Even sven, she does say:
She says that birth it not painful, full stop, unless “the woman” perceives it as pain. She’s making a universal statement. She then goes on to say:
She didn’t say “for me”, she said for any women “open enough”, implying that women who experience pain are some how responsible because they are too conventional or too ignorant.
Oh give me a fucking break. If you think you had an orgasm during labor, allow me to enlighten you… you simply passed the shoulders. It’s the greatest relief you’ll ever feel in your life, and certainly climactic, but it’s not an orgasm.
See, now THIS post, I find offensive. Sure, *you *didn’t have an orgasm. Granted. I didn’t, either. But who are we to tell another woman - one who we can be reasonably sure has been sexually active at some point in her life, being as there’s a human being coming out of her nether regions - that she can’t identify her own orgasm?
There are people out there who orgasm from being beaten, choked, even cut or burned. The lines between pain and pleasure are really very, very blurry.
Hey, if IO is allowed to tell almost everyone else in the world that they’re deluded about being in pain, I feel free to say the same to the three or four people in the world who think labor is hotsexyfun.
Of course you’re allowed. You’re simply both equally in the wrong, for the exact same reason. You can’t know what other people feel, that’s all.
My first birth was natural, no drugs, all the women of the family there helping out with backrubs and ice chips. I had two good coaches and many many years of experienced mothers around me. It would have been the most wonderful experience of my life-- if it hadn’t been so so godawfully painful. I remember nothing but the pain after the tenth or eleventh hour of strong contractions. Crying and begging for the pain to end, and being so exhausted from pain I don’t even remember holding my daughter for the first time.
The second time was just as painful (or maybe more because my baby was facing the wrong way) until they gave me that epidural. Then it was near bliss. The pushing wasn’t a big deal and it only took three. It was just just a sweet release. I** know** the difference and I am sorry but I can’t help thinking “who are they trying to kid?” Orgasm hell. There is no bloody way I’d have an orgasm through all that! For one thing, it’s nowhere near a sexual experience. Why would it be, just because it’s coming from the same place? No, my menstrual cramps every month aren’t orgasmic so childbirth sure wouldn’t be. For another . . . did I mention the PAIN? Nobody had to condition me to know what pain is. I have PCOS. I have had broken bones and food poisoning and pneumonia and full body pain from a car wreck. Nothing compares to the feeling of passing a medicine ball through your girl-parts. Nothing.
And from the dozens of friends and family members I’ve sat with during their own L & D, there was more than just a really powerful feeling. However it seems common on parenting boards for women to claim it wasn’t painful during their organic, lights-down-low, birthing pool experience so either we’re just all pitiful messes who don’t know real pain or maybe this is just a bit of one-upmanship for some mothers.
Really? Offended?
And don’t forget the potential side effects. I live in Alberta and the government supplies a book that goes over pregnancy, delivery, and after birth information and resources. It’s a great book, my girl is 17 months and I still have it close at hand. When I was pregnant I was reading it and got to the pain options section. It listed all of the different medication, what they do, and the side effects and disadvantages. The options listed were TENS (Transcutaneous Electronic Nerve Stimulation) with three risks associated including not as effective, Entonox with three risks including dizziness and numbness, Narcotics with two risks mainly drowsiness related, and the epidural with 15 risks. These included fever development, lower blood pressure, can slow or stop labor, loss of bladder tone, breathing problems, migraines after delivery (can last days), and may effect ability to breastfeed immediately after delivery.
I was induced and eventually has a morphine shot to help me sleep since it was taking a while to dilate completely. But that had worn off by the time the baby came. I would never tell a woman what is the right way to give birth since there is no right way, just what is right for them. In my perfect world the women would be education on what is happening, what their options are, and what are the pluses and minuses of those options.
Or maybe, just maybe, that’s actually how it was for them. Not one-upmanship, not better, just different. Why shouldn’t we all share our stories (in appropriate fora) so we all know the frankly amazing diversity that labor experiences can be?
If I don’t tear you down for having a painful labor, will you not tear them (meaning me, for that’s what I was *intending *for my second labor until the whole c-section drama happened) down for having a pleasant one?
