Seriously?
Ok, he did mention that he had a kidney stone before, so he knew what pain was like.
Seriously? You're related a kidney stone to childbirth?
I quietly told him that childbirth pain is different. Women don't always need "rescued" from the pain. Some women do very well with the pain, and can find their "happy place" to cope with contractions. And lo and behold, they are able to relax their pelvic floor muscles enough to give birth successfully.
I also told him something that may have floored him: that I personally did not find labor all that painful. No, I'm not some masochist. Yes, I do experience severe pain. But pain from contractions? I personally found it very tolerable. BUT - I am also able to put myself into a light hypnotic state. I do this with childbirth and dental work.
Now, before anyone jumps at me on this topic: pain is very subjective. In other words, what I feel is mild/moderate/tolerable pain, someone else may feel it as severe. My coping ability of pain may be different than the next person.
Pain that I do NOT cope well with: surgical pain. It's a deeper, much more visceral pain that is continuous. Give me drugs. Lots of them.
Childbirth pain, to me, is an intermittent annoyance. Yeah, it hurts, to a degree. But I can cope well with it, and get into my "happy place" state of mind. Contraction pain has a definite beginning, peak, and end point.
My gut-wrenching IBS pain that comes out of nowhere? Kill me now please. I have prayed for death from that pain.
So back to contractions, pain, and coping. It's all about you, the individual woman. It's about what your response is to pain and how you are able to cope (or not able to cope). Do you go into childbirth with a positive attitude, well prepared for the rigors ahead? Do you have continuous support during your labor, telling you that you are doing beautifully?
I admit, at one point in labor with my 3rd child, I thought to myself "some drugs would be nice right now", but knowing that I was about 8 or 9 cm, it was too late in labor for medication. So, I just accepted it for what it was - labor. Deal with it, I said to myself. And I did.
Kindly share your thoughts on labor and pain/coping. Share your own personal births if you wish.
39 comments:
Contractions are fine for me -- I deal with them without much of a problem. No, I wouldn't want them to go on forever or anything like that, but all in all they're tolerable.
That all changes when I have to start pushing. I swear, with my homebirth with #2 I would have put in my own epidural with an icepick had that been an option. It was that godawful.
And for the dentist's office? Shoot me up with Novocaine. Fast. The needle is nowhere near as bad as dental work without drugs would be for me.
Definitely it's subjective!
I cope with labor pain too well! I have fooled too many nurses who thought they would have to send me home or were unaware that I was in transition as they were joking with me and not paying attention to the urgent necessity to CALL THE OB. And then of course, the epidural did relax me during some of my births and I progressed so rapidly I could barely catch my breath. My husband only missed one of our 6 babies' births and almost missed 3. Also, I had a horrible kidney infection before I ever had children and that pain is just nonsensical. Labor pains for me were very manageable. It was the delivery that could be a bit uncomfortable.
For me my fatigue level determines my ability to cope with labor pain. I say this as my girls were born very late at night while my son in the middle of the day. Coping with the labors were so very different in day versus evening. I work I rehab therapy so often need to asses pain and encourage my patients through it and around it and I also see a difference in my work with them. Although the support of a great labor nurse also made a huge difference with my girls labors.
I also found contraction pains tolerable. What I didn't find tolerable was shingles. I was 6 months pg with my 2nd when I developed a horrible case. I would rather give birth 10x's over than have shingles again. I think it was so horrible because it was unrelenting. I find my RA pain to be worse than childbirth on some days.
I did not cope well when forced on my back & strapped to monitors. Unhindered, no one watching me, able to move, make noise as I pleased? Totally doable. Felt like I could do it again when I was done. Painful? Yeah. Empowering? Hell yeah. Stubbing my toe is far "worse" pain. Hard to explain.
For me, my labor pain was absolutely intolerable. The only thing that got me through the pre-epidural phase was knowing that it would definitely be over within 24 hours at the most. Maybe if I had a doula I would've done better coping, but maybe the pain would still be horrific enough to make me scream for an epidural.
