I’ve been told that in fact, childbirth is not actually that [ainful for most women - most *non-western * women, that is. Supposedly, while it’s never painless, having better developed abdominal muscles (not ripped or anything, just solid), like people tend to develop in hunter-gatherer or farming settings, make childbirth much easier. And that the lack thereof is what causes so much pain in women today: their muscles are so poorly developed that when forced to contract repeatedly during childbirth, the musles become agonizing.
The pain is mainly coming from contractions of the uterus and the process of the cervix widening as labor progresses. Not sure how farming would tone up your uterus.
I’ve heard that the “squat and drop” method is supposed to be less painful than the traditional “strapped to the bed with your legs in stirrups” American approach. I don’t know of anyone who’s used the squat method, but I’ll bet it’s catching on in California.
I have a hunch that the tearing of flesh, due to a baby’s head being forced through an opening too small for it, would be quite painful despite the presence or absence of muscle tone.
That’s what I’m told happened in the case of our child’s birth, although I was quite content to focus on my wife’s face and not the business end of the procedure.
Strangely enough, the tear I had didn’t hurt at all. Something about the skin being stretched at the time and the distraction of pushing, I was told. The doctor did use a local when repairing it, though.
One thing to consider might be diet. Western women may eat more than some, producing larger babies. I have even heard of some societies where women eat very little in the last month, in order to ensure a smaller baby and an easier birth. (This might not be a bad survival strategy in places with little maternal care!) The average size of Western babies has been increasing over this century, at any rate.
But most of what I’ve read implies that birth has always hurt. That’s how we’re designed; if you walk upright, birth will hurt a lot more than if you go on all fours, and the larger human head makes it worse. That’s why our babies are born half-done compared to other mammals; if we waited until they matured as much as other mammalian babies, they wouldn’t be able to be born at all.
Societies used to place a lot more importance on stoicism, though. It was more important to them not to scream and carry on the way we often do.
But–women have always died in childbirth, and birth has always been hard.
When my mom had my older sister(her birthday was yesterday!), she used a birthing chair. I’ve never gotten a full description of the birthing chair, but my mom said the experience was much more pleasant and she was pissed to see the fad pass away. Sara was born in 1975, and I was born in '81 so, at least in Memphis, we’d passed on the chair. And I know that sounds bad.
-Lil
In fact, I’ve often read the claim that the pain of childbirth is woman’s punishment for Eve’s sin in getting Adam to taste the forbidden fruit.
I don’t know how far back this particular notion goes, but the misogyny of Christian thought has long be an element of the religious culture.
However, I agree that the claim that only western women feel the pain of childbirth is just as much of a myth as women’s complicity in that pain. Human heads just got too big too fast, evolutionally speaking.
Apparently the society of Scientology feels that way too, as the mom and those around her are supposed to keep quiet to ensure the baby’s peaceful entrance into the world. I wonder how well that works in reality?
–gigi, everything I know I learned from Us magazine
Christian? This is becoming a pet peeve. You could mean Judeo-Christian, or you could mean the Christian interpretation of the Old Testament. But, for a long time before a certain carpenter came along, the Bible belong to a bunch of people I like to call Jews.
Genesis is explicit that the pain of childbirth is part of the punishment of Adam and Eve. Adam gets to toil and sweat for a living.
Dangermom Have you got a cite for that? The Victorians and some others were stoic. But, I’ve never seen proof that they were anything but a minority.
Yes, obviously the text is from Genesis and I explicitly cited RickJay’s comment on that.
Perhaps it’s just my memory or biased sources, though, but I don’t associate the commentary on women and pain with Jewish sources. It always seems to come up in a Christian context. Orthodox Judaism does have its misogynistic elements, no question. This particular one doesn’t seem to me to be one of them.
Christianity has always picked and chosen which passages of the Old Testament it selects to pay attention to, and that is a pet peeve of mine. Unless you have some evidence that I’m mistaken about this, I’m going to continue to assert that the association of the pain of childbirth with Eve’s action is a Christian notion. Judaism, after all, doesn’t even have a counterpart to original sin and that’s often the context that this comes up in.
My friend just had a baby three weeks ago and it not only tore her perenium, but caused severe swelling of the labia for some reason that she nor I can explain.
She could barely walk for a week afterwards…and her stomach was fairly tight and flat.
My wife gave birth to three children (not all at once), and fortunately for her, labor was just a matter of 3-5 hours each time. While painful, she claims it was not that bad. Afer reading a recent news story about how many women now have C-sections, she remarked that she would much prefer to to have vaginal delivery. She said it was a fullfilling experience. Surprised me.
We know an obstertetric (sp?) nurse who told us that in the many hundreds of deliveries at which she assisted, by far the majority of women seldom screamed and carried as so often seen in movies. She blamed Hollywood for over-dramatizing it.
Carol Burnett once said that giving birth is not that bad. She said it is like taking your upper lip and pulling it up over your head.
I had the same experience you did. I gave birth 16 days ago…no drugs, 3rd degree tear. They had to give me an epidural after birth in order to repair the tear (2 hours worth of stitches). The tearing didn’t hurt at all. The contractions, though, were the worst pain I’ve ever endured and ever hope to endure.
Gosh, I wasn’t thinking of people as recent as the Victorians. I don’t have a citation, no, just a lot of reading I’ve done here and there. I’ve read accounts of, for example, poor people in Asia or in Europe giving birth without much fuss. I clearly remember a memoir I read in which the local peasant women placed a great importance on not screaming during labor, and one asked worriedly whether she’d made any noise. It was about being strong and not showing weakness.
Agreed, it’s not as bad as Hollywood makes it out to be. But there are a few things we do here that may make some women feel more pain than they need to. Position is one, of course. Keeping women in a bed, rather than up on her feet or on her knees may prolong labor. Delivering prone means the mother has to push up and out over her tailbone, instead of letting gravity help pull the baby out as in a birthing stool or squatting childbirth position (safe for work).
Another thing that causes extra pain is the speed at which many hospital births take place. I don’t want to misquote her, but **irishgirl **has posted the time limits in her hospital for each stage of labor, and they are much shorter than most midwives allow for home birth. By letting mothers take longer, there is more time for hot compresses and massage to stretch the perineum and reduce or avoid tearing. There is less pressure on the woman to get the baby out quickly or face an unwanted c-section.
Finally, I think women experience a lot of unneccesary pain simply because they are ignorant and expect pain. We don’t encourage women to attend births that aren’t their own. We show them hundreds of screaming actresses for 20 years, then throw a lot of techno-babble at them in a birthing class or hospital tour, and expect them to just know how to do it!
Obviously, these are areas which may vary by culture, and in some ideal place that probably doesn’t exist, childbirth could be a lot less painful than it is here.
