Can birth be orgasmic? For many, this question sounds impossible—or even offensive—in a world where pain, fear, and trauma are commonly accepted as the norm in childbirth. In a recent episode of the Orgasmic Birth Podcast, reproductive health coach and mother of three, Liya Tepitsky, shares how she moved from a long, excruciating first labor to an intentional orgasmic third birth, reshaping everything she believed about what is possible in birth.
The First Birth: Pain, Power, and a Single Plan
Liya’s journey began long before she ever conceived. A chance encounter with a couple in Las Vegas led her to the concept of home birth and to the film “Orgasmic Birth,” which she watched with her husband early in their relationship. They married after one month, conceived in the second, and quickly agreed that home birth was their path—no debate, no Plan B.
During her first pregnancy, Liya’s midwife encouraged her to create a vision board and to write her birth story in the past tense, as if she were already holding her baby. Although she never named orgasmic birth as a goal, she was crystal-clear on one thing: she was not going to the hospital, even though it was just across the road.
Her first labor lasted around 14 hours, much of it in a birth pool, and she describes the pain as excruciating, feeling like she might die. Yet the environment was peaceful and feminine: a doula, a photographer, gentle music, and a yoga mat where she finally birthed her baby at home.
Later, when she learned that all four other couples in her hypnobirthing group ended up in the hospital, she became curious. They had the same midwife, the same doula, the same classes—so why such different outcomes? That question opened her to the idea that her internal belief system and unwavering clarity (“There is only Plan A”) had helped shape her birth experience.
Nutrition, Ketosis, and an Unusual Newborn
Birth also pushed Liya deeper into her passion for physiology and nutrition. Her midwife, a vegan, disagreed strongly with Liya’s carnivore-style pregnancy diet, which emphasized animal-based fats, eggs, fish, and grass-fed meats, with bone broth as a postpartum staple.
After her first baby was born, he did not latch or feed for 48 hours, although he peed and pooped normally and remained within all clinical parameters. Concerned, the midwife consulted a more senior midwife who suggested that the baby’s lack of hunger could be linked to Liya’s high level of ketosis during pregnancy, making it physiologically normal for him not to seek food immediately. After two days, he latched, and she went on to nurse him for eight months.
This experience fueled her decision to certify as a health coach so she could share the powerful results she was seeing with others.
The Second Birth: Predicting the Day and Feeling No Pain
Liya conceived her second child just five months after her first, resulting in a 15-month gap between her boys. She again enjoyed pregnancy, reporting no nausea and continuing to lift heavy weights in the gym right up to the night before giving birth, despite others warning her she’d end up in the hospital.
From the beginning, she told her midwife she would give birth exactly at 37 weeks—and that is precisely what happened. One morning at 6 a.m., she woke, used the bathroom, and as she lifted her knee into bed, her water broke. Calmly, she told her husband to grab a towel because they would soon have a baby, while he panicked, remembering how hard the first birth had been.
She called the midwife, who assumed they had time and said she’d make a smoothie and arrive in about an hour. But within 30 minutes, while a friend took her older child and dog for a walk, Liya was already on the bed, holding and nursing her newborn.
In a video they later found, she and her husband look into the camera repeating, “We just had a baby,” stunned by how quickly and gently the birth unfolded. She describes this labor as completely painless, as if she had been anesthetized: aware, conscious, but with no sensation of pain and no orgasm—just ease.
The Third Birth: Training for Orgasmic Labor
Even after such a remarkable birth, Liya did not assume it would happen again. As she approached her third pregnancy, she felt called to become intentional about pleasure in childbirth rather than leaving it to chance or “miracle.”
She began listening to stories on the Orgasmic Birth Podcast, including one where a midwife told a birthing woman to take the clock off the wall, release her obsession with time, and get intimate with her husband. After the couple did so, their labor progressed quickly, and their baby was born soon after.
