Which is more painful pregnancy and childbirth or a kick in the nuts?

[Shodan]

@EverwonderWhy

Agreed. But another question for the men was if suffering a hard kick in the nuts was the only way to have children would they do it?

Well, I have been kicked in the nuts, and while it is not a particularly pleasant memory, I survived.

Both my kids are adopted, so I would change the proposal to getting kicked in the nuts as part of the adoption process.

So it would be
[ul][li]Fill out all the paperwork[/li][li]Go thru the screenings and background checks[/li][li]Meet with the social worker[/li][li]Get kicked in the nuts[/li][li]Pick up the baby.[/ul]I assume the social worker would be the one kicking me, and she was rather a small woman, so I guess I would say Yes.[/li]
But I would ask for an epidural first - none of this natural childbirth or doing Lamaze breathing before being nut-kicked for me.

Regards,
Shodan (who is consistently surprised at the kinds of questions that come up on the SDMB)

[Palo_Verde]

I had 4 babies, all unmedicated, totally natural births. I found pregnancy fascinating, and fulfilling. But after the first 2 kids I was kind of over it, and if I could have had a baby without the morning sickness, heartburn, backache and cramps, I would have done it. Childbirth is… interesting. But each time I forgot how much it hurts until it was too late and the baby was coming. I think nature makes you forget the details or you’d never want another.

[Lynn_Bodoni]

I said the only reason women suffered through childbirth was their desire for a kid - not because they think childbirth is nice or not that painful -

Well, some of us get pregnant in a time or place where it’s not possible to get an abortion, and not possible to travel to get an abortion. And once you get pregnant, you gotta either get an abortion, or have a miscarriage, or go through childbirth. I had absolutely no desire for a kid, but had to go through childbirth anyway.

[Doggo]

@Sattua

I desired pregnancy the first time, now that I’ve done it I’m not excited about doing it again. Never was interested in the childbirth part.

Possibly a swift kick in the nuts is as painful as birth, but only for a few seconds. Labor lasts hours; pushing sometimes lasts hours too.

Obviously never been really kicked in the nuts then.
I say it is worse than childbirth, because once the baby is out, the woman instantly stops screaming and starts slobbering over the infant. The pain in the nuts goes on and on.
And, yes I’ve been at many births as part of my job.

[MandaJo]

@Doggo

Obviously never been really kicked in the nuts then.
I say it is worse than childbirth, because once the baby is out, the woman instantly stops screaming and starts slobbering over the infant. The pain in the nuts goes on and on.
And, yes I’ve been at many births as part of my job.

Yeah, but the kick in the nuts takes a second, and then the pain goes on and on an on for how long? Childbirth goes on and on and on for hours–sometimes days–and then it’s all over.

Remember that the birth you see is after an extended period of labor.

[Chronos]

I don’t think the OP’s question is inherently unanswerable. All we need is some third experience which is available to men and women alike, and to which nutkicks and labor can both be compared. Such an experience, to be definitive, must be worse than one and better than the other, so it might take some trial and error to find one, but it should be doable. For instance, how do both compare to getting kicked in the kidneys?

[Mattie_Blue]

Two male hosts of a Dutch TV show called Guinea Pigs experiencing labor contractions with the help of electrical stimulation devices.

Here’s A Video Of Two Men Experiencing Labor Contractions

[Skald_the_Rhymer]

In a sense the question is meaningless, as no one with testicles can undergo childbirth; therefore no one has any basis for comparison. Well, Tiresias, but nobody else. But I’ve been kicked in the nuts, and while painful, the experience is brief: childbirth typically lasts much longer.

[Nava]

Pregnancy and delivery aren’t always painful; the only time a kick in the nuts isn’t painful is if the kicked guy is in a deep coma. So I’d say the kick.

[RTFirefly]

I’ve taken it in the nuts on several occasions during my younger years, not always from being kicked (one time it was a baseball, thrown medium hard), and while it always hurt like crazy when it happened and for maybe 15-20 minutes afterwards, and hurt but less so for anywhere from another 15 minutes to a couple hours, and then after that you were back to normal.

I really doubt that more than a small fraction of women experience less pain than that as a result of a pregnancy that goes all the way to term. I bet most women would trade first-trimester morning sickness, let alone labor, for the amount and type of pain equivalent to a kick in the balls, if such things could be easily compared and such trades made.

[stui_magpie]

@flatlined

Getting kicked in the nuts is way more painful than having a baby; and here’s why.

A year or so after giving birth, a woman will often say, “It might be nice to have another child.”

On the other hand, you never hear a guy say, “You know, I think I’d like another kick in the nuts.”

Case closed, time for another beer. And more thinking."