CAN’T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG?!?! sob
ETA: (Tongue out of cheek) No, not really offended. Just playing up the parallels to IO’s post and the claim that it offended some posters (and made others want to do violence to poor IO). I haven’t actually been offended by anything here…just annoyed with the notion that we can tell what other people are feeling better than they can.
After 22 hours of rollicking labour, my daughter emerged in a final rush, fracturing my coccyx and ripping out a fourth degree tear (look it up, I am not going to provide a link). I probably should have requested a c-section at the end but it was an issue of stubbornness on my part after a long day. At that point there had been projectile vomiting going on for about eight hours and I was just wanting to get the baby out – she was showing signs of foetal distress in those last minutes as well, and there was not a lot of time to mull things over and ponder best practice. The final progress note was succinct: “Tight fit.”
Anyway, while they are certainly linked to powerful sensations, I am at a loss to interpret projectile vomiting, pudendal tearing, and pelvic fracture as anything but unpleasant. That’s why I never take Ipecac while falling on ice and ripping out my pierced earrings at the same time – it just doesn’t turn me on the way it does the hip kids.
Idealized birth experiences… meh. Yes, let’s do our best not to medicalize/marginalize/alienize any part of natural childbirth, but don’t be a birthzilla.
For some reason I have always been fascinated by labor and childbirth, and when I was quite young my mom told me a lot about her 4 labors and vaginal births (one induced, all in the hospital but attended by midwives and without any pain relief). So I’ve known for a long time that even for the same woman doing it multiple times, labor and birth can be completely different experiences…
I don’t doubt that a tiny minority of women orgasm during labor. Weird, but whatever. I also don’t doubt that many experience labor and birth as more painful than anything else they have experienced. Or that some don’t find it particularly painful. My mom was lucky enough to have one birth she didn’t perceive as particularly painful, and she said the pain of the other three wasn’t totally overwhelming to her. Other women experience such horrible pain/trauma that they develop PTSD from birth.
I get offended too when people dismiss other women’s experiences here. It seems to be really individual. Although childbirth is and has been perceived as highly painful in all cultures for thousands of years, so I don’t doubt that it will continue to be for most women, unfortunately.
Yep. I was induced too. I think even when the meds are administered carefully, women tend to report more pain with induced labor.
In my case, I had mild labor in the morning at work and just kept on working. By 10 PM my water broke so we went to the hospital. Contractions were increasing steadily but everything stalled around noon the next day. I guess since the water was broken, they had to induce. It wasn’t long before I was contracting like a motherfuck. I was damn tired and in loads of PAIN. Got the epidural. Took a quick nap. Woke up with proper dilation and pushed that baby right out. Maybe too fast because I did tear but I didn’t have a hard time healing. I’m telling you, I’m not ashamed to say I was more than relieved to get that needle in the spine.
I’ve given birth by C-section (baby 1), vaginal + epidural (baby 2), and vaginal unmedicated (baby 3) and can honestly say that all three have their pros and cons. Yes, even the C-section, though it would never be my first choice. I have very little patience for people who get snotty about other women’s birthing methods.
As for preferring an unmedicated birth, it was my preference and remains so even after having done it both ways. For me the pushing stage was much more productive and easy without being anesthetized. Also the baby was less sluggish with early breastfeeding and I didn’t have to worry about being hooked up to a needle (during labor) or developing a spinal headache (afterward). However, to each their own.
I think the difference is that no one chooses the multiple-intervetion-baby-in-distress-mom-in-shock-everything-going-to-hell method of childbirth - it’s forced on them.
It certainly was for me - I had planned on a basically drug free natural birth (in hospital) and assumed that it would be uncomfortable but manageable as it was for my mother, aunts and grandmother.
It didn’t work out - instead I had what was possibly the worst experience of my life with the baby at the end being the only upside (and yes, Junior is a HUGE upside 
).
I suppose it rankles a bit when people comment about their birth experience as though it was a ‘choice’ and thus assume that my birth experience was a choice. Believe me, if I could have chosen differently, I would have.
Now, perhaps this shit-show of a birthing experience means that I wasn’t cut out to have children (without a LOT of medical interventions I’m sure we both would have died). Perhaps I’m not as womanly or feminine as some because my body was not capable of having a regular old low lights candles and breathing delivery. However, Junior likes me quite a bit and I think he’s a peach so I guess that’s that.