FWIW, I have IBS too, and the MOST successful thing I've used to treat it (and keep it from being symptomatic) is acupuncture. I really really wished I could've had my acupuncturist with me when I had my baby!
I never really noticed any contractions when I was having them because I got used to being kicked and someone squirming around.
I totally agree about surgical pain. I had a C-section since Bubba was throwing variables d/t a twisted up cord.
I thought (erroneously), "Oh, I can get up and go to the bathroom without drugs." I tried to stand and I had the most horrible pain. They're not kidding when they say it's major abdominal surgery!
It was much better after the pain meds. As a result, I always tell my patients to take my word for it, and if they experience pain, DO NOT tough it out.
We have lots of pain meds that are not sedating we can use. It doesn't hurt to ask.
First birth was as you say, mild. 58 hours of unmedicated labor, doula present. Second birth I had SPD and 2 doulas present. 28 hours of almost torture. I begged for an epidural but my team and midwife knew that wasn't what I wanted, so I powered through. So, on the one had, I totally see how birth can be not that painful. On the other, I can see how it can be excruciating. Both births were beautiful and I found strength in both but I think we forget that anatomy/positioning/other factors have a lot more to do with pain than threshold for pain. I don't think my threshold for pain went down in 2.5 years.
I've had two borths with an epidural and one without meds. I preferred the one without meds 1000x. I felt like I was in complete control of my body and knew that with every contraction, I was getting closer to holding my daughter. She was my second birth and my labor was textbook and roughly 7 hours from bloody show to baby.
My first and third births, my water broke before contractions started, so after hanging out for half a day with no sign of an organized contraction pattern, they started the Pit. I hyper stimulated with my first birth and went for the epidural, which took 2 docs 11 tries to get.
My third birth was a vaginal delivery of twins and the on-call doc had hands the size of frying pans, so I opted for the epidural, which was a good choice because he went in up to his forearm to break B's water. This birth was taped and aired on TV, though you don't see him with his hand up my hooha, LOL! You see two pushes for Baby A and then they cut to Baby B, but there was only 9 minutes between them. The video is still on line :)
I found labor absolutely tolerable! It reminded me of lifting weights where you have to breath through the pain and relax. Actually it was so much easier than I expected that we almost didn't make it to the hospital and the nurses were very surprised to find my daughter crowning despite my remaining quite calm!
I just think that doctors do some women a huge disservice by telling them how terribly painful labor WILL be. Maybe, but maybe mom will be just fine!
I think the key preparing for the 'pain' of childbirth through classes, studies, etc. I am an ldr nurse as well and just had a baby 9 days ago. I took a class hypnobabies (so you see it much where you work?) which was phenomenal in preparing me and teaching the utmost importance of relaxation! My labor was 6 hours and I got to the birth center at 9 cm completely surprised I was that far along! My labor was by no means pain free but it was completely tolerable. It was such an amazing, empowering experience!
I just had baby #4 almost a month ago and had every intention of having an epidural as I'd had with the first 3. Baby #3's birth was the calmest one I'd had and I anticipated a repeat this time around. BTW, all of 4 mine were pitocin inductions, so fwiw, they could have been "easier" on me without the pit. With this last one, I put in my request for the epidural with plenty of time for it to help, but I ended up having to wait nearly 2 hours, and by then I was having intense pain. I've always handled the epidural needle very well, but this time it felt like the anesthesiologist was hammering the needle in during the middle of these horrible contractions. He asked my labor nurse, more than once, how far dilated I was, to which she answered, "Oh, the last time I checked, she was at 2.5 cm." Well, that was where I was when I was admitted nearly 6 hours prior. She hadn't checked again beforehand. Come to find out, I was at 9.5 cm while getting that epidural, and thanks to my dr. for coincidentally showing up right at that time to introduce me to his OB wife who he thought might be delivering me if I labored much longer. I ended up pushing the baby out before the drugs had a chance to do anything at all. I was bawling throughout, not so much from the pain as the frustration of not having the calm, relaxed experience I had been expecting while simultaneously feeling like the ball had been dropped somewhere along the way and outside of my control. I do believe that a delivery without the epidural would have been more tolerable if 1) had it been my idea to try it without or 2) had I been told that I was SO CLOSE to delivering before they allowed me to get that useless epidural which only added to the horribleness of the pain. Had I been checked beforehand and been told I was at 9.5, I think I could have gotten up the strength and courage to forge ahead without the expectation of the drugs kicking in to take away the pain. Instead, I felt like I crumbled under what ended up being my worst delivery experience
of the 4. It didn't help that the dr. found that the baby was also posterior (face-up) up til the very end when she rotated just before delivery. I do think pain is subjective in that I could have dealt with the pain much better if I was better informed of my progress along the way and had I even had the chance to accept that I was going to "go natural" before that moment came.
