Orgasmic Birth: The Best Kept Secret with Debra Pascali-Bonaro

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 some fun.

Hello and welcome. I'm Alexandra J. Johnson, and today's guest is Deborah Pascale Bonaro. Deborah is the mother of six children, director of the documentary Orgasmic Birth, and co author of Orgasmic Guide to a Safe, Satisfying and Pleasurable Birth. She is the chairperson of the International Mother Baby Childbirth Initiative, and she is also a birth and postpartum doula trainer and has been working as a doula and training doulas since 1987. Her newest project is a fair trade website, Global Birth Fair.

Welcome, Deborah. Thank you, Alexandra. It's such an honor to be here with you and for all who are joining us.

Yes, thank you. Yes, it is a pleasure to be with you. And as I was saying earlier, I so appreciate your work. And I watched Orgasmic Birth and read Orgasmic Birth book, and it just really opened my eyes to a whole new way of giving birth. I mean, it's remarkable, the possibilities that we have for giving birth. So thank you.

You're welcome. And thank you for reading it, because so much of our culture is immobilized by fear or just the current paradigm that they are not willing to take that step to look out and see the many other opportunities available. So thank you for taking that walk with us.

Yeah, my pleasure. So I'm curious, what. What inspired you to create the movie, the book, and in many ways, this orgasmic birth movement?

Well, you know, my involvement in birth started really after the birth of my first son, who is now 30. So it's been many years of being a childbirth educator, being a doula, and really learning from women and men themselves, just attending hundreds of births and having such an amazing opportunity to view the sacredness and the sensuality and sexuality of birth through many, many, many different people's eyes. And I was always stunned by the births that I was at, many of them at home, in birth centers, and particularly in hospitals that really did welcome and promote what we now call undisturbed birth or natural birth or physiologic birth. And I thought, but that's not the message the media gives. You know, we see fear and pain and struggle and just knock me out and cut and suck and pull babies out. And so I always felt there was this disconnect, and I really wanted to give voice so that all people knew what was really available to them. So I do have to say I never thought I'd do it via film. I was really doing it through speaking and just sharing kind of one on one and in my childbirth classes. And I certainly saw that the people that worked with me really, over time, transformed what they thought of birth and then had births that were incredibly pleasurable. So how I made the film is quite unique, is that I'm sure somewhere in that subconscious mind, I knew I needed to get this out in a bigger way. But I was literally asleep and had a dream of making the movie. And when I awoke, it was so powerful. I just was like, I saw myself make this film. I need to do it. And that set me on a path to say, I may not know how to make a film. I certainly know the message and the storytelling, but I believe we're always only a degree of separation from the people that can. And I was really blessed to connect with an amazing production team that was able to help bring this message to film. Wow.

And how long ago when did the movie come out?

The movie came out. First cut was the end of 08. And we really did our real major launch in the beginning of 09. And it was at one of our early screenings in 09 in New York City that at the end of the screening, a woman came up to me and said, that was so incredible. Have you ever thought about writing a book so that women could really read on how to. To make this happen? And I said, I've thought about it a lot, but I've never written a book and I don't even know how to go about it. And she said, well, I'm a book agent and I bet you we could get you a book deal in a matter of a couple of weeks. And I went, wow. And so I knew that if I wanted to write a book, I really wanted to do it with a good friend of mine, and she's also in the movie Orgasmic Birth, a phenomenal midwife, Elizabeth Davis. So I called her and she was in. And it was a matter of a couple weeks. And we had numerous offers from many different publishers for the book. So we knew we were at the right time and the right place.

That's amazing.

I love it.

I love the sharing of the wisdom. And then I also just love your personal journey, which is fascinating and inspiring for all of us as well. I didn't know how to make a movie. I'd never written a book. And you're just jumping in and the universe is conspiring, but, you know, isn't.

That what birth is like because, you know, we don't know how to give birth either. Unless I would tell you. You really do. Because the body that grows the baby knows how to birth the baby. But on a conscious level, we all worry, can we do birth? And it's that same trust in ourselves is what it took for me to trust that I could make a film and a book. And that's what birth gave me. Birth taught me. Trust and really move forward and really follow your dreams because it will unf.

That's awesome. So great. I would love to talk more about that on the. Because I know it's such a mental game. How is it going to work? I'm getting close to giving birth and I trust my body, but there's still like a. Oh my gosh, really? I can just trust creation to do this. So how do we kind of tap into that energy more?

Well, many things. And each person needs to do it in their own way because we are all unique on how we tap into our creative energy. And certainly if you've never done a lot of creative things in your life, birth is the time to open it up because you are literally full of creative energy. You're creating life inside you. But for those people that before are writers or write poetry or do art or do dance or meditate or movement or yoga, pregnancy is really an opportunity, an invitation to find those things and go deeper. Whatever brings you deeper into yourself to creating that space, to really do a self reflection. What are the things in life that have served you well, that bring you to peace, to pleasure, to joy, to bliss? And what are your challenges? Because we birth the way we live. And sometimes our obstacles in life can also become our obstacles in birth. So, you know, as people in life, it's just like me making the film that all are like, oh, you've never done it. You can't do it. It's going to be hard. I mean, isn't that a lot of what society says to women approaching birth? Don't trust yourself. It was too hard. It was terrible. And are you allowing those messages in? Because if you let them in for birth and you let them in for life, it holds you back in many things. But if in birth you can kind of face those fears, give voice to the fears, we all have them. We wouldn't be human without them. But how can we kind of name them, how can we release them? And what can we replace them with that brings us to identifying our strengths, our wisdom and trusting our intuition?

