Pregnancy

For many couples, the first months of pregnancy are the first threat to their sexual life. At best the woman is tired, at worst quite sick; she may even become repelled by the smell or touch of her man's body. Her hypersensitivity must be respected since it has a protective function. Luckily this stage does not usually last longer than three months, and it is largely offset by the excitement of being pregnant.

In the second trimester most women enter into a phase of heightened sexuality: they glow with life, they feel happy in their bodies, and experience strong sexual tension. This stage of her first pregnancy may be a woman's first experience of her own sexual potency. Many couples find this a time when they fuse most intensely. It serves to reinforce the love they will need weathering the transition at birth.

In the third trimester, the woman's size and increasing fatigue may make lovemaking difficult, but for most couples, even if it occurs less often, it is still joyful right up to the birth.

Birth

This is clearly not a sexual occasion for the couple, although in a sense it is for the woman. In natural childbirth, accumulated tension is discharged through contractions which fold the body forward as in orgasm and many women find this at least partly sexual. Reich pointed out the similarity between the involuntary movements of birth and the convulsions of orgasm and it has been noted in more detail by women themselves—see Niles Newton's Maternal Emotions, and Sheila Kitzinger's The Experience of Childbirth. To open to childbirth the woman must let go of any holding in her body; the lower back must be allowed to come forward with the contractions and pushing movements; the legs must open and the head must fall back with mouth and throat well open. It is also essential for the woman to be able to maintain eye contact when the intensity of feeling and pain may cause her to panic, collapse in despair, or waste energy in unresolved rage. The woman's basic emergency response will often be evoked, and the muscular armor strongly activated.

Many midwives have independently arrived at a way of helping the woman in childbirth which is similar to that consciously attempted by Reich and his physician colleagues: encouragement of eye contact during contractions, letting the jaw come loosely open, letting the chest down, and breathing fully in the abdomen, with some local massage of tight muscles in lower back and thighs. Personally, I believe birth is best left in the hands of midwives and other trained women. Although some men (Reich, Dick Read, Leboyer, Odent) have helped in the modern resistance to technocratic childbirth, many more men are its engineers, and it is up to women to reclaim this lost ground. But even if given ideal attendants, women working in close cooperation with the mother, at least one man can be useful: the husband; and his best role is that of emotional supporter.

The couple who have done some of the work described in this book may find it helpful in childbirth.

The woman's blocks in childbirth will be the same as those which block orgasm in her sexual life. But while blocks to orgasm will prevent it or minimize its intensity, blocks to childbirth will only delay and probably make it agonizing. The baby will be born against resistance mobilized by direct fear or resistance which pre-exists as chronic armor. The presence of chronic armor is one reason why birth has been taken over by (mostly male) obstetricians. In spite of the hopes of natural childbirth supporters, many women are not capable of unmedicated birth. It has even caused psychosis in some mothers, driven them crazy in a lasting sense. One reason for such a reaction is the forcible breakthrough of her armor by the birth process. Eventually the pelvis has to let go.

Even if it does not lead to psychosis, this forcible breach of pelvic armor can be a shattering experience. Birth enforces such a total letting-go of armor that the woman is left completely vulnerable. It probably ensures more sensitive and profound contact with the newborn child: the face of a woman just after an unmedicated birth is open and glowing, her eyes are completely innocent and unmasked. At this point she needs total support and protection from her friends, and especially her husband, in order to be able to give her love and protection to the baby.

Postpartum

For almost all women, the letting go of armor during birth results in a subsequent period of great vulnerability. This is the probable origin of post-partum depression, in which every small setback can cause weeping or pain. Very often, though, the depression contains a great deal of rage: anything which has been buried in the past may now come to the surface; resentments become hot and urgent. This comes hard to the husband, especially since these are weeks in which his sexual access to his wife is non-existent and in which he wants to compensate for this in his new enjoyment of the child. Instead, his efforts at protectiveness may be met with gloom, distress, or anger. The woman's fears of being taken over by the man and the child at this period receive some legitimacy from the historical fact that in many patriarchal societies men have indeed assumed control of women because of the vulnerability associated with child-bearing. There are no easy answers here. But ideally, the woman should get maximum protection and help. It may help the man to realize what is happening: this is a temporary letting-go of all defenses in the woman and the well known post partum depression is something of a misnomer— the woman's anger, if not open, is not far beneath the surface. It will pass.