Lust att föda. En kvalitativ studie om kvinnors lustfyllda och sexuella upplevelser under födandet
The aim of the present thesis is to find deeper knowledge about women?s experiences of sexuality, desire and pleasure during childbirth. In this thesis there are statements of women?s different kinds of pleasurable and sexual feelings and experiences during birth. Furthermore, factors that may influence some women?s feelings and experiences of a sexual kind are discussed in relation to the common notion that women above all feel fear and pain when giving birth. The thesis is based on ten unstructured interviews with women who have all given birth, most of them recently and in some cases more than ten years ago. The women had all stated before the interview that they had had some kind of pleasurable and/or sexual experiences during or in connection with their childbirth.
Result: Almost all of the women who were interviewed had, before giving birth, been unaware about the possibility of lustful and sexual dimensions during labour. There was one statement of experiences not being pleasurable at all during the actual birth but this woman mentioned pleasurable sensations after the baby was born. Some of the women experienced pleasurable and lustful sensations during contractions while others experienced orgasm or preorgasmic sensations during the last part of the pushing stage. There were informants who experienced feelings of desire and/or orgasmic sensations in spite of having epidural analgesia. The women who had experiences of desirable and sexual sensations all stated that these were exclusively personal with no participation from their partners. Nearly all of the participating women had kept these desirable and sexual experiences to themselves and not mentioned them to their partners or anyone else. An important finding was that feelings of shame and different kinds of taboos were the women?s main explanations for not talking about it.
Discussion: The scientific literature in this field suggests the possibility of talking about four different discourses about birth. In this thesis the first is called ?medical discourse?, with pain/painreleif, monitoring/security, riskthinking and technical development. The second one is named ?discourse of ?naturalness? ?, with influences of earthpower, ?naturalness?, sexuality and awareness of the body. The third one is called ?religious discourses?, with influences from the madonna myth, shame and taboos. The fourth discourse is called ?feminist discourses? where rights, independent choices and sexuality are constituents. The findings suggests that these discourses influence each person`s experience while giving birth. The findings also suggest that, in accordance with the Sexual Script Theory, the influences can be seen on an inter-personal level, in an intra-personal level as well as on a cultural level.
Conclusion: The Sexual Script Theory might be applicable as a way to understand women's experiences of sexuality while giving birth.