While this is a practical approach, “kicked in the kidneys”* is probably not a good place to start. This is because getting kicked in the kidneys is straight-up horrifying enough that I can’t imagine it ranking between the two target pains. It’s in the general vicinity of kidney stones, with the addition of possibly redecorating a bathroom in Classic Slasher Flick when the pain makes your knees buckle.
*Assuming this means “subjected to a bruising impact to one or both kidneys”, since my incidents involved elbows and falling on rocks, respectively.
A kick in the nuts is a terrible sharp searing pain, but it will pass relatively quickly. No cramps/contractions leading up to it, no pushing and buildup. And unless you think your testicles are actually ruptured, you don’t have the fear that something is permanently damaged.
With childbirth, I’d be worried about tearing. I know the vagina can expand amazingly, but still, I’ve witnessed a birth and I can’t imagine what that feels like.
You seem to be taking the stand that ALL of labour is painful. NOT SO!!!
It is only when a big head goes through a small opening that it becomes agonising, and that part doesn’t usually last long.
Besides, has no one on here heard of epidurals? Good grief.
No, contractions and pushing are usually very painful in themselves. Occasionally women don’t feel much pain, but that’s not usual. Epidurals can’t always be used and especially aren’t usually used in early labour, plus they have drawbacks.
What kind of job do you do that involves watching women giving birth?
I trained as a general and obstetric nurse- good enough reason?
I observed several births, and in none of them was there much pain till near the end. None involved screaming at all. The pain stopped as soon as the baby was out and there was no residual pain. In fact, none of the women I observed seemed in any discomfort till very near the end. One woman even started delivering the infant without any indication she was doing so- big shock when I checked and the head had crowned already!
No doubt some women have more pain than others, but none of the ones I looked after seemed to have pain problems during their labour. Certainly, it didn’t put them off wanting to do it again.
However, I’d really, really like to never get hit in the nuts again.
I’ve never had kidney stones, but the concussion I had in the sixth grade hurt a lot worse, and a lot longer, than childbirth. Maybe we can get a list of things that hurt worse than childbirth and the guys can go through them.
You didn’t mention which was worse, by the way, the kidney stones or the kick.
I like Master Blaster’s idea of making a ranked scale. We have kidney stones and an ACL tear nominated. The concussion should not be included because they’re so variable. I know because I’ve had two.
What else should be added to the scale?
Not until that little thing called the afterbirth is dealt with. And if you think not screaming and slobbering over an infant means there’s NO pain, you must think women are total wimps.
Although the thing that I was most aware of afterward was exhaustion. Labor always seemed to mean a night with no sleep on top of everything else.
Not quite. For my first one, I went into back labor. I was moaning and rocking and wishing it would go away for hours before I figured out that I could be in labor. It wouldn’t have been as bad if it had started during the day, but it was keeping me from falling asleep and some time after midnight I just wanted it to stop, whatever it was.
I nearly had one of those. For the third, if I turned on my side, the contractions would stop. If I fell asleep, the contractions would stop. Yes. I was napping during labor. It’s not a usual thing.
And it didn’t last. It was going too slow. At the beginning, they weren’t sure I was actually in labor. After twelve hours, they decided that I was and that they were going to induce it the rest of the way . . . in about an hour, after they got back from lunch.
That one was not much pain until the end. And the pain doesn’t always wait to diminish until the baby is passing through. Sometime just being able to push at last eases a lot of it. It was always the contractions that hurt. I don’t remember any pain from the passage.
No, I completed the training. Did you miss the part about GENERAL and obstetrics?
The obstetric part was about 2 months a year, if I remember correctly, but I could be wrong ( it was a long time ago ).
I enjoyed that part of my training, as the women were all healthy and looked after themselves, and the “patients” ( babies ) didn’t break my back.
No I can’t provide a link. I was writing about my personal experience, which indicates that extreme pain for hours and hours is not the “norm” in childbirth.
If it was that bad, I’m sure there would be few multiple pregnancies.
BTW, after several pregnancies, some women have little discomfort during labour, and the baby almost falls out.
my second c-section was a disaster and extremely painful. 5 minutes in recovery my stitched busted open and i was told i couldnt have more pain meds nor were they going to stitch me back up, that it had to close on its own at that point. i had to tend to the open wound myself after i was released from the hospital and it did not heal correctly. It was by far the worst pain I have every felt in my entire life and to this day it still hurts when i strain those muscles. Personally I would have preferred a kick to the nuts. By no means do I regret going through the pain to have my daughter but I could have done without the complications.
For me, a male, a hard kick in the nuts is way more painful than pregnancy and childbirth. My wife got pregnant and gave birth three times. It hurt her way more than it hurt me.
I’ve had five kids, so I’ve probably given birth more than you’re observed birth. So my anecdote trumps your anecdote.
Your ignorance is a little disturbing.
Kids don’t just fall out, except in Monty Python. My second was the fastest, my fifth took the longest.
Women get epidurals for a reason.
