While watching some re-runs of sit-coms recently, I’ve heard female characters remark to their ungrateful children about their long birthing labors (40-50-60-some hours) before delivery. I’m skeptical, but based only on my own experience. I was 21 years old with my first (and last) pregnancy. I remember what tv show I was watching and the time it was on, and of course know the time of delivery. Moderately painful labor pains began around 9:30 p.m. At about 10:00 p.m., I said let’s get to the hospital. After several hours in labor, and following an eipdural (thank you Jesus for anesthesia), I delivered a healthy boy at 2:10 a.m. I figure my labor (moderate to severe pain) and delivery was about four and a half hours. So how many hours did you endure labor pains (moderately to severe) just prior to delivery? And more to the point: do women exaggerate their hours of labor to make men/children feel guilty?
I was in labor for 18 hours. And I was given Pitocin (actually, I was given too much of it) to hurry labor along, as I had a problem pregnancy.
Mine was about 25 hours from the first strong pains I believe. My sister was in labor for three days the first pregnancy. My sister in law barely made it to the hospital her labor was so short with her second.
Less than 5 hours from first real labor pain to birth of my son, and that with an induction and an epidural. The women in my family are known for quick labor.
My first two were induced at 7am and birthed around 3pm, give or take.
My third labor started naturally at about 10 am, progressed until it stopped, then was induced with Pitocin, and birthed about 5pm.
By the way, that last one that didn’t get induced for quite a while was way, way less painful than the first, induced, two. I was like, “This is (comparatively) nothing!”
24, ended in c-section. If she hadn’t been so huge and flipped over, probably much less.
Four kids and it’s been awhile so my memory may not be accurate, but I’d guess 8 hours with the first and second, two or three with the third, with the fourth, only a couple hours, . Seriously, my water broke, we drove to the hospital, and he was out in about an hour. My pregnancies/deliveries were ridiculously easy.
We don’t have kids, so I have no recent data points to give you. I can tell you that my mother was in labor for 36 hours with me, though this was in 1965; I wonder if they would let someone stay in labor that long today. If 36 hours is exaggeration on my mother’s part, at least she’s gotten my father to corroborate it for her. 
I arrived at the hospital 7am Monday to be induced and she was born 10:20pm Tuesday. I wasn’t in labour that whole time of course. The first day they just administered that gel that ripens your cervix (I’m 38 weeks pregnant at the moment… my brain is swiss cheese and I’ve lost my words so don’t ask me what it was called). My waters broke on their own around 2am Tuesday, and I only had niggly contractions until they talked me into Pitocin about 9am, and from then on things hurt. I think in the official notes, the hospital records me being in labour for 12 and a half hours, which I guess is from when they turned up the Pictocin until she was actually born.
My aunt was in labour for 26 hours in 1984*, I remember that. I think my sister-out-law was 30+ hours from waters breaking, and that was nearly a year ago. My bestie was 4 hours with her first, 20 minutes with her second (that’s from waters breaking/first contraction to his arrival), and my nephew’s friend’s mother had her second baby in the toilet at home without realising she was even in labour. In labour, as in pregnancy, Your Mileage May Vary indeed.
- And this was the arrival of the cousin I’ve posted about before, who went on to have a 20 minute pregnancy - she arrived at the hospital complaining of back pain, was diagnosed as being both pregnant and in active labour and gave birth 20 minutes later.
That would make a great House episode.
1st time: 6 hours
2nd time: 1.5 hours
3rd time: 1.5 hours
4th time: 4 hours
No kids here, but my mother was in labor with me for over 40 hours. She also had something going on with her undeveloped (at 19 years old) bits and had to have a series of shots and lots of other stuff just to get preggy. She suffered so much to have me and then I turned out to be a bad seed :smack:
I’m also the reason she has grey hair. She points at them and tells me “This came from when you tied a towel around your neck and jumped off the roof” “These are from when you destroyed your brand new 10-speed and bled all over my new carpets” “THESE ones were when you bought that motorcycle and wrecked it in the same day!!!”
She should have known that she had gotten the wrong shots when I was a toddler and got my head stuck between the iron bars at the bank. I don’t remember, but she says that I loved the excitement of sirens and firetrucks.
(for the people who have problems with me forgetting to use the shift key, I’m sorry. In my defense, I’m used to auto correct. The shift key just doesn’t register until after I look at what I type and I expect it to be fixed when I post.)
I say I was in labor for about 7 hours. I gave birth 6 1/2 hours after getting to the hospital, and the real pain just started a half hour or so before I got there. I had been having contractions for the whole day though (I got to the hospital at midnight) and some women would have gone in a lot sooner than I did, and would say their labor was longer. Probably a lot of the ones with really long labors are counting from early on (not all, I realize).
Some women exaggerate, but there are two reasons for the disparity in older stories vs/ today. First is that they just won’t let a labor go that long today. You’ll be carted off to the OR for a c-section instead. Second is that labors used to be longer because they administered so many narcotics to laboring women in the 40’s and 50’s, and just like narcotics slow down the gut (causing constipation), they slow down uterine contractions, making each contraction less effective and prolonging labor. Those 30 and 50 hour labors weren’t all *active *labor, and they were not unmedicated labors, with a very few exceptions.
