The Sexuality Connection in Pleasurable Birth

Chapter 5 addresses the relationships between sexuality and pleasurable birth experiences, both how sexuality impacted birth, and how birth impacted sexuality. I focus on how the interview participants had related their birth pleasure experiences to their personal sexual relationships and sexual lives by having incorporated concepts of gender, sexism, and sexual identity during the interviews in a myriad of ways. Some interlocutors had been forced to deal with sexist and cisheteronormative oppressions during birth. I found that sexual orientation also intersected with a range of both oppressive and liberating energies during birth, particularly for those who’d given birth at home and thus had more latitude for relational or even sexual expressions. I analyze the roles that sex played in labor and birth, focusing on those participants who had sex during early labor or just before labor started, before tackling the remaining three themes regarding sexuality in the aftermath of pleasurable birth: personal sexual empowerment, physiologic changes, and relational factors.