Giving birth: 0
Passing gall stone: 11
Every one’s birth experience is going to be different and since pain is a SUBJECTIVE response–noone can say that labor and delivery doesn’t hurt all that much or is the worst torture known to womankind for anyone but themselves.
Now that we have that established, some generalities can be made.
the perception of pain depends not only on your own nervous system, but also on cultural mores, personal emotional needs/fears/concerns, level of trust between partners, laboring woman and the health care team. I would say that ignorance does increase pain, indirectly, but there is no guarantee that a firm knowledge base will decrease your pain.
Thing is, labor and delivery is overwhelming to some women, and not to others. I count myself in between the “camps”. First time, I was convinced that I would die if my husband left the room–real rational. My anxiety (which was not addressed, see below) made my negative perceptions stronger.
I have had nasty labor(kid #1) with an old school male physician who came in and lectured me that I was “taking too long” and left the room (this did not add to the experience in any positive way) and(kid #2) I have had a female physician sit on my bed, hold my hands and say that we are gonna get thru this if we work together–I borke my tailbone on that baby.
Not trying to diss male docs–I have had several excellent ones, but since I only had three kids, and only one male OB/GYNE–this is my story.
I have also had back labor(kid #3) and a pudendal block (the really loooooong needle one)–because anesthesia was too busy to come give me an epidural. Thank God for docs who still practice some old time delivery doctoring, that’s all I can say.
Bottom line: For me, the realization that my BODY was in charge of this process and my intellect was not only NOT needed, but getting in the way, was disconcerting to say the least. Once I surrendered to the process and worked with the pains and rhythms, things were much better. I accepted whatever drugs were on offer, though–Demerol IV push was a wonderful thing for me…
Plus, labor is finite, with a (hopefully) positive outcome. That makes a difference–but no way would I dismiss anyone’s fears of it or memories of their pain.
On a lighter note, before she had her baby, my friend related to me a story her Korean aunt told her. Her aunt said that she’d heard of a village in Korea that had a curious local custom. Many women squeeze their husband’s hand during contractions, but in this village, a man was required to drop his pants and let his wife hold on to his penis instead! :eek:
With all of the pregnancy books I have, you’d think I would know what a Foley is. What is it?
Picturing this made me giggle.
I’m 15w 4d today and this is a very enlightening thread. But I think I’m scared of the pain that you all have forgotten about. Damn, what’s that going to be like? :eek:
Nutty Bunny, if you get an epidural, you have to have a catheter (Foley) for the remainder of the process, since you can’t feel how full your bladder is anymore. You can’t really feel it, I was relieved to discover.
Thanks. How does it feel going in? Or do they do it when the epidural takes effect, so you don’t feel it at all?
I think I’m more frightened of the epidural, (possible) episiotomy and other procedures than the actual labor itself.
I’m a 35 year old baby myself, as you can tell. Oh, I mean “baby of advanced maternal age”. :rolleyes:
They put it in after. I never felt it at all, or the few stitches from my small episiotomy.
The epidural is a burning pinch - much like every other needle. It’s not bad, considering the comparision to labor.
I sort of went into it with the idea that while I would prefer to try no drugs, I wasn’t going to be a hero about it, I had nothing to prove.
I felt almost nothing except when they started the c-section, my right side didn’t take the anesthetic enough. I menitoned it and the anesthesiologist (male) said, “Ahh, low pain tolerance.” I thought about grabbing his scrotum (close to my head anyway) and testing his pain tolerance but I decided I had enough to think about.
The episiotomy, the forceps I felt nothing.
One weird thing I was not prepared for - how much your pubic area (the top too) swells after labor. Seriously, they give you bags of ice to bring it down.
The Foley was my buddy that made sure I didn’t have to try to get up for anything. Doesn’t hurt (I was already frozen). Burns a little coming out.
One note - a friend of mine had her water broken before freezing, she said that really hurt. I was frozen already, just a warm rush. Felt weird, like a big huge, uncontrollable pee.
