Excerpt from A Good Birth, A Safe Birth

"It's a glorious experience. I know there are
a lot of people who say, 'Oh, I hated being
pregnant.' I felt exhilarated and really
wonderful. ...[My second birth] was two days
of labor, but not bad, not hard--it was easy."
Actress Demi Moore, Oprah Winfrey Show, 1991

If you're like most women, you think of childbirth as a necessary experience of pain and exertion in order to get the end product--the longed-for baby. But while birth is these things, a seldom-discussed fact is that it can also be a time of great pleasure. Biologically, women are designed to receive physical pleasure not only during lovemaking, but during birth and breastfeeding as well.

If childbirth is supposed to produce pleasure, why are so many women dissatisfied with their birth experiences? Standard hospital birth practices, from the shaving of your pubic hair to routine episiotomies, destroy much of this pleasure potential. Another reason is that we've not been taught that our reproductive functions--all of them--are designed to give us pleasure.