Yeah, that's so amazing. So I'm curious. You said that giving into these fears and all these things that people say birth is challenging. And we have all these images can birth. And obviously it is possible because you've written about it and made a movie, but how can birth be pleasurable? How are we so off on seeing it only as a painful experience?

I'm so glad you framed it in that way, too, because as we're learning more and more about mind, body, medicine, even think of the placebo effect. You have a group of people, and one group gets a sugar pill and the other people get an actual medication. And it's phenomenal that a large portion of the people on the sugar pill get better just because they believe that they're taking something that will make them better. So let's go a layer deeper in birth. We've kind of grown up in a cultural time where all we've been told probably since we were born is that birth is painful. Everything we've heard as a young child, the messages from television, from community, from women, even from men, is pain. So it's easy to say we've been given a pain placebo, and it's so deeply ingrained in us that most of us really believe it. So what we have to do is get beyond that and really examine what is possible. We need to start listening to stories of women that have faced their fears, faced their challenges, may have moments of pain, but have moments of transcendence, of joy, of bliss, of ecstasy. And some women who just never would tell you that birth was challenging or painful and just totally experienced it as blissful, as joyful, as meditative, and sometimes as orgasmic. So it's going to take a lot of personal look, and I always say to people, first, examine what are the messages? What was your birth like? What is the story you've been told about the way that you were born? Because that's the starting point. And then what has culture told you? And what would you like it to be? And what messages do you need to create around you to reframe that? How can you prepare to allow what I actually call a new language of birth? Our current language is all negative, even the word contraction for most people. When I say contraction, what do you think of.

Yeah, contracting and tense, right?

And pain. So why are we using a language of birth that's just constantly leading you there instead? Ina May Gaskin, a wonderful midwife, was one of the first people all the way in the 70s, wrote Spiritual Midwifery, and she called them rushes. Since I've heard Her call them surges, which I love, because they're your own personal power surgeon. When you describe them as sensations as powerful as your power, a lot of times you feel them differently. They are hugs for your baby. They are waves working with you and your baby, giving your baby this gentle hug into the world. That image for many people already relaxes them and bathes them in a more loving, calm connection than contraction. Right.

I love that too, because you are setting your expectation. I mean, obviously, if we have the expectation of contraction and pain and challenge, we are going into birth with that mindset. But I love this. It is our personal power surging through us. Talk about a different paradigm to experience.

Wow, isn't that great? And it is so needed because the whole language of birth, we have terms like the water breaks or the water ruptures. And I often say in my workshops to people sitting there and those listening, if something were to break or rupture in your body, how many of you right now would be excited?

That's right.

That's a negative word. That's a sign of illness. So we're using a framework of illness on a healthy event. And when you frame birth in an illness model, it's easy then to feel sick, it's easy to feel pain. And then we give our power a way to authority to take care of us. Where in birth, what we really need to do is stand within our power, the body that's grown, this baby knows what your baby needs more than anybody else. And when you claim that connection and you work with that wisdom, your caregivers are really more the lifeguards, the guardians of keeping you safe so that you can safely give birth. You do it when you lay down and give your power over someone else to take care of you. They never understand your baby as well as you do.

That's so great. I love this, the new language for birth, like, really changing that. Because I know I was talking to my husband the other day and I'm like, am I naive? Like, to be wanting to create this, you know? And I've never given birth, so it's a new adventure for me and I'm stepping into the unknown. But I love this, that it is possible and creating a new language. Because I know a lot of people, I would imagine women are kind of. Am I silly to believe that I can actually have an orgasmic birth? I think if I'm honest, there's a part of me that has that. I think a lot of women kind of have to work through that fear, right?

Oh, totally. And I just want to say, because you may understand it, but people listening might not. Orgasmic is not orgasm. There is something called the birthgasm, and you certainly are birth, orgasm. And you really saw that if you watched our film Amber, who had rolling orgasms, but the other women in the film still claim an orgasmic birth because an orgasmic birth is a heightened physical and emotional experience. And I think all birth is heightened physical and emotional experience. So to me, all birth is orgasmic. It's just reframing a different vocabulary around it and using what I think is the more feminine language of really opening up a softness, opening up a flow. And for me, birth was orgasmic, not in an orgasm, but I would associate it in the fact that the kind of relief I felt after my baby emerged from my body into my arms, that release was orgasmic. So as you think of a new language, allow yourself to find the words that fit your belief systems, your values, your baby, your body, and allow yourself to know that we're not saying that it might not be without facing challenge, that there might not be pain. Watching athletes, just watching the Olympics, we saw many people face challenges. We saw moments of pain, but we saw them push through that and their endorphins, their beta endorphins, their natural pain relievers come in. We saw them face their challenge and go on to complete events that brought them just. Their face went from pain to ecstasy to bliss and joy. And it's the same thing that birth holds for us.

