Latest / The Birth Lounge Podcast / Ep. 449: Orgasmic Birth with Tilly Storm

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Ep. 449: Orgasmic Birth with Tilly Storm · The Birth Lounge Podcast

The reason that women don't have this sort of experience that we're describing is because of one thing, conditioning.
Hello and welcome back to another episode of Guys Is Going.
Deep, and I mean so deep within yourself, and I wanna prepare you for that because some of today's conversation might actually bring up a little discomfort within yourself as you sit in this conversation with today's guest and I, if lack of confidence, guilt, and shame around your sexuality or something that you struggle with, then you need Tilly.
Tilly Storm is a somatics.
Sex and intimacy.
Coach for women who lack desire or pleasure in the bedroom and beyond.
With a background in Taoism and Tantra, Tilly brings a modern twist to unlocking pleasure and passion in the bedroom using somatic healing, psychotherapy and proven coaching techniques.
She helps ambitious women reignite their desire and experience more pleasure in the bedroom and beyond and Tilly had her very own orgasmic birth.
So today we're talking about a topic that you guys have asked me for years.
I mean, quite literally begged me to have the conversation about orgasmic birth For so long, I've gotten texts about it, I've gotten emails about it.
My dms are filled with it.
People wanting to know, have I heard about it? Have I seen it, have experienced it.
Is it something that is real? Can you have an orgasmic birth? Well, today we're gonna dive into all of that, and I think that you might be surprised to learn that an orgasmic birth does not mean that you actually have an orgasm while you are having your baby.
It's much deeper than that.
Think more on an energetic level.
Think more of a shift in yourself cellularly.
I'm so excited for this conversation because I think it's something that intrigues all of us.
And if it's something that's possible for you, why not explore this conversation.
So without further ado, Tilly, welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having me.
You have no idea how excited I am to have you.
This is a conversation that I have, a followed from you for a long time, and B, it is something that over the last decade of me being a doula, I cannot tell you how many times the idea of an orgasmic birth has come up.
Both online, people emailing us, our one-to-one clients.
Everyone seems to be a little interested in how to have this really glorious orgasmic birth.
And you had one, so I thought that maybe we could have a conversation today about the work that you did to lead up to your orgasmic birth.
What was that experience really like and how can listeners and other mamas, if they're wanting an orgasmic birth, what would be the path to getting themselves there? Because I think that's probably where a lot of people get stuck.
They know about it, they know it's a thing, but then it's kind of a question of like, like how do I actually have an orgasmic birth? So before we dive into all of that, just break it down for us about what an orgasmic birth is.
And I'd love to hear about your experience having one.
Yeah.
Uh, alright.
Well first, when we talk about what an orgasmic birth even is, we get to throw our definition of what an orgasm is completely out the fricking window.
Bye.
What you think orgasm is is based on men's bodies.
Hmm.
So the orgasm has been mapped on men and it really can't be mapped on female bodies because our cycle is always changing and it makes it nearly impossible to do, you know, coherent scientific research on it.
So it's not like people don't wanna try to understand female pleasure and orgasm more, it's just that they, we don't know how, which is crazy, but we don't.
So when you think about what orgasmic birth is, it's not going to be something like the typical definition in our head.
Like, well, an orgasm is where, um, I feel this pleasure and then it continuously expands and then there's some fireworks sensation in my clitoris after that's the map of a male orgasm.
Female orgasm.
The definition is much more like this pleasure expands.
So you have pleasure.
Pleasure expands, and then it goes a little up and down and up and down and up.
I don't know if y'all can see me on video, but it's very up and down.
And then eventually there's some sort of mind state shift that happens.
So fireworks might be one of those mind state shifts, but oftentimes it's not.
And I have worked with many women who they don't, they think they've never had an orgasm before.
And when I finally help them to understand how women's bodies actually work and how our pleasure builds over time to create some sort of mind state shifts, sometimes it's like surrender.
Sometimes it's bliss or joy.
They're like, oh, well I've had that before.
I have that all the time.
And what they're really experiencing is something more like an energy or a full body orgasm.
Not a clitoral fireworks, friction based, orgasmic experience.
So orgasmic birth is not some friction based clitoral experience for the people who have them.
It's a complete and utter mind state shift of total surrender.
So when you think of it like that it makes a lot more sense because I think women have this idea in their head that an orgasmic birth means like they're stroking their clitoris or I don't know, they're, they're doing something that invokes this firework sensation.
Is that clear? Yeah.
And I, I think a lot of people probably think that orgasmic birth means having an orgasm when your baby is being born, right? I know that before I learned about it, when just by the name it almost seems as if an orgasm while your baby is being born is what it is.
Um, and it was something that I learned from you that that's not.
Exactly what an orgasmic birth is.
And so was that your experience where it was just this kind of whole body energy shift of what? Just like power or was it joy or, I guess, I don't know.
It was my experience was very unique.
I'll just say.
But it was an experience of complete and utter surrender and wild primal.
Like I didn't give a shit about what anything was going on out there.
I mean, the world did not exist for the two and a half hours that I was in labor with my first one.
I know it was really short, so Ha ha.
But it was like, it was complete and total surrender wildness freedom.
Um, and that was absolutely orgasmic and ecstatic to me.
And for years I kept thinking like, wow, what do I have to do to feel that uninhibited in my life again without having to go through labor again? Because if I could feel like that all of the time, then I would've landed on something that was worth millions of dollars.
Yeah.
Bottle it up and sell it.
Yeah.
Okay.
The more that you talk, I almost feel as if I had like somewhat of an orgasmic when I think about my birth, there is literally no part that I would exchange or change, and I felt so safe the entire time I was completely surrendered.
Of course, I had the waves of fear and one that comes up for me is.
I reached this point, and it was really unexpected for me, is I got scared to push, but then once I started to push, it was like really powerful and I felt very in control of it.
It took a lot longer than I had expected, and it was definitely harder than I had thought it was going to be.