I was terrified of having an episiotomy and it wasn’t a big deal at all. I had a lot of stitches but regular Tylenol kept me pain free after delivery, and I healed up without any trouble. I am not worried about having another one if needed. I did Kegels and massage and everything beforehand because I was so afraid of having one, but when I got one I didn’t feel it. I did need a local afterward so she could stitch me up though.
I have to say after reading about how manageable most people’s birth experiences were, I am much more optimistic about having another one. I think I could handle contractions much more readily if the back pain wasn’t there. I have had some of the things people compare birth to, like sinus infections and mono, migraines and such and I would place my labor as way worse than any of those so I am hoping I just had a bad time and next time will be better. Although as someone else pointed out, I would rather have a hard labor than a colicky baby. And if anyone does go through back labor, I highly recommend getting in a tub as long as you can, it is the only thing that helped take pressure off for me.
I agree about the women that count labor time from the first little contraction. If I was going that route I could say I was in labor for a week. I only count from when it got too painful to walk around and when I couldn’t talk through a contraction any more, I went to the hospital, and from there it was a little less than 12 hours, with about 2 hours of pushing. I will tell myself that my next baby will zip right out in 3 hours from start to finish, which seems to be more the norm in my family.
I had my water broken before I went into labor. I didn’t find that it hurt at all. Maybe the doctor bumped your friend’s cervix accidentally. That woud hurt.
Geeze - if I had to give a specific number to the pain of labor, I guess I’d give it a 60-70. What made it really bad though was that it was unrelenting, and went on for a very long time, with no end in sight: my labor was induced, and I did not progress at all for about 12 hours.
Epidurals “safe and effective” - I’m no fan of epidurals. I had one with both deliveries. The first one hurt like hell going in - the jackass botched it (this is the same fellow who, when asked “can you stop when my contraction hits” said “If I stopped every time a woman had a contraction, I’d never get done”. I really regret not neutering him with my bare hands). Oh, and it didn’t work. And they didn’t believe me.
Didn’t work with the second delivery either, and that was a c-section. OK, I didn’t feel cutting but I felt things getting moved around “inside”. That was nowhere near as painful as labor was with my first kid.
But I’ve had worse individual pain than either of those, really. Including an electromyelogram / nerve conductance study involving cattle prods. But that didn’t last as long, even if the individual pains were far worse (80/100). And I could have gotten up and left with either of those, whereas with childbirth, there was no way to escape.
I think the duration, and lack of ability to escape, made the actual pain of childbirth far more misery-producing than a similar amount of pain from another cause.
Not necessarily.
I had the epidural, but I’ve never had a catheter in my life. I had never even heard of anyone having one because of an epidural before your post. 
And I’ll add a big Thank God behind that because I’ve always thought a catheter would be excruciating :eek:
I think they thought I was going to take longer than I did. Anyway, if they hadn’t told me what they were doing I wouldn’t even have noticed.
They’re probably pretty common but not mandated - if you can manage to sit up when you need to pee. However, you’re probably not allowed to sit up (I certainly wasn’t) so they did cath me. The epidural does mask that sensation so it wasn’t too bad - that was one of the few things that was numbed with my son’s delivery.
With my daughter’s delivery - c-section - they cathed me before the epidural was started and yeah, it was reasonably unpleasant. Not agonizing but pretty uncomfortable. Tubes to not belong in that orifice.
I think I was cathed because of the amount of blocking they were using. I couldn’t even roll over, much less get up to pee.
I guess I never really addressed the original question.
I was terrifyed of giving birth. I had never had a broken bone, tooth pulled, anything physically taxing happen to my body.
I remember my fear being of the actual birth. How can something that big come out of a hole so small?? :eek:
Then when the time came, I found out that it’s the friggin contractions that hurt!
My epidural never took if you ask me, because I felt everything. By the time the actual birth happend, I was so tired and sore from the contractions that the stretching and tearing were just a minor last detail to get over with.
What amazed me more than anything is how quickly you get over it. I mean one minute you’re moaning and exerting yourself harder than you ever have, and after just a minute of holding your baby you have (at least I did) completely forgotten what you just went through.
Amazing.
