Orgasmic Birth: How to Have a Safe, Natural, and Amazing Homebirth with Elizabeth Davis

Welcome to Mama Goddess. I'm your host, Alexandra J. Johnson. This podcast is all about rocking your goddess life, creating vibrant health and celebrating motherhood and family life. It's about living an authentically awesome life. Let's have.

Hello and welcome. I'm Alexander J. Johnson and today's guest is Elizabeth Davis. Elizabeth has been a midwife, women's health care specialist, educator, and consultant for over 30 years. She is internationally active in promoting mother baby centered birth and is widely sought after for her expertise in midwifery, education and organizational development. She is also the author of Heart and A Midwife's Guide to Pregnancy and Birth, Orgasmic the Women's Wheel of Life and Women's Sexual Passages. Welcome, Elizabeth.

Thank you. Good to be here.

It's so great to be with you. And you have been doing this for 30 for over 30 years. So I'm very excited to be tapping into your wisdom today. And I'd love to just start off with what inspired you to do the work that you do right now.

Well, I started, I had my first child in 1972, and that is a period in our history that I refer to as the dark ages of childbirth. It was a time where fathers, partners were not allowed in the delivery room and all manner of medications were used on women without their real consent. And, you know, I was a hippie and I was involved in the back to the land movement and doing everything in a sustainable way, which led me to want to have a home birth. But at that time in my area, which was rural Oregon, I couldn't find a midwife. So I got some care at the hospital a couple hours away because I was living pretty far out with a woman doctor. And it was all right. I mean, she weighed me and said hello and was in and out of my room in five minutes and never talked to me about anything really. And then I met this woman who was pregnant and had a toddler with her and revealed that she was planning on having a home birth because she had already done so in California and asked me if I wanted to come to her birth. And I was thrilled. I mean, you know, I was 20, 21. Oh, wow. It's just so amazing to go to this birth in a milk shed in the middle of nowhere and watch this stunning woman do this thing just on her own power. And when it was over, I turned to her and said, and this is important because this is really how we got midwifery back in the States. I said to her, will you be my midwife? And she said, well, I'm not a midwife, but I'll be at your birth.

Wow.

And sadly, I went into labor a little over a month early. I know now that my nutrition wasn't the best and that I hadn't really gained enough weight, but I had no guidance. There were no books, really. So this wonderful midwife, quote, midwife of mine was not in town, and I felt I had no option but to go to the hospital. I really didn't. I didn't have anything ready. I wasn't ready to consider having a premature baby at home when I was two hours away from any help. So I went, and it was a brutal experience. You know, my son was taken away from me. There was no rooming in of babies. It was a nightmare, and I was so ashamed of it. I felt like I'd failed. You know, I felt like I should have done. I should have known. Why didn't I realize how important birth was? I'd wake up in the morning with my baby, and my first thought would be, no, you know, I haven't had him yet. I can't. I want to go back. I want to do it over and thank God for breastfeeding, because that really pulled us together and helped me heal from the details of how they drugged me against my will. And this horrible episiotomy. And it goes on. But two years later, determined now to have a home birth with a great team of midwives, I had this experience where I was definitely staying at home. There was no doubt, and my baby was coming. And I had this episiotomy. It turns out to be really key because I was so afraid of tearing that I really went deep inside myself when I could feel that she was about to birth. And as I did, I discovered I could feel everything. I could feel her head and her face. I mean, I could feel the details of her body inside mine. And especially as I was birthing her, I could feel her shoulders move through me. And the combination of the physical sensation and the emotional release led me to only to myself say that it was an orgasmic birth. Not a term that I used to really at all for many, many years, because I was establishing my career as a midwife and an author. I had international work. And I thought if I started talking about orgasmic birth, people would think I was crazy and I would be discredited and that would be that. So not so long ago, really, just, you know, probably a decade at the most, I met Deborah Pascali Bonaro, who had just made a film called Orgasmic Birthday and was beginning to show it all over the world. In fact, she's shown this film, I think, in 40 countries. And time and again, women would come up afterwards and say, God, I had that experience, but I was afraid to talk about it. You know, I didn't know anybody else did. And so we talk about those of us that have had orgasmic births coming out of the closet. And I just feel so fortunate that way back in 1974, I gave birth to my daughter that way. And that set me on my course because I felt like the contrast of my experiences was so great and it was so important to my self esteem and my confidence as a mother. I thought, how can I not serve this? How can I not? And that it's meant a tremendous amount of work for me in my life. But it also, at a pretty early age, set me on my course. And that's something to be grateful for.

