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106 pages

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BIRTH & SEX SHEILA KITZINGER BIRTH & SEX The power and the passion Birth & Sex: The Power and the Passion First published by Pinter & Martin Ltd 2012 2012 Sheila Kitzinger Sheila Kitzinger has asserted her moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988. All rights reserved ISBN 978-1-78066-050-9 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade and otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher s prior consent in any form or binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. Set in Minion Line illustrations on pages 105-110 by Jonathan Meakin Editor Debbie Kennett Index by Helen Bilton Printed and bound in the UK by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall This book has been printed on paper that is sourced and harvested from sustainable forests and is FSC accredited. Pinter & Martin Ltd 6 Effra Parade London SW2 1PS www.pinterandmartin.com www.sheilakitzinger.com Dedicated to Polly Kitzinger, with thanksgiving for her strong feminist commitment and vibrant living.

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Pregnancy

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Publié par	Pinter & Martin Limited
Date de parution	01 janvier 0001
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781780660530
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0333€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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BIRTH & SEX
SHEILA KITZINGER
BIRTH & SEX
The power and the passion
Birth & Sex: The Power and the Passion

First published by Pinter & Martin Ltd 2012

2012 Sheila Kitzinger

Sheila Kitzinger has asserted her moral right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

ISBN 978-1-78066-050-9

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade and otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher s prior consent in any form or binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

Set in Minion

Line illustrations on pages 105-110 by Jonathan Meakin Editor Debbie Kennett Index by Helen Bilton

Printed and bound in the UK by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall

This book has been printed on paper that is sourced and harvested from sustainable forests and is FSC accredited.

