Friday, November 27, 2009

Review of Orgasmic Birth

I met the filmmaker Debra Pascali-Bonaro at the Lamaze Conference in October, and she gave me a copy of Orgasmic Birth to review. I’ve watched it three times and had three very different reactions to the movie. This isn’t a traditional film review; I won’t be giving a play-by-play of what happens in the movie. It’s more a written account of the conversations I’ve had with myself and with others as I’ve thought about the film.
~~~
The first time, I watched it alone while sewing. I found myself close to tears during the birth scenes. They were beautiful and moving. The noises and the movements evoked a bodily memory of my own births. When I watched these women move and heard them give birth, my body knew what they were experiencing.

The film follows eleven couples through their late pregnancies, births, and early postpartum time. While they were still pregnant, they spoke of their hopes and fears for the birth. They were interviewed again after their births and discussed how they felt about the experience. The film also features twelve different birth experts, including obstetricians, family physicians, pediatricians, midwives, academics, doulas, and birth advocates. Many of the names are familiar: OB/GYNs Christiane Northrup and Jacques Moritz, Dr. Sarah J. Buckley, Dr. Marsden Wagner, Ina May Gaskin, Elizabeth Davis, Penny Simkin, Eugene R. Declercq, and Robbie Davis-Floyd. Others might be new to some viewers: Carrie Contey, PhD, Maureen Corry, MPH, Richard Jennings, CNM, Ricardo Herbert Jones, MD, Lonnie C. Morris, CNM, Lawrence D. Rosen, MD, Naolí Vinaver, CPM, and Billee Wolff, RN.

Four of the eleven women give birth in a hospital with wildly different experiences: a first-time mom almost gives birth en route, not realizing that her labor is so far advanced. She commented that the hardest part was laboring in the car, when she could no longer move with her contractions like she could at home. A woman who strongly doesn’t want a c-section agrees to an elective induction and ends up with Pit, an epidural, and multiple vacuum extraction attempts. Another woman has a cesarean section for failure to progress. The other women give birth at home, some outside on their decks, some in birth pools, some in the corner of the shower, some on their beds. We see women squatting, kneeling, crouching, standing, swaying, walking, bouncing on the birth ball, hanging from a birth sling, climbing up and down the stairs. We hear them joke around and moan and sing and grunt and scream and cry.

Several of the women explained what they were thinking and feeling during their labors. For example, we saw footage of one woman screaming as her baby was being born. From the looks and sounds of it, you’d think she was in extreme agony. But the film cut to her explaining what was going on internally: It just felt so satisfying to scream, she said. Giving birth was the most satisfying work I’ve ever done. I loved that the birth scenes often included how many hours or minutes before birth. One woman had a very long labor: 38 hours. You see her laboring at 23 hours before the birth, then 18 hours, then 6, then 1, and then finally you witness the last minutes of pushing. Because you see the hours pass by, you understand that birth is a process that takes time and is sometimes just…slow and tedious and quotidian.
~~~
I watched Orgasmic Birth again a second time a few days later. My emotional response was more muted, and I found myself asking more probing questions about the film: What, exactly, was Debra Pascali-Bonaro trying to say with her film? Why did she choose “orgasmic birth” for the title? Might the idea of orgasmic birth set women up for failure when they actually go into labor and feel the rawness and intensity and pain, not just the bliss and the ecstasy?

I found myself particularly troubled with the word “orgasmic.” I think a number of other words describe more accurately what the filmmaker is trying to communicate in this film: ecstatic, empowering, or transformative come to mind. In our society, orgasmic is always used in the narrow, sexual sense. In that sense, orgasmic birth = having a literal orgasm during birth. But that isn’t really what the film is talking about at all. We do see at least one woman literally having an orgasm during her labor (she said it was very unexpected and quite lovely), but the other women experience something else, something more nuanced and more complex than simplistic sexual climax.

I thought about my own labors and births and there is no way I would label them as orgasmic. There wasn’t anything sexual in the experience. Sensual? Yes. Not in the erotic, titillating sense, but definitely sensual in the larger meaning—an experience involving all of the senses deeply and fully. Definitely ecstatic. Definitely painful and challenging at certain moments, mostly during the last hour or two before Dio was born. Empowering, yes. And normal and everyday too.