Mm, that's so beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. It's amazing. And I always feel so much gratitude as I prepare to give birth to our first child. For all of you that had been doing this for over 30 years and literally pioneering the midwifery so that I can work with a midwife and it's legal at my home. So great. So thank you.

You're welcome.

Our midwife is awesome and she's Mary Jackson. And I don't know if you're familiar. Yes, she is amazing. But she was like, I was in jail. I'm like, oh, my gosh, the things that you all have gone through. So that our generation and the next generation and the next generation can literally have a whole new experience of birth is just. I mean, I get goosebumps and tears. So it's really incredible.

Well, yeah. It took us 10 years and seven legislative attempts to legalize midwifery in California. And, you know, when we started, we were naive enough to think that it was just a matter of demonstrating safety or cost effectiveness or something like that. And over time, we learned that it really wasn't about that at all. It was about going up against the most powerful lobby in the country, the American Medical association. And that what we really had to do in the end was we had to form liaisons, coalitions with other interest groups such as the Farm Workers in California now and the Junior League. We were advised by our legislator after our bill was once again defeated that if we had 50 coalitions, a legislator would look at us and would no longer see just that fringe midwife group. But a line of supporters behind us said it would make it much harder to Vote against us. I can't even tell you the number of volunteer hours that we put into forging those coalitions and more or less lobbying for ourselves. But in the end we succeeded. So now women have the option of working with a licensed midwife in California. And most of Us are also CPMs, certified professional midwives, which is our national qualifying credential.

Right. So can you talk a little bit about that? Because I know a lot of people. I mean, it seems just that for me it was like, absolutely, I'm going to work with a midwife. But the percentage is really high of people. What is it, 98% of the population still gives birth in a hospital. Something.

Yeah, Home birth is really increasing, though. I mean, even though it's a small amount, like the rate of home birth has tripled in the last six years.

Oh, that's so great.

Yeah, people are definitely picking up on it. And one of the markers that, well, Ricky likes, you know, the business of being born, her support out of hospital birth, home birth and midwives has been hugely important. And more and more celebrities are choosing home birth too. And that's the way we are. We check into the media and they get the attention. But there also was a really important study that was released in, I guess it was published in the British medical journal the Lancet, which is one of the BMJ actually is the website. You go to BMJ and you can access what's called the CPM Certified Professional Midwife 2000 study. And in that study there were 5200 and some planned home births for the midwife. And the outcomes were astonishing. I mean, the cesarean rate was 3.7, in contrast to our current 33% in the general population. And there was no increase in stillbirth, neonatal death, certainly no maternal death. And the outcomes were in terms of breastfeeding and satisfaction and no infection and no complication, the outcomes were excellent. So this is. I keep this on my desktop and whenever anybody says, oh, I've got a relative who's not sure I've got a friend or whatever, I just, you know, just attach this study and send it on. Because the more I've looked into the kind of research, this is a whole other area of interest for me right now because I'm revising my sexuality book and for example, there's a new birth control pill that suspends menstruation for a year. And you would think that the FDA would have done consideration, considerable research on something so drastic. And in fact, they had a one year study on 1,000 subjects. To me, this is, you know, it's just not enough. And here's the CPM 2000 study with, you know, 5000 plus home births spanning years of time. Now that's a legitimate study and that's what it takes to be published in the British Medical journal. They take 20% at most of studies that are submitted. So it's just a window into, you know, what some listeners already understand is a level of corruption in our healthcare system. And I think that we all just, you know, this is just the facts here and we need to be aware of it, you know. Right, yeah.

So it's so great too, because it gives, you know, like you said, you're just kind of on the fringe and kind of back to the land hippie. And I know a lot of people that I've talked to are like, oh, you questioning it? And it still seems a little out there. But then you give those statistics and it's like, wow. I mean, it's incredible. It's just so exciting.

Right? Yeah, well, I'm not exactly a back to the land hippie anymore.

I'm saying you were. I'm thinking you were.

I still have a really beautiful garden and. But I do so much international work and I feel like a world citizen now. I really do.

And all the work that you do is incredible. I didn't mean to say that in the wrong way. I'm just saying a lot of people, even for me, people think that I'm like, oh, you're just a hippie or whatever. And it's like, no, actually this is how it's been done before, before hospitals, and it's healthy. So can you just tell us a little bit? You're a midwife. What are the benef of working with a midwife? Why is a midwife working with a midwife different than working with a doctor? And how would somebody go about working with a midwife?