But there was never a point where I was in just like excruciating pain where I thought I wasn't gonna be able to do it, or I thought about tapping out, or I thought about changing my plan.
I was completely held and supported the entire time through and so when I think about my birth, I don't know that the word orgasmic would be the adjective that I'd choose.
But it was certainly very powerful.
And for me it was just a very life-changing experience.
And the energy did shift.
I can wholeheartedly say that the energy that I used to carry pre-baby is very different than the energy that I live with now.
And it's almost more peaceful, more confident, more secure, more grounded than I ever have felt pre motherhood.
And I started to feel that in pregnancy.
But really the birth of my son just, I mean, it felt like the big bang in my brain.
I mean, I just am just fundamentally a different person.
So, you know, uh, thinking that I didn't have kind of that orgasm piece, would you kind of still consider my birth orgasmic? I mean, that's not for me to decide.
It really isn't.
You know, I wasn't there and only you would know that.
It's, it is within that mind state shift that is considered the orgasmic experience.
Often women will struggle with one of these three components of orgasm that I discussed.
The pleasure.
Some women are super numb or they just don't feel like they can ever get turned on.
Like there's just, there is no pleasure.
So how are you gonna have an orgasm if there's no pleasure? Hmm.
Uh, so a lot of women will get stuck there and then someone will get stuck in the expansion of the pleasure.
It's like, eh, it kind of builds, but then it never really builds to anything that's going to have them, like what you said, have this, this letting go or this falling into this different state, this mind state, right.
For you is like safe and blissful and grounded, which.
Is different words.
I don't, I don't know that I've ever heard anyone describe it like that, but that is a mind state shift.
So maybe that counts for you.
I don't know, again, not for me to decide, but I think that with orgasmic birth, it doesn't mean that there's never pain either.
And for many women who experience, I mean, I experienced a lot of pain during that birth too.
Okay.
Let's not say that.
It just wasn't all butterflies and rainbows because there were really hard moments to it, and I really did feel like I was gonna die.
Oh, there was a moment where I was like, okay, this is it.
I literally felt like that kid was gonna split me open from my belly button to my head.
Mm-hmm.
I was like, okay, yep.
This is it.
I'm gonna die after this.
This is how I go out.
Yep.
I was, I was totally convinced that I, I was not going to make it, that I was just going to tear open.
Like my whole body was just gonna rip to shreds.
That's what it felt like.
And it was also the surrender 'cause there was no other option.
Mm-hmm.
That was one of the most ecstatic, orgasmic experiences of my life.
So yeah, it was all the things.
It was, it was all the things, all of the sides of the coin, the pain, the pleasure, the bliss, the terror at the same time.
And I think that's the mind state shift that was like, yeah, that was freaking orgasmic as fuck.
Like, I don't know else, I don't know else I, I don't even know what else you could call that other than it was like the macrocosm of the universe happening through my body in such a very short period of time.
And it was ecstatic and orgasmic, just a seismic shift in who you are fundamentally on a cellular level.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's how I feel about my birth is I just, I look back on the, the woman I was before, and I'm like, she was so cool and she was fun and she was, I mean, she was everything I wanted to be in that time of my life.
But she doesn't exist anymore.
She's gone.
I'm a totally different human on this side of the birth of my baby.
And it was crazy.
I always heard people say, you know, you're not gonna be the same person.
But I thought they meant more like, I thought they meant more like, your body's gonna be different and your, your mental load's gonna be different and you're gonna think about things differently.
And all of those things are true, but the way that I interpret the world and I interact with the world and I, you know think about things is so different now on this side.
It was nothing I could have prepared for and nothing I could have imagined beforehand.
And I think that is just a really, really cool thing.
So you talk about surrender a lot, and that's obviously something that has to happen in birth, right? We talk about that a lot in the birth work, but the other piece that surrender plays a really big role in is our sexuality.
So walk us through the work that you did leading up to having your orgasmic birth, because I think a lot of people probably think, all right, I'd love to have an orgasmic birth.
I'm trying to not have birth trauma.
I really wanna have a positive experience.
I love having sex and having orgasm, so why not have an orgasmic birth? But before we started to record, you shared with me this isn't something that you can just hear and then, you know, practice for a few weeks and have an orgasmic birth.
So what did it look like for you to actually lay the foundation to have this really amazing birth experience? Hmm.
That's such a great question.
Yeah.
Honestly, it started with my dad.
Mm-hmm.
My dad the reason that women don't have this sort of experience that we're describing is because of one thing, conditioning.
Hmm.
That's it.
Okay.
All of the things that you were told about birth, all of the words you hear described about it, all of the original sin BS that you hear about it, you have been programmed since the day you came onto this plane that it's gonna suck.
And who would you have been had you been raised in a tribe of women and a culture of people who celebrated you, who told you, this is gonna be an initiation, this is going to be the most amazing day of your life, not the most painful one.
Who would you be had you not been taught all of these stories and told all of these negative things about birth? Well, you would be someone who expected it to be awesome, and it's within that expectation that you create your reality.
If you expect it to suck and be hard and be painful, then that's probably what's gonna happen.
Our thoughts and our beliefs and our stories create a reality.
So when I tell you that I didn't do any work to have an orgasmic birth, in fact, that wasn't even a thing until three work, three weeks after my baby was born.
I'm friends with Debra Pascali-Bonaro and that movie, her movie came out literally three weeks after the birth of my kid.
And I didn't know her at the time.
I, I met her like two years later and I, I saw the, the movie when it first came out and it actually gave me language to put to my experience 'cause I didn't know how to describe it to people because it was not what I had been told, or like there was no one going around talking about having an orgasmic birth.
Maybe Debra was on a small scale, but it wasn't like, it wasn't to my knowledge at that time.
But what I say, the, for most women, there is so much conditioning and story rewriting and unconscious reprogramming that has to happen in order to have this sort of experience.