Average textbook time for a labor in our current medical environment is about 15-18 hours for a first labor, and 7 to 8 hours for women who have given birth before.
With my son (first pregnancy; I was 18 and very active, worked up until the day he was born), I had an OB appointment at 7:30 PM, where the doc told me I was 80% effaced and about 2 cm dilated. Not unusual. He said he’d probably see me in the hospital by the end of the week. 14 hours later, my son was born. But I don’t *feel the first stage of labor - I can only presume I was in it while at the doctor’s office, and later on that night I felt my belly get superhard under my hands at regular intervals, but I didn’t feel any cramping until about 5:00 the next morning. Then it was 4.5 hours of bonebreaking active back labor until he was out. So…I don’t know. Somewhere between 4.5 and “who knows?”, I guess.
*Didn’t feel it with my daughter, either. They had me hooked up to the monitor, which clearly showed contractions, but I didn’t feel them. I never did get to the stage of feeling anything before she was delivered by c-section.
It depends partly how you define ‘labour.’ I’ve always said 33 hours, because I only count it from when the contractions were regularly less than 4 minutes apart, but I’ve seen other guidelines that I can’t remember right now but would extend my labour to 48 hours.
Labours like yours are common, but so are long labours and really short labours and all sorts. Since the woman’s not usually alone but with her partner and midwives or doctors, I doubt many people are lying about the length of their labour. TBH it’s kinda mean of you to suggest that, just because you didn’t have it that bad, other people don’t really either.
Sitcoms usually focus on the unusually short labours for dramatic purposes, don’t they?
My mom was in labour about…three hours or so. I think secretly she is slightly miffed that she can’t tell me that she laboured ten thousand hours to bring me into this world, so the LEAST I can do is come to visit her sometimes. Instead she has to opt for the standard “I brought you into this world and I can take you out of it, you know.”
Some here seem to be counting labor as starting when they got the hospital. I have always counted in when contractions began in earnest — not Braxton Hicks contractions that plague you for weeks prior to the birth.
So as best I can remember, here is what it was with mine:
- 16 hours
- 11 hours
- 8 hours
- 5 hours
When my last was born, I woke up with strong contractions at 3:30 am. I woke my husband at 4 and we at the hospital by 4:30 (had to drop off a kid with an aunt). With my other labors, I think I was at home for at least the first third of the entire labor period.
18 hours with my first. Regular contractions started at midnight, went to the hospital at 6:00 a.m., delivered my son at 6:00 p.m.
About 8 hours with my second. I was induced when I was at 34 weeks because my water had broken a couple of days prior and I hadn’t spontaneously gone into labour. I was given pitocin at about midnight, she was born at about 7:30 a.m.
It’s hard to say, as my early labor probably lasted days. I thought it was starting and stopping, when it was actually progressing. I recall being in labor (though I thought it was just pre-labor contractions) Sunday night, Wednesday night, Friday night, and Saturday night, so we went to L&D Sunday morning. I didn’t feel anything after we arrived, so I thought the contractions had stopped–but actually, they were regular and I was dilated 4cm.
They gave me pitocin at around 4pm or so to augment my contractions and speed things along, as I was definitely in labor but my body was taking its sweet time. They kept upping the pit, but I didn’t really feel anything significant, though I dilated to something like 5-6cm. I actually fell asleep around 10pm (which weirded the nurse and my doula out–apparently, sleeping through pit-augmented contractions is not something that happens).
3:30am, though, I woke up to my water breaking, and the hard labor started–no sleeping through that. My son was born at 6:01am after only about 25-30min of pushing.
It was similar with my second, except I kept going into labor too early for the hospital’s tastes and they kept stopping the contractions. After 2 weeks and 4 hospital trips, I was dilated to 4cm…but, baby boy #2 had an arrthymia that spooked the docs and there was concern labor and birth would stress him, so I had a c-section. He was fine, thankfully, after his rude sudden welcome to the bright, cold, and hard world.
With #1 I started having contractions at about 10AM on Friday. They were brief, irregular, and mild. By about 6PM they were starting to organize and become recognizable as The Real Thing. We went to the hospital at about 4AM on Saturday, and I think I was at like 6cm. I was completely dilated by 8AM and he was born at 10AM. So … 24 hours from start to finish, 6 hours in the hospital.
With #2, I had a few false starts. I was in a crappy headspace and not really “ready” to have my baby, mentally. I remember I drank a whole lotta pineapple juice on Tuesday afternoon, hoping it would help (like a milder version of castor oil). Things kind of started getting going that evening,and we went to the hospital sometime after 1AM. I was dilated to 8-9cm by 7AM but got stuck for four hours. After an epidural, I dilated very quickly and he was born just after 12noon. So, 18 hours start to finish, 10-11 hours in the hospital.