I love that. Yeah. So great. I have been an athlete for most of my life, and that's what my husband always says. It's just going to be like one of your competitions, you know, like pushing through it and feeling the joy and the ecstasy. Like when you're exhausted and you've pushed yourself and it just feels like the endorphins are flowing and you have goose bumps and it's amazing. So I love that image, isn't it?

And think about it this way, when you know, as an athlete, when you're having that moment of doubt, when you're having that moment of pain and you're like, can I do it? What are the people around you doing?

What are the people around me doing?

Yeah. What's the audience doing?

Oh, yeah, they're totally cheering you on. They're like, go.

Like, they're giving you confidence. And just imagine if everyone that entered a woman's birthing environment treated her with that kind of care and love and said, you can do it, you're doing it. I'm here for you. Go, go, go. Yes, yes, yes. Women would then find within them the strength. But sadly, what happens, particularly in a hospital environment, is hospitals are places to keep people pain free. And if you're there for surgery, you certainly want to welcome that approach. But it's naive of us to think that this one wing of labor and delivery would have a different approach to the challenges women are. So instead of hearing, yes, yes, yes, you're doing great, you hear, would you like drugs? And when you have someone of authority who you put your trust into, say, would you like an epidural? What you're hearing underneath it all is, if you don't think I can do it, then how can I? And if the audience at a competition was saying, oh, give up, you know, you sure you don't want an iv? Don't stop on the marathon to get a drink of water. You want to hop on scooter, it looks like your leg is hurting. I mean, just think of the different effect it would have psychologically on our athletes.

Wow, that's such an amazing image and so powerful. I love the image too, of like our birth. The people who are in our birth and kind of there cheering us on, like celebrating, like, yes. Rather than like, oh, we're fragile, you can't handle it. I just love that image. I just see people celebrating and laughing and being happy and cheering us on.

Yes. And that's who you want at your birth. So when you really look at who to invite to your birth, you want people that are going to trust birth, that are going to believe in you. And when you have those moments of self doubt which we all have in labor and it doesn't matter if it's baby 1 or baby 10, we're allowed to have those moments of fear of can I do it? This hurts, this is hard. But you want to look at, up into the eyes at people that are really holding for you, the belief in you, and that's what moves you on.

That's so great. I love it. So inspiring. So how do we prepare ourselves to really make this shift and create new language for birth? And what do you recommend during pregnancy that we do to kind of be ready for this experience?

Well, well, listen to birth stories and particularly women that have had all positive pleasurable and are starting to use this new, beautiful, feminine language of birth. You want to take that in? You can read a lot of those birth stories on our website, orgasmicbirth.com our book is full of these stories and women's comments and other books. InA May's Guide to Childbirth. There are many other books out there that really do storytelling in a positive way. And when you come around negative stories, people that want to tell you birth is horrible. One of the things I always say is we want to honor them, because that was that woman's experience. And I want to hold every woman's experience as sacred and valuable. But I would ask those women, what would they do differently if they could make a change to find pleasure in birth, Were there any things they could envision that they could have done? And I do caution that in our current hospital, and I think a lot of Americans don't know this, we offer the least options for comfort in labor. And so most women either lay in a bed and suffer, and then an epidural is a wise choice, or you need to birth in a birth center at home, or the few hospitals that now offer tubs and water and doulas and birthing upright and. And birthstools and balls and ropes. And what you need to find is talk to women that had a real array of comfort available to them, because you'll find that when women are upright, when they're moving, when they're working with their bodies, when they're dancing their babies down, and I mean, dancing. Belly dancing was designed for childbirth. It was to spiral those hips and help that baby down. And an analogy for that would be, if you have tight jeans, try to pull them on without moving. They're never going to get on. You're going to wiggle and jump and tug and pull. Or if you have. As your hands swell, if you have a ring, try to get it over your fat knuckle by just going straight over it, and you won't get it off. You're going to have to wiggle it and twist it and wiggle it, and that's what your baby needs. In your pelvis, you have a big baby navigating your pelvis. The last thing you want to do is stay still. You want to move for your baby. And if you listen to your baby, your baby will tell you which positions feel good and are helping the baby and which positions hurt more because they're making it more difficult for your baby to find its pathway. So women need to explore all these stories, all these options. A really good childbirth class that's teaching you all your options. And sadly to say, the vast majority of hospital classes are not teaching you all your options. They're often teaching you to be a good consumer of their services. So I would encourage women and men to reach out and look for classes that are really giving them a full range of choices.

Wow, that's so great. I love that. The movement, too, during birth. That's fascinating. You give us such great images of pulling off a ring or putting on jeans that that is necessary during birth. And most women in a hospital don't move at all.

Isn't that sad? And we wonder why hospital birth is so painful and hard. We're making it that way. From a physiologic perspective, the more you lay a mother down, we know this from science, the more pain she'll feel and the longer her labor will be. So to get in a bed and lay down is to make your labor longer and more painful. I mean, is that what you really want?

That is amazing. So, movement. So you would recommend a woman move during pregnancy? Pregnancy dance. And what if a woman's like, I don't know how to dance because there's usually somebody who says they can't dance. So what's your thought on that?