I wondered if my rejection of the idea of orgasmic birth was just a case of sour grapes. You know—for me birth didn’t feel like amazing sex, ergo it cannot for anyone else either. But I don’t think so. I totally understand how labor and birth can be pleasurable, enjoyable, and even sexually fulfilling for some women. I enjoy giving birth—not that every moment of it is sheer bliss and pleasure—but the totality of the experience, for me, is quite positive. Just not sexual in nature.

I do know some women in real life who have experienced moments of incredible pleasure (including sexual/orgasmic feelings) during birth, including a woman who I’ve known online for a while and finally met in person at the International Breech Conference in Ottawa. She brought her tiny newborn, not even two weeks old. This third baby’s birth was fast and furious, but twice during labor and pushing, she experienced moments of intense pleasure, much to her surprise. Click here to see pictures of her birth, complete with detailed comments. (Crowning pictures are quite graphic.)

I still find myself troubled with “orgasmic birth.” I worry that that particular phrase (though not necessarily the film) sets women up for failure. I can see women finding the idea intriguing until they actually go into labor. Then, as the raw power of labor threatens to engulf them, they will say: “$#@! This hurts! This doesn’t feel anything like sex! Give me the drugs!” Sex in our culture is also debased and commercialized. I don’t like the idea of linking our casual and sometimes crass attitudes towards sex to something as beautiful and sacred as birth (and I think sex should be beautiful and sacred, but it often isn’t in our culture today).

The other day, I looked up “orgasmic” in the dictionary and found that there is another meaning outside “the physical and emotional sensation experienced at the peak of sexual excitation, usually resulting from stimulation of the sexual organ and usually accompanied in the male by ejaculation.” The second meaning, one not in circulation in our everyday language, is “intense or unrestrained excitement” or “a similar point of intensity of emotional excitement.”

I had an “aha!” moment. Debra Pascali-Bonaro is arguing that birth can be a peak emotional, physical, and spiritual experience. And given the right setting and preparation, birth can include moments of ecstasy, transcendence and occasionally even sexual pleasure. Her film explains the hormonal and environmental similarities between making babies and having babies. If we see birth not as just a narrow equivalent of sex, but rather sex and birth and breastfeeding as a continuum of important and inter-related life experiences, then the phrase “orgasmic birth” makes much more sense. Think of it this way: if women were expected to make love in the same kind of setting that they labor and birth in (in a clinical environment, observed by unfamiliar professionals, monitored and tethered to machines, and above all their biological rhythms forced to adhere to a strict timetable), they would undoubtedly have a high rate of sexual dysfunction and disappointment.

Other thoughts I had while watching the film the second time: I wondered who this film is intended for. It’s definitely a film that people in the “birth world” would love (midwives, doulas, childbirth educators, birth activists, etc). But do we need yet another film that preaches to the choir? Would anyone with a more mainstream or medical view of birth even watch this movie? In other words, does the very nature of the film—and the title in particular—deter the very people who would benefit the most from watching it?

Remember the Today Show back in September that accused home birthers of being hedonistic? I had the thought that, while watching Orgasmic Birth, someone could watch the movie the wrong way and find fuel for that argument. Now, that person would have to ignore about 80 minutes of the film in favor of 5 minutes of material (or not bother watching the film and simply make assumptions about the message based on the title).

