Moon Wise Birth & Doula Services

Paid parental leave affects everyone.

I recently had a client come in requesting pelvic work because of injuries from her first birth. In her words, she had torn significantly, and had been stitched... badly - she described something I’ve heard about from several other clients, the ‘husband stitch’, in which a doctor stitches the vaginal opening too tightly closed in order to supposedly make future sex with the birthing woman more pleasurable to an imaginary future male sex partner. Which, alone, makes me want to punch these particular doctors in the nads. Hard. Because - does this really need to be said? Sure seems like it does: WOMEN’S BODIES DO NOT EXIST TO PLEASE MEN. EVER. UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. This practice, like so many others, is a vestige of a dark age in which women were the property of men. Please observe, dear reader: WE DO NOT FUCKING LIVE IN THOSE DARK AGES ANYMORE. Not here. Not now. And any doctor acting as though we do should lose his or her license to practice medicine IMMEDIATELY. Birthing women are generally not asked about this: Would you like this dodgy procedure? It is just done to them - in a supremely vulnerable moment, I might add. Sometimes with a grody wink to the male partner in the room. Or so I am told. But back to the story. This client tore again with baby #2, and was attended to by a different doctor, who was shocked by the terrible work of the first doctor, and stitched her properly. She had been in pain for several years with the husband-stitch, and then was no longer in pain. But she felt that the tone of her pelvic floor had suffered, and she wanted to work on her tightness. Upon actually meeting this woman, she further revealed that her husband had been cheating on her, that she was fairly sure they would be separated within the year, and that her desire for a tighter vagina had to do with being able to keep a future male partner. She attributed the cheating to her vagina not being tight enough to please him. This made me turn some colors. The room is thankfully dim enough that I had some cover. Once I had recovered my wits, I told her quite precisely the following three things. Mark them well, women of my heart. 1) Your vagina is not a sheath for anybody’s cock. It is the core of your body, the powerhouse of your pleasure, the holy portal through which you have, like a god, pushed two human beings into the world. It is not a fucking sheath for a DICK. So please, take the checkout magazine stands full of 1980s Cosmos that apparently line the aisles of your mind, and set them on fire, because that is a bunch of fucking nonsense. 2) If your husband is cheating on you, I GUARANTEE YOU that it has fuck all to do with the tone of your pussy. If he is cheating, it’s because he is a cheater. Please give credit where credit is due. If the sex you have been having with him has suffered since your first birth, perhaps that is because you were in excruciating pain whenever you did it, seeing as some idiot with diplomas on his wall gave you an unconscionable injury by stitching you badly and playing into this 1980s Cosmo complex you’re harboring. But please understand: cheating is not about vaginal tone. Cheating - sleeping with someone else and lying about it - is about being an asshole. 3) You do not want a tight vagina. That is a myth. When we use tight as a descriptor, we are discussing the pussy as a sheath. We are centering our entire experience in the pleasure of a male partner. And while we, of course, care very much about the experiences of our lovers, their perspectives are not more important than our own, and we do not take responsibility for anybody else's good time. Please keep your eye on the proverbial ball here. What you want is a strong vagina. A vagina that can grip, control, pulsate, and fully release a penetrating object at will - a cock, or otherwise - with a full range of sensation. A muscular vagina. A free vagina. If you do not have this experience, it is very likely because you - like many many many of the other women who come to me for pelvic bodywork - are, in fact, too tight. Your pelvic floor is hypertonic - it is in a perpetual state of spasm, and doesn’t remember how to release. Much like a hand, a vagina has to be able to both grasp and let go in order to do much for you. If it is hypotonic, it is like a hand that is floppy and cannot grasp. If it is hypertonic, it is like a perpetually clenched fist. Far more of the women I meet under these circumstances come to me in the latter category than the former. A tight vagina is a PROBLEM. As a physical reality, and as a concept. Get with me on this. Strength is the key. Across the board. Change your language and change your life. Please. Inhabit your body like you are the boss of it, like your experience is important, like you are the one steering your world, like your pleasure matters. Because it FUCKING DOES. Female pleasure is raucously, explosively powerful. It is what brings women of all ages and races and sizes and abilities and orientations home into our own blessed bodies. It is the lever which moves the world. Its power is such a treasure that billion dollar industries have arisen to manipulate women, throwing a glamour around us that divorces us from our own sensations, focusing our sense of worth on our looks and throwing our lived physical reality under the bus. It is up to us to STOP FALLING FOR IT. We are not owned. We are not beholden. And our bodies are utterly magnificent, exactly as they are. Please start fucking acting like it. Love, PCWS http://embodyworkla.com/blog/ *artist self-identified as Von Nida Ferrelli

Tressa White, Those doula baby cheeks though