So - talk all you want about your positive birth experience - I won’t begrudge you that in the least. Just remember when you’re talking about it that some women got no say in the matter and hearing about ‘choices’ just rankles a bit. It’s like a tall person saying they ‘choose’ to reach a high shelf without a stool. I’m sure the 4 footer in the audience would love to be able to do that as well - sadly, for the 4 footer it’s not a choice they can make.
Amen.
I have rarely if ever read a post on this board that angers me more than InterestedObserver’s. To imply that childbirth is not painful is denying all of the feminine experience throughout human history. It takes us back to the days when male doctors told us that menstrual cramps were all on our head, and patted us on the head like children and sent us on our way. It is appalling to me that women in our day and age don’t support each other, but instead shame each other not only into enduring pain, but into feeling inadequate if we feel pain. Real, live, excruciating pain, by giving us the same line about it being a social construct and all in our heads.
Can some women have orgasms during labor? Maybe, I don’t know, but I suppose it’s possible. Do the majority of women feel pain to one degree or another? Yes. And IMO it’s profoundly anti-woman to pretend otherwise.
I’m not a woman, but I’m familiar with the concept. I’d think it verges on offensive to call child birth an integral part of a woman’s sexuality. Women can lead a fulfilling sexual life without spawning. As new agey as this trend might seem, women as baby makers is a very tired concept indeed.
The only baby machines I can think of are manufactured by GE under contract from the CIA.
Yep. We need to respect other people’s choices about how they have and raise children. We also need to respect that everyone doesn’t GET choices and so, when we defend our own choice, understand that we may be talking to someone who didn’t GET to choose a non-medicated vaginal delivery, didn’t GET to choose to breastfeed.
(My first was adopted. For several years I felt like hitting many people over their smug attitudes towards their ‘superior birthing choices.’ I’m probably too thin skinned, but I have yet to meet someone who wanted to breastfeed and couldn’t, wanted a vaginal birth and ended up with a c-section, or wanted to get pregnant and ended up adopting, who wasn’t occasionally hurt or rankled by the unthinking comments of others).
As to orgasmic birth - to me it felt like the worlds biggest bowel movement. There was definately relief and release, and joy - but I don’t tend to come after being constipated either. And frankly, there is a little too much Catholic left in me to want to associate motherhood with sex - that’s why God separated sex from baby by nine months 
I did have a choice.
When my obstetrician told me that my baby looked like she was going to be too big for my pelvis, as her head hadn’t even begun to engage at 38 weeks (which is not a good sign in a first pregnancy). He made it very clear that he would support whatever I decided to do, but that I shouldn’t expect an easy labour.
I decided that a planned, calm, chilled out, pain-free delivery was what I wanted.
So I had an elective c-section under spinal anaesthesia.
And you know what- it was an amazing experience.
Joyful and emotional and everything I wanted it to be.
The recovery wasn’t particularly painful, and I would do again tomorrow.
It was the right choice for me, and my daughter.
Can childbirth be empowering, uplifting, beautiful and orgasmic- undoubtedly.
I’ve seen enough of them to know it can also be upsetting, painful, messy, dangerous, unpredictable, undignified and exhausting.
“Medicalisation” isn’t always a negative, and c-sections don’t have to be seen as some sort of awful failure.
I decided that the risks of a long, difficult labour and a possibly obstructed delivery or cord prolapse with the associated risks to my baby simply didn’t outweigh the benefits of a vaginal birth-for me.
Someone else in the same position may well have made a different choice, and good for her if it worked out.
But really, this hierarchy where the drug-free natural birth is at the top for “real women”, and c-sections are a poor second for wimps and failures is ridiculous. Adding the level of " oh, poor you for feeling pain, I found the whole childbirth experience sensual and orgasmic" is just another thing for women to beat themselves up about, and who needs that.
Doctors never did that. They told us that menstruation itself was a dangerous medical condition, that menstruating women were basically incapable of even light physical activity and that women should spend huge chunks of their life “resting” because of their inherent frailness.
Different people experience pain in different ways. It’s not an attack on you if someone says they have found a way to manage the pain of childbirth that works for them.