Birth & Sex

While often separated or compartmentalized mentally, giving birth is part of a woman's sexual life cycle. Indeed, an effective analogy is sometimes made between birth experiences and sexual experiences. The same things that contribute to feeling safe in a sexual encounter also apply to feeling safe in a birth environment--i.e. most people would not be able to comfortably "perform" sexually in a hospital, on an elevated surface, surrounded by strangers, with bright lights shining on them, and with people "coaching" their performance. So to it can be difficult for women to relax and feel comfortable enough in a hospital setting to release their inhibitions, let their bodies take over, and do what needs to be done to give birth to their babies. Birth--like sex--is an intensely physical process, the flow of which is also strongly influenced by the mind and emotions (and which can be disturbed or disrupted by outside interruptions or interference).

Some time ago, I read an article called Industrial Childbirth in Adbusters magazine (an unexpected place to find a birth article, I thought!). This author draws another effective parallel between sex and birth:

"Our collective idea of childbirth is pretty nasty – blood and fluid, panting and screaming, stretched anatomy, the emergent gooey greyish-purple alien...horrible! Remember when you first heard about sex? Remember how horrible that seemed? But sex isn’t horrible, is it? What’s missing...is the emotional element (emphasis mine). Sex is a natural and beautiful process, all entangled with love and passion. So too, and a million times more, is birth...But childbirth is not a medical procedure any more than sex is."

While then explaining that she isn't saying women who all have pain-free, blissful, complication-free births, she goes on to discuss fear.

"...I am saying that fear has no place in the process. Fear causes adrenaline production. This initiates the 'flight or fight' response where blood drains from the uterus to the limbs, slowing the process of labor until the primeval woman escapes to a safe place to give birth. Meditation and relaxation techniques during childbirth – which are often described to women as methods for coping with pain – can in fact be methods of preventing pain by preventing fear. As with sexual intercourse, if a woman does not feel safe, relaxed and preferably loved, she will experience tension and pain during childbirth."

You can read the whole article here: http://www.adbusters.org/magazine/80/industrial_childbirth.html

--Molly Remer