Tell me about labor pain! (Most likely TMI)

In My Humble Opinion
1

Please. I can handle it. Honest!

I’m 3 months pregnant. I’ve been reading all the baby books - but I don’t find that the books really describe what the pain feels like. They just tell you about breathing (ha!) and the various drug options.

Is it sharp and stabbing? Attacked by aliens pain?
Dull, grinding, torturous? Overwhelming?
Interminable agony?
The breathing is a joke right?
Do the drugs work?

I know everyone experiences pain in their own special way, but surely it must hurt like living hell? When I’ve asked women who have had children they usually get this glazed over, blissful look in their eye… and they say, “Well, I don’t really remember the pain…just looking into my son’s eyes for the first time.” And then some look kind of shifty and run away from me saying, “Oh it’s not that bad.”

Don’t be afraid of traumatizing the mommy to be! You can give me the gory details. :smiley:

Thanks in advance!
Shana

2

My youngest turns 7 on Monday, so I think time has dimmed some of the more distinct memories of labor. That said, it’s not really something you can ever forget.

With my first one, I was pretty loaded up on Demerol. I was unconscious between pushing moments, and I’m not sure that I remember those all that well. But I was unhappily drug-free with the second.

It hurts, yes. In the early stages, it feels like bad cramping, kind of dull. Later on, it gets sharper and the “push” urge isn’t something that you can just not do. Sharp-sharp, too - I know things stretched and ripped and tore, but I couldn’t feel that over the muscle labor. It takes your whole body’s effort too. And actually having the baby feels like taking the biggest dump of your life - I remember that I was very surprised at that.

I can’t tell you if the epidural helps; I’m much to quick at it to have ever had an epidural. I do remember cussing at the nurses during the second one, insisting that I was quite far enough because in ten minutes it was going to be too late. And sure enough, it was.

3

It was absolutely excrutiating. No, actually, it wasn’t *that[/] bad. It wasn’t more than I could handle, and was like extreme cramps. What sent me literally up the wall was when the doc came in to check for dialation. I was backpeddling on the bed to get away from him!

I didn’t have any drugs at all with the first two, the third was a C-section and yes, the drugs were very good. I did feel rather disconnected because there was no pain, just a bit of pressure (yeah, I know you’ve heard that one before), and a general squickiness feeling your body being moved around but being able to tell exactly what was going on.

And you do tend to forget the pain once you see your bundle of joy.

4

Oh dear.

Wow, well thank you Cowgirl Jules . I guess you only get the drugs if you have a long labor huh? Otherwise no? I think I had heard that before, that there’s a very narrow window where you can receive the epidural. Eeek.

5

Ah, hi Lyllyan …sorry, didn’t see your response because I was posting.

Excruciating huh? Well, I have had horrid cramps. I’m thinking it’s worse than that…much worse. Gah.

And when he was checking you for dialation it was painful as well?

Ok, I’m going to go breath now… :wink:

6

That would be breathe .

7

My first was excruciating for two reasons. The first was that labour was induced. Avoid being induced if you possibly can; the contractions are savage. The second reason was that he was presenting posterior and so I had the backache from hell as well.

The good news is that my second was like shelling peas. Not induced and **not[/] posterior presentation. And I stayed at home as long as possible so I could walk around instead of lying down.

8

I had an epidural, and I wish I hadn’t. I was in labor 19 hours and they had to use forceps. But it was like my upper body was watching someone else give birth. The nurses had to prop my knees up and I couldn’t even push. I barely participated in my son’s birth, and I’ve always felt cheated by that.

9

First of all, don’t believe ayone who tells you you’ll forget about the pain the second you see your baby. You won’t CARE about it, but you won’t forget, either. (It’ll come in handy 15 years later when you remind the child that after all your hard labor, the LEAST he can do is vacuum the family room.)

I was very surprised by the physical feelings of labor, because I had been told to expect cramps similar to bad menstrual cramps and that the pushing stage would feel like a very large bowel movement, and I found none of this to be accurate in my case. As you get further on in your pregnancy, you’ll likely have what is called Braxton-Hicks contractions. It’s like your entire abdomen balls itself up into a knot suddenly, then fades out. Once you start having those, you’ll have a better idea of “real” contractions - the real ones are considerably stronger, but you’ll have an idea of how out-of-your-control it is and an approximation of the various sensations. The labor contractions for me: there was an annoying pressure that seemed to radiate from just under my pubic bone up through my abdomen. A couple of times during labor, it was fast and strong enough to make me feel like I was being squeezed around my ribcage, and make me gasp. The worst part of it (again, for me - everyone’s experience is slightly-to-drastically different) was that I simply could not get comfortable, rather than being in any serious pain. My back ached, my hips were “loose” and tender, my feet were cold, etc… but for nine hours, which kind of sucks, to be frank.