But the only reason that I feel that I had the experience that I had was because I was raised in South Louisiana by a father who was, I don't even know, how do I describe him here? He had wanted to go to school to be a chiropractor in the 1960s and leaving Louisiana at the time he was a good old boy from the south, right? Like that wasn't gonna be possible.
He was gonna leave Louisiana.
There was no chiropractic schools in the entire state, so he never did.
He fell into the footsteps of his dad and took over the air conditioning, heating and plumbing business.
And so that's what he did instead.
But he always had this mentality of like, number one.
Two things I learned from this man.
Number one, don't trust the government.
Number two, don't trust doctors.
I will say that at his funeral.
Thank you dad for telling me to never trust the government and never trust a doctor.
I feel like your dad should be on this podcast.
Uh, he would have so much to say about it.
He was so proud of me too.
Um, I'll tell you kind of like when the family came to the birth, they were waiting for a couple of days.
It was an interesting experience.
Anyway so this man all growing up, we don't do doctors.
We don't do prescriptions.
We don't Oh, ever.
Did you not go to the doctor at all? Only because of my mother, but he never agreed with it.
Oh, okay.
I'm not quite there.
I, I see a place for medicine and I highly respect medicine when it's appropriate.
And I would say my mistrust is not in doctors.
It's more in the system.
But Okay.
All right.
This is interesting.
Yeah.
So he was one of these guys, you know, like he wasn't raised on a farm, but he had that sort of mentality.
Like this was super small town Louisiana, and.
Uh, the animals that we had, chickens, the chickens did their thing.
You went, you know, so it was just very like salt of the earth.
We don't need people to facilitate some event that's been happening for tens of thousands and or millions of, I don't know how long, but however long we have been here.
We don't need someone to interfere with that.
So I literally like cats, when the cats were born, you just watch the cats and it's like, okay, they just had a baby.
Cool.
And nothing big about it.
It wasn't an ordeal so we just never had that mentality that we needed to intervene with things like the human body just knew what to do.
And, uh, I really, not that he had tons of conversations with me about birth in particular, he didn't really, but I just adopted that mindset of like, you know what? I actually went to school to be an O-B-G-Y-N.
I never got into med school 'cause I suck at taking standardized tests.
But I got to the point where I did go to a bunch of rotations with an anesthesiologist my senior year of pre-med, and I watched all of these women have these C-sections and I just was like, I don't know what the fuck I just saw.
But that is not what I thought birth would be in the human experience.
And they were so despondent and checked out and you know, I understand people have C-sections and they need them sometimes, but uh, and nothing is wrong with that.
However, many of these women were just like, I don't even know where they were.
It was like they were gone.
They were not there.
I, it was probably very traumatic for many of them, and I had just decided in that moment, I was like, okay, whatever that was.
I am not having that experience.
So, uh, if I ever get pregnant and have a baby, which I did, I knew that that was probably gonna happen soon.
I was like, anything to not have that experience.
So, eventually I got pregnant like the next year I think, and then my husband and I went to the Bradley Method childbirth classes.
That was like the super common thing back then.
And it was basically how to have a non intervention heavy hospital birth.
And after the second class, I realized like, oh, they're just training me how to like, combat people when they wanted to intervene with things.
And I'm like, I, yeah, I'm not even doing this.
No, thank you.
So we opted, we, like, I quit going to classes.
I'm like, I'm not doing this.
Like, I'm not going to the hospital.
Are you kidding me? No, I've seen what happens there.
So I ended up having a free birth.
And I didn't have a fear in the world.
I don't.
And people are like, oh, you're so courageous.
And I'm like, are you kidding me? To me it feels like you're so courageous to go to a hospital like that seems crazy to me.
And again, because of my dad and the stories I was telling myself, right? I, I had grew up with those stories.
You don't need a doctor, you shouldn't trust them, right? So for me, I got exactly what I believed and thank God I listened to myself because my birth was lemme see, uh, midnight on the due date, my water broke.
Nothing happened for two hours.
I just felt a little nauseous, like.
Ugh.
Just kind of sick.
And then at two in the morning, I woke up and I'm like, okay, yep, things are happening now.
Um, and then I had 'em at four 30 in the morning.
So it was a two and a half hour labor, and it was very, very fast.
And you know what, by the time I would've thought to call anybody, if I had even had a midwife, it would've been too late because it was 30, literally 30 minutes before delivery that I was like, this is happening.
And we lived in the middle of nowhere in Idaho at the time.
And, uh, yeah, there's no way they would've made it.
And it was the coldest night of the years, like five feet of snow on the ground.
It was such a crazy night.
It was like negative 19 degrees that night.
And yeah, I just, I just had 'em, and I had the experience that I believed that I was gonna have, and there was never an ounce of fear that I couldn't do it or that something would go wrong.
I did also prepare myself.
I bought the emergency childbirth manual and I knew the three situations that would, that could happen, that could be an emergency situation.
And I told my husband to, you know, look out for these things and if those things happen then, you know, maybe call 9 1 1 and then that was it.
So, yeah, that was it.
It is wild to hear you talk about I know you said you didn't like really grow up on, uh, grow up on a farm.
Did you grow up on a farm? No.
No.
Okay.
Yeah, so I did grow up on a farm and for a very long time I have, you know, shared that I think that's where my deep trust in birth comes from.
I think that because I didn't grow up with a mother who talked about birth in a super positive way, she didn't have birth trauma in a way that she kind of shared negative thoughts, but it wasn't anything about this is an initiation.
This is gonna be a fantastic day, this is gonna be hard work, but you can do it.
This is gonna be the greatest day of your life.
You're gonna meet your baby.
You and your baby are gonna work together.
Your baby's body and your body are dynamically connected, like you guys are gonna talk and sing and dance together in order to bring your baby into this world.
There was none of that in my life, but I did for years get to see how animals do it, and I did get to see how uninterrupted birth just happens.
Right.
And I also got to see my dad need to intervene.
And so I think that really helped lay the foundation for me of understanding how do we learn to sit on our hands in birth when nothing is needing to be done, and how do we evaluate the room and the situation? You know, the room on the farm is the field or the barn.