Okay, well, I have to recommend my book called Heart and Hands, which is just released in its fifth edition. It's completely updated and revised. I do this about every eight years. And in the first chapter, the first chapter is called the Midwife A Profile. There's a lot of political background, much more detail than I've just given you. And also an overview of what midwifery care is and a series of questions to ask a midwife when you are interviewing her. And that's a good guide. I mean, there are to get started in terms of finding a midwife, you might call any kind of local birth resource center or any place where people find doulas. Usually they will be aware of midwives. You might look in the phone book, depending on the legality of midwifery, in your location. The thing about, and I'll make this I think, a little more clear as we go on, the thing about choosing a midwife is of course you want her to be competent and experienced and that's why you look for licensure or certification. The CPM credential is, again, it's a national credential and the outcomes of how CPMs work, as I said, have been demonstrated to be excellent. So you can assume on that basis that she's got a solid level of skill and knowledge. But then every midwife's philosophy will differ slightly in terms of her approach. And the bottom line is you really need to pick someone with whom you are extremely comfortable. And that is because birth is a very intimate event and preparation for it involves developing trust. And the more you trust your midwife, the more comfortable you'll be with her when the birth is taking place, the freer you will feel in asserting your request during the birth, whether it's for more contact or less. You know, do you need privacy? Do you need someone real close in? Do you want it just to be your partner? Or do you want to give your partner a break and have your midwife be with you? Do you want to catch your own baby? Do you want a water birth? What do you want? There are many decisions that need to be made in the course of the, of this process. But in a nutshell, a midwife gives comprehensive prenatal care, meaning that she orders the same labs that a physician would order. But before she ever gets to that point, she screens you for any pre existing medical condition. Heart disease, clotting disorders, kidney disease, the big ones that would rule you out from having a home birth. And once those are out of the way and everything looks good to get started, she can send you for labs and perform physical assessments at the same schedule that a physician would do. But there's so much more because as I was saying about my five minute physician visit back in the day, today, it's not a whole lot different. The average length of meeting with a physician is 10 minutes, and the average length of meeting with a midwife is about an hour. And that hour is very much directed besides the physical assessments. And midwife takes a lot of time with palpating, feeling your baby's position, sharing that information with you, and even teaching you how to feel your own baby's position, having Your partner listen to the heart tone. Just making. Even the siblings, if they're siblings, they're invited to participate in the prenatal and hear the baby too, and that kind of thing. But then there's just the questions that arise in the course of pregnancy. And, you know, it's been said that midwives are experts in normal care, meaning that they know about nutrition and at the same time they honor your nutritional preferences and they know that we all have comfort food foods and that we all blow it now and then, but still with a focus of wanting to optimize, help you optimize your nutrition and exercise and all of the components. You know, it's been said that the caloric output of an average first labor is equivalent to that of a 50 mile, 55.0 hike. Wow. It gives you some idea of, of what you need at a physical level. And probably in a moment we'll go into the hormones of labor a little bit more. But to talk, to add to what the midwife offers, she offers something that is almost unavailable in the medical system, and that is postpartum care, meaning that she will come to your home at one day and two day and three day, and sometimes, sometimes every day for seven days straight to make sure that you're healing right and that your breastfeeding is going along the way you need it to, and that you're not getting undue pressure from the household and that people are helping you in the way that you need to be helped. You know, I really do think. I don't know if you would agree, but that the first six weeks of caring for a baby, especially the first one, is probably the hardest work you ever do.

I haven't had it. I'm in the process. I'm seven months pregnant.

There you are. That's what I would say to you. And it's so hard to understand how this could be so hard when even if you're kind of resting a lot, but somehow a whole day goes by and you don't get a shower or you barely have time to eat. You know, the baby wakes every hour or so with breastfeeding and the hormones are all over the place, so you're up and down and, you know, sleep deprivation sets in over a course of time. It's quite something. And postpartum care can really make the difference in helping you get around that corner. And I won't say resume your normal life, but I will say integrate the experience so that you can start fresh with your baby.

Yeah, that's beautiful. And then you don't have that at all. When you go to the hospital, it's kind of, you just give birth and kind of leave.

And there, not only are there emotional issues with that, but there's some serious health issues. Like I've talked to a number of women who had episiotomy, something that a midwife hardly ever does, that's cut to enlarge the vaginal opening and nobody has checked them until six weeks. Well, you know, it's so easy to develop a low grade infection, have impaired healing. By the time you get in to be seen, the tissues have come apart and now you need reconstructive surgery or whatever. I mean, there are things that really do should be monitored and we're just in a, you know, a healthcare system where we're trying to cut costs and that's good, but only to a point. There's certain services that are essential to real health.