I can’t even describe the pushing sensation, but I wouldn’t say it was similar to a bowel movement - to me it seemed like all the pressure was up top. You get your rhythm and routine down pretty fast - you sort of hold your breath and press with the muscles in the TOP of your abdomen, rather than your pelvic muscles. When the time comes for pushing, you won’t have a bit of doubt - you just HAVE to push. When they make you stop for one reason or another is when the panting thing comes in handy, otherwise all the breathing exercises in the Lamaze class were pretty useless.

The crowning was rough - a lot of pressure inside the pubic bone area, plus the contractions and a sense of heat (they call the crowning part the “ring of fire”) but as Cowgrl Jules said, at that point you’re so busy wth the muscular stuff going on that it is pretty inconsequential. (At this point in my labor, my tailbone broke. Seriously. There was an audible “snap.” Ask me if I cared at that point.) Once the baby’s head was out, the worst of it was over. The rest of her sort of “slid” out and while it wasn’t a particularly fun sensation, it beat the hell out of the stuff that preceded it.

The window for the epidural is somewhere between 5-7 centimeters dilation, IIRC. Before that, the epidural can stop or slow your labor. At 8 centimeters, you go into what they call transition, and things start happening pretty quickly. The reason the docs gave me for not doing an epidural after 8 cm is that it can interfere with your ability to participate (i.e. push.) I DID have the epidural, and just under the wire, too, because I went from 3 to 5 cm in about a five hours, then 5 to 7 in something ludicrous like 25 minutes. The epidural SHOULD have slowed my labor somewhat, and it was supposed to last an hour, but about 20 minutes after the epidural, I delivered.

I think that’s proably enough to scare the crap out of you for awhile :slight_smile:

10

Well, I pretty much had the gamut in a long labour with induction about 12 hours in, after I’d stayed up all night.

I had a lot of dysmenorrhea as a kid. I’d literally roll around on the floor. So labour to me was pretty much like that for a long time, until I was fully dilated, though following the induction contractions were definitely stronger. About six hours into that, the pain became severe enough that I began to projectile vomit. I think I was just really tired, though. Birth was about four hours later. The heartburn relief at the moment of birth was great!

11

I was induced at 37 weeks because my pelvis completely seperated as a result of my pregnancy. I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t hold my bladder, I was effectively on house rest for the 2 months proceeding. It was intense pain all day every day for months. It happens to 1 in 30,000 women, and I won that crappy lottery.

Labor was nothing compared to that.

Labor isn’t that bad. It’s a weird cramping, totally unlike menstrual cramps. The ones that feel like killer cramps are false labor, and they are also worse than the real thing.

Labor is sort of like a horrible case of Montezuma’s revenge. Those sort of cramps. Well, not exactly, but that’s the best metaphor I can give.

Anyway, I intended to go through it without drugs.

Then I realized I was a bloody fool.

The first 8 1/2 hours were painful. Then I got an epidural. From there it was very boring for about 20 more hours. The last 1/2 hour was pushing and having the baby be born, and that was damn cool.

Get the epidural. It is your friend. After that, there is no more pain. However, what no one will tell you is that you no longer have sphincter control either, so you will randomly fart uncontrollably and without feeling it. And boy, will they be loud and embarassing!

You will, however, still feel the head and shoulders emerge from your vagina. It won’t hurt. It is one of the coolest and magical feelings in the world. And I can’t describe it at all.

So, in short, labor is ouchy, but only as long as you allow it to be. You can get an epidural pretty much any time, especially since they now have studies showing it doesn’t prolong labor and may even shorten it.

As for books, I highly recommend Pregnancy Sucks.

12

I had both induction and posterior presentation with my kid too. Oh, and a dislocated pelvis.

I still shudder at the memory of the amniotomy. They SHOVE A KNITTING NEEDLE INTO YOUR LADY PARTS. REPEATEDLY. Avoid at all costs.

13

Boy are you asking for it.

Seriously, I had one baby in each of the last four decades and the experiences varied quite widely. #1 was in the phase where they gave you lots of drugs in hopes that they would cloud your memory of the ordeal. They didn’t. On the other hand the details are fuzzy.

