Tuco, standing can help. For what it’s worth, my wife spent much of my wife’s delivery sitting on my legs (which was easier than standing with her legs apart.) Beyond that, I’m no expert so allow me to bow out of the thread.
“…my wife spent much of my first son’s delivery…” :smack:
Yes, absolutely. Or whatever position helps her. I spent much of my last labor on a big bouncy ball next to the bed. Kept my hips flexed.
I had back labor with the first one. For the ininitiated, this is when the kid faces front rather than back and the back of his bony skull grinds against the base of your spine. The only thing that helped was doing a slow twisting dance move that looks like your hips describe an infinity symbol on the floor. As I found out later, what it actually did was both massage my inner muscles to relax them and by twisting the birth canal, allow the kid to naturally slip into a better position for everyone involved.
The only position that is BAD for labor is flat on your back. It makes the kid rest against some very important blood vessels, constricting the flow to both of you. It also makes you push uphill to get the kid out. It’s not much of an uphill, but as they say, every little bit helps.
HennaDancer
This has been discussed in depth before. Rather than repeat my long research update on childbirth and pain there, let me just link it.
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=94681
Please refer to point 4 in my first post in that thread.
By the way, the hypnotherapy I did with child two worked great. No pain, and that’s WITH pitocin, thanks. Not that the first was all that bad, even without hypnosis.
Oh, and an upright labor position also decreases the chances of poor fetal heart tone (that is, if you labor upright, babies are less distressed). On the flip side, there’s more risk of a serious bleed afterwards, too. But that’s why we make extra blood for pregnancy, so we can lose a bunch safely.
So what you are all saying is that is isn’t nescessarily the contractions that hurt,but it is the babys big head streching through the canal that hurts so much…? They why do some women have such painful periods? and if its the muscle thing again,that it hasn’t been used so after awhile it really hurts etc…well you’d think after years of “training” with periods,the damn thing would be ready to go
I think that’s what some people are saying, but that’s not the main reason.
Labor starts when the cervix decides to open from 0-3cm to 10 or so cm in diameter. This happens at the same time as uterine contractions start. The baby doesn’t start to come out of the uterus until fairly far along. Once I’m to that point, all the intense pain is gone.
There is a burning sensation as the head comes out, but I hardly noticed it with the first kid and not at all with the second. This is the skin stretching right around the rim on the vagina.
There are relatively few nerve endings inside the vagina to be bothered by a baby’s head, and even so, it’s all nooks and crannies in there- folds and corrugations. Kinda like one of those blow-up punching baloons you can get in the supermarket. Slender when unexpanded but huge when it’s got air in it, or in this case, a baby. Once you get that pesky cervix out of the way, assuming you have no pelvic abnormalities, there should be no further blockage, and so long as the perineum is massaged, oiled, and supported, no tearing. This is IN MOST CASES. Of course not all people will work like this.
HennaDancer
I would think the reason in the past why women were so frightened of giving birth was the mortality rate, not shame.
Well, yes. The fact that it wasn’t talked about much so the woman was totally unprepared for what might occur is where the shame came in. If you tell someone that you are going to go through an incredibly painful experience and might die- and NOTHING ELSE- it’s bound to cause problems.
HennaDancer
True-very true.
However, weren’t alot of doctors very ignorant?
I’ve read an account of Princess Charlotte of Wales’s labor, which killed her (She was the daughter of then Prince Regent, later George IV). It was hideous.
“Why is human birthing labor so painful?”
Its jus god’s way a sayin, “Y’all makin too many chilluns. Stop it.”
except that when it comes to god…
You know I’m guessing you are a man/ Try and squeeze a tennis ball through your penis and see if taking a leak 1,000 or so times prior to that was great practice. I’m not tryng to flame you but really you need to get over any association between menstrual cramping and labor they are TWO DIFFERENT THINGS.
Let me use small words
period pain = I’m a little cranky but keep doing what I normally do.
Labor pain = stop all body functions and pant like a dog.
Having a headache isn’t practice for a lobotomy. Falling on your knees as a child won’t prepare you for a compound fracture at age 25. Sitting on a tack is not the same as being impaled on a fence post. Do you get it at all?
I think there’s an important point here. 100 years ago, I, nor my sister would have survived birth. My mother nearly died when I was born, even with our advanced methods and medical expertise. (My sister’s birth was an automatic C-section and was a lot easier.)
My sister recently had a baby, and had extreme difficulties. I doubt she would have made it if we lived in the Victorian era. I have no children, but it’s highly likely I would also have problems.
So, evolutionarily speaking, my mother, my sister and I are all genetically unfit. We were “selected-for” artificially. Our offspring will most likely carry on whatever defective gene which has made the female pelvis in our family so stubbornly inmovable. In a tiny way, we have weakened the species as a whole by surviving and breeding.
I have often wondered what the remote future of our species will be like. Considering all of the people, not only birthing mothers, who would have died if not for our advanced medicine and who are now breeding the next generations, will our decendants be weaker? Because the “weak” are not thinned out by illnesses which used to be fatal, will those illnesses become more prevalent? Will our species become more sickly as a result?
