May, after attending the births of women on the road trip, went on to qualify as a midwife and keep records that prove that intense emotional support and trust in the physiological process produce great birth outcomes. There were 11 births on the road before they settled in Tennessee, and today, after 2,028 pregnancies, 95 per cent completed at home and only a 1.4 per cent Caesarean rate (compare that with 30 per cent in some British hospitals), The Farm’s statistics must beat any other birth centre in the world. Here are a few of the more experimental lessons they learned on the way.
A Kiss on the Lips May Be …
… all that you need to get you through labour. Believe it or not, there is an extraordinary correlation between a relaxed mouth and a ripe cervix. Not that extraordinary when you consider that a good kissing session probably preceded your current state of falling pregnant in the first place. Ina May Gaskin encouraged the women she attended to practise ‘horse lips’, or blowing raspberries, after discovering a direct link between a relaxed mouth and lips and, well, the labia, or other set of lips we girls have. During one birth on The Farm, a four-year-old girl stood beside her labouring mother demonstrating how to blow better raspberries between contractions. The mother copied her, laughing, and shortly afterwards a new sibling arrived.
Also effective on the lip front is French kissing your partner (now imagine how that would go down with the starchy midwives on an NHS labour ward). In Spiritual Midwifery, a Farm resident called Marilyn, who had already had two children, describes her home birth:
Rather quickly, those monumental tidal waves of energy which women on The Farm called ‘rushes’ [contractions] came upon me for the third time. Had I discussed this with Gerald beforehand? I don’t remember. He was reclining next to me, and at the start of a heavy contraction, I found his mouth and we French kissed. Whew! Here comes another! We kissed again, from the start to the finish of the contraction. My mouth must have been opened cavernously wide, because later Gerald told me I nearly sucked the denture out of his teeth. I’m glad he chose to tell me this later. I didn’t need anything inhibiting me while I was testing the midwives’ adage: ‘It’s that loving, sexy vibe that puts the baby in there in the first place, and the same loving, sexy vibe will get the baby out.’ And it did. I didn’t tear with Annie, who weighed six pounds.
The lips manoeuvre is not something you even need to wait until the birth to try. If you have been with your partner for so long that you often forget to include kissing in your lovemaking any more, try out Marilyn’s denture-sucking French kiss with a view to what’s happening down below at the same time.
Tits Oot for the Lads
That loving sexy vibe is not only confined to the mouth. If I told you that in hospital you are often hooked up to an IV drip (which is almost routine procedure in some places) and then given synthetic oxytocin to get your labour started, you wouldn’t be in the least bit surprised. If you now learn that real oxytocin is produced naturally by your body as you start to make love, and is that warm feeling that rushes through you during a heated embrace, then you might be a little more shocked.
As our own resident High Priestess of Natural Birth, Sheila Kitzinger describes in Birth Your Way:
For many women the very gentle arousal produced by nipple stimulation, carried out by you or someone else, may produce contractions if continued for 20 minutes or so at a time. Stroke the nipples with your fingers, rolling, sucking or licking them [tricky unless you are a dog], or rest a warm face cloth on your breasts, lifting it off when it cools, dipping it in hot water, and pressing it against the nipples again.
Sheila also notes that ‘Masturbation will also produce contractions and, because it is possible to have an orgasm very quickly and to experience multiple orgasm with self-stimulation, it may be a more effective method than intercourse in starting off labour.’ Orgasm in a woman produces waves of contractions in the clitoris, vagina and uterus, and opens the cervix. Ho, ho, ho. Even if it doesn’t work, you can at least have fun trying.
Try Some New Positions
Good positions to make love in and good positions to birth the baby also have some things in common. For example, the best way for most women to give birth is on their hands and knees, doggy style. Now it is difficult to adopt this position without immediately being transported back to some dubious session with the lights out. Mid-labour with my first baby, when the midwife came in to find me on my hands and knees being massaged by my birth buddy Lisa, I felt she’d opened the door on some porno movie. ‘I think she thinks we’re some sort of lesbian double act,’ I whispered, grabbing the gas and air back off my so-called friend who was sucking away on it. The disapproving midwife left the room, and we both fell about laughing.
For the lazy among you, unwilling to try new positions and therefore get yourself in the mood to try any position that feels comfortable on the big day, may I offer you the wise words of the obstetrician Professor Roberto Caldeyro Barcia: ‘The only position worse than lying on your back for birth is hanging by your heels from a chandelier.’1 And there’s another one for you to try.
I’ll Have What She’s Having
While no one can promise you an orgasmic birth in your new negligée, there are plenty of people who do have one. Ina May Gaskin asked 151 women who had birthed on The Farm in Tennessee if any had experienced orgasm at birth, and a staggering 21 per cent said yes! If your first reaction is that they are lying, why would they bother? Marilyn of denture-sucking fame was fairly typical:
My last birth was very orgasmic in a sustained sort of way, like I was riding on waves of orgasmic bliss. I knew more what to expect, was less afraid, and tried to meet and flow with the energy rather than avoid or resist as I had first time. The effect was probably mostly psychological in that it gave me tremendous satisfaction just to have accomplished such a difficult passage safely. I felt great for months afterwards, which helped me to feel positive about myself in general. This in turn affected how I felt about myself sexually. I also think that, for me, learning to let go and let my body take over in labour helped me to tap into a part of me that I never knew before, and helped me to feel more willing to let go while making love.
Many women find that after giving birth, a few weeks or months down the line, sex becomes better and better with their partner, and some experience orgasm for the first time. Might this be you?
Sorry Darling, I’ve Got a Headache
What if you just don’t feel like doing it? Pregnancy may drip-feed you hormones that soften and engorge your yoni, make the clitoris more sensitive, and hit a triple jackpot with making the lubricating cervical glands work overtime, but what use is that if you are forever rushing to the loo to chuck up your Boots sandwich? It is all very well wandering around in a state of semi-arousal, but if this is accompanied by tiredness and aching breasts, then what’s the point? My favourite line in Vicki Iovine’s Best Friend’s Guide to Pregnancy is when she describes the urge to hit her husband over the head with a bedside lamp when he goes near her breasts in the first three months. Not everyone is in the mood at the beginning.
Although Dr Miriam Stoppard in the New Pregnancy and Birth Book says, ‘The majority of women I have spoken to about sex and pregnancy have almost universally felt that sex was better than ever,’ I reckon she conducted most of her research in the nymphomaniac district of Amsterdam. The truth is that sex is a very complicated issue among individuals, let alone couples, and it tends to be where we dump all our private and collective neuroses.
Most commonly, our body image determines how we feel as a woman. Sad to say in our post-feminist age, but if pregnancy makes you feel fat instead of gorgeous, then that is going to translate immediately into your lovemaking. The light will go firmly off when undressing, some of you may reach for the chocolate box rather than the fruit bowl, and you just won’t feel desirable. You may even subconsciously push your man away.
However, always remember that