Childbirth is mostly associated with grueling pain that comes along with labor. Pleasure would be the last thing in the mind of pregnant women who are often told to be prepared for a painful labor. However, for some, it is as pleasurable as an orgasm. Recently, a woman from France revealed about her experience of 'orgasmic' birth of her second child.
Amandine Mangin, 29, said that it was more like an 'intense' lovemaking. The delivery of her first daughter Alyssia was painful but then she heard about the concept of pleasurable birth and was intrigued, news.com.au reported.
Orgasmic childbirth, which is also known as 'birthgasm', is a sexually pleasurable child delivery experience. According to a 2009 Fox News report, obstetrician-gynecologist Dr. Christiane Northrup said that during childbirth as the baby moves through the birth canal, it stimulates the pathways involved in sexual pleasure. Moreover, the stages of natural childbirth mimic the normal sexual response of an individual in some ways, such as breathing become faster and deeper.
By the time Amandine, who has been married to Vlad for nearly seven years, was six months pregnant with her son Ilya, she said she had gathered the "tools to ride the waves of childbirth" by training herself as a prenatal yoga teacher.
She considers pregnancy as a really graceful thing but the first three months were not that graceful. She said: "I got morning sickness — which lasted all day — but as soon as the third month was over, I was blossoming like never before."
She also said that yoga was her means to cure back pain and swollen legs. She even walked regularly during her pregnancy and said she covered 10km in the three days before her due date.
"It's a holistic approach," she explains. "A physical preparation with yoga, breathing, dance, and massage."
According to Amandine, who is now a doula and Pleasurable Birth Preparation Practitioner, "acceptance and relaxation" are key to a pleasurable birth.
"Basically it is getting free of old programming and beliefs — such as 'childbirth is painful' — and updating my brain with positive affirmations," she said, "An emotional preparation with meditation, relaxation, visualization. A spiritual preparation with chanting, and energy-rising tools. I also prepared my perineum with oil massage."
A survey by the Positive Birth Movement and Channel Mum in 2016, has found that six percent of women say that they have had an orgasm during childbirth.
According to a 2017 Fox News report, Debra Pascali-Bonaro, director of the film Orgasmic Birth, and co-author of Orgasmic Birth: Your Guide to a Safe, Satisfying and Pleasurable Birth Experience said, "Giving birth was a part of our sexuality as women."
"There is no scientific, evidence-based medicine that supports it 100 percent, but on the other hand, it doesn't mean that some women wouldn't experience that feeling or something of that nature during childbirth," Fares Diarbakerli, a certified obstetrician-gynecologist in Clifton, New Jersey told Fox news.
"The term 'orgasmic' also includes all kinds of pleasure from experiencing birth with joy, ecstasy, intimacy, connection [and] bliss because so much of our language around birth is about pain and fear and we don't give voice to the many other emotions that can be felt," Debra Pascali-Bonaro added.
