How can labour pain, which many people say is excruciating, how can that turn into ecstasy?
Sarah Buckley: I think it depends what you do with the pain, and I’ll just describe for example what I did with my fourth baby: I had a very ecstatic experience there, and it was really what came to me instinctively, in this altered state of consciousness. I used oxytocin you could say, I found my partner, I looked into his eyes as I was having each wave of labour and I said, ‘I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you, I love you ….’ Just peaking with each contraction, and that totally transmuted that pain that I might have had into something completely different-an experience of ecstasy, of love, of being totally consumed by oxytocin, or love, if you like in that experience. MUSIC Masako Fukui: I’ve read in literature that you’ve written and other people have written about ecstatic birthing, that there’s a transcendence. That there’s a change of identity, I suppose, which is not dissimilar to some of the experiences that religious mystics say they have when they self-inflict pa