The hospital births that were decidedly not orgasmic or empowering or transformative (purple pushing, stranded beetle positions, "doctor knows best" mentality, multiple vacuum extraction attempts, cesarean for "failure to progress," etc) were a bit of a distraction. They showed these excerpts without enough time to explain what was going on and why. And the music, at times, was a bit too obvious in the emotions it was attempting to provoke. You know, the happy Enya-like music for the good parts, the stark, dreary music for the sad parts, etc.
~~~
I watched the film for the third time a few days ago with a group of family members: my husband, my sister-in-law Lisa* (mother of five children, the first three born with Pit and epidurals and OBs, and the last two born naturally with hospital-based CNMs), my brother-in-law Ken*, and his wife Mary*, who is 33 weeks pregnant with their first baby. Mary is seeing a hospital-based group of five CNMs. These midwives have a 7% c-section rate and seem very open to doing births in a variety of ways. Mary would like to give birth without an epidural, so we’ve been giving her lots of advice and suggestions with the caveat that she can take or leave them as she wishes. We kept a running commentary as we watched the film: advice, suggestions, reactions, and explanations of what was going on, which Mary found helpful.

After we watched the film, we had a long discussion about everyone’s reaction to the movie in general, and the phrase “orgasmic birth” in particular. Below is my paraphrase of our post-film conversation.

Lisa (mother of 5, last 2 born naturally): “The title didn’t really fit the film. The overall message of the movie was that birth is normal. The film showed really what giving birth was like for me when I gave birth naturally. And even how they showed those hospital births and how clueless people are and how they just do what their doctors say. That kind of behavior bothers me, and that’s how it was with my first three children. Now I know that my body does know more than what a doctor knows, and that I need to trust myself. If I were in Mary’s situation, I think this is the best movie you could watch. I like this film much more than The Business of Being Born, which was really Hollywood-ized. There’s more nudity in this film and more of the noises of birth—it’s really what birth is like.”

Mary (pregnant with her first): “It was invaluable to watch this movie with all of you, since you've already had several children. I liked hearing your multiple points of view during the movie.”

Lisa on Pitocin: “Pitocin is awful. If someone offers you Pitocin, RUN! Run away from that person. That’s why I got epidurals with my first three because I could not handle the pain once I was on Pitocin. It felt like I was being turned inside out. With my fourth baby [first natural birth] I was really scared because I didn’t know if I would be able to do it naturally. But really for me, the contractions didn’t hurt at all. Pushing did. I pushed my fourth out in a kneeling position, leaning over the back of the bed, which was raised up all the way. The nurse had never seen a woman give birth like that before. The only thing I didn’t like about the movie is that I don’t think birth is a sexual experience. The kissing thing doesn’t make any sense.” (A few of the couples kissed a lot during labor.)

We talked about the less commonly used definition of orgasmic (as a peak emotional experience), and they both totally agreed that that’s the meaning the film is trying to portray.

Lisa commented that orgasm [in the narrow, sexual sense] has nothing to do with birth to her. Linking it to sex, for her, didn't work. Mary agreed. Lisa commented that sex was often talked about as this “dirty” thing when she was growing up. They weren’t allowed to say the words "sex" or "orgasm," let alone have one. Mary commented that sex is often not what it should be and that it has too many negative connotations or implications in our society, so using the phrase “orgasmic birth” almost contaminates the birth. Lisa was pleasantly surprised to find that the film was different than she thought it would be like because of the title. The first few minutes are a montage of women in labor, making very sexual sounding noises (because, let’s face it, labor and birth often sound like that!) and she was thinking “oh boy, what am I getting myself into?!” They both felt that the title “Ecstatic Birth” more closely described the movie’s message. Still, Mary felt the title should stay the same, even though it’s not exactly the right fit for the movie, because it made her think.

Eric commented that he was most moved by the women who found that giving birth was a transformative experience—particularly Helen, who was a survivor of sexual abuse. (Helen was molested when she was 6, and raped when she was 19. She wanted to have her baby in a way that was safe, that was the opposite of her experience of sexuality in the past. She was worried that labor would trigger flashbacks, but giving birth became the most powerful thing that has happened to her body. She said, “I felt myself go away, and this woman who knew how to birth a baby came in. I felt transformed.”)

Lisa: “I now have complete trust in my body, myself, and my womanliness. The film did a great job of showing how birth is naturally. There’s a plethora of emotions in the whole process, from the excitement of first finding out you’re in labor, to impatience when it keeps going on and on.”

Mary particularly liked one husband’s comment about the birth, that “it felt like God was in the room.” She liked that the film communicated that it’s okay to be scared and it’s okay to cry or scream or whatever you need to do.

Towards the end of our discussion, Lisa commented: “Mainstream people aren’t going to watch the movie because of the title, and that’s a shame. How could I tell someone they should watch a movie with that title, especially some of my more conservative friends?”
~~~
It turns out that "Orgasmic Birth" was not Debra Pascali-Bonaro's first choice for the documentary title/concept. She pitched several other titles to media executives, including "Ecstatic Birth," but only "orgasmic birth" stuck. This makes sense of a title that is intriguing and controversial and memorable, but that doesn't exactly fit the content of the film. Her interest in the topic also comes from her own experience giving birth. From the Times Leader of NE Pennsylvania:

The birth of her own third child, 19 years ago, “was an orgasmic experience in the way that dark chocolate is,” Pascali-Bonaro says. “The release, the absolute release, as I felt his body slip from mine, was orgasmic.”
In sum: the birth scenes are incredible and the movie is worth watching for that reason alone. They're not overly romanticized or sanitized. I found them incredibly realistic, in all their variety, about what giving birth normally is like. I'd like a different title, because I think that it will keep many people from watching it, but I also understand the rhetorical power of "orgasmic birth."