Mm-hmm.
In order to understand how and when to intervene.
And sometimes it was as simple as my dad reaching in.
Of course, reaching into a cow is.
All the way up to your shoulder to help that baby be born.
Sometimes that calf has been born a little bit, but they do need a little rotation.
And then sometimes, not often it did require a C-section.
Right.
And so, I know many of you are probably like c-section for cows.
Yeah, we can, we can do c-sections on farm animals.
Obviously it comes with similar risk.
As humans, we run the risk that mama animal doesn't make it.
They have a risk of infection.
They need a lot more healing and a lot more, um, managing and tending to postpartum than a, a cow or a pig or a goat or any animal that didn't have a c-section, just like humans.
And so I think that me, that being my normal and then after that was ingrained in my brain, I stepped into birth work is really where my divide happened and I walked into the hospital system thinking, why are we just doing so much? Like our bodies are meant to do this? We, why are we doing birth this way? And so for me, it really gave me such a great foundation.
And much like you, I did get the birth that I kind of expected.
I didn't have any sort of expectation going into my birth.
And I think that really shows in my birth experience.
I, I just knew that no matter what happened, two things, I would be able to pivot and I would be able to handle it.
And from the time that my water broke and then nothing happened for hours, I pivoted and I, uh.
You know, like every woman hoped for a quicker labor.
I had a three day labor and I was able to handle it.
Like every woman I wished that I had been able to push just once or twice my baby had been here.
I pushed for hours and hours and really hard labor intensive pushing right? And I still don't have any birth trauma because I knew no matter what happened in my birth, I was gonna be able to be flexible and I was going to be able to handle it because I was confident in myself.
And I just think that is so important.
I love that you bring that up.
And I think a lot of people go into birth not really with that idea, right? They had this birth plan.
For some people it's very rigid, and if it strays from that birth plan at all, then for them it's very traumatic or it causes them to spiral or it causes them to think that maybe they did something wrong.
And I think that birth plans are a lovely idea.
I love a birth plan.
I made a birth plan, I had multiple birth plans, and maybe that's the key.
Maybe the key is not having one birth plan, but it's having many birth plans that if I get into this situation, I will be able to pivot.
I will know where to go, and I will know how to confidently make my choices.
And I think that is something that you just described really well about.
Like I just kind of hung out, my water broke, nothing happened.
I just trusted that my body would happen.
I didn't think I'd have a two and a half labor.
I did.
My labor was two and a half hours and I just birthed my baby, and I knew that my body could handle it.
And you and your husband had done the work you mentioned previously about watching women dissociate in labor in the C-sections, that they just weren't there.
You could look in their eyes and they were just absent.
That is something I have seen so many times.
It is very, very sad.
Would you say that dissociation in labor is the exact opposite of an orgasmic birth? Because that's almost how I feel.
They're two polar opposites of the spectrum.
That dissociation is like, I'm not here, I'm checked out.
I'm gonna have blank space in my brain when I go to revisit these memories.
Where an orgasmic birth is almost this like out of body experience where you don't have blank space, but you just have these memories that rush back.
And for me, when I think about my birth, I still get the high that I had when I had my son, which is the opposite of looking back and having almost a an empty filing cabinet where the memories of your child should be.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I, uh, I believe that the opposite of orgasmic birth is traumatic birth and disassociation is what happens when you're experiencing trauma.
Hmm.
So, absolutely.
Yeah.
And it doesn't have to be that way either.
Okay.
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I definitely did not have the same experience with my second one.
Oh, tell us about that.
Yeah, so those, just like you, I agreed that it's all about.
Being able to surrender and go with what is presenting in the moment.
I mean, this is how, if you follow any Eastern philosophy like and the Taoism and things like that, which I really love that.
But Taoism is very non-dual.
It's just responding to what's here in the moment.
And if we all could just go into our birth experience with what's being presented in the moment without story, without bringing in the conditioning and letting fear take over us, then we can respond in an empowered way.
Being empowered means that you're present with what's here and right now, and you're not reacting from your primal, unconscious mind and the triggers that your unconscious mind might say you.
You'll react in a fight flight, freeze, fa and dissociate because it feels like there's a lion chasing you or you have to all of a sudden change plans and, but that's not the plan.
And you're holding so tight to the plan and now you can't fully surrender and meet what's here right now.
So my second experience was totally different.
I had flew from Denver, I had him in Denver.
I flew from Denver to New Orleans to go visit my family one more time before I had my second one.
And two hours after I got off the plane, my water broke.
I was 34 weeks, 33 or 30, I can't even remember anymore.
It's so long ago.
Yeah, 33 or 34 weeks.
So, uh, I knew that I, I knew, I knew what was ahead.
I knew that, uh, the risk of infection would increase the longer I waited and that, you know, I'd probably need to go to a hospital just to ensure that my baby could breathe when he came out.
And eventually I did.
And that was also the most amazing, orgasmic and empowering experience of my life.
Oh, that one was super fun.
That one was so fun because as soon as I got to, uh, the ER and I had waited like 30, no 24 hours, I had waited a whole day after my water broke, and I knew it was all gone, like no water.
I knew.
And I got there 24 hours after that happened and they checked me in and they did the ultrasound to ensure that there was actually no water.
And just like I already knew, they were like, yeah, you don't have any water.
Uh, you should probably get induced.
And I'm just like, all right, here's the deal guys.
Like, I'm only here for my baby.
I'm not here for me.
Okay, I know how to birth the baby.
And I told 'em, I'm like, I had my first twin unassisted.
This is gonna go really fast.
So as soon as it starts, it's gonna go really fast.
Y'all, it went 30 minutes.
Okay.
It took 30 minutes to birth that kid.
I had six contractions.
That was it.
But the time between, nothing happening because earlier your water breaks, the longer it's gonna take for contractions to start.
You could, it's normally wouldn't start for like a week at 33 or 34 weeks.