These stories made sense to Liya, who already understood the hormonal links between sexual arousal, oxytocin, and labor from both experience and study. At the same time, she was following Ina May Gaskin’s work and came across a talk where Gaskin described tribal women using vibrators to stimulate pleasure hormones in labor when intercourse was not available.
This insight changed everything. Liya realized she didn’t have to depend on her husband’s availability or their relationship dynamic in a given moment; she could own her experience and access pleasure independently. She asked her husband to buy her a vibrator for her birthday about six months before her due date and began a ritual of training her body and mind for orgasm during pregnancy.
The process wasn’t simple. It challenged her religious beliefs, raised questions about whether it was “allowed,” and required deep inner work to claim self-pleasure as sacred preparation for birth. She discussed her intentions with her new midwife, who had never heard such a plan but was supportive and excited to see what would happen, agreeing to be as low-intervention as possible.
The Orgasmic Birth: Pain to Zero in Seconds
On the day of her third birth, at 38.5 weeks, Liya labored at home in her bedroom. She waited until she was well progressed before calling her midwife, wanting to be sure she was close to birthing.
By the time the midwife arrived, Liya was in significant pain, though still deeply present. She had a photographer and assistant documenting the experience. Standing on her knees, already tired and feeling like she had been “close” for too long, she knew: this was the moment she had trained for.
She asked her husband for the vibrator, having already consulted the midwife about how to use it safely and hygienically. As soon as she placed it on her vulva and turned it on, the pain vanished. She describes her pain going from intense to zero, replaced entirely by orgasmic sensation indistinguishable from her previous practice sessions.
Her eyes rolled back; she felt herself leave Earth, “going into space” to retrieve her child, with her whole body vibrating in joy. Within about 30 seconds of reaching orgasm, her baby was born, witnessed by her midwife, photographer, photographer’s assistant, and husband, all present in the room.
Looking back at the video, Liya sees a woman in another dimension, embodying her belief that she deserved to birth with the same kind of sensation she felt when deciding to conceive. She also reflects that she wishes she’d given herself permission to begin using the vibrator earlier in labor instead of “saving it,” now aware that extended or repeated waves of pleasure might have been possible.
Rewriting the Story of Suffering in Birth
Underneath her story is a deeper spiritual and cultural critique. Liya challenges the widespread belief—often traced to religious interpretations—that women must suffer in childbirth as a kind of spiritual requirement. She does not believe that a loving God desires women to bleed and suffer to bring children into the world, and she sees this shift in belief as foundational to changing outcomes.
For her, clarity of desire and belief is not about bypassing reality, but about aligning physiology, mindset, and environment so that the body can do what it is designed to do—sometimes with profound pleasure. This includes her work on chronological versus biological age, where she focuses on helping women become biologically “younger” so they can carry pregnancies and births with more resilience, even into their late thirties and beyond.
Today, Liya supports women one-on-one as a mentor and nutritional coach, particularly those struggling with fertility and those preparing for natural conception and birth. She believes that for the vast majority of women considering IVF, natural conception could be possible with radical nutritional and lifestyle changes, though she acknowledges that we are often confused about what “the right things” truly are. Her work, offered in multiple languages and online, aims to bring women back into power over their bodies, their cycles, and their births.
Claiming Pleasure and Power in Your Own Birth
Liya’s story is not a prescription; it is an invitation. Not everyone will choose a vibrator in labor, a carnivore diet, or a no-Plan-B home birth, and not everyone will experience orgasmic birth. But her journey shows how radical clarity, embodied preparation, and permission to center pleasure can transform the way we conceive of childbirth itself.
Whether you’re pregnant now, planning for the future, working in birth, or healing from past experiences, Liya’s story offers a living example that birth can be not only safe and empowering, but also ecstatic.
To hear her full story in her own words, including the emotional nuances, detailed timelines, and spiritual insights, listen to her episode on the Orgasmic Birth Podcast and feel into what might be possible for you.