Well, having had three C/Ss, I'd much rather have a C/S than a root canal -- but all my C/Ss were under general anesthesia!
I did have two full days of massive contractions before my first C/S, and found that, for me, Lamaze breathing didn't help at all [I'm a certified Lamaze instructor, btw]. I did not reach any "happy place". The contractions were shattering. An attempt at epidural failed, so I can't report any personal experience, but my professional experience has been not that an epidural relaxes the pelvis, or the perineum [the former can't really relax, anyway] but that it often does relax the cervix remarkably: a woman who has been stuck at 5-7 cm for a very long time suddenly goes to full dilatation [and then everyone says the epidural wasn't necessary, but it was]
Oh, and I've had kidney stones as well. It is supposed to be worse for men. It was pretty awful, and there wasn't a baby at the end of it.:-))
You rightly note that pain is subjective; everyone has their own threshold, and there are cultural factors as well [ladies of a certain ethnic background arrive screaming their guts out without noticeable contractions because of a belief that a terrible labor ensures a strong, "fighter" of a child]. This is why I think of analgesic options rather like a smorgasbord -- the art is matching the analgesia to the patient's need. I've had a patient who delayed having a second child for 13 years because of terror of repeating the unalleviated pain of her first labor; and I've had patients tell me that they "never felt contractions". Nearly everyone else falls somewhere in between. However, what I really dislike is a current form of brainwashing which says that if a woman thinks positively she won't feel anything, or that contractions aren't "painful" because they are physiologically normal. That results in disappointment and guilt.
Well, I've had a kidney stone and I haven't had a baby. As a doula, though, it was the closest I've ever come to the pain that can happen during birth, so I was thinking about this a lot!
A couple of things I observed:
(1) I cannot understate how much relaxation helped. At the beginning of the stone's attack, I thought I was just having really bad gas or something. I was still in a ton of pain. My boyfriend, at some point, got me a warm pack and put it on my side where it hurt, and the way it relaxed those muscles was magical. Pain cut in half, instantly.
(2) I got to a point where it hurt too much to relax. That was when the real panic set in - it hurt like crazy and there was nothing I could do. That was when I went to the ER!
(3) I had to hold still and be calm to get my IV at the ER. It was really, really hard. I did deep breathing and focused, and I kept it up for the few minutes that I needed to, but I couldn't hold onto it any longer. I thought (yes, I was thinking this at the time) that it was interesting: I could get on top of the pain but I couldn't stay on top of it. I thought that a lot of it was that I was so scared. I didn't know what was happening and I was honestly scared that my appendix was exploding or an organ was dying or something. I thought that if I knew that nothing bad was happening and that there was a known end point, I could have stayed on top of the pain.
Of course that's all guessing, since I have never been in labor! Ha! But I sure was trying to doula myself and learn from the experience until they finally gave me the good drugs. That sounds kind of crazy now that I reflect on it...