Pinter & Martin Ltd 6 Effra Parade London SW2 1PS

www.pinterandmartin.com

www.sheilakitzinger.com
Dedicated to Polly Kitzinger, with thanksgiving for her strong feminist commitment and vibrant living.
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION: WHY I WRITE ABOUT BIRTH AND SEX
1 DE-SEXING BIRTH
2 GENITAL GEOGRAPHY
3 SEX AND PREGNANCY
4 ACTIVE BIRTH-GIVING
5 ACTIVE MANAGEMENT
6 EPISIOTOMY
7 BIRTH AND LANGUAGE
8 BIRTH DANCE
9 WATER BIRTH AND SONG
10 HOME BIRTH, MIDWIVES AND DOULAS
11 SEX AFTER THE BABY COMES
12 CHANGING CHILDBIRTH
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
REFERENCES
INDEX
INTRODUCTION: WHY I WRITE ABOUT BIRTH AND SEX
I was in a state of postnatal euphoria in January 1961. My fourth child was newborn. Like the others, it had been a home birth - and she was in bed beside me in a room scented with hyacinths, in our cottage outside Oxford. I decided that I wanted to write about the joy of birth, and help other women discover it.
Polly was waking at around five in the morning for a breastfeed and then lay contentedly on the bed gazing around at her new world. So I started to write The Experience of Childbirth. Writing early in the morning, in the first light of dawn, has stayed a habit - a quiet, peaceful time when my mind is still rich with waking thoughts, ideas, phrases. That first draft only took me six weeks. Then I read it through aloud (that was important, I think, because I wanted to speak to women in my own voice, not to harangue them), and amended it over another few weeks.
The challenge I faced was to create a language to convey the multi-faceted sensations of labour and birth, physical and emotional, to find words for the rush of energy as contractions squeezed the uterus, and the power that built mountains was released in your body, for the feeling as the baby s head crowned as if in a ring of fire, and the birth passion.
I have been criticised for describing birth-giving in terms of sex, imposing on women a compulsory sexual performance - birth with orgasm. But for me personally it was an intense psychosexual experience. This is not surprising, since both childbirth and lactation involve the same hormones as in sexual arousal.
My colleagues in the National Childbirth Trust (NCT) were often sceptical about this. The lovely Betty Parsons, antenatal teacher to celebrities, also taught Prince Charles and Princess Diana. He was an enthusiastic advocate of her birth education, and is said to have invited her to teach relaxation to Her Majesty the Queen. He hosted her 80th birthday at St James s Palace. When told (erroneously) that her fellow birth guru Sheila Kitzinger had suggested that the moment of birth could be compared to an orgasm, Betty told her class: Well. Honeys, if that s an orgasm, then keep me out of bed . 1
Nothing like The Experience of Childbirth had been published before. Grantly Dick-Read had written Childbirth Without Fear. 2 That was from a kindly male doctor s point of view. I admired him very much. He introduced fresh insight on birth. But sexual passion was nothing to do with it. He did not describe the amazing energy that poured through a woman s body. And he believed he had said the last word on the subject. He and his wife Jess were staying with us and over breakfast I got talking about research that I considered important. He was taking the top off a boiled egg, put down his spoon, and said firmly, I have done all the research that is necessary .
He taught that birth shouldn t hurt if the mother relaxed. But of course it did! The pain was a side-effect of the creative process, muscles tightening and stretching as the baby s head pressed down to be born - positive pain, pain with a purpose. He had photographs, too, but the women s faces were all stamped with black rectangles so that they couldn t possibly be recognised.
In France psychoprophylaxis - claimed to be accouchement sans douleur - was the latest fashion. An American, Marjorie Karmel, wrote Thank you, Dr Lamaze - to my mind a sycophantic book extolling the benefits of his method of strict training of breathing and relaxation. 3 It was an enthusiastic instruction manual. If a woman obeyed his teachings she should have no pain. If she did feel pain, however, it was evidence that she had not conformed to the correct number of huffs and puffs, did not hold her breath long enough when pushing, failed to practise assiduously, and lacked commitment. I was fed up with women being blamed for everything that happened to them.
I had no agent, but knew that the firm of Victor Gollancz was innovative, radical and idealistic. I sent the manuscript off to Victor, with a few photographs taken by Uwe, my husband, of me giving birth, breathing my way through contractions, smiling as I reached down to stroke a glistening head that had just emerged, and cradling a naked baby against my breasts. My brother-in-law, Hilary Rubinstein, worked with Victor Gollancz then. Victor called him to his office and announced, apparently with shocked disbelief, I have photographs of your sister-in-law s private parts on my desk.
I am grateful to them for their courage. They decided to go ahead and publish. It was clear sailing from then on. The editor suggested a few minor amendments. Otherwise, the book came out in 1962 exactly as I wrote it in that post-birth milky, glowing babymoon .
There are hotels that now advertise babymoons for mothers, fathers and babies. But when I intended to focus on feelings that follow spontaneously on an intense and ecstatic psychosexual experience of birth, it was not my idea that anyone should make money out of it.
The Observer serialised three chapters of The Experience of Childbirth, the first extract taking up the whole front page of the supplement. With four children under five, I had no spare time. Any career as a social anthropologist was certainly on hold. But now I was a writer! The Experience of Childbirth was later sold to Penguin and went through 23 impressions with them. It has been published in various languages, and sold well over a million copies. It is still in print in a revised form as The New Experience of Childbirth. 4
The whole experience was astonishing. The only thing that compares with having your first baby is having your first book!
Since then I have written 35 more books, many published in other countries and languages, and revised and updated over the years. My Good Birth Guides for example, took the lid off hospitals. 5 , 6 It was a shock to some professionals that anyone should dare to publish a hospital guide like a hotel or restaurant directory. They denounced it as unscientific . Of course it was. So is a hotel guide. But it gives the reader a basis on which to find out more and to compare what she wants with what women tell her about their experiences. After it came out some hospital administrators and obstetricians - only a handful, but it was a radical change - wrote to tell me what they were doing to improve things. Maternity hospitals have now become open to public audit.
My books celebrate the sexuality of birth and, I hope, can help women discover it for themselves. Articles regularly appear in the press (mostly women s and parenting magazines) about sex, pregnancy and motherhood, but in the form of either Let s get sexy again or Sound medical information and advice .
I explore the complexity and depth of female sexuality. Sex and birth are intimately connected with our sense of self-worth, joy in the power of our bodies, and freedom to express ourselves through them.
I never made the obvious connection between sexual feelings and birth until I witnessed a laboring woman whose husband was sitting at her side pull him closer and passionately kiss him during a long contraction. Her relaxation during this intense part of labor was instant and impressive . The ecstatic and beautiful birth that resulted from this woman s pulling her husband to her for a kiss enlarged my growing collection of practical techniques to pass along
Ina May Gaskin Birth Matters 7
1 DE-SEXING BIRTH
If you have had a painful labour or one which was distressing because you felt trapped (even if it was not particularly painful), you may think that sexual excitement and feelings during birth have no connection with each other. The sensations of labour obviously have nothing to do with being sexually titillated. Yet in a strange way the energy flowing through the body in childbirth, the pressure of contracting muscles, the downward movement of the baby and fanning open of soft tissues, can be powerfully erotic.
Some women compare birth with orgasm. One says, It s like having a baby. You build up to a climax. Then you push the baby s head out. It s the most wonderful feeling in the world the end feeling is the same. Another woman tells me that the release she feels