What did I say? I say you put your favorite music on. That old saying, dance like no one's looking, wait until nobody's in your home, blast your favorite song, and let yourself go. Because this is not about being a professional dancer. This is not about, like, looking in the mirror and having a move. This is about feeling your baby in your body. And this is about just subtle changes in labor. We're not throwing ourselves around the room. We're gently moving, swaying our hips, spiraling, leaning forward, a gentle rock, holding onto our partner and swaying. So it's really allowing yourself just to be in connection with your baby. Think of your baby as your dance partner, and the two of you need to be in rhythm. When the baby is trying to move one way and you're now laying flat in the bed, it's as if you and your baby are moving to two different rhythms. And no wonder it doesn't go well. So something I teach now and I love is something called Journey Dance. And I'm in the process of working with Journey, Toni Burgins, the woman who developed it. And you can go to journeydance.com and see it or my personal website, motherlovedulas.com I have a page on it. And we're hoping to develop now Journey Dance that's specifically more for pregnant women in guiding them, not in specific moves, because it's not about you dancing to my moves because I don't know your body and your baby, but it's allowing, helping you to find and what you need for the easiest safest birth.

Right. So then it's trusting your body and whatever your body wants to do during birth and just letting it flow.

Definitely. And, you know, that in itself can be a difficult challenge when we're in a culture that, you know, we're more likely to dance after we've looked in the mirror and practiced the movement. Because the last thing you want to do in birth is be conscious, be worried about either your own self criticism of yourself or somebody else's. And I would guide you here to think about birth as. And it is a continuum of our sexuality. And when we are in the middle of being intimate, the last thing we want to do is self assess ourselves or get our mind too heavily involved. Because once that thinking mind comes in, usually our experience of pleasure drops right out. So it's allowing ourselves to go deep within to that other space and allowing that trust and just feeling the flow of what feels right that brings us in our intimacy to pleasure. And the same in birth.

So what do you think the key or what are the key, if there are key elements to having a pleasurable birth?

I think really important is that you need to be in an environment that you feel safe. You know, animals, and we're animals, don't birth if they don't feel safe. As long as we keep ourselves in a fearful, anxious, stressful state, we produce adrenaline. And that will impede or inhibit the release of oxytocin, the hormone that we need for labor to progress. So safety for me is utmost. You want to be in an environment that you feel completely safe. The second criteria would be privacy, because looking at intimacy, most of us would have trouble being intimate if at any moment all kinds of people could enter our space that we didn't invite, that we didn't know, and maybe that we didn't feel safe with. So we need. That's why animals make a den. Usually, if you've ever had cats or puppies in your house, you know, usually the female will be trying to get under beds and in closets and, you know, as far away as possible from other people to have privacy. So that's really important. And then I always say, take a moment and really close your eyes and envision that you need to plan or you want to plan an intimate night, maybe alone, maybe if you feel safe inviting your partner in with you and create what I call birth ambiance. So everything from what would the lights be like? Do you like spotlights? Do you like mood lighting? Do you like it dark? Maybe candles? And think about that. How could you bring that into your birth space. And if you're in a hospital, you cannot light candles, but you can bring electric candles. I bring holiday lights, little twinkly lights and plug them in and like just put them around the room. Then what kind of sounds would you want to hear? Maybe you have favorite artists and whenever you hear those kind of songs, it brings you to an intimate, intimate feeling. Maybe it's the sounds of the rainforest or a thunderstorm. And you know, you can get these off the Internet now. Or maybe it's silence. And you know, how many of you is your sounds for intimacy, the sounds in a hospital. And what would the sounds in the hospital do to an intimate moment?

Right.

So you know, so if you are in a hospital, just having kind of music that will buffer out those other sounds can be really important. But don't just make it any music. Make it the music that connects you to safety, to privacy, to intimacy. And you know, we've all had the experience driving down the street where a song comes on the radio and all of a sudden we're bouncing and singing and we feel good and we're smiling and that gets us to create endorphins, our pain relievers. So in birth, if you can invite the music that gives you that feel good feeling, you're actually creating more pain relief. And the last element of that ambiance would be smell. Think about what, maybe there's a favorite flower, an aroma, some kind of smell. It might even be, you know, grandma's old pillow that just gives you a memory of her and invite that into your birthplace. I don't know anybody when they're being intimate, that kind of bottles hospital aroma and lets it go in their bedroom, right? So really think about it. And in pregnancy, your smell is really heightened and sensitive and in labor too. So even if you've created a nice ambiance, but hospital smell might bring a memory to you of illness, of another time in your life or a sit that was not health related. You don't want to let anything come in sight, sound, touch, thoughts, that brings you into a place of illness, that brings you into a place of less than, that brings you into a place that is not enhancing, that this is a healthy, sacred, amazing, powerful day in your life. And when you and I would encourage you, like write down your words, put them on index cards, put them across your countertop, put them across your fridge, put them somewhere and then say to yourself every day, in order to bring myself to achieve a birth, that would include this language, what are the elements that I need to bring with me, what do I need to address, how can I get there?

And then do you recommend kind of playing with that, like you said, putting it on your refrigerator and in your bathroom so that you see it, like having it be a conscious practice that you do every day where you just kind of tap into that energy and preparation?

