i started reading "the scientification of love" by michel odent last night. i quite like him, though the book itself isn't exactly easy reading... his english is fine but i suspect the book was written in french and translated, because it has a slightly unnatural feel to the language, even though it perfectly conveys the message. it's a series of very short, kind of choppy chapters detailing new insights on "the scientification of love" from various disconnected research perspectives, so you really have to work to make the connections yourself; science hasn't done it for you. as he describes it, the subject is like a mirror broken into a thousand pieces and each science has one piece but can't see how it fits with the others. he's trying to fit them together himself.
anyway the reason for this post is that there was a paragraph that really struck me, in which he was talking about how back in the 70s the idea that since no other natural physiological process is painful, birth pain must be culturally created. (i've talked about this before and it made a lot of sense to me.) but he says that's wrong... that hormonally we need labor to be painful so that our bodies will release endorphins which facilitate and possibly even trigger the actions of the more important birth/love/bonding hormones (oxytocin and prolactin). that totally blew me away. maybe birth is supposed to be painful? maybe we should be glad that it is! even after the pain stops the endorphins continue to flow for hours after birth...
it's interesting to me because the "cultural delusion" theory totally made sense to me, and i think in part it is still true... we are super scared of labor and conditioned to expect agony our whole lives... but maybe, rather than creating the pain outright, our fears and expectations simply intensify the feelings we would naturally already be having (and put a scary spin on them).
to be honest, i love the idea that the pain helps make birth more pleasant; because in the end, that is what the effect is. i want to be thankful for all aspects of my birth, however difficult they may be. and pain=endorphins=hormone cascade=bonding=love. it's another great reason not to use drugs in labor... you miss out on the pleasure that directly results from the pain. (of course, you still release the bonding hormones during breastfeeding even if you have an anaesthetized or sedated birth.)
fascinating. odent rocks.
anyway the reason for this post is that there was a paragraph that really struck me, in which he was talking about how back in the 70s the idea that since no other natural physiological process is painful, birth pain must be culturally created. (i've talked about this before and it made a lot of sense to me.) but he says that's wrong... that hormonally we need labor to be painful so that our bodies will release endorphins which facilitate and possibly even trigger the actions of the more important birth/love/bonding hormones (oxytocin and prolactin). that totally blew me away. maybe birth is supposed to be painful? maybe we should be glad that it is! even after the pain stops the endorphins continue to flow for hours after birth...
it's interesting to me because the "cultural delusion" theory totally made sense to me, and i think in part it is still true... we are super scared of labor and conditioned to expect agony our whole lives... but maybe, rather than creating the pain outright, our fears and expectations simply intensify the feelings we would naturally already be having (and put a scary spin on them).
to be honest, i love the idea that the pain helps make birth more pleasant; because in the end, that is what the effect is. i want to be thankful for all aspects of my birth, however difficult they may be. and pain=endorphins=hormone cascade=bonding=love. it's another great reason not to use drugs in labor... you miss out on the pleasure that directly results from the pain. (of course, you still release the bonding hormones during breastfeeding even if you have an anaesthetized or sedated birth.)
fascinating. odent rocks.
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