Two children here, had them both by the age of eighteen. First one we had a midwife scheduled but couldn’t locate her when I started labor. This was long ago, before cell phones and when midwives were illegal in my state, using a midwife for a delivery was logistically equivalent to setting up a really big drug deal. Husband made the mistake of letting my family know I was in labor, next thing I know I was in the hospital with a nurse smugly informing me that my husband wouldn’t be allowed into the room with me because I hadn’t gone through their stupid labor course. I told her that A) he’s my labor coach and B) I may be 17, lady, but I know what “AMA” means and I’m not about to let a little thing like contractions every couple of minutes stop me from hiking right on outta there. Husband allowed into room shortly after. Next battle was the ten or so interns who filed in with the doctor telling us they ALL wanted to do an internal exam. Husband says no, she’s in the middle of a contraction, and the doctor is saying great, that’s just what we want them to observe! Surfaced from labor long enough to tell them all to get the fuck out or I’ll chew their carotids out one by one. Score two for our side. I lost one on the pitocin drip which they insisted was necessary because my labor wasn’t progressing “fast enough.” This was about four hours after starting labor in the first place–guess I wasn’t using up enough technology for them. I do NOT recommend pitocin, it turns hard work into gratuitous torture. Also lost out on the fetal monitor–the belly band one hurt but the sound was kinda comforting, but the screw in one they attached to the baby’s head was alarming and the shrill beeping caused no end of anxiety until husband figured out how to turn the volume down. The nurses kept coming in waving needles full of Demerol at me–I kept screaming at them to get away from me, was there something in the concept of “natural childbirth” they didn’t understand? When we finally got to the pushing stage, of course they insisted on the stirrups and when my daughter came out she shot out like a squeezed watermelon seed and the doctor was juggling her like a greased water balloon. I told him if he dropped her he’d never stop paying the malpractice settlement. Episiotomy I didn’t agree to but was too busy to fight over–tore in a completely separate spot due to the terrible angle imposed by the flat bed/stirrup presentation, ended up with almost a hundred stitches. Then off to a ward of six where I was the only breastfeeder and the other five women all smoked. (Yes, they used to allow smoking in hospitals.) They wouldn’t bring my daughter in for feeding at night, but did come in often to let me know she was crying in the nursery and they wanted to give her sugar water. Advised them that I’d sue if they did and messed up my milk coming in. Finally got them to bring her in, then they tried to stop me from nursing longer than five minutes on a side and tried to stop me from napping while nursing. (I never wore a bra, and intentionally wore wool Pendleton shirts during the last month of pregnancy to toughen up my nipples–I was ready!) Final count on this one, ten hours labor and about twenty threats of lawsuits all in order to accomplish what mammals have been doing on their own for millions of years. :smack:
Second child–didn’t tell ANYONE but our designated babysitter when labor started, had him at home with husband attending, five hours labor total, delivered on hands and knees with only one tiny tear which healed on its own. Second child was two weeks past due and 9.5 lbs, a lovely delivery and no problems, some hard work but one of the most rewarding experiences ever. Had some cake and wine to celebrate, then went in to the hospital after about five hours to have us both checked out. Yes, I walked into the hospital and I was wearing my pre-pregnancy jeans… No, doc, you will NOT put silver nitrate into the baby’s eyes because I don’t have gonorrhea, and no, there will not be a circumcision, thankyouverymuch. Foreskins are not a birth defect. :wally
Seemed to me that most of the pain was iatrogenic in nature. I’ve been told things have improved since then, but I still feel that in most cases doctors don’t belong in labor and delivery. There isn’t enough for them to do and they get bored and want to “help.” YMMV.
I guess I’m an exception to the rule here.
I’ve had two kids. Both labors and deliveries were the most intense pain I’ve ever felt. My second-born was the worst: back labor and an epidural that didn’t take. When the doctor manually turned my daughter, I’m amazed that my screams didn’t shatter every window in the hospital. I would rate that labor as the worst pain I’ve ever felt, whatever that amounts to. A 90? I haven’t experienced kidney stones, but I’ve had gallstones, and they were a picnic in the park compared to labor. Same thing with broken bones.