Definitely. I think that you need to go there. Another avenue is that's the theory of hypnobirthing, right? And a lot of stories in our book of women that found pleasure and some bliss, joy or ecstasy in birth. Many prepared with hypnobirthing, which is really using your power of visualization to see what you want to achieve and put yourself into that state. So I think there is real power in repetitive preparation. Just like athletes today. I mean, they've done studies. Athletes that visualize themselves completing the event or how they approach the event, or how they score that goal along with physical practice are more likely to achieve the end results than people that just do physical practice.

I always find that so stunning. I mean, it makes sense, but it's still like, oh my gosh, we definitely need to be practicing this mental visualization.

Yes, I highly recommend it. And again, along with the physical, like the athlete, you know, make those moments to dance, make those moments to the comfort measures that you're learning in your childbirth class or that you're reading about. Hire a doula and invite your doula over to really do some hands on work with you of different positions and different touch, if touch is safe for you, and different techniques. Because the more you have a lot of different comfort measures available to you to draw from that you've really practiced, then you'll be able to know which ones you want when in labor.

Yeah, I'm curious too, because a lot of people will say, because I personally feel like I need to prepare a lot, just the mental and the physical and everything. It just feels like preparing like an athlete would for an event. But some people are like, we've been doing this forever and your body knows what to do. You don't need to prepare that much. Do you have thoughts on that? Of how much preparation is, how much we need, how much is too much? And your thoughts on that?

Well, you know, I like to take people back to kind of really think about about 1920 in the US we brought birth from home to hospital. But if we envision the generations before that, women gathered around women to support each other in childbirth. So I always like to ask women, and we can ask you and see your answer. Do you have any younger brothers or sisters? Yes. Those would have been births that you would have attended. Because if we look at birth in kind of a home social model, you as a little girl would have already been learning about comfort and birth through being around when your mother gave birth to other siblings. Now, add to that. Do you have any younger cousins? Yes. Those potentially could have been births that you would have been around because your mother might have gone to some of them because the women gathered to offer support. And do you have any friends that have given birth already?

Yes.

So there may have been in the home environment, some of them that may have asked you to. So culturally, most women historically would have been to many births and learned these techniques hands down, from women to women for comfort and labor. And so by the time their own birth came, they would have had a whole lot of information and experience. We're only the last couple generations where the first time we experience birth as our own, that isn't historical. It's not how it went. And on one hand, I agree with you. The body that grew the baby knows how to birth the baby. And in an ideal world, I agree that you should be able to just do it. But that would be if your experience and your memories and what you know about birth is all positive. Because if what you know about birth is fear and pain, then you are not accessing your intuitive wisdom. If you are in a fearful, tense, frightened state, you are going to actually find any animal cannot birth in that state. Well. And a lot of women today are having really long, difficult, challenging labors because instead of being in the hormone of oxytocin that is needed for birth, which is the hormone of. Of love, of calm, of connection, and is an amazing pain reliever in our brain, we're in a state of fear. We don't feel safe. We're anxious. And that's stress hormones. And we all know stress is not good in our lives, and it's definitely not good in our birth. So to answer your question, I wish in the ideal world, yes. And I hope one day when women support women at birth again and we reconnect that intuitive, traditional wisdom that was passed down from our great grandmothers on. Then again, we might not need childbirth education, but right now we've broken that circle of knowledge, and I think it's very hard to birth without it.

Mm, I love that. Beautiful. And it's so. And it's really empowering, too, for us to. Because I know a lot of women and I know a lot of people listening to this. We live in A modern world, and most of us have stress, and it's challenging to relax and all of that. So we need to do everything that we can to get into that receptive, intuitive space that you're talking about.

Yes, it's really important. And find your own way to it. We're all different. So I don't think. I wish there was a prescription on how to do it, but I think the prescription is to make the time and space in your own life to find out what you need. And in reality, if you prepare well for birth, what you're doing is preparing well for the rest of your life and for parenting. Because in parenting, you're going to need to access. How do you get connected to your intuition of what's best for your child? How do you make those five or ten minutes a day to nurture yourself and your spirit and relieve your own stress? Because you certainly don't want to bring your stress onto your child. So we're really talking about putting you on a path that we all need in life.

Right. So you're learning how to mother throughout your pregnancy and through the birth. And it's just a preparation, a rite of passage to step into that.

Yes. I love that you said rite of passage. I love that I always say it's the journey. And I've taken this. It's Elizabeth Davis and others, I give them credit. But I love the expression with the first baby. It's a journey from maidenhood to motherhood. And that's an incredible rite of passage.

Yeah, I feel like that definitely has power for me when I feel into. There's the physical process of giving birth and becoming a mother, and then there's the spiritual and emotional and mental. That's like a rite of passage. Like I am venturing into a whole new world and becoming a completely new woman. And it's very exciting.

I'm glad to hear your excitement because that's what it should be, you know, and knowing that you're going to discover things about yourself, strengths and wisdom that you had some sense right now that it's there, but it's going to just flow in such a deep way that I think it's an amazing gift to give yourself to fully experience and explore it.

Yeah, I love it. And I love too, when you were saying the new language, I feel like we need new language for all of it. Like new language for pregnancy. We need new language for birth, new language for parenting and mothering. I just feel like there's a lot of newness that we need to create don't you think?

