award winning film
orgasmic birth
the best kept secret
available with subtitles in 7+ languages
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Explore our acclaimed film, immersive workshops, live webinars, practical ebooks, and exclusive products—everything you need for a positive, empowered birth experience.
Although a small percentage of births benefit from the use of technology and surgery, the overuse of technology in hospital births today often causes more harm than good.
The U.S. cesarean section rate for 2019 was 31.7%, well above what researchers consider safe and appropriate use (WHO recommends between 10-15%).
According to Maureen Corry, Executive Director of Childbirth Connection, New York City:
“Results of the U.S. Listening to Mothers Survey demonstrate that technology-intensive birth is the norm, with a majority of women reporting each of the following interventions while giving birth: electronic fetal monitoring, intravenous drip, artificially ruptured membranes, artificial oxytocin to strengthen contractions, and epidural analgesia.”
Women today, trusting that all offered techniques and procedures are safe, eagerly accept epidural analgesia for pain relief and artificial oxytocin to induce or augment labor.
However, these drugs and procedures have many negative short-term and long-term effects on mother and baby that should be considered and questioned.
With almost one in three American women having a surgical birth, our experts look at the current data and discuss the risks that overuse of cesarean section is causing to mothers and babies.
Orgasmic Birth was created to tell a different story...
One where women tune into themselves and trust their body’s natural ability to do what is needed to bring their baby into the world safely.
Joyous, sensuous and revolutionary, Orgasmic Birth brings the ultimate challenge to our cultural myths by inviting viewers to see the emotional, spiritual, and physical heights attainable through birth.
In this 85-minute award-winning film, you will:
- Learn about the risks and dangers of the overuse of medical/cesarean births
- Discover the benefits of a safe, sexy, orgasmic birth
- Follow the stories of real couples as they experience giving birth naturally
it's more than a film, it's a movement.
“I believe this is the most well-balanced, truthful, celebration of birth that I have ever viewed.”
-Carolyn Rafferty, RNC-O
What is orgasmic Birth?
Orgasmic Birth is birthing with love, power, and deep connection. Imagine blissful, expansive waves of pleasure flowing through your body, where your mind, body, and spirit are fully alive, and natural hormones like oxytocin support ease, connection, and even ecstasy.
With the right support, environment, and positions that honor the anatomy of pleasure, birth can become profoundly transformative—emotionally, physically, and spiritually. Riding these waves creates a total-body sensation of power, joy, and connection between you, your baby, and your partner.
Every birth holds the potential to be orgasmic—not just physically, but as a heightened, awe-filled, ecstatic experience. Orgasmic Birth is about giving birth with love, moving through labor with power, and honoring the emotional, physical, and sensual heights of birth.
It’s a combination of pleasure, hormones, and love that transforms birth into a truly magical, life-changing experience—a moment of release, wonder, and profound connection that stays with you forever.
Orgasmic Birth is all these things – the orgasm, the ecstasy, the hormones, and the love – and that is why it is so amazing.
“Less a story about orgasms and sex than a story of love and the power of birth!”
-Sarah Akers, CNM
creating the film
When I was filming “Orgasmic Birth: The Best Kept Secret” documentary, I witnessed many beautiful, pleasurable, powerful, and orgasmic births.
The original concept for the film WAS to show that birth can be an empowering and pleasurable experience, but what surprised me was when the laboring mamas were able to birth in their power, surrounded by love, support, care and respect, that their births were dramatically more pleasurable too.
I had witnessed many births as a doula – I knew that this was possible, but the wave of pleasurable and even orgasmic births that took place during my filming process was extraordinary.
When it was time to name the film, I knew we had to make a bold statement — birth, under the right circumstances, was an ORGASMIC EXPERIENCE!
meet the experts
Nine percent of American women who give birth experience post-traumatic stress disorder after labor and birth.
Nearly one in five women and, by extension, their families experience the long-term effects of postpartum depression.
In order to better understand the science and unearth the evidence that there is a better way than the system that’s been created for us, we met with five of the world’s leading experts in childbirth.
Here’s a glimpse of what they had to say…
Marsden Wagner, MD, former Director of Women’s and Children’s Health for the World Health Organization says in the film:
“Very clear hard evidence in the last 10 years [shows that] the number of women who are induced—that is, their labor is kick-started—is doubling. You kick-start labor by giving them a powerful drug. And then you give them more drugs to keep the labor going.
Now, there are about five to ten percent of women in which there’s a good medical reason to do this, and you’re saving lives and all that. But if you go above ten percent, you’re not saving lives anymore. These are powerful drugs with all kinds of risks, including brain damage to the baby, a dead baby, a dead woman. And yet we do it twice as much [as we used to].
And there’s so much pain in induction—incredible pain. And so they have to come with all the pain relief and the epidurals and all of that. So we get induction, leading to epidural, which leads to cesarean. And that is what’s happening in this country.
Now, why? Did something happen? Did American women’s bodies suddenly go bad? Did American women’s bodies suddenly lose the ability to figure out when it’s time to go into labor?
