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    Orgasmic Birth Review5

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    Bnaren Naren
    This document provides a summary of the film "Orgasmic Birth" directed by Debra Pascali-Bonaro. The film alternates between nine birth stories filmed in a serene environment and commentary from midwives and physicians. It counters sensationalized depictions of birth and shares positive birth stories. The film shows women laboring in supportive surroundings, freely expressing themselves. Their labors are aided by partners and midwives as they welcome their babies. The film aims to expand awareness of birth as a profoundly sensual experience by capturing real labors and births. It suggests current high cesarean rates in the US may be harming more than helping and advocates for a more natural approach to childbirth.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    Orgasmic Birth Review5

    Uploaded by

    Bnaren Naren
    67 views2 pages
    This document provides a summary of the film "Orgasmic Birth" directed by Debra Pascali-Bonaro. The film alternates between nine birth stories filmed in a serene environment and commentary from midwives and physicians. It counters sensationalized depictions of birth and shares positive birth stories. The film shows women laboring in supportive surroundings, freely expressing themselves. Their labors are aided by partners and midwives as they welcome their babies. The film aims to expand awareness of birth as a profoundly sensual experience by capturing real labors and births. It suggests current high cesarean rates in the US may be harming more than helping and advocates for a more natural approach to childbirth.

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    Birth Review5

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    This document provides a summary of the film "Orgasmic Birth" directed by Debra Pascali-Bonaro. The film alternates between nine birth stories filmed in a serene environment and commentary from midwives and physicians. It counters sensationalized depictions of birth and shares positive birth stories. The film shows women laboring in supportive surroundings, freely expressing themselves. Their labors are aided by partners and midwives as they welcome their babies. The film aims to expand awareness of birth as a profoundly sensual experience by capturing real labors and births. It suggests current high cesarean rates in the US may be harming more than helping and advocates for a more natural approach to childbirth.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    67 views2 pages

    Orgasmic Birth Review5

    Uploaded by

    Bnaren Naren
    This document provides a summary of the film "Orgasmic Birth" directed by Debra Pascali-Bonaro. The film alternates between nine birth stories filmed in a serene environment and commentary from midwives and physicians. It counters sensationalized depictions of birth and shares positive birth stories. The film shows women laboring in supportive surroundings, freely expressing themselves. Their labors are aided by partners and midwives as they welcome their babies. The film aims to expand awareness of birth as a profoundly sensual experience by capturing real labors and births. It suggests current high cesarean rates in the US may be harming more than helping and advocates for a more natural approach to childbirth.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 2

    BIRTH 36:3 September 2009 265

    Orgasmic Birth: The Best-Kept Secret


    Directed by Debra Pascali-Bonaro
    Seedsman Group, Inc.,
    Westlake Village, California, USA
    www.orgasmicbirth.com
    85 min, DVD, $35
    Orgasmic Birth, visual storytelling at its best, is Debra
    Pascali-Bonaros response to the crisis in birth today,
    with its increasing obstetric medicalization of labor and
    escalating cesarean section rates. It alternates nine birth
    stories with commentary by midwives, physicians, and
    educators. Participating mothers offered the lmmakers
    unusual access to their lives, believing strongly in the
    value of their personal experiences. Filmed in muted,
    golden tones in serene, darkened rooms, the movie
    counters the medias hysterical depictions of birth and
    the negative birth stories all too commonly heard these
    days.
    Orgasmic Birth shows women laboring and giving
    birth in warm, supportive surroundings (save for one
    poignant counter-example). Engaged in the hard work
    and great joy of labor, they are free to express themselves
    through movements most harmonious to them. We
    hear the musical sounds coming from deep within
    them, or high and keening, which reveal a repertoire
    of birth songs familiar to midwives and home birth
    mothers. Each woman is held, soothed, and comforted,
    encouraged by partners and midwives as she welcomes
    and endures the intensity of contractions and enables the
    opening of body and mind to let the baby emerge into
    its rst birth day. It is a miracle, each time.
    The lms title is meant to be provocative. In the
    United Statesa country obsessed with sex and concur-
    rently puritanical about sexual mattersthe very word
    orgasmic commands attention. By naming labor
    and birth differently from the usual terminology and
    extending the denition of sexuality to include womens
    birthing powers, Pascali-Bonaro expands awareness of
    what is possible and guides viewers into a compelling,
    persuasive realm where they might not have expected
    to go. They see that birth can be a profoundly sensual,
    sexual, and spiritual experience; that oxytocin is most
    likely to ow and increase when women agree to feel
    their laborsa process that benets mother and baby
    in so many ways before and after birth. Most of these
    women labor in an intimate environment conducive to
    letting go and surrendering, enabling them to transcend
    pain (or not to feel their contractions as pain) and, for
    some, to experience real sexual pleasure.
    Birth is not romanticized; the viewer labors along
    with each woman. Im scared. . .somethings going to
    break, says one. Later, she reminisces, I thought it
    would go on forever. . . . Nobody tells you that if you
    stand up you can have the baby in ve minutes! You have
    to trust that people will accept you when you totally let
    go. Im so proud of myself. I have fears too, says
    another. Will I have the strength? Others express con-
    dence: Just picture this brave little soul. If hes ready,
    Im ready.
    In Birth by the Numbers, an invaluable DVD
    extra interview, Eugene Declercq guides viewers
    through sobering statistics. He compares the U.S. neona-
    tal, perinatal, and maternity mortality rates with those of
    other industrialized countries. Asking whether cesarean
    operations, invaluable in countries with inadequate med-
    ical care and in instances of crises, have reached a point
    in this country where they hurt rather than help when
    performed as often as they are, he suggests that changes
    in practice have led to the current persistent increase.
    (I can only wish he could have been as specic about
    the agents and nature of these changes as he was about
    the numbers he quoted.) Finally, acknowledging the birth
    reform movement that exists already, he lists the many
    ways in which citizens can join and become active in
    advocating for a more natural, safer way of giving birth.
    Jutta Mason, a Canadian activist, wrote that Womens
    culture, when it disentangles itself from the medi-
    cal monoculture, is so rich, so full of variation and
    interesting detail. . .women (give) birth in ways totally
    unknown within hospitals (1). She adds that when med-
    icalization becomes dominant, these fascinating birth
    stories virtually go underground. Orgasmic Birth does
    not hesitate or equivocate in bringing these vital sto-
    ries into the light, literally. Robbie Davis-Floyd, one of
    the lms commentators, points out that we need to tell
    and hear themalthough often it is not considered all
    right or polite to do so: Might not women who have had
    planned or unplanned medical interventions feel inade-
    quate, consider themselves to have failed?
    Yet clearly the purpose of this lm is not to judge,
    but to ensure that the knowledge of womens powers
    and wisdom remains as alive and viable as possible. It
    succeeds admirably and should be an essential part of
    266 BIRTH 36:3 September 2009
    education for all those involved in caring for childbear-
    ing women. And why not show it (along with many
    of the new childbirth lms coming out these days) to
    young women and men in the context of sexuality and
    life skills courses, as well as in the area of reproductive
    rights, to give them a way of approaching childbirth as
    an empowering event of life? Perhaps it will help build a
    constituency of mothers and practitioners large enough to
    tip the scales and create a re-visioning and re-structuring
    of maternity care.
    Jane Pincus
    P.O. Box 72 Roxbury, Vermont 05669, USA Co-founder,
    co-author, and co-editor of
    Our Bodies, Ourselves
    References
    1. Mason J. The meaning of birth stories. Birth Gazette 1991;
    6(3):1419.

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