We’ve all heard that some women are right in the thick of active labour and then all of a sudden, they orgasm. Deep down most of us call BS, however is there any truth to this tale? Can you cross that fine line of pain into pleasure during childbirth?
Doula, Bailey Gaddis told Babble, ‘My initial reaction when I first heard about women who reported orgasms during birth was that they were lying braggarts — mainly because I was jealous I had never experienced this phenomenon.’
‘But since I’ve become a birth doula, I’ve witnessed many women experience multiple orgasms during birth,’ she explains.
Yep, still seems like an urban legend to me. However, in the Sexologies journal (yep it’s a real journal), it’s been reported that 0.3% of births occur with an orgasm.
If you’re needing some more scientific evidence, Psychologist Thierry Postel surveyed 956 French midwives for his study “Childbirth Climax: The Revealing of Obstetrical Orgasm,” published in (once again) Sexologies in 2013.
He received 109 complete responses from midwives who had, combined, assisted 206,000 births during their careers. The midwives reported 668 cases in which mothers said they had “felt orgasmic sensations in birth.”
Many women believe that by self-stimulating their orgasm, they feel less labour pain as their focus is more on the pleasure of masturbation.
Dr Barry Komisaruk of Rutgers Univerity in the USA, says that, ‘Anatomically, orgasmic birth is no surprise. In fact, the intense stimulation of the vaginal canal in childbirth may work to block pain, whether that stimulation is felt as sexual or not.’
Have you experienced an orgasm during childbirth? Has masturbating during labour eased your labour pains? Do you think it’s possible to orgasm during labour? We want to know what you think, let us know below.