Contractions are really weird to me. I experience the pain, but it feels distant for most of the labor. It's also very consistent. I go up the hill to a peak of pain and then it fades. It's like a brain freeze to me, and I live through the peak because I know there will be the fade. I do usually have a bit of whining during transition if the baby is OP, but otherwise, I am fine until the baby crowns. It's not the contractions, it's the pressure when the baby is just about out. What I know about birth pains is that they are not forever...even the most painful ones are mostly NOT painful...they are going up or coming down. I cope by praying, talking, rocking, walking, breathing through my nose and out my mouth like a runner, and imagining the contractions like a hill I used to run in cross country. It pulls me down a little while I'm climbing and I dig in until I finally get to the top and it's easier...then it goes down.
I found the pain to be easier when I had a good nurse in the room, and when I felt like people in the room were calm. Of my 7 births, the ones when I was being ordered around or yelled at to push...those were more painful than the ones when the nurse was either leaving me by myself (with my husband) to cope my own way or when the nurse was very supportive. When a nurse was panicked or bossy, I worried about her reactions and not my own coping. When the nurse gave helpful suggestions (or the midwife gave affirmations and rubbed my back)...I stayed calm and got right through.
Blessings!
Dawn
So far I've just experienced pit labor and the kind where the placenta is ripping away from the uterine wall with contractions. (It hurts like a mofo) Both I did without meds and I lived though I was really REALLY glad for the spinal with the abruptio placentae.
It makes me think I could probably handle regular old contractions just fine, if I ever get the chance.
Everyone is different for sure.
When it comes to childbirth, my ability to cope is directly related to my enviroment and level of support and my emotional state. If I am stressed, scared, exhausted, unsupported, I will opt for the epidural. If I am surrounded with supportive people, am in a 'happy place' I am good to go.
I can take surgical pain, no problem. I'm pretty good with broken bones too. Give me a bad headache or migraine and I'm incapacitated and a little tylenol or motrin and a cold compress aren't even worth the trouble. If I could I'd head straight to the heavy duty narcotics not that that is ever an option.
I coped with back labor for 12 hours and I'm assuming sometime near transition the pain was so horrible I was nearly passing out. I was on O2 and as soon as I got the epi I wet from a 4-8 and had my son out within a few hours.
That being said, I have a very low general pain tollerance. But I WANTED to tollerate labor without meds as long as possible.
1. Pain is definitely subjective, and different pain is tolerated in different ways by different people. I don't remember my first labor, on pitocin and analgesia free, as being intolerable. My recent flare of sacroilitis? Excruciating.
2. Argh! That epidural comment is one of my pet peeves. Labor naturally speeds up. The slope of the dilation curve changes. Epidurals SLOW DOWN labor, according to the Cochrane Review and other evidence based sources. Just because women deliver after an epidural doesn't mean it somehow helped the dilation!
The best part about labor pain is that it is productive. It leads to an end. Pain from a stubbed toe- NOT PRODUCTIVE! I don't get anything better from going through that pain. Doing through the labor process is a refiners fire. Making you better and stronger and ultimately changing you into a mother.
Here are my list of painful experiences that most people would agree were painful (on a zero to ten scale). And no I'm not a masochist, either.
Tooth drilling without novacaine = 0.75
Giving birth/pushing/crowning = 3.5
Shingles = 8.5 (constantly feels like your skin is being flayed or burned) without pain meds (yes I did take some).
Sciatica = 10+ (while pregnant with babe #2 so not much I could take but I tried what I thought/was told was safest).
Prior to experiencing sciatica my pain scale was slightly different, I'll admit sciatica was a 14 on my original pain scale. Giving birth seems like a cake walk by comparison.
I have had 4 unmediated births with the help of doulas, massage, water, and relaxation practice. Even with Pit I managed- towards the end I was not nice but it ended.
I have had kidney stones and obstructions and several surgeries to deal with that, PCNLs, pyloplasty, and a few other fun times kidney pain and labor pain are 2 different things that cannot and should not be compared.