Oh, I really do. And, you know, men are really important in this, so I don't mean this comment to devalue them, but a lot of the language of birth came out of the development of obstetrics, and it went into obstetric text. And then in fairness, childbirth education, a lot of people don't realize it, but really emerged in the 50s, and it started with Dr. Lamaze in France, Dr. Dick Grantley Reed in the UK in the US we had Dr. Bradley. And I think you're getting a sense of where it came from. They're all men and they're all physicians. And so it's only been more recently that we're starting where women are redesigning this approach to birth. And the men meant well and they've given us many gifts. But I think it's time that from a feminine perspective, we reevaluated what is serving us from the model they've given us and really bring it into a more feminine context.

And I feel like you were talking about taking your power back. It feels like not to criticize the men, and it is what it is. But really, us women stepping into, creating a whole new world and really stepping into our power.

Yes. I love. There is a lot going on right now about feminine rising, and it's just to recognize that we need a balance, the male energy, and that brings really value, skills and strengths and things that society needs and certainly we need in parenthood. But I think that the feminine has been very suppressed for a long time, and so the feminine needs to rise so that we can achieve this balance in birth and in life. And I think birth is a real gateway to that feminine rising. Yeah.

And I think I saw in one of your videos, too, just on that we live in the modern world and how we are giving birth and how we are mothering is very different than our grandmothers and our great grandmothers. Can you just talk a little bit about how we start stepping into creating a whole new world for men and women? Like creating new roles and new ways of giving birth and new ways of parenting and new ways of just being in relationship.

Yes. And one of the things, you know, when you look back historically, that can be a plus or a negative, depending on what side you see it. Women had to do a lot of daily tasks. They might have been gathering at the river, doing their laundry every so often, and the women would gather, and as they did their work, though, they had an opportunity to share a lot, and the men had their things that they had to do. Which put them into community. So there was more of a sense of community of women and community of men. And I still see that in the developing world when I travel. Women actually get more of an opportunity in some cultures to be together and cross share both their successes as well as their challenges and what they're facing and what's hard in their own personal lives or in their parenting or in their relationship. And I think that today we've developed this sense that often our partner, and if they're a male partner, is kind of that's our best friend, that's everything. And we don't necessarily make the time to get out in circles of other women and really have that kind of support and nurturing and learning that feels safe to do without judgment. Because I think sometimes when we do get into the environment today, we're all too caught up in what should be. And I don't think that's the language we should use. There are no shoulders when it comes to birth or parenting. It's what feels right. So I really. My vision of what I'd like to see happen is particularly around birth. I've said for a while, I'm waiting for someone to get the idea and run with it. I'd like every Tuesday morning at 11am or whatever time is a slow time at Starbucks or one of these coffee chains to have circle time, birth story time. And whether you are about to give birth or you gave birth 80 years ago, you can come and be in circle, listen to stories I love. And we are seeing more new mothers groups, new fathers groups, places that people can come and just really share where they are and crosshair what works, what doesn't work, what they feel. Because I think that our current American society has really broken down these connections that I think are essential for us to be able to honor what this means, to bring new life into the world in a way that really serves all of us, including community, society, and humanity.

That's beautiful. I love that. And what do you think about for the fathers? Do you have any tips for the fathers? It seems like a lot of men that I talk to are excited about being a father, but then they are also kind of like, I have no idea how to hold the baby. I don't even know what I'm doing. And there's like a disconnection for some.

Guys.

Around their fathering. So do you have any wisdom for the fathers on how to tap into their instincts and their intuition as fathers?

Yeah. And again, I would love to see fathers groups and fathers circles of New dads, because I think they have their own unique set of feelings and challenges and rewards. And when they're expecting to be able to get around new dads and be able to ask their questions and be able to listen to how they're feeling. One thing we all face in birth and in parenting is a lot of fears and challenges and expectations from society. And when we sit with them on our own, they can become giants in our own mind, you know, and we think, you know, sometimes we're the only ones with this. When we get together in a group and we can hear that everybody has these thoughts and feelings in their own ways, it's almost like you can release them, you can laugh them off, you know, you can change and put them into a better perspective. And also, somebody in a group usually says something that's a big aha moment and solution. So dads, I think, really need this because at least pregnant women kind of their bump gives away their pregnant, and other women will come up to them, whether it's solicited or not, and give advice. But new expectant dads don't often have that way for people to just come up and share their thoughts, experience, and nurture. So I think that would be really helpful. I always encourage new dads childbirth classes. Get with other fathers that are expecting, but find other men in your life and in your circle and ask them what it's been like and what they would recommend, what worked for them. Great.

And then what do you think of father or a partner? How does a partner partner support the pregnant woman or the birthing woman? What's the role for that? And some tips for men on how to do that.

