Orgasmic Birth?

Here’s an interesting article about a professional mid-wife who is trying to promote the benefits of natural childbirth vs. C-sections and the use of drugs.  She says that women can experience a type of "birth ecstasy" under the right circumstances.

Gaskin began her practice as one of about 250 hippies who pooled their money in 1971 to buy rural land south of Nashville to form a commune. Soon she and a few other women on The Farm were delivering 25 to 30 babies each month.

While training herself, Gaskin sought out doctors and other midwives and devoured medical texts. But she never sought a medical degree, instead helping to create an alternative certification so lay midwives could prove their competency.

Not all obstetricians think home births are inherently unsafe. New York obstetrician Heidi Rinehart spent a few weeks at The Farm while a medical student. Although her husband also is an obstetrician, when they were having a baby, they asked Gaskin to be their midwife.

But even doctors who’ve never heard of Gaskin have felt her influence because of patients who have read her books, seen her birth videos or heard her speak.

“They request or demand or vote with their feet to have the kind of birth they want,” Rinehart said.

Now, Gaskin has a film in the works that is in keeping with her anti-establishment, freewheeling nature.

“We’re doing a movie called ‘The Orgasmic Birth,’ ” she said.

That’s not a metaphor. Gaskin says that under the right circumstances women experience a sort of birth ecstasy.

“I mean, it’s not a guarantee,” she said, shrugging her shoulders and smiling, “but it’s a possibility.

“It’s the only way I can think to market it to (this) generation.”

If women could really orgasm during childbirth, I think we’d be seeing a lot more babies being born.