I ran into an article a few years ago, I believe in Scientific American, that pointed out that not only was the pelvis reshaped to allow for upright walking and the increasing head size, but also that the baby comes out upside down–that is, back up–while all the other primates give birth with the kid coming out face up. This allows for a much easier labor on the part of the mother, as she can just reach down there and pull the kid out and up by herself in a natural manner without having to worry about turning the kid around first to not break the back. It also allows for a birthing without help, compared to the use of midwives throughout human history.
I’m scared to death of not only being pregnant but also giving birth. I attribute that to spending alot of time with a friend who was pregnant and witnessing her giving birth all the while screaming “God help me I’m gonna die!”.
A friend reported to me the astonishing tale of her sister’s experience with childbirth. She said that the sister was calm as could be throughout the whole labor, waving away offers of drugs, saying, “This isn’t bad at all. I expected it to hurt.” She laughed and joked with the doctors during the actual delivery. The baby was born with remarkable ease.
She is not a “big” girl, either. I guess some people just have an easier time than others.
First of all I am not a man …I am a woman who has gone through some pretty excruciating period cramps and I just so happen to be 10 weeks pregnant thank you very much…:mad:
My reason for asking all these questions is to kind of wrap my head around the concept of what I am going to experience in a few months.
From what I have always heard,period cramps were supposed to be your uterus’ way of preparing for labour,hence the comment in my previous posts. I don’t really see this great difference between cramps and labour except that with cramps you are squezing out some fluid while with labour you are sqeezing out something much greater…all I wanted to know was why those contractions are oh so much more painful. Pardon me for trying to be a little more educated.
I’m sorry. I would have been kinder had I known. I had this vision of some guy who had never and would never telling his wife to put up and shut up… really I apologize…well anyway. Don’t be scared. It will all happen very naturally. Stay in shape and the GREAT news is, your period symptoms will most likely change after a childbirth. With each child my period changed completely.
Yeah I guess it’s roughly the same movement (same area of the body) but really not the same at all. Your entire body will feel different by that time. At about 7 months you’ll feel heavy and you might start to have pre-labor, then you’ll get a better idea. Honestly though I am not kidding you, I promise it isn’t the same, put that completely out of your mind. Get a good coach, really pay attention to the breathing it helps a lot.
Relax and enjoy your pregnancy. Those were some of the happiest times in my life and hey, no painful periods for…hmm at least 10 or 11 months!
But don’t you think that women who had more painful labors would have fewer children? It would make sense that if it hurt a whole lot, she wouldn’t want to do it as often. If women are genetically predisposed to having painful labors, they won’t want to have as many children, meaning the trait won’t get passed on quite so much. If that were true, that would mean fewer women would have painful labors than before.
AwSnappity, normally, women didn’t have much choice on the pregnancy front if they wanted sex at all. Opting not to have another baby was pretty unlikely, no matter what. I’m guessing you didn’t go read my link, so I’ll repost it here…
and sonicsink, every woman I know who has had bad period cramps has found labor to be much EASIER than expected. You are already used to coping with surges of hormones and your body is prepped to hand out the endorphins like crazy. My little sister is a case in point. She has periods that make her curl up and cry, WITH ibuprophin. But she has had three kids, and said after the first one, hey, my period is WORSE than labor! She said she didn’t even think about meds, because it just didn’t hurt as bad as she thought it would, and bonus, it had a baby as a benefit at the end! Her first labor was about 12 hours, and while it did briefly get intense, she thought it was a breeze compared to her period. Second labor was so mild that she did not even know she was in labor until she went to her checkup and they told her that not only was she dilated to six, but she was contracting regularly, and to get her butt to the hospital immediately. She couldn’t even feel it (hint, if things are that mild, tell the nurse at the hospital to check you before sending you home - they wouldn’t admit her because she ‘couldn’t possibly be in labor no matter what your doctor’s office said’ and she went home, her water broke and she had to try not to push all the way back to the hospital, where her son was born 15 minutes after arrival). YMMV, but overall, women who have nasty period cramps are better prepared for labor both emotionally and chemically (if not physically - the cramping is a moderate form of exercise, but it is really the braxton hicks contractions late in pregnancy that ‘train’ your uterus for labor). You’ve already done the ‘practice’ part, not necessarily of the muscles, but of the coping mechanisms (even if they seem pathetic to you, I’m betting you’ve automatically learned to relax and take a deep breath, or ‘sound’ (let your breath out through your teeth or humm slightly) when a particularly nasty cramp hits - this is part of the ‘training’ women used to do for labor, before we had handy pain meds. If ANYTHING hurt, we coped with relaxation and breathing and ‘zoning out’ (natural hypnosis state)… so you’re ahead of the game!). It wouldn’t hurt to get some additional guided practice, though - it is better to have a bit of conscious control of the process, so you can apply it more directly, at will. I recommend hypnotherapy from my own experience, but Bradley method is also very good. Hypnotherapy also has the bonus of dealing with your fears in advance, so they don’t make you tense up and make things worse instead of better. Birthing from Within (book or class) will also help on that front.