Can Birth be Pleasurable?

Can birth be pleasurable?

This is a radical idea, one I have spent the last month reflecting on.

In childbirth education classes and prenatal meetings with clients, I talk a lot about “comfort measures” – tools and practices that can help a laboring person feel safe, comfortable, and supported through labor. Some of these comfort measures are movement, dimmed lighting, massage, essential oils, TENS unit, etc. There is a wide range of options, but the discussion is centered around one single idea: that birth is ultimately “painful” and the best we can do is create some kind of “comfort” around that experience of pain. 

I like to be practical, and I have said many times in my client meetings that I do not believe in “pain-free” birth, but instead believe that birth is hard work, and we were made to do hard things.

The difficulty is the gift. It is what transforms us into mothers. It does not serve us as humans to fear or avoid difficult moments.

But the idea of birth actually being pleasurable is so radical. This concept is outside of the way we typically discuss birth. It’s far from the way women experience birth in our culture – and honestly, vastly different from the experience I have witnessed with many of my clients. But, but, but, but there is something to it, and the idea seems more approachable to me.

For starters, oxytocin is the hormone that causes our contractions, and it is also the hormone we release when we feel pleasure. So on a physiological level there is a clear connection between our experiences of contractions and our experience of pleasure. This is solid ground to frame this conversation around.

And I have seen it. I have. And I have some lived experience of it, as well.

First, I think we have to dive deep into what pleasure is. Pleasure is a heightened, altered state. It is different from contentment; it is even different from happiness. Pleasure, in my mind, is a heightened, altered state in our bodies that we experience sometimes during sex, during self-care moments, during massages, during deep moments of connection with ourselves and others, and possibly during childbirth.

It usually takes work to experience pleasure, right? It’s not just immediately there. You have to be doing something geared toward pleasure in order to feel it.

Now, birth (in most cases) is undeniably difficult in some way. I never want to fear this. I never want to shy away from this truth. But can something be both difficult and pleasurable? Would someone running a marathon or an ultra-marathon describe the experience as both pleasurable and hard work?

People do difficult things all the time for the pleasure of it: hike the tallest mountains; run ultra-marathons; complete difficult degrees of education; achieve impossible feats that are both extremely difficult and, dare I say, painful. Yet, there is also some kind of pleasure. Otherwise, why would we again and again work towards these goals? And I know that birth is different from these accomplishments. Still, there is some connection.

When I teach childbirth education class, I often discuss the difference between “working hard through contractions” and “suffering through contractions.” There is absolutely a suffering cycle that people can get trapped in during labor, but it is not the only path to be traveled. There is another way to labor that does not involve suffering, and that could even involve pleasure.

Does pleasure have to be void of pain? This is a good question that I do not necessarily know the answer to. Are pleasure and pain complete opposites? If so, they do not seem like far off opposites that live on different planets. Instead, they might be opposites that are on opposing sides of the same coin. Can the way that we breathe through pain or the way that we are supported through pain allow us to transform it into its counterpart: pleasure?

Fear, more than pain, seems to be the enemy of pleasure. This can also be understood on a hormonal level. Fear is associated with the hormone adrenaline, and when adrenaline is in our blood stream, the hormone of pleasure oxytocin cannot remain. Through this thought process, it is not the “pain” of contractions or childbirth that does not allow women to experience pleasure during birth. Instead, it is the fear of labor that heightens the physical pain and traps some laboring people into a suffering cycle.

What have I seen as a doula? I have seen many unique births at this point, and I truly want to shy away from any overarching belief around women and their bodies. However, I do think it’s important to question the mainstream narrative and change pregnant peoples’ expectations of birth. After all, what we expect is often what we get.

I have seen women confidently work through labor, deeply connected to their body through movement, mindset, and breathwork. In these births, these women seem to escape the suffering cycle, often describing their births as a moment of strength. I do not know if these women would describe their births as pleasurable; maybe they would choose a word like “manageable?” I can absolutely recall a few births where the mothers who were laboring may in fact have been enjoying the sensations in their body, the contractions, as pleasure.

Personally, pain has always been associated with a problem. When I was in labor, I never felt like it was painful because I never felt like there was a problem. I did not have easy labors with either of my boys. My labors were long; even my early labor started with strong, frequent contractions, but I remember days later reflecting on my birth and thinking there is no word to describe the feelings I had in labor. It felt like an extremely difficult physical moment, but there was nothing wrong with my body, so I couldn’t call it pain.

Pain is a problem. Birth is not a problem. It is extremely difficult; I truly felt like my body was breaking open at points and like I had been pushed to the limits of my life force. Yet, even then there was a place of pleasure. There was. This doesn’t take away from the hard work, but it was there. And reflecting back on my births I do think there could have been a way to step closer towards the pleasure in those moments.

I think the key towards experiencing pleasure in birth is deep surrender. Letting go completely. Once the struggle of the mind shuts down, and the body is allowed to open fully, there is a path of pleasure that opens up. There are things that allow moms to surrender more fully: all the comfort measures I mentioned earlier, and of course a safe space to birth in and a supportive team around her.

What if much of the pain we experience in birth is not physical, but is in fact a result of fear, an experience of our fear around birth? This is an interesting, approachable idea. There is a lot we can do to manage fear. I, of course, think childbirth education is the key to this; normalizing birth can eliminate fear and possibly make birth pleasurable.

Listen – I am a little skeptical, and I am not trying to sell anyone snake oil. But I do think there is a deep truth here that has been forgotten or ignored. I think we can, in fact, do the hard work of birthing our babies while experiencing the pleasure of childbirth.