A woman's body is designed to have a baby- kidneys are not designed to be obstructed with stones
I was ok with the waives of pain until the Pitocin was added. That is HELL ON EARTH ctx pain. As a doula if a client is on Pit & screams Epidural, while I do my best to help her cope, I UNDERSTAND that PIT pain is a whole nother ball game!
I think that each birth is different. Each woman is different. It is wrong for any care provider to put their experience onto someone else!
I have had a painful birth and also a comfortable unmedicated birth. I know both are possibilities. But allowing a mom to birth the way she wants with the support she needs is so important!
The discomfort of birth doesn't have to equal pain like in dental work or other surgery. I made a video comparing them and why birth can be comfortable. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0xyB-Ujy8s
I found contractions to be manageable... for a time. My experience was that labor felt like having really, really bad menstrual cramps, all the time (even between contractions), and then contractions were like the Queen Mother of cramps on top of that. While I could deal with that kind of pain for a while, breathing/vocalizing/whatever, after about 12 hours of that with no cervical change I found an epidural helpful. I fully believe that my inability to relax the pelvic floor during that time kept me from progressing, and the epi really helped with that.
Pain is definitely subjective. Had three babies without any kind of pain control. No problem.
Had an abdominal hysterectomy. Never took a pain pill after I left the hospital.
Dental pain? Give me the vicodin but I CAN deal with it if I have to.
My worst pains ever come from my migraines. I have IBS too and for me that can't touch the migraine pain.
it is all very subjective but I didn't want to miss anything of childbirth by being drugged. It really wasn't that bad.
I "coped" with contrations fine. Felt like a vice squeezing my pelvic bones so more of an ache that it felt good to breath and "ahh" through. Really nothing like I had ever heard anyone describe it and no problem for me. So surely all women are different. I wouldn't tell the next woman that labor was no big deal but it was no big deal to me. I didn't ENJOY pushing but it was also ok too. The interesting thing is that I had a homebirth and I remember thinking that if I had had to get in the car and go to the hospital, I couldn't have done it! I was thinking I would TOTALLY "need" an epidural! But as long as I could do what I needed to, it was a piece of cake. How interesting that that detail, getting in the car and going to the hospital, made such a huge difference in my perception of what I could handle. I wouldn't say I FEEL pain differently but I definitely "cope." I don't usually think to take a Tylenol when I have a headache. But it hurts. Kind of in an "oh well" sort of way. But I don't like it when people say I must have a high pain tolerance. I do feel pain...it's just that I don't always DO anything about it
Contractions and birth are fine for me. Mainly because I know the pain is a mean to an end. There IS going to be a baby, and I am not going to care about the pain once that baby is here.
Migraines, gallbladder attacks, SPD, or toothache pain? Pump me full of every drug you have and lots of it, please! People think I'm weird when I say I'd take birth over a migraine any day of the week. But my births last maybe 2-3 hours if I'm lucky. My migraines can last DAYS. Which would you rather deal with!?!?
I have had 2 natural births at a birth center, and I am anticipating my 3erd very soon. I found that after watching my sister-in-law give birth to her 3erd baby in a hospital it was encouraging and motivational to see the process actually unfold in front of me. I felt like the hospital was a stressful and an invasive situation and choose a birth center so I could feel relaxed and more in control of what I was able to do like walking around, and trying different birthing techniques. With my 1st girl I was in labor for 11 hours, I spent 10 hours laboring at home with my family watching movies and hanging out and the contractions where very manageable. I knew that the pain was only temporary, a quote I kept thinking of from my older brothers "No Fear" t-shirt "Pain is only temporarily, but glory is forever". Pushing was more of a pressure discomfort for me, but my midwife placed a mirror so I could see my daughters head and I was instantly motivated and focused to push so I could hold my baby. I'd have to say that the pain of birth wasn't bad at all, just a passage to be able to bring joy and happiness to a new life. When I was 8 months pregnant I had a cold, now you wouldn't think a cold would ever be worse than labor, however I had sneezed and because of the position and weight of my daughter, I pulled some of the muscle away from my rib cage. That was so much worse than labor, every time I moved or my daughter moved it was pulling my muscle away over and over again, all I could do was lay in bed for 4 weeks while it healed, after that, labor was a warm welcome in my eyes.