So labor was not starting on its own.
So I'm so glad that I had 'em in Denver.
Because these people were cool and they, they were gonna work with me and I just told 'em, I was like, look, I'm not taking the drugs.
So what I would prefer to do is that you give me a breast pump and we're gonna see if we can induce labor with a breast pump.
I use that thing on off for six hours and it worked.
So, every time I would go on and off with the breast pump is when I was using it, I would start to feel something.
It wasn't much at all, but I could feel like things happening in my uterus and then it would dissipate and then I would use it again.
It would dissipate.
And I just kept doing it until eventually I was like, okay, if I stop using it, let's see if my body takes over.
And then it did, and then I had six contractions and he was out and I refused to have a baby on the bed.
I told him to bring in the fricking pallets with some blankets because I was not getting in that damn bed.
They brought in the pallets.
They said that the doctor didn't feel comfortable to birth a baby with a woman on all fours.
So he was gonna bring in the resident attending midwife, which technically isn't even really legal, but he oversaw while she caught, and somehow that was legal.
Oh my God.
Anyway, what a good man.
We love that.
Right? Yeah.
So he caught Victor, my, my youngest, and uh, then they did their whole NICU thing.
I, I fought as long as I could to keep him on the cord and whatnot.
But he, he did okay.
He was breathing okay when he came out.
So it was NICU for 10 days and.
He, it was mainly because he couldn't feed, he didn't have the suck swallow reflex yet.
He hadn't developed that yet.
So, um, we had to do the gavage tube where we would put the breast milk through his little tube into his belly.
And then eventually after 10 days, we were able to go home and, and feed him just breast only.
So I was very fortunate 'cause that took a little while and that was a really difficult part of it.
But yeah, I mean, that just goes to show that you can have any sort of birth experience and if you're fully present and meeting what's here in the moment and choice and not letting fear and old stories get the best of you, you and you're present, right, and you're not being triggered and reacting to old conditioning and beliefs, you can continue to make empowered choices.
So.
I don't think it matters what kind of birth experience you have, as long as you're there, you feel like you're the one making the decisions and you're calling the shots.
That's what makes it empowering.
I think a lot of people out there are probably thinking, wow, I might have had an orgasmic birth.
Because I think it's really empowering to hear you say that you had a NICU stay you had a hospital birth when that wasn't your plan, and you still described that as orgasmic and being fully present and being the one calling the shots, even though things went drastically different, almost the opposite of what you had anticipated and hoped for.
Yeah, but I, I also was the one calling shots, you know, I, that was the key piece of it all.
Did I fight them in the nicu? I did, but that's what I'm saying.
Thank God I had him in, in a NICU in Denver and not New Orleans.
'cause it would've been a very different experience there anyway.
Yeah.
NICU was very interesting.
I didn't leave that kid the entire time I was there.
Hmm.
Uh, they, it depends on what NICU you're in, but some of them, they don't allow you to stay there, which I think is just the funniest thing on the planet.
Like, I'm sorry, you're not gonna allow me to stay with this kid that just came out my vagina.
Yeah.
Fuck you.
Uh, no, that's not how this is gonna go.
So I, I told him, I'm like, I'm not leaving.
He is not gonna be left out of my sight.
Like I'm, that's not gonna happen.
So I don't know what you need to do in order to accommodate a mother staying in the nicu, but I am not leaving this room.
And I did not for the entire 10 days.
So.
He was with me the whole time and I made sure that they weren't trying to shove some bottles of formula down his Gavage tube and you know, whatever else.
But they were, they were really cool actually.
Uh, the nurses were very helpful and they let me do all of the things.
Uh, they showed me how to feed him with the gavage tube, which I got to do that, which was really cool.
But I, you know, again, I think that was very situational considering where I was doing that.
So I don't think many women would've had the same experience.
You might have been met with a lot more resistance, actually ended up having the head of NICU come to talk to me.
'cause he is like, well we don't really get a lot of moms who like demand to stay.
And, you know, of course he was getting the jaundice and the bilirubin and blah, blah, blah.
And they were worried about him regulating his temperature.
And I was doing kangaroo care and all this and.
You know, we don't get a lot of moms doing this, but you know, we're willing to work with you because they basically told me I was right.
Like, you know, it's actually a lot better for a mom to be able to regulate her baby's temperature when they're on their chest and not, and some incubator with a heating thing.
And the doctor was like, yeah, like if you wanna do that, let's do that.
I was like, yeah, cool.
'cause I really wasn't gonna give you another option, but, okay.
You know, i've shared about this before, but we had a five day hospital stay when my son was between two and three days old.
He wasn't quite three days old.
Um, not quite 72 hours when we first arrived at the ER, and much like you, I went in just with my armor up.
I just was prepared to fight them on everything.
They were not gonna separate me.
I was not leaving.
I mean, I wasn't even gonna shower in the hospital.
My baby was not going to be out of my sight.
I had brought a wrap to wear him.
He was not going to go into a bassinet.
We were not sleeping separate.
And I had just anticipated pushback from the hospital staff.
I really thought they were gonna come in and say, we can't allow you to wear your baby.
We can't allow you to sleep while you're wearing your baby.
And of course, I was doing it uber safe.
His face was uncovered.
I was in a seated position, so I wasn't laying down.
We were on a firm surface and they never said anything to me.
The only time I really had to unwrap him was for procedures that he needed, um, or for testing that we needed to do.
And then once we had moved out of the ER onto an actual medical floor, they had brought us to a room that had a very firm surface.
And looking back.
I think they might have done that on purpose because I was able to co-sleep with him in that room outside of a hospital bed.
Which obviously that mattress is not safe for co-sleeping.
And I think even in that unit, I anticipated a lot of pushback.
I thought they would come in and say, we can't let you sleep here with your baby.
And do you know, not a single person said anything to me.
And I almost wonder if they just knew it was better for our family unit.
It was better for my baby to be close.
