baby

Emily Street had a three-week-long orgasm after her hypnobirth.

UK midwife Emily Street, 35, has used natal hypnotherapy techniques to get through four labours pain-free. Yep, four.

But that’s not even the best part. After her most recent birth (of daughter Pip), the flow-on effects of the labour left her with euphoric feelings similar to those experienced during orgasm for more than three weeks.

I mean, really. Sign. Us. Up.

Street wasn’t always so relaxed. In fact, that was why she’d looked into natal hypnotherapy, or hypnobirthing, in the first place.

“I was really quite terrified having seen loads of things as a midwife, and obviously the things that really stick with you are the ones that weren’t so nice,” Street told  The Daily Mail.

Hypnobirthing techniques focus on distracting your focus, reducing your body’s natural reactions to stress and fear, and tapping into your endorphin reserves through exercises such as breathing and “deep relaxation”.

“People think that hypnobirthing is this airy-fairy, hippie, new age thing, but it’s really not. It’s a real, back to basics principal,” Street said. “There’s not a midwife or doctor in the land who’d argue that a relaxed woman isn’t going to find labour more easy.”

Regardless of your views on the technique, this last point seems pretty sound. And for Street, at least, it’s worked every time—magnificently.

“It surprised me how well it worked,” she says. “The euphoria that I felt after the births was very, very close to an orgasm sensation, which lasted for three or four weeks as opposed to something that’s very intense for a short amount of time…I absolutely loved every minute of being in labour.”

Street is, in her own words, “passionate about taking the pain out of childbirth”. She works with the UK-based Reproductive Health Group to help women better understand their bodies in the lead-up to labour.

“I teach the physiology of birth using diagrams of how your uterus is made, right down to the muscle fibers,” she said in The Daily Mirror. “I explain how everything works together, why you need to breathe really well, why you need to relax your muscles instead of tensing up.”

It’s important stuff. If you’re having a child, no matter how you choose to plan your birth, it’s good to know what’s going on—what goes where, and why—to inform your decisions.

“The difference we can make to a pregnancy changes the relationship between mother and baby for the better,” Street said of this kind of education. “It really can change people’s lives.”

And the three-week orgasm? Just a really cool bonus.

This story was originally published on Spring St.