Right? Yeah, I think it's. I love that the postpartum, the afterwards is so important too. And I feel so blessed to be working with a midwife that is so aware of my needs and so supportive and I feel so safe and supported. And I talk to a lot of women and that go to the hospital and they don't feel supported at all. So I think I'm curious on what are some of the fears or. Yeah, let's go with the fears. What are some of the fears that you see women have around birth and how do we kind of navigate those, the common ones?

Oh, well, now I can probably talk a little about the physiology of birth, which sounds boring, but it's not. No. Yeah, that'd be yes, please do. Okay, so there's this point that we reach at about 4cm of dilation. So you know, when you're in the birth process, the first stage of labor is the dilating phase and your cervix goes from being relatively closed to opening to 10cm or maybe a little more, depending on the size of your baby. And right around 4cm. Technically we call this the transition from early labor to active labor. And at that point there is. The intensity of the contractions is quite a bit more for most women than they expected. This is the point of saying, I can't do this or oh my God, this really hurts. What was I thinking about natural birth? I must have been out of my mind or even. There's a psychological fear of being taken over by labor. Like, this is much bigger an experience than I thought. And what I've said about it, it's the point where you realize that you don't do birth. It does you. And that is. Is one of the things about birth that's so magnificent. And in my work on sexuality, we can draw a parallel. We can draw a lot of parallels here to the degree to which we let go in making love does indeed affect the magnitude of sensation and ecstasy that we experience. And labor is very much the same kind of process which most people can't even. They're thinking. I'm sure people are listening to me thinking, this woman does not know what she's talking about. But at a hormonal level, the hormone oxytocin, which is the hormone of making love, it's the hormone that we release with physical arousal. It's also the hormone that we release at the mere thought of our lover that would cause us to be aroused without direct stimulation, which is why it's called the love hormone. And interestingly enough, it's the same hormone that lets down the breast milk and causes a mom just hearing a baby cry to let down her milk again without direct stimulation. There's a strong emotional component of how oxytocin functions. It is also the bonding hormone. And at the time of giving birth, it is 10 times higher than at any other time in a woman's life.

Wow.

So we are meant to have pleasure at the moment of giving birth, and we are meant to be primed with oxytocin for the purpose of bonding with our babies. And they, too, are primed with oxytocin, revved up and looking straight into our eyes and ready to go. This is nature's design. But the thing that gets in the way of this, physiologically and all too often, this is part of the experience in the hospital. The hormone that opposes the oxytocin is adrenaline. So thinking about making love, and suddenly there's a knock on the bedroom door and you go into alert mode, or the phone rings, you've got to turn it off, or somebody actually opens the door. Anything that disrupts privacy and the flow of oxytocin and causes you to have to think or stop, or certainly if you feel afraid, feeling observed or feeling afraid, those are the enemies of a spontaneous orgasmic birthing process. And if you think about what happens in the hospital with strangers coming in and out of the room unannounced, the monitor observing you, everyone looking at the monitor and not at you, the focus going off of you and the baby onto the machine. And midwives certainly listen to heart tones. Don't think for a minute that they're not monitoring the baby as well, but they're not doing it with a monitor. It's not necessary. Necessary to do that for safety. So, yeah, just having a quiet space and having privacy allows oxytocin levels to rise. Unfortunately, when women go into the hospital and have that feeling of, oh, my God, this is more than I can handle. Well, wherever women are, the good news at that moment of, oh, my God, this is more than I can handle is right around the corner, the endorphins are coming. Amazing. The endorphins are what you feel. I give the example of I'm not much of a runner, and every now and then, somebody gets me to go running with them. I prefer dance and aerobics and whatnot, but if I go running, there's typically a moment where I feel like, oh, my God, why? What am I doing? Why am I doing this? I just want to go home. This is hard. I feel sick. I want to give up. And then I get the endorphin rush, and I'm, you know, I'm like running like a, you know, a cheetah. I'm just. My body's on automatic and I'm flying through space. And the endorphins also are a big part of what we call nature's pain relief in a natural birth process. But they come at that moment of giving in and surrendering and saying, I can't do it. Right at that moment, the endorphins come and make the whole process so much, so much more bearable, and they change your consciousness, they alter your perception. So what else can I say about the physiology? I wanted to say that there's this thing that happens in hospital births called the cascade of interventions. And that would be where, say, a completely healthy woman, she had a great pregnancy, everything's good. She's planning on having a natural birth in the hospital, and that's more powerful. And it is possible. Don't get me wrong, it's certainly possible. But let's just say she's really healthy, and she goes in and has that reckoning of, oh, my God, I can't do it. But the adrenaline levels rise and the oxytocin drops. And adrenaline is also known to make the cervix rigid. So now she's really having unusual amount of pain with her contractions because she's not able to just be in the oxytocin field as she should be. And she asked for pain relief. So she gets an epidural. And one of the side effects of epidural is to lower maternal blood Pressure, so that depending on how much is given, her baby might have some distress. But if the practitioner is wise and doesn't give her too much initially, she might not have that problem. But very possibly contractions will slow down or stop. And at that point, the choice is made for pitocin. We need to do something. Pitocin is artificial oxytocin. The problem with artificial oxytocin, with pitocin is that there are only uterine receptors for it. There are no brain receptors. So the love correlation, the bonding correlation, the ecstasy correlation that comes with oxytocin is absent with pitocin. Pitocin actually shuts down a woman's natural production of oxytocin and also causes contractions that are really strong. So at this point, really strong contractions combined with the epidural may impact the baby negatively. Not enough oxygen to the baby. And we have a cesarean. We have a cesarean for a healthy mother and baby that really had no problems. But for the fairly typical chain of interventions that happen in hospital birthright now.