Yeah. And, you know, one of the easiest things that I love, Ina Mae Gaskin has always said, the energy that gets the baby in, gets the baby out. And that's just a line I love and I love to share in my childbirth classes. Because many men, if they're watching these television shows, they're like a deer in headlights. Like to be standing beside a woman in a hospital with all this technology, it's intimidating for anyone. And when it's the person you love, and particularly men, their role as protector, it makes them feel really vulnerable on what to do, and they feel like they need a list of things to do. But when we create a sacred, intimate, joyful, blissful birth, and we create birth ambiance and we're moving and we're making those sounds and we're allowing ourselves to go to the same hormones that made the baby, then really their Job becomes quite easy because they need to do the same thing they did to make the baby. They need to love her. They already know. I say to dads, you know what touch she likes, you know how she likes to be kissed or not. You know what she needs. And I love. Dads often come away from watching our family and they say, I've had so many fathers come up to me after seeing the film and say, thank you so much. I was terrified on what to do. And after watching your film, I just like, I'm so relaxed because I watch the men. I can hold her, I can touch her, I can kiss her. I feel great. I'm ready now. And I think we have to allow dads to know that. On the other hand, you know, if you are high risk or if there's a potential that you are having a hospital birth where more technology is being used, then I would say information is power. And dads should really have good information about the different techniques and options, as should women. Because with anything that's offered, you have the right to inform decision making, meaning you can agree or consent or you can refuse. And so dads are really great gatekeepers of helping women to make those informed decisions of what's best when for themselves and their babies.

That's so great too. I love that the gatekeepers like the masculine kind of protector. It gives him a purpose and a role in the process and he feels empowered rather than looking like he's said and all the things that are happening and feeling overwhelmed. And I love in the videos that I've seen of men supporting the women, obviously the birth is amazing and watching the women, but I love watching the men. They are so emotional and so happy and so joyful. I get tears right now thinking about how powerful and how loving men are in that whole process.

Isn't it beautiful? It's so wonderful to watch everyone's experience. I mean, I always feel that when I'm at a birth, it's like this window into the divine. And not that we all can't welcome and feel the divine in our lives in all different ways and get there, but whether or not you experienced it before or whether or not you work hard to bring that element into your life, birth brings you there without much effort. And to feel just this sacredness touches everyone in the room in such a deep and intimate way, it's really incredible.

I know you all midwives and doulas, that's got to be the best job ever. Bringing life into the world. That's miraculous.

It really is. People always ask me after you see so many births, does it get old? And I'm like, get old? It's a miracle every time. And it just touches you so deep. I mean, it's such a heart opening time to be with a woman and a man as they're welcoming their baby into their office.

And do you have any? I'm sure you have thousands of them, but is there any like birth stories that like, are your favorite birth stories?

You know, all of them to me are special. And I always say, you know, some people are blessed with the two hour labor and some people are blessed with the two day labor. And there are lessons and just value and amazing moments in all of them. So whatever you're given is really your path. And your baby is 50% of the path. So be gentle on yourself sometimes. You have what you'd like to see in birth and your baby already has a mind of its own and kind of chooses maybe the more scenic route, taking a little bit longer than you hoped for. But what's really important to me and what I think are my outstanding moments are women that just really surrender, that really trust their body, that have a partner there with them, that also can believe in them, that can love them, that can allow this just to unfold. And my most incredible births lately are the women that really are inviting pleasure in and really kissing during labor, nipples stimulation. There are stories in her book of women that are doing clitoral stimulation. And one which is a story I was at as a doula, we wrote briefly in the book of a woman who her friends gave her vibrators as a baby shower and she decided that pleasure and pain travel on the same pathway and she was not going to feel any pain. And I have to say it was really an amazing moment for me to be with her. And you know, there's always. And those listening may be going vibrator, like, wow, you know, but like, what an amazing thing for a woman to really decide. What is it? Where do you want to go on the spectrum? And on one hand, we certainly honor and hold that some women are making choice for a cesarean birth for no medical reason, but that's how they feel safe and that's what they want. And so I do want to hold that space for women to say that there is a real opportunity to not put to chance that birth becomes pleasurable, but that you keep yourself on a pleasure path. And those stories lately for me have been powerful. I joke in my classes now, whether you plan to use it or not, if you're having a high hospital birth, bring in a vibrator, set it on your nightstand. And one thing for sure, you'll get privacy.

That's awesome. That's so great. So I'm curious on the vibrator, clitoral stimulation during labor. And is that like, you would do that? I know, I read it in the book. But a woman would do that during her contractions or after her contractions.

During. You would really do it because it's during sensation, that surge, that you want to give your body the counter kind of impulses and take it from pain to pleasure. So, I mean, it's the same thing as doing massage during the sensation. Kissing, touching, moving, all these things are different sensations. So that your brain, instead of focusing, focusing on pain, which if you just sit still, then that's what you're going to be given. If that's where your mind focus is, you want to switch that up. And particularly when you stimulate the clitoris or kissing or other ways of sensual touch, it takes you somewhere else.

I love that too, because you're an alchemist, almost like transmuting the energy of and like riding the pain and turning it into pleasure. And I can see how it could be orgasmic.

Yes, very much so. So those are my recent. Now that I've made the film, I'm getting invited into many more interesting birth environments that, you know, makes me wish. I wish someone had told me this 30 years ago.

It's so great too, because I know you talk about this in the book too, of like, birthed as a sexual event. So why not bring the pleasure? I mean, the baby is coming through our vagina. I mean, there's sexual energy. So how do we channel that? That's so, so inspiring. And literally like, oh, my gosh, it's a whole different way of looking at birth.

Totally. And you know, when you look at birth as sexual, then you must ask your caregivers to really, if they embraced it that way. We have to change our whole system of birthing because the reason we've put gowns and masks and women wear hospital gowns, and that is really to cover that this isn't a sexual event. If we make it a medical model, we've industrialized it, We've put it on the birth conveyor belt, then we strip it of that element that makes it so intimate that even as caregivers, we have to change the way we deal with women. So I think we're at the beginning of a new paradigm. And I'm really glad that our film and Our book is opening up a discussion to look at birth in new ways for women to do their own exploration of what feels right for them. I mean, there's no right or wrong way, but the way that you feel, it's going to be best that you feel in touch with your body and your baby is going to make birth easier for you.