It was better for me as a mother not to have to fight.
It was better for me as a mom, to have my baby close.
My husband didn't have to play the in-between, he didn't have to defend me or our choices.
And our hospital staff was so supportive and so.
I think it's a really beautiful gosh, words are hard in postpartum, but I think that you are laying out a really beautiful scenario of how hospital staff can be very supportive if you are very confident in your choices.
If you are making evidence-based choices and you go in and you have these conversations about what is important to you, why they are important to you, and how can your hospital staff support you in doing what feels best to you and your baby, and I think that piece is often missed on a lot of families.
When we get into the hospital system, a lot of times we find ourselves almost feeling helpless, right? You're like, well, I'm not a doctor.
Well, I'm not a nurse.
Well, I'm not this, no, but you are the mother of that child, and you do know that baby better than anybody else now or ever will because you are their mother.
And so I just want to, I hope that listeners you're listening, saying, okay, well.
If Tilly and HeHe can do this, then so can I.
So with that mentality, I want to circle us back to orgasmic birth.
If someone is listening and they, they've decided like, okay, I am either very newly pregnant or I'm not pregnant yet and I'd like to start doing the work to have an orgasmic birth, what do we do? I think I have gathered that probably diving into your sexuality and doing some unlearning about the conditioning that we have had over the years as women in the Western culture is probably a good place to start.
You need to feel very open and comfortable with your sexuality.
Is that kind of the starting point? It's part of it, but not the most important piece.
I can't tell you when I was 23 and had my first one that I was comfortable with my sexuality.
Hmm.
I still had a lot of unprocessed shame and guilt from being raised Southern Baptist.
Like I had a lot of that.
And I hadn't done the work.
So what is really important, if you not even pregnant yet, is to recognize that sovereignty is the gold standard.
It's the north star here.
Sovereignty is a north star.
And the reason that I say that is because when you are a sovereign individual, you know yourself.
You know what you want, you know how to advocate yourself.
You don't need someone to advocate for yourself because you're no longer a people pleaser.
Many women hire doulas because they're the biggest fricking pushover, people pleasers in the world 'cause they don't trust themselves to speak up when it matters.
That's what it is.
Yeah, being a sovereign woman means that you know what you want, you confidently ask for it, and you keep holding to that standard and not backing down.
And it's, uh, it's again, within the expectation, right? Like when you're in your sovereignty, there's an an energetic expectation that's to be met by people.
So when I'm in that hospital and these people are suggesting I do all these things that I don't want to do, I'm like, no, thanks.
I know the facts.
I know, you know the numbers and the studies, and I could pull some off right now if you wanna debate them.
I'm a smart individual but you know, I'm not a, I'm not open for that.
I'm open for this, and when you're a sovereign individual, you have that ability to state and hold to and expect a certain level of being met with.
So I think it's more about being able to own your voice and own your desires more than the sexuality piece at all.
It's not about reclaiming my sexuality to have an orgasmic birth.
I didn't freaking do that.
That came later.
But it was more about owning my desires and owning my voice and the expectation that came with being met in my desire and using my voice to speak it and not backing down that mattered.
So I.
Again, not so much about sexuality itself, but do you have a lot to work on around these things? Yeah, because when you're doing sexuality work, you're discovering all the parts and pieces of you who've backed down, who stayed quiet, who've shut up, who haven't spoke up for herself, who haven't stated her desires and what she really wants.
So the same thing that you're working on when you're working on your sexuality is basically the same thing you're working on when you want to go have an orgasmic birth.
People think it's about sex.
It actually has nothing to do with it, but that shame and guilt is present in both.
There's shame and guilt in what has been conditioned into us about sex, but then once you start to learn, and I don't say this in any ugly way, and I say it also because I've been there, right? Like I've done this work so.
I walked the same path, but you eventually realize I let myself down.
I had so many opportunities to speak up for myself, for that little girl inside for the things that I wanted, and I didn't do that.
And that shame and guilt surfaces again, because you start to realize that other choices could have been made and there possibly might have been different outcomes.
Not always, not guaranteed, but I think a lot of us probably have to sit in this really uncomfortable space of, of realizing, had I been more confident, had I spoken up for myself? Had I said no? Had I said yes? Had I said, do more, do less.
I want something different.
Then our stories might have been a little different, and that's hard, right? It's really, really hard to really realize that.
You've let yourself down and you didn't speak up when you wanted to.
Okay.
Would you say that your orgasmic birth set you on a path for being more deeply in touch with your sexuality? Because I think a lot of people think about it as the opposite.
This person must be really comfortable sexually.
They must be so in touch with their sexuality and comfortable and just like a sexual being.
It sounds like for you, your births actually were the starting point and now you live this really sexually confident life.
Yes.
The births was the initiation and that what I was saying in the beginning.
Remember how I said for years I kept wandering? How do I get to feel that free? My body, how do I get to own that wild primal that I could experience in that, in both of my births? Because my second birth, even though it was so freaking short, it was still wild and completely primal.
And how could I feel like that every day? How could it feel like that in my body without having to be in labor birth to get there? So that led me to recognizing that there was work to be done around myself.
Um, eventually I had, um, my husband at the time had made a comment about only me only being able to have an orgasm in one way.
And that was really the comment that got everything started for me because it started questioning why.
Why does it only happen in one way? Why do I have to be the one in control of it and why can't I just receive it? And then I had started to hear via the interwebs and Facebook ads back in 2015 when you can actually do these sorts of ads without meta kicking you out and banning your account.
That my, my very first sexuality teacher, Layla Martin, uh, she had done this she was advertising this book called Wild Woman in the Bedroom.
And I got the ad and I'm like, yeah, wild.
It was that word wild.
I was like, that's what I felt in birth.
That's what I wanna feel like every day.
That's what I feel like in my sexual experiences.
I was super un uncomfortable in my body.
I didn't know, like I had saggy boobs 'cause it was dumb breastfeeding.
I was like, Ugh.
You know, like I don't feel good in my body.