That'S amazing. So then it was the. Is it called, like, the hormone cocktail that I've heard before? Kind of like that?

Yeah, the cocktail of hormones that's part of labor.

So you kind of disrupt that.

Yeah, the oxytocin and the endorphins and a little dopamine thrown in. I mean, they're. I mean, if you think about the. The way that you feel when you've made love to somebody that you really love and what the afterglow is like, that's how you should be feeling in labor. And, you know, what you need for that, you know, and safety, the word that you chose is that's so important. And that doesn't mean people hovering around you, necessarily, but it does mean somebody that is, you know, that you are satisfied, is adequately assessing you and the baby and is more or less guarding the space and preventing unnecessary interruptions or distractions and believes in you and believes in the process. That's safety, and that is what makes the hormones work properly as they should.

Yeah, that's so amazing. Like, it just sounds like common sense that we would want to be tapping into that to all of those hormones. And then we get the adrenaline. And it's not surprising that we have so many interventions.

Right.

I mean, it just seems.

Yeah. Yes. And you're probably thinking, well, how is this even possible that physicians aren't aware of it? You know, I mean, if this is physiology, then what are they learning in school? How come they don't Know this. And you know, I would also recommend the work of one of my colleagues, Robbie Davis Floyd, who has written a book called, well, go to her website, robbiedavisfloy.com and she has an article there where she talks about the three paradigms of healthcare. And I've reiterated these in my books. You'll find them in orgasmic births. You'll find them in heart and hands as well. And it helps to understand that medicine right now is really a technocracy, meaning that it's about technology and the body is viewed as a machine. And the idea is that the practitioner never have fear. And it's not about emotions, it's not about feelings. It's just about getting the right drug, the right medicine, and the right amount, and running every test in the world to be sure no base has been uncovered. You add a dose of fear of litigation. You know, the malpractice crisis is out of hand. And you have a particular type of practice where common sense may not always be the gold standard, where what used to happen in medicine, where the country doctor would individualize care and really think about now, what does this woman need? I know her. I know her health status. She doesn't need that test or this test. She needs this one. Now, a practitioner would say, I better run every test just in case. I got to cover my bases. So this is technocracy. And where midwives, most of them, operate well, the middle ground is something called humanism. And in humanism, we try to be. The practitioner tries to develop a better bedside manner, takes a little bit more time to inform a client, maybe changes the atmosphere for birthing a little nicer paint on the wall or nicer furniture, more welcoming to the partner and family. But I've called this a kinder, gentler technocracy, because all too often, it's still the same medical protocol and practice to which the woman is subject. In humanism, right? But in holism, you have the creation of a health care partnership where it is understood that the practitioner and the. The person seeking care are equals. They both have life experience. They're both adults. They need to navigate a relationship. Because how can we expect women to trust us if we're not trustworthy? How can we, as midwives expect women to be open and transparent if we're not transparent? So now we are in an intimate relationship, and we are creating a dialogue that is real. And you are at the helm in you, the client, are at the helm in the holistic model, meaning that as a midwife, for example, if you ask Me, what I think would be a good source of protein for you. I am always going to ask you what you think. It's not that I won't give you a suggestion eventually, but my focus is going to be on drawing out your knowledge, your wisdom, working with your preferences to get to something that you will actually do. Because I could tell you to eat, whatever, and we all know that none of us like to be told what to eat. But if I work with you and what you like and who you are to evoke your own knowledge and your own part and your participation, then we've really. That's sustainable and that lasts after I've gone. I mean, the postpartum care is only so long. My objective as a midwife is to create autonomy in you and sovereignty in you so that you feel like you know what you need to know to be a good mother and to be a strong woman. And I don't want your dependence on me because it's not realistic. I'll be off to the next birth and the next client. Yeah.