#2 and #3 were born in the Lamaze natural childbirth days. However, #2 was an induced labor past the due date. My advice is, if you can avoid that, do so. Four hours of labor, back labor, bad presentation. It would have been more than I could handle if I’d had a choice about it (this was the one where, at one point, I said that I quit–the nurses laughed. They hear that one a lot.) This was also the child who, owing to that bad presentation, fractured my coccyx. Um, it looked like he might be the end. No drugs except for the Pitocin that started the whole thing off. My Lamaze class had thoughtfully provided a self-evaluation form which, if I’d filled it out, I’d have had to conclude that I flunked, but since I had a lovely baby I tore the self-evaluation form (with questions like, “Did you feel you lost control of your labor?” Hell yes!) up.

#3 was drug-free, painless, and took an hour and a half from the first contraction to the last. The very worst of the contractions was like a bad menstrual cramp for me, and I don’t have particularly bad cramps. The pushing phase was almost pleasant. It was quite a surprise, because after #2 I really thought I was in for it. No stitches, either. (And this was the largest of all my sons at eight pounds, although the others were all around 7 1/2 pounds so not too much different.)

#4 was breech and was delivered via C-section. Now THIS is the way to go. You get the drugs right up front (an epidural–I had what they very misleadingly called a “walking epidural,” before my doctor realized he was breech, even though I had asked about it because I was pretty sure he hadn’t turned, and they cranked up the epidural a little bit for the operation so while I FELT the cutting, it didn’t hurt, it was more like feeling a finger tracing over my skin).

I have to say, I am a real wuss when it comes to pain, so if I could do this four times you can get through it.

Now raising them, that’s a different story.

(Ah, on preview I see a couple of other people have also mentioned avoiding inductions. Good advice, very good advice. Just remember this: if they say “Pitocin,” you counter with “epidural,” and things will be fine.)

14

Not anymore, thanks to some new research. You lucky bastard. :wink:

15

In the last Newsweek I read (the one with autism on the cover), they have a short article about how new studies show that it’s OK to start epidurals much, much earlier in the labor process. If you’re getting one, try asking your doc if he’s heard about that. :slight_smile:

16

Granted, this isn’t coming first-hand (the whole Y-chromosome thing, dontchaknow), but with our second kid, my wife had excellent results with self-hypnosis as a method of dealing with the pain.

Going into it, we were both pretty dubious; it seemed a little too New-Agey and crunchy granola for us. But here’s how it worked: her water broke at 12:30 AM, she booted up the hypnobirth CDs and ran through the exercises until about 4AM, when the pain got to be too much to cope with alone. She called the doula and midwife, all were in place by 5AM, and the baby was born just before 7AM.

She’s no Amazon-type (5’2", 120#), but she was able to deliver an 11 pound, 12 ounce baby without using any drugs. So for her, at least, the pain was bad but manageable.

How bad? Obviously, it’s hard to quantify, but for what it’s worth, she said that it hurt less than her first marathon.

17

Labor’s pretty bad.

If you have gone through life with bad periods, you’re sort of lucky. Labor is like the period from hell. You’ll go a couple of minutes, then have the absolute worst cramp ever, which will last a minute or so. If this happens to you every month anyway, you’ll at least be more prepared for it than I was. I’ve always had easy periods.

I second whoever said don’t get induced. Doctors are big into this, but most of the time it’s for their convenience, not yours or the baby’s (they don’t want to deliver on the weekend if they can help it). I was locked up tight as Fort Knox when they broke my water and fired up the Pitocin. (Looking back, and having learned more about labor over the years, I see that breaking my water at the very beginning was stupid and unnecessary. No wonder it took 22 hours.)

So yeah … no induction, if you can help it. And try to get them to let you walk. First babies are going to take their time and there is no point laying in bed the whole time when you could be out roaming the halls with gravity doing part of the work.

My epidural was … ehh (I got it at around 3cm). I thought I’d be totally numb … didn’t happen. I’m all about as many drugs as possible during labor (for everyone, not just Mom!), but the epidural really does make labor longer (or it did for me, anyway). The contractions are weaker and don’t get the job done as well. They ended up having to turn mine down towards the end. Had I been left alone with something sharp and pointy, I would have hurt myself. (If you are a redhead, point out to the epidural person that redheads need more drugs than other people.) The epidural itself didn’t hurt a bit. Once they numbed up my back, I didn’t feel anything. Getting the IV put in my hand hurt more.

You can’t prepare for the pain. All you can do is learn coping techniques for when it comes. Take a lamaze class. Yes, the breathing is lame. However, it may help you and at least keep you from killing yourself before the kid comes out. I was convinced the epidural would take care of everything for me and didn’t bother with childbirth classes. Read everything you can get your hands on, even the weird hippie granola stuff. Even give hypnobirthing some thought. Don’t depend on any one method to get you through it. Try everything. Bring in a lucky rabbit’s foot if you think it’ll help.

