Birth orgasms
And now for something completely different.
You may not have heard of it but there are some women who claim to have orgasms during birth.
Not their birth, that is; while giving birth to their babies. Each seems equally improbable, though.
Plus, the article calls it a “common ocurrence.” Don’t think so. Even if one construes the figures in a liberal way (868 noticed per 200,000 births), the actual incidence of orgasm during birth would then be .00434, not exactly what you’d call common.
Let’s get real here. For most women, giving birth is excruciating, and a bunch of breathing exercises doesn’t even begin to touch the pain. Epidurals do, but my guess is that women given epidurals would experience numbness that would preclude an orgasm even if a women were inclined in that direction for the occasion.
But for some women (supposedly a few percentage points, although I can’t seem to find a link right now) the nerves to that area of their body are so configured that they don’t have much pain in childbirth at all. I’ve known such women, and the ones I know tend not to have cramps with their menstrual cycles, either. They just seem to be wired differently. My guess is that some of the orgasmic-birth women might also be women with that unusual nerve construction, because otherwise the thing is simply incomprehensible.
Although I must say that human beings are almost immeasurably surprising.
And note, also, that the women in the study were all French.
Sounds like a bunch of hooey to me.
Pain and pleasure are easily switched around from the command center.
It’s why sadism and masochism exists.
An addendum to Ymarsaker’s comment:
One reason the sado-masochistic sexual relationship is potentially very dangerous is that pain is a condition for sexual pleasure and, for some, the greater the pain, the greater the pleasure.
I bumped into this issue years ago and concluded similarly to neo, its possible for a few women. Birth is not always a long drawn out affair. 20 years ago my best friend was waiting for his wife to give birth at their local hospital, while he was waiting a large black woman was hurried by on a gurney yelling, “this is my seventh child and I’m telling you folks, its coming now!” Later he was stunned to overhear nurses talking about her having a 15 minute labor at the hospital.
Sounds like a bunch of hooey to me, too, and I am a woman for whom labor was a whole lot easier than for pretty much all of the women I know. This is definitely not because it didn’t hurt – indeed it did – but because I got through it much faster than most people seem to, with less time for the overwhelming pain to overwhelm me. This seems to be genetic — my mother was the same way — and does not change the nature of the pain, nor the disconnect between that pain and anything I associate with pleasure. Skepticism seems appropriate.
My first wife andI had our son at home, as planned.
A book we had read (among many) suggested that since conception was a product of love making, birth should also be.
I still remember her yelling “Don’t touch me!”, 33 years later.
Carol Burnett said it best.
“You want to know what ‘natural childbirth’ is like?
Take your lower lip between your thumb and forefinger.
Now pull it up over your head.”
yyyeeeeeooouuuucchh
The last sentence was perfect, I’m still on the floor laughing!
“And note, also, that the women in the study were all French” But of course mon ami!
When people are in existential crisis, to the point where their spines are exerting all energies for survival, they don’t want anyone else to move them or provide nerve stimulus that distracts them. This is the divide between survival and death, which people know instinctively.
A woman may wish to hold your hand though if she thinks salvation comes through you. But if she relies more on herself, then perhaps not.
Also, the brain tends to not be able to distinguish strong signals from one spectrum vs another.
Intense cold feels about the same as an intense fire.