And when I read that book, she had mentioned about how shame and guilt.
Where one of the reasons that women's sexuality can get shut down or their desire or their pleasure can be hard to access.
I didn't have an issue with desire, but it was the pleasure that felt limiting.
And within that knowing, I ended up signing up to do a Jade Egg course with her, which was learning the, uh, Taoist jade egg practice.
That completely blew me open.
Two months after doing a jade egg practice, I became super multiorgasmic, was able to have cervical orgasms, energy orgasms, like all the things.
I was like, what in the world happened here? I didn't even know.
It was amazing.
And then that led me, uh, I was a doula and a midwife apprentice at the time while I was doing this and working at the birth center that I worked at.
I just was like, there's something about this role that is fulfilling.
But it's not quite it for me, and I could never put my finger on it.
And then when Layla, my first sexuality teacher had started a coaching certification and sex love and relationship coaching.
And when that opportunity even presented itself, I was like, that's what I'm here to do with my life.
I just knew, I knew in that moment that, oh yeah, here's what we're here to do.
So yeah, the birth was the, the blueprint, the birth, had that not happened, I wouldn't have even had a blueprint for what? Being wild and allowing your primal mind to lead the way for a few minutes a day.
Dear God, heaven forbid, we don't think for 10 minutes.
Okay.
So yes, that was the blueprint.
That experience made me recognize that this is what being free in my body feels like.
This is what feeling confident in my body feels like.
This is what pleasure and bliss and ecstasy feels like.
And after that game's over, like I had to find that and I was gonna, I was gonna go until I did and fortunately it didn't take too long.
Okay.
I wanna ask about your partner's role in all of this.
Not yours in particular, but like, just for people listening.
If, you know, if you have a woman who's very sexually confident and she also doesn't have problems with desire or she, you know, is very open with her sexuality, but she has a partner who maybe isn't quite there yet.
How does that play out in terms of an orgasmic birth? Because I can imagine that that mismatch of energy or maybe their lack of confidence can impede some things.
Yeah, I mean, that's where you've gotta get really good with knowing your desires and speaking in feminine communication and being vulnerable and keeping an open heart.
And that's not an easy thing to do in a world that tells us to be strong, independent women all the time.
When we're also in this experience, that really requires us to completely surrender, like the completely opposite skillsets of being strong and, you know, making shit happen versus being able to fully let go and surrender.
So when it comes to a partner not being on.
Board fully.
It's about owning your desires and again, advocating for yourself and using your voice and, uh, really dialing in feminine communication because eventually men just want to make you happy.
So especially men, so if they know what you really want and what would bring you pleasure and joy, they're very likely to do it.
Now, if they've got their own beef and programming around doctors, hospitals, what birth should be, what it shouldn't be, and, but all of this then, you know, I, I'm really not sure, but I never would've been with a husband who had that sort of mentality.
Anyway, again, just from you.
Now y'all all know like how I was raised with a dad like that.
And of course we always go for a dad.
So did my partner have any problem with my choices in that? Not a bit.
He was completely on board, so.
It's not an issue that I personally had to face, and I don't think I would've ever attracted anyone that would've been an issue with in the first place.
So, uh, does it happen? Yeah.
I mean, I was a doula and my midwife for apprentice for seven years.
Did I see men struggle with this? Absolutely.
Uh, but at the end of the day, it's her body.
She is the one growing the baby.
She's the one that gets to birth the thing.
So ultimately it's your choice.
Yeah, I agree with that.
And it's obviously something that I teach as well.
I'm really blessed that I have a husband that didn't bat an eye when I said, we're gonna home birth this baby.
He kinda was like.
I know, I knew that was, I knew that's what we were gonna do.
You know, and of course he had questions.
He's in healthcare and, and so he does come from that kind of medical realm of things, but he never once questioned my intuition or made me feel as if this choice wasn't good for me or our family.
Um, and he was eager to learn.
And I, I do think that makes all the difference.
I do also like you recognize that not everyone has that.
And that's super unfortunate.
And I think that it just makes me really sad when you have a male partner who's not willing to get uncomfortable to do the work, in order to let you do what you need to do to have your baby.
'Cause I agree with you.
It's your body, it's your choice, it's your baby.
And, and I do believe that birth is divinely feminine.
Right.
And, and I'm not someone that doesn't believe that men don't have a role in birth.
I absolutely do.
I would not, I would not have been able to have my birth without my husband.
I would never have wanted to have my birth without my husband.
So I do believe that for people who want their husbands there, there is a role for that male energy.
But I do believe it's divinely feminine.
And in that, that male energy has to be confident enough to set the ego aside and say, this is my role and I need to step back and, and do what my role is, which is probably gonna be different than the role that you play in everyday life.
Just because birth isn't masculine.
So you don't need to be in control.
You don't need to be the decision maker.
You are a supporter.
And I think for a lot of men, that's a really hard role to play because they're used to being the leader.
And it can be very uncomfortable to sit in a space, especially for your first child that you've never been.
It can feel really scary and intense.
You probably have never seen your wife in the state that she is in, making the noises that she is making, saying the things that she's saying.
Moving her body in the way that she's doing that can be really just uncomfortable and I think a lot of men are not willing to just go there.
And it makes me very sad.
Yeah, I agree.
And you know, there's a reason that they didn't allow men in birth rooms a long time ago.
Yeah, yeah.
That's very true.
Okay.
It really is women's work.
I mean, at the end of the day, it is like there's a reason men don't have babies, uh, because they would have them based on logic and reason and what makes sense.
Well, that's not the skillset needed to birth a baby.
Yeah.
So, you know, there's a reason that we women get this experience and, you know, it, it makes sense to me why for so long and, and history, human history that men really weren't a part of the experience.
And I think it's cool that many of them can be a part of the experience now.
I'm not saying that we shouldn't have men as part of the experience.
I'm just saying that the ones who have, you know, maybe these, uh, differing viewpoints or whatever, you know, like, again, ultimately this is your decision, it's your body.