* Not their real names. You know who you are!

18 comments:

  1. I am really interested in watching this! I had the induced, pitocin, failure to progress, we want you to have a c-section, I refuse a c-section, labor is miserable, then finally a beautiful baby arrives and makes you forget (for awhile) that it was that miserable experience. I love what Lisa said (Pitocin-run!). I want a wonderful experience next time. I want the freedom to move. I want an empowering, ecstatic, orgasmic feeling next time. I want to be able to say that it was a positive feeling overall, not "I'm so glad I have my baby, but boy the process leading up to it was miserable". I'm not saying that I want it to be all giggles and good feelings, but I want to be able to have control of my labor. Thank you for sharing this and it will definitely be on my list of things to watch.

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  2. Great thoughts! I have only seen it once and would love to see it a couple more times. I agree that the title may have been unwise, as a lot of women simply will not watch it or will dismiss it on that basis. "Ecstatic Birth" or something similar would have been better. The current title definitely has shock value, but isn't something that's going to draw medical professionals or mainstream birthing women. Thanks for your thoughts on the film!

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  3. I have been wondering about watching this film, but the title turned me off. Thanks for giving a review that now has me convinced that I will benefit from watching it.

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  4. Thanks for this, while I had heard about the film from many sources (including midwife for my first son) no one else had commented that the title didn't really fit the movie. I thought (from both the title and their discription of it) that it focused only on mothers who actually orgasmed during birth. While I understand that this DOES happen to a small amount of woman, and I don't think there was anything wrong with talking about it (I could see a woman who didn't know that was a possibility feeling ashamed if it happened to her), to me, watching a bunch of woman orgasm was, by definition, pornography. So I haven't touched the movie despite my love of birth-topic books, blogs, movies, shows. Now, since I've read your post, I might actually find/watch the movie.
    Thanks

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  5. As a birth advocate and activist, I appreciated the film and could certainly see how my friends would connect with the images and storylines. However, I doubted whether it would be appropriate for the average, mainstreamer. I think it's a bit too crunchy for most folks, especially if it's their first film on birth. Perhaps this would be better as a follow-up to something like The Business of Being Born. I would liken it to reading Ricki Lake's _Your Best Birth_ before diving into _Spiritual Midwifery_. I guess I'd rather ease people into it than risk scaring them away. Just my two cents. :-)

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  6. I was interested in watching this movie before, but hesitant because of the title. I liked reading your reviews from each time you watched the film. Because I have already seen Business of Being Born, I think that I may have to watch this one. By the way, how to you get men to watch stuff like this? My husband gets freaked out by nudity (even if it is breastfeeding/birthing nudity). I really want him to see this stuff and read books on this topic that I am so passionate about. I actually went through one book I really want him to read and I covered all the pictures that may bother him.

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  7. I still have not seen this. I'm eagerly waiting for one of our local midwives to get her hands on it for a screening. It's been suggested and hoped for but hasn't happened yet.

    I agree that the title could turn off a lot of people, but also make them think. My second birth was not orgasmic in the throw-your-head-back, "Oh god yes yes!" sense, but orgasmic in that, like during sex, I had to surrender all of myself to the sensations and choose to process them as pleasure, or at least choose to NOT process them as pain. Let's face it, when you are nervous and afraid during sex, and you think it's going to be scary and that it will hurt, IT WILL HURT. When you are relaxed and happy and feel safe and loved, and you know what will happen and expect it to feel good, it will feel good!

    My first birth was the scary painful virgin-sex scenario. My second birth was the orgasmic experience of a seasoned lover. And yes, it did feel really good, at least during the pushing stage. I wanted to push constantly! It was such a release. And when he was born, I wouldn't call it necessarily orgasmic, but I did shout out, "Oh my god, WOW!" because it felt so amazing. Also, early in labor, the waves of contractions felt very much like the gentle waves of pleasure that pass through my body after an orgasm's peak. (Later in labor, not so much!)

    I guess the title could be very useful in spurring discussions on what exactly "orgasmic" means, and shifting our perceptions on what is sexual vs. sensual, and how we can enjoy pleasure with our bodies and not have it mean something dirty. We refer to a really delicious meal as orgasmic (foodgasm), an excellent song as orgasmic (eargasm), so why not birth? Birthgasm!

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  8. Mallory--how do i get men to watch this? In my case, the men are already interested/okay with this kind of stuff! Frankly any birth movie will show lots of nudity in various forms. So if your husband is already not okay with nursing or birthing nudity, this is not the film for him!