That's so beautiful. That's amazing. And it's really. I can see, like, the process of working with a midwife, of really bringing her, a woman back to herself and trusting her intuition and having faith in her body, you know, because definitely going through this process, for me there was. I love my body and I've done a lot of work with it, but it's like, oh, my gosh. It takes a whole other level of faith and trust and honoring your body through pregnancy. And I feel like I've gotten that from our midwife as well. And it's just a beautiful thing, a gift for you guys to just really support us in finding our own authentic expression.

Yeah. You just mentioned a word that I was wondering how you're feeling in your pregnancy. You said intuition. And I'm just wondering if you feel that you have been more intuitive in this pregnancy than perhaps you were before.

Yeah, I mean, I think that I have. I definitely have worked on my intuition over the years, but, yeah, definitely just more intuitive and also just more clear on myself and, like, my boundaries and just really stronger in my essence of, like, who I am and what I stand for and what I want. And there's just a whole new level of kind of inner power that's coming up. That's just awesome.

Awesome. That's great. That is awesome. Yeah. Well, one of my more recent discoveries around the birth process and the hormones has to do with intuition and oxytocin. Really? I suspected for a while I started in my sexuality book looking at the changes in women's desire in the course of the monthly cycle. And it was easy to correlate increased desire with the oxytocin peak that happens mid cycle with ovulation and also again right before menstruation, right at the beginning of menstruation times when women, you know, report they want sex more than usual. And I have learned more about oxytocin. I thought, well, you know what, desire is one thing, but women also report feeling stronger and feeling more self possessed and certainly with ovulation, having a peak level of performance in a number of types of, well, you know, all kinds of academic testing and physical endurance and things like that. The peak of the cycle really is a peak. And women also mentioned being more intuitive and having precognitions and that kind of thing. So investigating more on the oxytocin connection and discovering that what oxytocin does at high levels is it changes the brainwave frequency. It slows the brainwaves down from the ordinary beta frequency where we are talking on the phone or thinking, doing a lot of thinking or processing mentally. From there we drop down into alpha with any kind of rhythmic activity. Dancing, gardening, sometimes riding in the car, driving, showering, swimming. These all induce an alpha rhythm, running, another example. And the endorphins are part of that process too. But what's been found of women in labor is that their brainwaves, if they're not, you know, they're not with an epidural and they're not with pitocin and they're under the influence of high levels of oxytocin, is that they're in theta frequency. And theta frequency is the most, is the slowest brainwave and the greatest amplitude. The longest wave in human consciousness, which doesn't sound like much, but it's associated with alterations in time, meaning that an hour can seem like minutes and minutes can seem like an hour. And we know what that's like from really, really, really deep lovemaking. And again, the same occurs in labor where time stretches and the woman is entirely in charge. She's really setting the pace. It's her body and her hormones and her frequency that we should be following. The most important thing that anybody can do for a birthing woman, and this is her partner, her friends, her family, and certainly her birth attendant is follow her and train to her and run the energy of oxytocin, which is the energy of love. And most decidedly do not run the energy of fear. Because when we run fear, we run Adrenaline and it disrupts the field in which she's operating. We can pay attention to the baby, we can have concerns from time to time, but we need not go into fear. It's not a productive state for the laboring woman. And it really robs her of the magnitude of what she's doing that is indescribable. It's part of the orgasmic experience. Women have said they feel like they're out of their body between contractions and they're traveling and they're understanding things or they're healing, deep healing from maybe a prior birth experience that wasn't so good, or maybe even healing abuse issues. There's a therapeutic neurophysiologic dimension to birth that in other words, other cultures, I mean, birth is considered a blood mystery. It's a rite of passage. It's not some kind of physical event. It's a major, life changing moment for a woman.

I love the images that you paint just for birth. And it seems like it can be a very, like you said, peak experience, transformative experience for a woman. For a lot of women, there's the fear around birth or the stories that we've heard and the images we've seen, but that it can actually be like we're birthing a new self and it can be magical and orgasmic.