So fantastic. I'm like, so charged up. It's so great.

Good.

I'm curious because I know you do so many things and there's so much that we can dive into, but I definitely want to get into. You know, you're an activist in many ways and just you have so many. You're just doing so many incredible things. So I'd love to just how can women kind of move into action around change, changing this paradigm of birth and doing what they can to make a shift in how we give birth as women?

Yeah, and I'm glad you asked that, because just last week, Brazil is the country that many people know as had a very high cesarean rate. And I won't go into all the details, but there's been a huge activist community that has emerged. They call it the humanization of childbirth. And individual physicians, most midwives, doulas, women, men, pediatricians, you name it, People are getting involved. And they're actually so amazing that they're marching in the street. Last week there were marches in 13 Brazilian cities with hundreds of women and men holding signs about birth and taking back their birth power and stand up and deliver. Don't take it lying down. So on one level, I think it's time in America that we have a march. I think it's unacceptable that we have hospitals at 40 and 50% cesarean birth rate. To me, that's a violation of a woman's human right because we know that a cesarean rate, that's really life saving for mom and baby. And certainly I hold cesareans as valuable. Surgery when needed, is somewhere between 5 and 15%. So when we're getting up to that 40 and 50 at some of our hospitals, it's really a violation. It's taking healthy women and deciding somebody needs to go to dinner or they're worried about malpractice, or there are other things, but they're not in the best interest of women. So I 1 wish that all women, men, I don't care if you're expecting a baby or not, should really care about birth because you should care about all the babies that are coming into our world. And if people understood what is really best for mothers and babies, and then looked at what our current maternity system is doing. I think we all should be writing letters, we should be marching, we should be joining organizations. And one good one to leave people with is the Coalition for Improving Maternity Services, which is called Mother Friendly on the website www.motherfriendly.org and. And it really is an organization that looks at 10 steps that we could implement in all our facilities to be more mother baby friendly. So it's really time in America that I think people start speaking up and speaking out that we need to change. This is a violation.

Totally.

Yeah.

And then the impact of the birth and then also, like you said, really caring about the babies that are coming in and the next generation. How a baby is coming into the world impacts their whole life. And we're creating, we have the possibility to create incredibly loving and peaceful human beings or ones that have come in in violence or trauma.

It's pretty. It's sad. It's sad that we're seeing 25 to 35% of our births. According to Penny Simkin and a new group, they formed a website now called patch P-T-T c h.org to just work with the 25 to 35% of moms that are experiencing birth trauma. And I would call it even birth violence. And when we look at the fact that I know birth can be blissful, ecstatic and orgasmic and it's becoming traumatic, even a percentage of women are experiencing post traumatic stress syndrome equivalent to natural disaster and war in our American hospitals. That's a tragedy for women, for babies in society. So I think we all need to care. And currently look at it, and I do always say this, we have great doctors. I'm not criticizing them. We have great nurses, great midwives, great doulas. But what we have is a good system. And anyone that's worked in dysfunction knows that good people in a dysfunctional situation end up kind of sucked in. And so when we can really recreate a maternity system that's whole and that really honors and respects women and gives them all the choices to make birth as safe, healthy and pleasurable as possible, then all our caregivers will be able to do their role in an even better way. Great.

That's awesome. And then as women, us going on our own personal journey and really stepping into our power and taking our power back and giving birth how we want to give birth. You know, each woman kind of going on her own journey and coming together and inspiring each other. It's really exciting to see how we can actually start shifting things.

Yes, sharing your stories. You know those need to be passed on and encourage people you know to come and write their story. Those that are listening. After you give birth, come to orgasmicbirth.com and share your birth story with us. We're collecting images and if you film it all, we are really putting together some new tools to help people to see possibilities. So we welcome your stories to help.

Fantastic. So where do people find orgasmicbirth.com is that the best place to go to learn all about you and all that you shared in the interview?

Yes, we will definitely have a lot of resources there and people can watch our film as a digital rental or digital download or purchase a copy too and it will link you from there. My personal site if people wanted to attend my workshops or my webinars it is motherlovedulas.com but they can also link off Orgasmic Birth. But I do hope people explore on your own. There are many, many websites out there today and many other good books and films, so it's really reaching out and finding what kind of resonates with your beliefs and values. But I do encourage you think out of that box.

Beautiful. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom and your passion and your enthusiasm.

It's great.

I'm so inspired and I know everyone else listening is going to be well.

Thank you Alexandra and I wish you a really pleasurable, blissful, orgasmic birth. So I can't wait to hear your story as well.

Yummy. Thank you. Thanks for the love. I will definitely keep you, keep you in the loop and let you know how it goes.

Okay, well thank you so much.

Thank you and have a beautiful day.

Thank you.

Thank you.

We hope you enjoyed this episode of Mama Goddess. Sending you lots of love and blessings. If you'd like to connect more, go to mamagoddess.com until next time. Keep rocking it and have an awesome, awesome day.