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  9. Great to read your review!

    I'm the Trish from the film (& one of your regular readers!).

    For me, in my depicted birth, much of the experience really was a romantic bonding experience for me & my husband. Not sexual in a *turned on* sort of a way, but intimate - lots of hugging, love, looking in each others eyes, & togetherness in the face of both great pleasure & great pain. And through the pain & screaming, the feel of pushing my daughter out was intensely pleasurable. The emotional high & intense bonding (with both baby & my husband) after my daughter was born was similar in many ways to the aftermath of lovemaking. All this did not equal sex, but it was "orgasmic" in the sense that it was similar to orgasm in the ways mentioned above.

    Even if we are talking about pain, there are situations I can think of during sex that may have some discomfort involved. I'm not talking about kinky stuff, but about the borders of pleasure & pain that can occur in the experience, in the normal course of things. So even with the admittedly painful aspects of birth (my depicted birth was an extra long transition due to compound presentation), I can see how my birth paralleled it.

    So anyway, I just wanted to explain how, for me, my birth may not have contained an actual orgasm, but it certainly felt "orgasmic" to me.

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  10. Great minds, great minds. When I blogged my own thoughts, on this movie a while back, I had the exact same thought about the "hedonism" accusation. You do a great, thorough job of exploring this in much more depth, especially the ramifications of using the word "orgasmic" in the first place.

    It was so interesting to hear your relatives' responses to this - thank you for sharing them. I was surprised to hear that one thought this was better than "The Business of Being Born", as I felt/feel that BoBB would be a better choice for a skeptic or a newcomer to the concept of birth advocacy. Gave me some food for thought on my own assumption.

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  11. To Jill--I was able to really identify with your thoughts. I, too, experienced the same kind of "pleasure" with the birth of my son 17 months ago. I was thrilled with the experience, and felt so powerful. Pushing, for me, was the BEST part, so relieving and I felt like I was actually doing something productive. But I disagree with some readers' opinions of Pitocin. A non-stress test (because I had borderline-eclampsic pressures) revealed that my amniotic fluid was disappearing fast (I still don't understand where it "went") and after researching this condition, decided to relent to the midwife's suggestion that we induce. Although the pitocin did make the labor much more intense, I was still able to handle it without any epidural during the 28-hour labor. I'm glad I went with the induction because my baby was 9lbs 7oz, and the lack of amniotic fluid could have been dangerous, had he laid on his cord, etc. For my next birth, I'm considering home birth, if everything is going well and I don't have the hypertension. I'm now very intrigued by this film and am going to look for it here, locally. Thank you, everyone, for your thoughts!
    --camille

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  12. This is very timely, I am just about to watch this film which is on loan from my home birth midwife, and have been trying to get an idea (from reviews on the net etc) of what it is like to prepare my husband (who only knows the trauma of being present at our first birth, and thinks all birth is like that.) I regularly read your blog and was SO PLEASED to read this today! Very useful!

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  13. thank you for such a thoughtful post.

    i agree about another film that preaches to the choir. even though i AM one of those in the choir, I am in search of a language that is more universal.

    there has been a lot of fuss lately with birth workers and the 'advocacy' or 'activism' being dangerous to women, that there are too many empty 'promised' that birth can be transformational.

    this makes me sad. one, that birth workers get all clumped together and put on a 'side'. as a birth keeper my path is to just keep birth in the family, allowing the family to make their own moves and choices. and the other thing that makes me sad is how upset so many women are when they here about blissful birth stories or hear mothers feeling that proud feeling of birthing at home. recently i read the comments of a blogger who wrote about how dangerous one of Jan Tritons editorals were (it was the one on birth being one of the most transformational moments in motherhood) and the comments were full of venom for birth workers in general as well as "bragging" moms who birthed at home.

    now i know there can be some serious nazi's in the biz and thats not right. not at all. when we hold birth, we hold all women in birth. but also, this movement is young and a serious minority. i feel almost like in order to create a voice, we are going to have to make a bunch of films like the one you speak of here. eventually, we will figure out how to speak to more and more people using language that is helpful.

    i am towards the end of trying to do that with a fictional account of birth and midwifery that i hope gets seen by many. but we'll see.

    much love to you. i am always getting to chew on something good when i come here. you are the best at this.

    mb
    sorry for the typ-os. baby doing a late night nurse and only typing with one hand.