Goodness, no! You know, why do 60 to 80 percent of American women have to have powerful drugs and interventions to their bodies? Well, it has nothing to do with there being anything wrong with their body. And it’s not because of bad doctors. It’s a bad system.”
Orgasmic Birth movie captures intimate home births as well as births with midwives in US hospitals.
With the decrease in hospital-based midwifery practices in the United States, the option for normal hospital birth is gradually disappearing in many communities.
We look at other models of midwifery care, such as in New Zealand and the Netherlands — models that have achieved some of the lowest rates of maternal and infant mortality in the world.
Dr. Wagner discusses how a midwifery model of care is cost effective while contributing to a safe and positive birth for mothers, babies, and families:
“More and more countries are losing fewer women and losing fewer babies than the US, including Cuba and Slovenia. Countries that we would normally expect not to have such a great record are losing fewer women and fewer babies than we are.
And it’s not because we have bad doctors. We have highly trained, very good doctors, as good as anywhere in the world. We have good nurses—as good as any…
We don’t have enough midwives! We have 40,000 obstetricians and 5,000 midwives. Great Britain has 1,000 obstetricians and 35,000 midwives, and they lose fewer women and babies than we do.”
Pain, endorphins, comfort techniques, water, doulas, epidurals: Orgasmic Birth views women’s options for labor and birth and examines the risks and benefits.
Brazilian obstetrician Ricardo Jones, MD, discusses the process of giving birth and the role of a physician in that process:
“There is a space within our culture for medical interventions. That is why doctors are important in reducing maternal and prenatal mortality.
At the same time, we have to honor the traditions of millions of women throughout the world and throughout history. Women have the inner power and the inner knowledge of giving birth.
There is a parallel of sexuality and giving birth.
Women who are giving birth, trust yourselves. Trust your inner power. Trust your ability to give life. This is something absolutely sacred that is inside all women in the world.
A doctor, nurse, and all midwives in the world are people who are not in the position to teach a woman how to give birth, but to make it easier for her to do what she already knows how to do.”
Ina May Gaskin, internationally acclaimed midwife, author and founder and director of the Farm Midwifery Center, believes the reason we’ve turned to over medicalizing childbirth lies in our past:
“The United States has a peculiar history about childbirth. There is a higher level of fear of birth in this country than we see in so many cultures around the world. I think it has to do with our own peculiar history of absolutely destroying the profession of midwifery in the early twentieth century.
When you destroy midwives, you also destroy a body of knowledge that is shared by women, that can’t be put together by a bunch of surgeons or a bunch of male obstetricians, because physiologically, birth doesn’t happen the same way around surgeons, medically trained doctors, as it does around sympathetic women.”
Carrie Contey, PhD, a leader in the field of prenatal and perinatal psychology, says:
“What we’re finding is that it does matter—it absolutely does matter—how somebody comes into the world. And it doesn’t mean all babies should be born this way or that way. It just means that we have to pay attention and recognize that those babies are having experiences.
And the way that birth happens when it’s left to happen naturally, without drugs and without forceps, is really what the baby’s body is expecting. There’s a biological readying that’s happening. So it’s incredibly important that we start thinking about this time period in a new way, and we start caring for moms and babies and families around the birth experience in much more thoughtful and mindful ways than we are doing right now.”
Debra Pascali-Bonaro is a world-renowned inspirational speaker, podcaster, filmmaker, doula trainer, childbirth educator, and author. Debra’s podcast, Orgasmic Birth heals barriers and opens the door to share secrets to more love and intimacy in birth and parenting. She brings together her passion for pleasure in every aspect of life with her Jersey-Girl attitude of talking about what no one is talking about! Debra is a mother, grandmother and featured expert in parenting journals and media around the world.
Debra is also Co-Chair of the International Childbirth Initiative and Chair of the International MotherBaby Childbirth Initiative both of which promote safe, respectful maternity care. She is a Lamaze International childbirth educator, birth and postpartum doula trainer with DONA International, Director of the award-winning documentary Orgasmic Birth: The Best-Kept Secret and co-writer of “Orgasmic Birth: Your Guide to a Safe, Satisfying and Pleasurable Birth”, Author of The Ultimate Guide To Sex After Baby: Secrets to Love and Intimacy and the Founder & President of the revolutionary online childbirth class Pleasurable Birth Essentials which prepares expectant mothers, fathers, and partners to be positively prepared for birth and focuses on the intimate and sacred nature of birth.
Debra’s passion comes from her over 30 years of working with women, men, midwives, doulas, physicians and nurses in over 40 countries bringing comfort, love, and pleasure to birth and life! Debra has been featured in parenting journals and media around the world.
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Each educational use license comes with a comprehensive guide to hosting a panel discussion, including sample questions for the moderator to ask the panelists, and a Take Action guide for spreading the word about birth options far and wide.
orgasmic birth in the media
Orgasmic Birth has been featured in media all over the world!
We give back
We donate a percentage of every class to improve care and create birth equality. As Co-Chair of the International Birth Initiative: 12 Steps to Safe, Respectful Mother Baby Family Maternity Care, I work with maternity sites around the world. I know how far support can ripple out as we come together to ensure safe, satisfying, and pleasurable births for all.