My second daughters birth went just as well as my first, 9 hours total, but it took a little longer to push with her. I found sitting on a birthing stool helped, and gravity worked with me, not against the effort of pushing laying down in a bed. Also I had my mother-in-law, mother of 6 and 10 grand kids she helped with, and she was so motivating and supportive. My husband was with me as well and was keeping me laughing the whole time, as well as hearing my 2 year old daughter running up and down the hall asking when her little sister would be here.
I am looking forward to meeting my 3erd daughter soon, and while birth may be uncomfortable and involve pain, atleast it has a reward that never stops amazing you at the end. I still keep thinking of it as "Pain is only temporary, glory is forever" :) Good luck mommy's to be!
Ummm...yeah, I may be an odd ball but I enjoyed labor/delivery. Painful? Sort of, but a much different sort of pain than breaking a bone. It's pain with a purpose. I equate it to running a marathon. It painful and exhilarating! I was able to relax very well through my contractions without need of an epidural (though I've had an epidural birth too).
In one of my first lectures at Uni the lecturer, a former cardiac ICU nurse said "lesson number 1: Pain is always pain when the patient say it is pain! Always ask and always believe the answer!" She also then said that even if the patient looks like they are in huge pain, to just keep a close eye one them and maybe in certain cases try and advice on painkillers, as many are unaware of the options. For labour and delivery, if it is at a birthing centre or they have a birth plan, follow the mothers wishes if they say don´t mention pain, or no pain relief etc. Pain is really subjective!
I had a knee suregery once and in the bay another girl with another type of surgery got morphine injection. As the nurse as giving it to her, with no curtains or anything around the bed, the nurse turned to me, whom sat peacefully in my bed may I add, "you can not have this. You had less things done to you!" I was like, thank you for not asking too...
I appreciate that there is a spectrum of the pain experience during labor and birth. I am one that falls on the intolerable end of the spectrum. I know that preparation and expectation have a lot to do with it, but some of it is just luck of the draw. I also labor very rapidly (I was 10cm, +2 station when I arrived at hospital with my first and delivered in triage). For me, it was completely consuming and well beyond my ability to manage the pain.
I have 2 babies, for no.1 i wanted to go aw naturel.. adn had a doula ( the worst and most illerate one i think) and when i went to the hospital i hated the contractions, all the breathing crap i practises and planned was just that for me - crap. so i begged for a epidural, the doula resisted and then my husband a dr came in took one look , pretty much ordered the epidural and from then on it was HAPPY time. with the 2nd one i didn't bother with a doula or anything, went into labor, couldn't wait to get to 3cm, checked in to the hosp and was soon in epidural land.. ahh the pleasures of modern medicine, if i didn't have the choice of epidural i don't think i would have had more than 1 kid. just not wortht he torture and pain. thank you.
Labor pain- once I learned the whats, whys and hows of the entire process, I handled it well. I was WILLING, so it was easy to cope with (though painful, but it's all mental, what we can cope with, isn't it?) because it's productive. It's pushing that baby out. You get an amazing prize at the end.
Now, like you, I get angry at IBS symptoms in addition to wanting to die, because it's just pain. It hurts, and there is no bloody reason for it.
:P I had a colonoscopy not long ago and the doctor was not gentle or considerate, and I do recall wailing to a nurse, as I grasped the rails of the bed with white knuckles while the doc tried to force his way around a corner, that I had handled childbirth WAY better than I was handling that scope and I WASN'T just a total wussie. I even went in there with childbirth-like vibes. Relax, go to a happy place...did not work!
I had an epidural with my first child, and I think - for ME and the way I think - it was because I didn't understand the contractions, the true process. The epidural was amazing and helped me relax, and I don't regret it at all! However, I felt HORRIBLE afterwards with a fever and DS's blood pressure was low, he was so sleepy, and we struggled to nurse. It was that after-epi feeling that spurred me on to being way more willing to bear the pain of childbirth with my 2nd. Heh.