And I'm all about very much on board with like, if you're the one birthing the baby, you get to call the shots.
Okay.
Yeah.
So, uh, he's just gonna have to deal.
Yeah, I agree with that.
And I, you know, I think, well, I'm a very forward person, so I, I ask the questions that probably not a lot of people would ask, but I, I think there's a point where you could ask your partner, why aren't you willing to grow with me? Why aren't you willing to go there within yourself? Why aren't you willing to be in that discomfort in order to serve me in the way that I need and our baby needs in order to help us have the birth that our family deserves? Because I think a lot of men are not able to put two and two together, understanding that the way that you birth is the way that your postpartum is going to go and the way that your motherhood is going to get started.
And it's like this bouncing board for the rest of your life.
I mean, it does set the trajectory of everything following your birth and for men, I think that's a really hard thing to compute.
Okay.
I have one last place that I'd like to wrap up.
And you mentioned a jade egg.
Tell us about the jade egg, what that is, who would use it, why you would use it.
I need the details on the jade egg.
Yeah, we just, we just finished a three week jade egg challenge in my community, uh, which is really cool to introduce people to this practice.
It's honestly the best holistic sexuality practice I can give a woman to help her reconnect with her sexuality, to help her understand how her sexual energy can move through her body, how to work with her sexual desire, how to awaken it and if she already has lots of sexual desire, how to cycle it and move it through the body so you don't feel like it's to, like it's, uh, causing you to make poor decisions.
So basically the jade egg practice, it's, uh, using an egg shaped stone.
You use it within the vaginal canal and you do different squeezes and releases and breath work practices with it to help you create more sensitivity in the vaginal canal.
So if you are postpartum, you can use it as soon as you're cleared for vaginal intercourse.
So usually around six weeks.
And then if you are pregnant, you are not to be using this because it does shift and change your hormones.
Almost every woman that starts a jaded practice who's menstruating, um, her cycle will be funky for a little while, uh, because it shifts your, in the Taoist tradition, they were very interested in a person's health and wellbeing, and they also recognized that a person's sexual health was a basis for all living.
So it's within having an awake and alive sexual energy.
That you can actually go out and do things in the world.
You can create a business, you can have the family and run the family without depleting yourself, which honestly is what happens here in the United States.
And why women are always so tired and don't have energy.
Well, there's a million reasons why, but one of them being is that we pay no attention to our sexuality and we don't source our energy.
We don't turn on our inner pilot light, basically.
So it's like anytime we go to have sex, it's trying to start that pilot light off from scratch every single time because there's, there's no hum, there's no aliveness.
It's, we're so disconnected from our bodies.
So the jade egg is the practice to help you come back to that, to help you wake up that inner vitality and aliveness inside, and how to work with your sexual energy so that you can have amazing orgasmic experiences and actually want sex.
That is awesome.
Okay.
Tilly, oh my gosh, this has been such a fulfilling conversation.
I knew this was gonna be good because I think just the topic of orgasmic birth is so invigorating, but I think I've kind of settled on through this conversation that I did in fact have an orgasmic birth.
Not in the way that people probably thought going into this conversation of having an orgasm when I birthed my baby, but just in the fact that I was so in control, so supported, it was pure joy and elation for me throughout the entire time.
I, of course, had hard moments and I had moments where I was like, this is really intense, but it was truly everything that I dreamed of it being and.
I mean, minutes after having my son, I looked at my husband and was like, let's have another baby.
I mean, I just genuinely cannot wait to have another baby.
I cannot wait to birth again.
I love the entire experience and I just want that for every woman.
I want them to have this type of confidence leaving their birth experience.
I mean, heck, I want you to have that type of birth experience going into your birth.
That's what I teach you in the birth lounge.
But I want you to have this type of confidence going into motherhood as well, and, and I know that the way that you birth has everything to do with that.
So thank you so much for being here.
This conversation is going to be so pivotal for so many women.
If people were interested in learning about your community or learning from you or connecting with you, how can they do that? So you wanna get on my email list, y'all.
I don't do social media.
I am not a fan.
So, uh, the way you'll get on my email list is you'll get a free gift called Five Days to Epic Pleasure and Passion.
It's a free mini course that I have for you and it's got all of my best teachings and trainings in it.
It's specifically around sexuality and pleasure and desire and awakening low libido, things like that.
So if you know that's been something you've struggled with, you definitely wanna go download that free mini course by getting on my email list and, uh, yeah, we can connect with the next jade egg challenge.
I'm definitely doing it again.
So, you know, we'll have at least two of them going on every year.
So if you're interested in the jade egg and wanna learn more, definitely get your beauty in the challenge.
I love it.
Oh my gosh.
Tilly, genuinely, thank you so, so much for being here.
You guys, we finally did it.
We had the conversation about orgasmic birth, and I think Tilly gave you some really good tips on how you can start your own journey.
Birth does not have to be this scary, unplanned, unhinged, I have no idea what I'm blindly walking into experience.
It can be something that, yes, of course we can't plan it out, but you can pivot with it and you can be confident in your decisions, and you can be in control of the things that happen in your birth because you have been so conditioned and educated to believe yourself and trust yourself, and trust this process and know like I did, no matter what happens in your birth, you'll be able to handle it and you will know the right choice to make.
Ugh, oh my gosh.
Hands down.
This is one of my favorite episodes I have ever recorded.
We are at the beginning of recording this season of me coming back from maternity leave.
And Tilly, you are just the perfect person and what an amazing topic to kick off this season with.
So thank you so much.
All right, you guys.
I will see you in the next episode.
Be sure to follow, well, I guess you won't follow Tilly on social media, but be sure to join her email list and you can find me on social media at Tranquility by HeHe and at the Birth lounge.
Until next time, head to your app store and download the Birth Lounge app for evidence-based childbirth education and data driven postpartum support delivered straight to your phone.
Bye bye.
Thank you so much for tuning in today.
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