Stitches.
Recovery takes a while.
I had easy pregnancies, childbirth, but it was still horrible. It hurt, a lot.
Please don’t now try to imply I’m some delicate flower, I’ve been in construction about twenty years now, I’ve broken things, cut things, fell, punctured and hurt myself on more than one occasion.
I would like to say that epidurals do not equal painfree labor. First off, you can’t get the epidural until you are in the hospital, which, depending on your situation, can be several hours after labor begins. Then, even after you arrive, they have to wait until someone is available to give you the epidural. In my case, I had to wait for an hour and a half until the epidural was given. I assure you, it was quite painful.
Also, as angeleyes612 and fisha stated, recovery is no picnic. Even without a c-section, I experience severe tearing. I couldn’t walk well on my own for three weeks. The mere idea of a BM was enough to make me break out in a cold sweat.
It was a full 2.5 months until I felt like myself again and over a year until I felt as I did before the pregnancy. In discussion with many of my mommy buddies, this experience is not that unusual. Some have had it much worse.
Anyone who thinks that labor only effects you while your are actively pushing is either incredibly lucky, a liar or has never experienced it for themselves.
On the flip side, my husband gets kicked in the nuts and he is over it in minutes and has most likely forgotten about it completely 2.5 months down the road.
The failed epidural I had in my first labour left me with just as much pain as before I had it, but weakened my legs so I couldn’t move into a position that was more comfortable while they were happening - and it was hours before they administered a second (blissfully effective) epidural. Not exactly a “Get out of pain free” card.
My own pregnancy was mostly very easy. I didn’t have a painless labor and delivery, but for me the pain was more sustained and endurable than what I imagine a kick in the nuts would be. There was crescendo and decrescendo, and there was also the cheering thought of "once I’m through this I get to meet the person who’s been doing the rumba on my bladder for all these weeks. I chose not to have an epidural or other pain meds.
I have had kidney stones, too. For me (and I underscore that because I understand that factors like back labor and all sorts of other things make every woman’s labor and delivery different) the kidney stone pain was far worse. Possibly because there was no warning or build up. I was just carrying something from the back room to the front room at work and WHAM I was on the floor crying and then I threw up. (and I never throw up, not even when I was pregnant - sorry ladies)
I have also experienced toothache with such intense blinding pain that I have said a number of times I’d rather relive the birth of my (9.5 lb) son seven days in a row than have a toothache like that for even five minutes.
I think my answer to the question posed in the thread title is that a kick in the nuts might peg the meter for a few seconds or even minutes, but pregnancy and childbirth will keep the needle in the red zone for a whole lot longer.
I’ve never been kicked in the nuts, but I have had a metal instrument pushed up my fallopian tube, which resulted in the tube spasming. Given we’re talking about 'nads in both cases, maybe I have an idea of what a ball shot is like.
To compare the two pains:
[ul]
[li]the fallopian spasm was sharp, searing, breathtaking pain for a few seconds, followed by crampy soreness that wasn’t fun but was more annoying than debilitating.[/li][li]my more painful labor was nowhere near the sharpness of the fallopian pain, except during crowning. But it lasted all night, I was totally exhausted, I felt turned inside-out, and the pain kept on and on, only getting worse as time went on. And as noted above, my body was all cattywampus for weeks afterward.[/li][/ul]
So, all in all, I would much rather experience a shot to the gonads again than go through labor. The whole experience is definitely worse for labor. But if you just distilled the worst pain from each experience into a five-second burst of pain, divorced from the rest of the process, I’d say crowning and 'nad shot are about equal, and contraction pain is comparatively mild.
Oh, and once I was on a plane with a congested ear, and I had a pain as we took off that I thought was going to make me fall down in the aisle screaming. I’d say that was very comparable to the fallopian tube spasm: sharp, intense, totally overwhelming, but gone in an instant (thank Og).
Er, you can’t be unaware of the third stage of labor then, right? And if you were in hospitals no doubt the moms got a Pitocin shot so those contractions hurt like a goddamn sonofabitch. I may have been “slobbering over my baby,” (really dude?) but I was also literally writhing in pain. And that was after a labor that had been mostly painless! With my second baby, the afterpains I got while nursing were so bad, when the midwives saw me going through one, they rushed to offer me narcotic pain medication.
Since it is impossible to get an objective answer (no one can have both testicles and experience childbirth, we will need to go at this comparatively
I am male and have osteoarthritis. I discovered the OA by having, for just short of a constant year, the most incredible pain imaginable in my right shoulder, and, from time to time, extending all the way to fingertips of right hand.
The olny way I could possible lift a 2-liter bottle of soda was to form my right index and middle fingers into a hook and snagging the collar of the bottle.
By the end of the year, vicodin was useless - I am now on Sch II opiates.
I was told this was the only way a male could experience the pain of childbirth.
Based on that, a kick in the nuts is a bee sting.
If it were up to the male to endure the pain of childbirth, the species would be extinct.