Orgasmic Birth Book Review by a Mental Health Therapist
This is a book review of Orgasmic Birth: Your Guide to a Safe, Satisfying, and Pleasurable Birth Experience, written by Debra Pascali-Bonaro and Elizabeth Davis.
While this book is over a decade old, it continues to be reccomended by birth enthuists over and over. {Because who can get over that title?!}
I read it for the first time while expecting my first biological child and re-read it with each pregnancy and childbirth It provides a unique and hopeful lens about birth that I found unparalleled to other birth preperation books. Therefore, it deserved a spot on this blog.
How does this book help Anxiety?
Reading about birth helps reduce our worry or anxiety about giving birth. While we can get to a point of “information overload” I found that this book provided such a unique vantage point of birth that it would overall reduce anxiety.
While birth is so often associated with copious amounts of pain, and described by many as “the most painful thing they have ever done” This book provides stories of women who experienced euphoria, and yes, even orgasms, while birthing.
This book helps moms-to-be envision a wider variety of outcomes and sensations leading up to their birth.
The Power of Narrative
Our minds run off of the information they have. The more positive information we feed our minds, the more likely they are to produce subsequent positive narratives. Examples of this are as follows:
If we happen to have co-workers who are optimistic, we tend to be more optimistic.
If we are told stories from our childhood that are largely positive, we tend to remember our childhood as being overall positive.
If the birth stories we hear from our relatives are full of love and support, we generally then think that our own births will go the same.
Listening to birth stories is not common in western cultures, unless of course it’s about just how painful it was:
“I almost dies the pain was so intense”
“It felt like a knife going up my butt”
“I was in labor for 50 hours”
These are the kinds of birth stories I think most American women grow up hearing. Occasionally, we also hear stories that involve a complete lack of sensation:
“I fell asleep with the epidural and woke up to push”
While every birthing person is entitled to their own birth narrative, the pervasive narratives we hear deeply shape our unconscious and conscious understanding of birth.
What if you filled your mind full of narratives about the pleasure and triumph of birth. This book provides dozens of stories from women who experienced a counter culture narrative:
“It felt good”
While the power of narrative is limited, and this book will not necessarily teach you how to have a pain free birth, it is a narrative that I am happy to see enter a sea of stories that tend to “one up” other mothers about just how painful it was.
As Pascali-Bonaro puts it: “It’s every woman’s human right to have a pleasurable birth.”
Secret Conversations No More
So much of mental health advocacy, and birth advocacy comes from a place of educating people on stories that often do not get heard.
Do you talk to elder female relatives about orgasms? Probably not. In fact, you may have never talked to another living soul on the topic.
Other than hearing about the baby being born healthy, you may have never even heard a “birth story” before. Unfortunately, this is because many times mothers suffer in silence from their own birth trauma. Because our culture doesn’t always know how to sit with grief of any kind, mothers keep with them the knowledge and experiences that could help the next generation.
Often, when we go to have a baby, we are terrified of what may happen with organs and processes that have never been given words, conversation, or education. For that reason alone, it’s helpful to read stories. To understand more than just other narratives, but to uncover what may even be classified as “secrets”
So even if a mother has a wonderful birth, a birth that is pleasurable and wonderful, she may not have the space to speak of it. After all, fathers have just barely begun to get into the delivery room! So what’s the secret that this book shares? Here’s a brief introduction to a definition:
"How do we define "orgasmic birth"? Our definition is broad enough to include those who describe birth as ecstatic and specific enough to give voice to those who actually feel the contractions of orgasm and climax at the moment of delivery.”
Birth shouldn’t be a secret. Mental health shouldn’t be a secret.
Definitions, education, and stories should be a common place.
I talk to my children about all things birth in hopes they grow up much more informed than I was. You should see the drawings my five year old has!
Secrets fester shame and guilt. These can eat away at you. I see it every day.
If you feel so inclined, jump into the secrets - learn what you don’t know to empower you!
My overall opinion: If you are expecting, and looking for a broader narrative - read it!
It is my deepest belief that mothers know how best to prepare for their own childbirth. They carry with them an intuition that I try to help them see, both as a fellow mother and as a mental health therapist.
If reading this review has given you the curiosity to seek a broader narrative related to child birth - then jump in! I thought the book was fantastic. Hence why I have read it over and over.
If you look inward and find that this is not text that you think serves you in the preparation of your own birth then leave it. Listen to yourself and your inner wisdom.
Please let me know your thoughts in the comments below and let me know if you chose to give it a read!
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