I've given birth twice, both times mostly unmedicated. The first birth was hell. The baby was tiny (21w2d) but the misoprostil made it absolute HELL!
Second birth with my full term son was a walk in the park in comparison. Turned up at the hospital at 5cm, talking and joking, happy as. They put me on the monitor and bam, pain. Luckily I was only monitored intermittently otherwise that would have been awful.
20 hours from start to finish done only with wheatbags and entonox. The midwives and nurses on the L&D ward were all suprised.
Thank you for posting this very thing...Sigh :) I have had 5 deliveries which include 3 singletons and 2 sets of twins- and I've had NO pain medicine, so I am personally speaking from a place of knowing what childbirth feels like BUT when I try to talk with co-workers about helping moms find their own happy place vs jumping right into medications my co-workers are so quick to put me down :( I work in a large hospital, the regional peri-natal center and it has become so frustrating because it seems like the norm is to medicate, AROM, and the off to sections. Last week a fellow nurse 'suggested' I might be happier at a smaller hospital where the idea of 'happy places' vs medicating is more tolerated....
I have never discounted a mom's pain level- I know that contractions are individual to each mom/each birth but oh how I wish that moms could be encouraged to try birthing without all that...
I used self-hypnosis for my second birth, and didn't experience pain either. I have a hard time not correcting people when they go on like pain in labor is inevitable. While I understand that mindset (I used to think the same), it bothers me that this is the message that gets spread around more often than not.
It's different for every woman. It depends on how she copes and the position of her and the baby.
I have had 2 unmedicated births so far, and am anticipating my 3rd in the next week or so. My 1st was 32 hours, augmented with pitocin, with an awesome doula and my fantastic husband as support, and lots of mental and physical preparation prior, including 12 weeks of Bradley classes. Labor pain was, in a word, hell. I have a high pain tolerance, plenty of broken bones in the past, etc. My second birth was easier, only 14 hours, but still very painful. I still intend to labor without meds, because to me, intentionally introducing potential side effects for the sake of comfort is more distressing than pain - it stinks, but doesn't have any side effects ;)
I was shocked, actually, by how much pain I had in labor, I think because the mindset of people who support and help women prepare for natural childbirth seems to be that if you just have enough preparation and the right perspective, it's not that bad. I think this is a huge disservice, honestly. If it didn't hurt, we wouldn't need books and classes and doulas and videos to help us prepare. I am glad that there are so many people who manage to get through it with relatively little pain. But it's insulting to imply that those of us who don't have that glorious, empowering, mountaintop experience are doing something wrong or haven't prepared properly.
I have had 2 births, one was a homebirth which ended up transferring to hospital, the other was a homebirth. I had been terrified of the idea of pain in birth early in my pregnancy so took hypnobirthing classes and found they helped relax me not only throughout the rest of the pregnancy but also amazingly through my labour. i would also not call either of my labours painful. I am normally a complete wimp when it comes to pain - I got stung by a wasp a few years ago and ahhhhhhh it was horrible, so I think this was why I was dreading the 'pain' of labour. The GentleBirth classes allowed me to feel confident of the labour and then being at home allowed me to create an atmosphere of peace and calm. Even the transfer to the hospital on my first was not a big deal. My second birth was just incredible. I was teaching the classes myself at this stage and felt a bit worried in case the first birth was a lucky experience!!!! However it was just mind blowingly amazing. I felt so powerful and so connected to my body and all it was doing. I knew my body knew what to do and was doing all the work, my mind was taking a back seat and I did not feel pain but ecstasy. I would NEVER have thought my Type A personality would have been capable of experiencing such sensations. Every year on both their birthdays I think back to their labours with such joy and positivity - and feel very very grateful. (I still don't ever want to get stung by a wasp again and I would never ever take my changes in a dentists with anything but the strongest drugs!!!!)
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