Yeah, well, we're kind of supposed to be birthing a new self because, you know, you look at the sequence of our lives and especially the first birth, I mean, we're going from being, you know, a maiden, a woman, to being a mother. We're making a huge transition. Another thing I would share with you is when we're talking about this, the rite of passage or what, you know, the blood mystery aspect of birth, you know, something happening in the body that is mysterious. Is that the beginning of menstruation or menarche, and also the cessation of menstruation or menopause. All of these experiences have been honored in other cultures as rites of passage. And that has piqued my curiosity too. And what I've learned there is that what they have in common is a tremendous amount of hormonal instability over a period of time where women become. Well, in our culture, they're considered. They could be considered crazy, or they could be considered in need of medication or something like that. But I like to think of them as wild, like unadulterated and changing and dramatically expressive of things that are in some ways uncontainable. And again, as a culture, if we honored this and approached women in These transitions, with humor and understanding and support, they'd have more freedom to experience them fully and come out reborn on the other side, instead of feeling they needed to repress all of that and have it come out later in distorted ways or in unhappiness. You know, when my daughter was. She was only 10, and I was getting ready to go to a midwife conference, the first manna conference, the first national midwife conference that we had. And for whatever reason, I decided that I would give her a box of menstrual pads and show her how to use them. And she did indeed start bleeding when I was at the conference. And afterwards, she was like, mom, how did you know? And I heard myself saying, well, I'm a midwife. How can I not know? Because my experience of her was that the push, pull of, you know, mommy, Mommy, mommy, you know, and you're not the boss of me. Don't tell me what to do. Those almost like contractions in labor were coming closer and closer. I could feel it building up. And that's an example of how these things are similar. Menopause, you know, I'm through it. And I was like a teenager again. I had a lot to. To get out of my system. So how do we learn to love these things and see them as purposeful and meaningful instead of detrimental or in need of some kind of medication to tone us or dumb us down? Right. That's the bigger picture of what pregnancy and birth are all about. Yeah.

That's so beautiful. I love it, too. Just of the expression, like the push and the pull and the contractions and that there's almost. We're just kind of going through our own chaos to find a new expression of ourselves. That's really inspiring.

Yeah.

So it gives us. It gives us insight and kind of like hope and empowerment to, like, oh, I'm not crazy, I'm just wild. And I'm finding a whole new dynamic part of myself.

Yeah, yeah, let birth be wild. You know, just let it bring it back to its integrity. And I was thinking about. I was feeling like, gosh, there's probably some women out there that are thinking home birth is not for them, or they, you know. Yes, it's true that some private insurance does cover midwives. So if you're thinking about home birth, investigate that. But if you've got hmo, you'd be paying out of pocket. And some people flat out can't afford it. Although there are midwives that will cut you a deal on occasion, it may not be an option. So if you are in a situation, for whatever reason, where you will be in the hospital. My recommendation would be to find a doula, because a doula does the emotional side of midwifery for you, meaning that it is her role to be aware of your preferences and honor your choices, no matter what they are, whether she personally would agree with them or not. And to keep your space safe to, you know, to secure the perimeter, so to speak, and try to make you as safe as possible. I mean, again, you're still going to be going up against the protocol. And so it is very important to find a doctor or maybe you can find a midwife in the hospital that is on the same page as you are. But even midwives in hospitals aren't always available to you for continuous support and labor. And that's where a doula can come in. Some women feel like, well, what about my partner? Can't my partner be a doula? And my honest opinion there is, your partner should be with you like your lover. I mean, he should be or she should be, not having to think because thinking disrupts, you know, it disrupts the flow of energy and the intimacy. And a doula can do the thinking for you, more or less, and do the interaction with the medical staff and handle that end, and that can make a huge difference.

Wow, that's very cool.

I love that too.

Just for the tips for the men as well. I love what you said earlier. Entrain to the birthing woman that that's kind of the man's role of not thinking and not doing, but it's to be there, to be, to be connected to his partner.

Yeah, I mean, we know that one of the things that. Right, you know, physiologic, again, that stops, you know, oxytocin production is the neocortex. So bright lights, people talking, asking you questions, thinking will dramatically stop oxytocin. Just like making love. Like if the lights are on bright and somebody is asking you a lot of questions in the middle of making love, how far are you going to get? You know, I mean, it's not like bright lights aren't fun once in a while, but generally human beings will seek privacy and darkness and, and music or quiet. We know that makes it better. And the same is true for giving birth. Same thing.

So what would you recommend on how do we prepare for birth? Do you have recommendations for a pregnant woman on how to prepare for birth and even preparing for an orgasmic birth? Is there any things that you would recommend a woman to do?