The first labor and delivery was no picnic either, as I was significantly preterm and was allowed no drugs except for an epidural about an hour and a half before I delivered. However, I had been in significant to agonizing pain for a day beforehand. When that epidural finally came, I nearly passed out from the sheer relief. The labor probably rates around an 85, if for no other reason than because of the length of it. I went into labor at 3 am on a Saturday morning and, due to the preterm and the fact that my water broke, they could neither accelerate nor decelerate the labor. Regardless of what someone said in another post, I was not “comfortable” by any stretch of the imagination for most of that three days. I was in moderate to severe pain the entire time, couldn’t progress until the last day, wasn’t allowed to eat, couldn’t sleep because the contractions never stopped. This is not typical.
My labor is also atypical, I think, because my contractions, even toward the end, might last a minute at a time and be spaced right together – so it was like essentially a three-minute contraction that moved up and down my body. The L&D nurse said things like, “Oh, honey, you can’t catch a break!” No kidding.
I had two episiotomies. I didn’t feel pain with the first one until my epidural wore off. After that, it was like any cut closed with stitches. With the second kid, the epidural hadn’t taken, and it felt like I’d been slashed with a knife in the perineum, which I had. I have permanent, painful scarring in that area, which I no longer think will abate. This is also atypical.
I love my daughters. It was worth going through the pain then, and enduring the pain from the scars now, to have them in the world. I definitely don’t ever, ever want to go through it again, though.
Mrs. Furthur
SmartAleq, first of all, good for you for taking control as best you could the first time around. IMHO all your decisions were the right ones. They tried to bully you because of your youth, and you stuck up for yourself. Hurrah! I’m curious as to when and where this was.
I think these days (even though I haven’t had a baby in 29 years) things are MUCH better from what others tell me. For example, in many hospitals now you have labor and birth in the same room, decorated just like a normal friendly bedroom, except that it also contains all that a doctor might need if an emergency occurred. No more moving from one white and stainless steel “labor room” to another similar “delivery room” that has the ambiance of an operating room.
Also these days there is much more credence given to what *any * hospital patient wants and will permit. When my dad was in the hospital with what turned out to be his final illnesses, one night they came in to take a blood sample, and he hollered, “Go away! Leave me alone!” and they did. The nurses told me about it the next day. They had listened to him even though he was pretty much out of it, mentally. On a more pleasant note, doctors now tend to talk over all your options ahead of time and very much do what you want, although they will explain if they think your option is not a good one.
However, I’d still be very anxious about a home birth, myself. From all that I’ve read (and I’ve read a lot) the most normal-starting birth can turn horribly wrong in a very, very short time. Doesn’t happen a lot, but it does happen. My own OB/GYN had actually gone to France to study with Dr. Lamaze to find out what all this was about, and was extremely supportive of what I wanted to do, which was to avoid drugs if at all possible. But he did tell us that if things start to go wrong, and if he needed my husband to get out of the way, that he MUST do so IMMEDIATELY. Which was no problem, since I’d had to give El Hubbo a major ultimatum and guilt trip to get him to agree to go with me to Lamaze (only husbands were allowed to be labor coaches then).
Thanks, MLS, I appreciate the validation. Sounds like you and I are contemporaries, my daughter is 29 and my son will be 28 next month. I HATED those idiots at the hospital and couldn’t believe they could actually get away with that shit. They acted as if I had no say or right to participate in my own labor and delivery and they were unbearably, smugly paternalistic and condescending in every single interaction I had with them. They acted like I was some kind of crank because I didn’t want my baby born sedated and insisted that breast milk was the best choice for a human baby. I went there for my prenatal care with my second child, and during my last visit the doctor said “well, it could be any time now, guess we’ll be seeing you soon!” to which I replied “The hell you will!” He was shocked and asked why, and I told him “Because I had my LAST child here.” It amazes me how much things have changed since and I sure wish I could have had the modern type experience back then, because it sure looks like heaven!
It’s funny, though, what kept me from having more kids wasn’t the labor and delivery, it was pregnancy I really didn’t like. It’s so invasive and there’s such a huge loss of autonomy and sovereignty over one’s own being that I find disturbing and have no interest in repeating. I didn’t have difficult pregnancies by any means, it was just the normal restrictions that bothered me. Oh, and the heartburn, that really sucked ass!