Works for me

[Pitchmeister]

What, no one has linked to Chandler Bing’s thoughts on the subject? I thought that’s what this thread was about, honestly.

Relevant part starts at 1:10.

[Cazzle]

My last pregnancy resulted in 30 weeks of morning sickness, 10 weeks of heartburn, 5+ weeks of high blood pressure, 14 hours of labour and an emergency caesarian. I don’t know how they compare in intensity of pain, but I’m willing to bet the effects of a kick to the balls are usually shorter lived than the discomforts of pregnancy.

[SciFiSam]

Later contractions are each like a kick in the nuts, I’d say. At least, based on the way I’ve seen men react to a kick in the nuts. It looks horribly painful, but in labour you’re going to get that happening a hundred times (or more - sometimes much more). You do get the occasional woman who has a pain-free birth, but that’s rare. You get more women who don’t experience much pain - they only get the nut-kicking equivalent a dozen times or two.

Pregnancy is different. I LOVED being pregnant, but if it ever happened again I might not be so lucky. Some pregnancy-related conditions, like symphysis pubis dysfunction, can cause excruciating pain, and the thing is, you never know what kind of pregnancy you’re going to get. Same with labour.

[Annie-Xmas]

I’ve never had a child, but I once slipped on the ice and landed spread-eagle and leaning back on and breaking my tailbone. Then I rolled forward, slamming my crotch on the ice.

I can’t even image what slamming a guy’s nuts into the ice would feel like, but I think that pain was the closest to a kick in the nuts and any woman can ever experience.

[April_R]

This is a weird poll. The choices only tangentially relate to one another.

And as a member of the opposite sex how can one even venture to guess at the relationship of one type of pain to the other. There is no way to know. Silly poll.

Saying all that, a kick in the nuts doesn’t last up to 9 months, so I would say pregnancy may not be more painful but it is more annoying.

[kferr]

Many years ago I was playing volleyball in a big tournament. I jumped and accidentally landed on another player’s foot and my ACL went off with a bang. I hit the floor swearing my head off. A woman who turned out to be a nurse and was wearing a knee brace comes running over to look after me. After I calmed down a bit she said something like “I saw what happened, you’ve probably blown out your ACL. I’ve done that, and I’ve had kids, and let me tell you, blowing out a knee hurts worse!”

[Blaster_Master]

As a guy, I’ve never had more than a glancing blow, but even those were surprisingly painful. The thing is, it’s a different kind of pain from anything else. There’s pulsing/throbbing pain, dull pain, sharp pain, there’s that sort of stabbing pain that’s paralyzing. The odd part, at least to me, is that different kinds of pain can actually less, but be far less bareable, whether because of the kind of pain or because of the location. And that’s where the nut shot is set apart, it is a completely different kind of pain from anything else I’ve experienced AND it’s in a particularly vulnerable spot, so it takes very little real pain to actually be debilitating. But also because of it’s sensitivity, I can only imagine that the upper limits of that pain are as high or higher than other pains I’ve felt, and thus even more debilitating.

The other aspect is that, as mentioned, while there is the immediate and short lived intensity of the pain, it has lingering after affects in a sort of non-localized somewhat less but more widespread version of that pain through the abdomen, nausea or possibly vomitting, fatigue and weakness.
Either way, I think the only real way to compare the two is to try to estimate it relative to other intense pains that we’ve felt and try to come to a baseline. I’ve often heard that both men and women will say that a kidney stone is more painful, but I’m also of the understanding that kidney stones can be more painful for men because of the anatomical differences in the uretha. So I’m not sure how good of a baseline that is either.

So, my thoughts are that, in general, getting kicked in the balls probably has a more intense and debilitating peak, but even the after affects are over fairly quickly unless it’s particularly brutal. Child birth, on the other hand, is probably not much less intense but lasts considerably longer, and so it’s sort of like comparing a drag car to a NASCAR.

The other substantial difference between the two that I think actually plays a considerable part is the manner in which the pain is received. That is, childbirth is more or less expected and mitigatable. A woman makes a choice and has time to mentally and physically prepare for it and can receive medication for it. A man, on the other hand, never expects it and it’s over before any of the pain can be mitigated, so that probably adds a fair amount to the intensity.

[Dead_Cat]

Male, voted for options 2 and 3 in the poll. As others have said, the pain from a kick in the nuts is over very quickly - even with my worst one, where a soccer ball was blasted directly at the, er, target from 3 feet away, I was running around again quite happily after 15 minutes or so. The pain at the time was intense, but if that were the only way to have children, I’d do it. Provided you only had to have one kick in the nuts - if it were every day for 9 months, or even once a week, that would take some thinking about.

[markdash]

Only a guy would even think this is a question. (I am one, and childbirth is way more painful.)