Well, the book Orgasmic Birth is broken down into chapters around areas of preparation. And the first one is no birth, where all the physiology that I presented and more is given you. And then you have options and you make choices about how can you optimize the possibility of this experience in terms of where you birth and with whom you birth. Then being vibrantly healthy, you know, having, you know, being in optimal health will minimize the chances of complications and the use of technology with it, you know, a personalized approach to exercise and nutrition that's not by rote getting into your sexual well being. And for a lot of us that means exploring experiences of, well, abuse. You know, there are, you know, the rate of abuse. Who knows what it is? I mean, as someone said in one of my classes the other day, we used to say one in three women has experienced abuse. And she said, she's a psychologist, she said that's an old statistic and I don't think the rate of abuse has gone down. So we're talking physical abuse, emotional abuse, sexual abuse, obstetrical abuse, gynecological abuse. Any time where our body is touched or entered in a way where we're not in full compliance is abusive and trusting. Healing your body, healing your psyche from. From whatever way you've had to disconnect in that moment and bringing yourself back into your body and not feeling that you have to do this to be perfect, but giving yourself permission to do this as a woman by loving yourself so much that you see it's important is how you're going to be the kind of mother that won't encourage your child to disconnect. You know, it's all connected. Healing. That stuff goes a long way to having an orgasmic birth, having an orgasm period. It's all about being embodied and without being overly. I don't want to frighten women away from approaching this work because the book is full of exercises and options that you can take or leave.

Yeah, it's amazing. I'll just say that I highly recommend everyone to read it. It's in my top five for sure. I read it in a couple days.

Love it.

Amazing.

And then there's a chapter on expect the unexpected. And that's all about. We can do everything in our power to prepare and anticipate a certain kind of birth experience. But because birth is a mystery and because it's unforeseeable and not predictable, you know, bad things can happen to good people, so to speak, or shocking experiences that it can take years to understand. My first birth experience, I didn't deserve that. You know, but it happened to me. And part of my. What I had to surmount and integrate was healing from it and for it and for myself. And, you know, I was mentioning earlier that for so long, I was ashamed of that experience, and I almost didn't want to tell anybody about my birth because I thought I had failed. And then somebody was speaking to me about indigenous healers and said that, you, in many traditions, you cannot be a healer unless you have a wound. And I just thought, you know what? I've got one. And I'm no longer going to hide it or be ashamed of it, because that's my mark for the depth of understanding and compassion that I can offer. If I didn't have that, I wouldn't be the same. You know, and so many of us have these wounds that we hide, but in the process of becoming women and becoming mothers, like, wearing these wounds with a certain amount of pride, I survived this, and I'm still here. And I'm intending to be more and more myself is really the ticket. Yeah.

And what a beautiful demonstration of, from your wound, how much you've created for all of us to inspire all of us. So the beauty that can come out of our challenges is really inspiring, too.

Thank you. It wasn't always easy.

I know, I know, right? When you're, like, in it, you're like.

I don't deserve this.

Why me?

Oh, yeah. And like I said to my students the other day, after whatever I went through with my kids or something, just a moment. I walked in, I sat down, ready to start class, and I. I want you to all know that you will never get it together. And they all just sat there, and then they burst out laughing. And it's true. Life is not about getting it together. You know, it actually, for me, it's turned out that the hardest things are coming as I get older. I'm 62, so the biggies, you know, like peeling off the easy layers, well, that was relatively easy. But the really big stuff, maybe things that I've been carrying from other lifetimes or whatever, I'm getting down to those now. And thank God I have the life experience and the strength and the stamina to look at them. I could not have done it at the age of 20. That's so great.

It just gets better and better. We're stronger and stronger.

Well, hopefully. So.

I love it, too, because we can have the. The desire for an orgasmic birth or a natural birth and really do all these things that we want to do, and then life happens. So I Love that. You're just very cool in sharing that of just like, okay, prepare for it. But life, you don't know what you're going to get. And being comfortable with that because I know I've talked to some people, like, I'm going to have an orgasmic birth. And they ended up having it in the hospital and feeling bad about it.

You still have an orgasmic birth in the hospital and you can have a really hard labor and pain in your labor and have an orgasmic birth. So the moment of birth, you know, navigating your course to that moment of birth and the sensations and the emotions that you feel in that moment, you know, it's not about not feeling it. I mean, you're going to feel whatever there is to feel that's part of going through it.

That's so great. Awesome. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for taking us through the stages of labor and orgasmic birth and oxytocin and amazing. So I really, really appreciate you sharing all of your wisdom with us today.

You're really welcome. And I would love people to check out my website, which is ElizabethDavis.com and there you can find my books and ordering links to Amazon just to have excerpts and read more about them. And I'm also a midwifery instructor. I teach student midwives. So if any listeners out there interested in becoming a midwife, you can learn more about that on my website too. Yes.

Fantastic. And I love it. You just have like the midwife energy, like the calm, the presence. I just love it. I love being around midwives. You guys are amazing. You have such a powerful presence and love, so deep appreciation.

You're very welcome and I wish you the absolute best. And be sure to let me know how it goes, will you?

I will, most definitely.

Okay. Okay.

Thank you so much.

Take care. Thank you too.

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