Ladies, has this ever happened to you after you had an orgasm? A fart. ( I am not talking about queefing)- giggling put aside, it happens and it can be embarrassing. Farting when you have an orgasm, or at any time during a sexual encounter, can seem like a very unsexy thing to do. Or at least it can if the ideal image you have of sex comes from the movies, romance novels, or even most sex education material.
When we see sex depicted it's usually either highly glamorized and glossy or clinical but precise. Neither of these are real. Sex with someone else always has the potential to be a comedy of errors or at least a bumbling mess. Getting any two bodies together, naked, and moving around, unless you have practiced the choreography for hours, is going to be imprecise and imperfect.
This might not make you feel any better but it's something to keep in mind. Great sex is messy. And sometimes noisy too. There are things you can do but maybe the best thing you can do for yourself and your sex life is to try and slowly expand what you think of as successful sex, or sexual activity.
Investigate the Source
The first thing to do is figure out what exactly is happening. The moment of orgasm is a busy time and there's so much going on that unless you're paying attention, you might not realize where this noise and wind is coming from.
Are you experiencing farting or flatulence during an orgasm, where gas is being released from the anus. Or are you experiencing that other body response that people are often embarrassed about -- what some refer to as vaginal farting, which happens when air is released from the vagina during sex.
When that happens, it can sound like anal flatulence, but it isn't.
Reducing the Risk
The first general change you could try to make is with diet. There are gassy foods which are known to increase farting, and avoiding these may have an impact.
Talli Rosenbaum, P.T., MSc., a physiotherapist specializing in pelvic floor rehabilitation and an American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors and Therapists-certified sexuality counselor, offers these other suggestions.
Talli says that you may be bearing down during orgasm, which can increase your intra-abdominal pressure. There's a term for this response, it's called a Valsalva maneuver. When the abdominal pressure pushes on your rectum, you may not be maintaining sufficient anal sphincter pressure to counter it. The result is both orgasm and farting.
She also says you can do pelvic floor exercises to strengthen the external sphincter muscles and learn to try to contract them during the orgasm." However, she adds that having to think about contracting during an orgasm can sometimes be inhibiting, and if it interferes with your ability to have pleasure (and your partner is unconcerned about the farting), try not to worry about it.
So her final advice is to see if you can reframe the situation as something funny, or at least a side effect of having a very good time. She wants to remind you that there's nothing wrong with a body responding this way, it's just that some of us do and some of us don't.
The Cycle of Self-Awareness During Sex
It sounds like you are now anticipating it and it's getting in the way of having an orgasm. This is a bad cycle to be in because we all easily get into sexual routines and ruts and we may need a hand to get out of them.
You may want to consider talking with a professional. It might be a physiotherapist who specializes in the pelvic floor (they are certainly the best people to show you how to do pelvic floor exercises properly), a sex therapist or counselor. This information may also be enough. A professional isn't necessary, but they are available to help you with this issue -- and they won't find your question or situation odd.