Pushing isn’t bad, it’s the hell you go through getting to the part where you can push. During the hellacious contractions at the end, pushing eases the pain and takes your mind off of it.

Don’t be afraid of the vacuum if they bring it out. It’s a nice little contraption.

Picture me on my knees here, begging. Get out and walk, every day if you can. You don’t have to set a world record, walk slowly if you want. Just one mile will take you a half hour, tops. The lazier you are for the next 6 months, the longer it’s gonna take in the delivery room. (All I did for 9 months was sleep.)

Oh: towards the end of labor, you may feel like you’ve gotta go to the bathroom. That’s just the baby getting really far down in there. And it’s perfectly normal to throw up once you hit about 7cm or so.

Five years later, I haven’t forgotten the pain. But it really was worth it.

18

What does labor actually feel like?

Before I had a baby, a friend’s sister described it to me as though she’d suddenly been doused with gasoline and set on fire. That’s what it was like for me. Each contraction felt as though I were physically being burned alive, once they started getting pretty painful (which they did long before they were “productive,” or helping me to significantly dilate, let alone shoot out the kid). The earlier contractions did feel like particularly bad cramps plus, say, a nasty Charlie horse. The Charlie horse type of pain, but all over my pregnant belly, back, and oddly enough, thighs. For me, the pain started about 2 inches above the knee and would rise up my body, ending just below my boobs (but all the way around; my back was definitely afire each time).

I’ve had gallbladder attacks, various surgeries, and broken my ankle. The pain of labor put them all severely in the shade. While I was in it, I couldn’t see how I was going to get through and survive it, but I did. I haven’t forgotten it one bit, although it was worth it to get my two daughters.

The first time, I got an epidural very late in the process – I think around 5:45 to 6:30 pm, somewhere in there – and my daughter was born at 8:15. It relieved the pain almost completely and immediately, and I was very grateful. It did slow my labor enough that they put me on Pitocin to make the contractions stronger. I still had little pain, though, mostly pressure, and was able to push okay despite a really long labor.

The second time, I had an amniotomy (breaking the amniotic sac to make labor progress, which was astonishingly sharp and painful – took my breath away. Thank heavens it was brief). Pelvic exams with a speculum hurt me quite a bit both the first and second time. Always ask if they can use just their fingers; it doesn’t hurt nearly as much. Chances are good they’ll make you do a speculum at the beginning, but you can get away with fingers after that.

When the amniotomy didn’t do anything, I got Pitocin. Within 10 minutes, I was crying from the pain and got an epidural shortly thereafter. This epidural “didn’t take.” Essentially, it made my legs and feet numb, but I still was in agony and screaming for the rest of labor, which lasted about 3 hours and 40 minutes after they started me on the Pit. But then, my daughter was posterior presentation, which is rough anyway.

Here are my tips for an easier labor:

  1. Don’t guilt yourself about drugs. Drugs are your friend. If you don’t need them, great. If you do, use them. There’s no shame in it.

  2. If you’re going to have an epidural, INSIST on a real anaesthesiologist doing it if at all possible. They’re better at getting the needle into just the right space so your epidural works properly.

  3. Avoid being induced if at all possible. Pitocin takes early labor and cranks it into hard labor almost instantly. That’s rough to endure, especially because it may take your body a while to catch up and dilate. Meanwhile, you’re really hurting.

  4. Remember above all that everyone is different. A friend’s mom had only mild cramps with all three of her kids, and they came quickly. You might have a hard labor or an easy one. You can’t help thinking about it, I know, but when labor starts, you’ll just take it as it comes like everyone does, and you’ll find a way through it.

Mrs. Furthur

19

I personally found my labor no worse than menstrual cramps. It was actually easier than menstrual cramps for me because at least I felt like I’d gotten a rest in between cramps.

But then again I’m one of those people who Abbie Carmichael writes about. Before I gave birth I had the kind of montly cramps where you’re on the floor at five a.m. in the morning seaching the medicine cabinet furiously for the ibuprophen.

If it hurts take any meds you can and don’t ever feel guilty about it. Having a pain free labor will help to relax during labor and that can only benefit your baby.

20

My Sources say that it is like falling out of a tree and cathcing your bottom lip on a branch and having your bottom lip being pulled over your head, that is a woman’s pain.
I’m pretty sure that’s what it is like, that’s what my friend Gloria Ironbox said.