what it is) argument quite in those terms, Franny. What I said was that childbirth is absolutely beset by Things That Make Us Guilty If We've Done Them Wrong. Adding an orgasm to that list strikes me as, well, unfair given that the number of women who do achieve orgasm in childbirth appears to be a damn sight smaller than the number who manage a relatively easy birth.

Also I have to say I resent the suggestion that (a) I don't go hog wild about orgasm in childbirth because I'm sexually inhibited (b) I think of childbirth as painful because I'm stupid and brainwashed.

hi Monkeytrousers
honestly, it happened to me. Not making it up. Not hairy arsed trucker or anything.
Agree F&Z. I actually think Rhubarb's view of childbirth is the most unrealistic and guilt-inducing. That childbirth is supposed to be some pure experience that shouldn't be debased. Childbirth is the most animal/primitive experience anyone can go through I think. You have the rest of your life to be pure and civilised.

Yes, I know what you mean, MI, but I think you can see what I mean too.

I don't think anyone on this thread has said that we are stupid and brainwashed to experience childbirth as painful - I think there's been a lot of discussion about why we feel that way, but nobody has said stupid or brainwashed.

"I actually think Rhubarb's view of childbirth is the most unrealistic and guilt-inducing. That childbirth is supposed to be some pure experience that shouldn't be debased."

Hear, Hear!

'Nonsense'??? surely you mean

It is an opinion with which I do not agree but I respect the right of the poster to express themselves and to have a perspective that differs from mine.

Don't you?

And I would really really like it if you read my whole post again - and also the one i refer to in it, cos you seem to think I am saying the very idea of having nice feelings during labour is wrong!

but MI surely to say "childbirth is pure and shouldn't be sullied with nastiness" is much more likely to lead to feeling of Guilt when - contrary to your expectations - you find te experience is full of blood, shit and guttural mooing?

the experience/perception of pain certainly has a psychological element to it too, surely that is unarguable?