I’ve had the nightmare dozens of times: I’m in a fluorescently-lit room at the hospital, legs in stirrups, and everyone is yelling at me. Doctors, nurses, my assumed co-parent (though, better get a paternity test, girl, ’cause let’s hope your baby isn’t faceless and amorphic like this dude is). They all want me to PUSH, but what they don’t understand is that I am trying! My muscles barely obey me, and I slump and cry and try to do what I am told. And then, inevitably, I wake up – before I even get to see my baby.
What this recurrent dream shows me is that I’m terrified of giving birth. I think it’s hard not to feel this way if you have a vagina and a uterus, and maybe even if you don’t. The process is depicted in the media as one of the most physically painful experiences you’ll ever endure: I’ve seen soon-to-be-mothers in movies and TV shows screaming at their husbands, weeping in agony, praying for relief from gods they barely believe in. The pain scares me, yes, but in almost equal measure, I’m scared of who that pain could make me become.
There’s also the horror stories you hear about birth’s effect on the body. Parts can rip and swell and puncture and pop. You can pass out, bleed out, or shit yourself on the birthing bed. Having been relatively healthy for most of my life, I haven’t seen my body stretched to its extremes – and I’m not sure I want to. Why can cis fathers confirm their biological parenthood with a simple home paternity test while I have to endure hours of body- and soul-transforming labor to be eligible for mine?
It doesn’t help that my mom has told me all my life about how painful it was to give birth to me, since her epidural didn’t kick in quite right. But then, she does also say that giving birth to my little brother was comparatively painless, so maybe medical advances will be such by the time I’m pushin’ out a baby that I won’t have to break my brain with pain.
On the plus side, I am well accustomed to processing pain. Being a submissive masochist, I’ve written articles and done interviews on cognitive strategies for dealing with pain, and I struggle with chronic pain on a regular basis – so I’m better equipped than the average person for handling an excruciating situation.
I’ve also long been curious about vaginal fisting as a potential birth training activity during pregnancy, ever since I heard it discussed on some sex podcast long ago. Equivalent to the perineal massage recommended by many obstetricians, but a whole lot more intense, fisting could be a worthwhile practice for helping vaginal muscles learn to relax, stretch, and open up. Assuming the person fisting me would also be present at the birth (which may not be a fair assumption, what with my polyamorous sluttiness, but let’s pretend), they could even use similar communication strategies on The Big Day as they used in our fist-heavy “practice sessions” to guide me through the sensations. I am a big advocate for the idea that practicing difficult tasks makes them easier, and since you can’t exactly practice giving birth before it actually happens, fisting might be the next best thing.
The birth process seems less scary when I think of it that way: as an intense series of sensations, a rigorous task I’m putting my body through, not unlike a kink scene or a sexual feat. And if it seems weird to you to compare “the miracle of life” to a sex act, I would invite you to read Your Child’s Right to Sex, watch Orgasmic Birth, and remember that babies mostly occur because of sex!
Speaking of orgasmic birth… I am definitely the type of person to bring a Magic Wand vibrator to the hospital on that fateful day, assuming I had enough presence of mind to remember it at the time. (Let’s face it, that might be a job for my dutiful co-parent, whoever they may be.) Hey, if huge things are gonna be moving through my vagina, I want some clitoral vibrations to at least soften the blow! Sex educator Susie Bright famously used her wand to lessen discomfort during the birth of her first child. “I had no thought of climaxing,” she wrote in a 2006 blog post, “but the pleasure of the rhythm on my clit was like sweet icing on top of the deep, thick contractions in my womb.”
So, do I want to give birth? Part of me remains aghast at the thought. But another, bigger part of me is curious – curious how my pain tolerance would hold up, curious about what those “deep, thick contractions” feel like, curious about the extent to which pleasure can mitigate that level of pain. Pregnancy and birth are two magical things my body can (presumably) do that I haven’t yet experienced, and I’m always curious about bodily states I have yet to achieve. Maybe one day I’ll be swearing and sweating in a delivery room, cursing the day I ever claimed to want this – but if common accounts of the post-birth experience are true, the memory of that pain will soon melt away in favor of oxytocin bliss, endorphin nirvana, and the joy of meeting the new little person I’ve just brought into the world.
Thanks to TestMeDNA for sponsoring this series! Browse their website for answers to big questions like “What does a paternity test cost?” and “What the hell is a buccal swab?”