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  14. I agree with the idea that in sex as in birth, so much depends on the psychological; if you go into it with fear and anxiety, tension and distraction, no pleasure can come out of it. Whereas if you allow yourself to open completely to the experience, to the sensations... if you focus inward and are able to block out anything else going on around you (including the noise in your head, the buzz of your neo-cortex !)... if you feel NO fear and can totally relax, I absolutely do think orgasmic (-*like*) sensations are possible. Same goes for sex; the psyche *has* to be 100% compliant for orgasm to occur - if your head's not in it, it won't happen (at least not for me, anyway).
    For Chloë's birth (linked by Rixa in her post), I know it was because I was able to shut everything else out/off and recess right into myself, right into my primal brain (thanks in large part to being in the darkness and warmth of the enclosed bathroom, surrounded by warm water in a deep tub), that these sexual feelings happened for me. Pushing, too, was extremely satisfying, and again, absolutely orgasmic in the sense of 'sexual'. I was no longer in the enclosed security of the bathroom for pushing, but my birth team were brilliant, absolutely silent, and with the lights off, and feeling so loved and supported as I did, I was able to slip off once again into myself, and voilà! those feelings came rushing right back. And inversely, the moment any remnants of fear crept in (and creep in they did, as I reflected back on the pelvis-splitting pain of pushing out my nucchal-armed wonder back in 2007), the sensations going on inside me were perceived by a *fearful* me as anything but pleasure. Then, as the fear would dissipate and full confidence in my body would come back (coupled with the silence and darkness of the room), my *perception* of the experience, my interpretation of the tightenings forcing my yoni open, all changed, and pushing felt so. damn. good.
    Mind over matter ? Perhaps. But it undoubtedly helps to set your *environment* up for success, and this message, too, is hit home hard in Debra's film. Look at the love and warmth and darkness surrounding the women in the film, and look how *they* experienced labour, compared to the women birthing in hospital. I know it's not a generalization to make across the board, but being in a hospital environment is not conducive to pleasurable, ecstatic birth. It's just not. This is why, for me, it's important to get the message out about homebirth. If homebirth is safe for the vast majoirty of women, why aren't more women looking to this option ? It's high time we normalised birth. If I shared such an 'intimate' moment by posting my story and my birth photos so publicly as I have, it is my ultimate hope that women will read Chloë's birth story, and be inspired to look into ALL their birth options.
    Because as the saying goes, if you don't know your options, you don't *have* any...
    Thanks for doing this review of 'Orgasmic Birth', Rixa --and for the link-up to *my* orgasmic birth story :-)
    xx

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  15. PS Your readers may be interested to know that Debra has collaborated with Elizabeth Davis (midwife and author of "Heart & Hands") on a new book on the subject, and it is avalable for pre-order now :
    http://www.amazon.com/Orgasmic-Birth-Satisfying-Pleasurable-Experience/dp/1605295280/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259509627&sr=8-1

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  16. I've not been able to see this yet, but having recently given birth (at home) I'd really like to. Thanks for delving more deeply into the meaning of "orgasmic" birth, I can definitely relate to that term with my own birth. And certainly the quote at the end about it being a full release. Yes! I also like your mention of birth being this amazing, challenging experience and yet also normal and everyday. I don't know how to convey that to people, that yes it was a big deal and fantastic but it was also just something that was totally normal.

    I had avoided the movie until now because I thought it was really just about a bunch of women having literal sexual orgasms during birth. Now I definitely want to see it, knowing that it's a little more broad than that. :)

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  17. I saw the Orgasmic Birth screening in Montreal and afterwards a woman asked Debra why she used the title "orgasmic birth". She responded by saying something like this... She was at some sort of conference/workshop for movies or something. When it was her turn to introduce her movie and talk about it, one of the main guys told her to sit back down. He was turned off by her original film name (I guess it was boring because I don't even remember what it was now! :P). Debra was there with another woman, and she told Debra to stand back up and say that the movie is called "Orgasmic Birth". That got the people's attention and they wanted to know what it was about!

    My apologies for not remembering where she was exactly. I heard this story in May.

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  18. My friend just had a successful VBAC of a 9lb 10oz baby boy. She retells the story of the birth on her blog at the link below. At one point, she describes laughing while pushing (maybe exhaustion) but it reminded me of the discussion on Orgasmic Birth. Hers was amazing, even though it wasn't the "natural" birth she hoped for. I recommend reading her birth story!

    http://whereflowersgrow.blogspot.com/

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