AIBU to have found childbirth unbearably agonising?

[Caff2]

Just that. I had an elective section with ds2 because of it. And yet I have friends and read on here of people who "did it naturally" or "just had a bit of gas and air at the end".

Why was childbirth so awfully painful for me?

If hospitals had better, properly staffed birthing units, with proper access to whatever pain rrlief the woman needs, then many of the above problems could be avoided.

I think first births can be hard , because generally speaking no one in the western world is expected to put up with the level and longevity of pain that labour can entail , in any other situation .
So it comes as a massive shock to the body , both physically and physcologically .
I found my first time quite horrific , back to back labour , ventouse extraction , stiches up to my navel and yet i was more scared going into my second labour because i thought i knew what was coming . Couldnt have been more wrong , again back to back baby , but managed at home until 8 cms , when the walking , wailing and flailing were no longer working. She was out within a couple of hours of crawling into the hospital , with just a little graze .

While I think women should be able to make informed choices about childbirth, from freebirthing in the middle of a wood to ELCS, I do find calls to reduce pain relief during childbirth or numbers of CSs to be really weird. Why are there no similar calls for natural dentistry or anaesthetic free surgery? Women should be able to experience a pain-relief-free and medical intervention free birth if they so wish to, but making an ideal that everyone should aspire to out of what is a subjective personal choice, is just silly.

"But that is just ONE aspect of the denial of choice and callous attitude to women in pain".

Purply - the Quality Care Commission survey, done in UK hospitals, asked women 'did you get the pain relief you wanted' and 9 out of 10 said 'yes'.

The bottom line is however, that there is no such thing as a totally reliable, problem free analgesic that can be used in labour, so lots of women are going to struggle, no matter what. Entonox is useful but not a powerful analgesic, pethidine and diamorphine are primarily sedatives with some analgesic qualities, and epidurals fail to work as intended for 1 in 8 women. And even though epidurals are very effective for 7 in 8 women, lots of people would rather endure severe pain than risk the side effects that go with them. It's also the case that admitting a woman to hospital in early labour for an epidural is one way of hugely upping the chance that in a few hours she's going to end up on an operating table having emergency surgery for failure to progress and fetal distress.

I found childbirth excruciatingly painful, so much that I was writhing round and would've sold my soul to the devil if it meant the pain disappeared.
I went through my pregnancy asking midwives to refer me for an EC, which was denied.
I booked an appointment with an anaesthetist to guarantee an epidural and was told it's as simple as asking for one on the day.
My Arse was it!!
I begged and begged for an epidural at the top of my hoarse voice only to be told the doctor was administering an epidural to a lady next door by which point I cared about nothing other than my own tortured body and no doctor came.

I ended up giving birth with 2 whiffs of gas and air, which whilst on paper appears to be a well managed labour where I coped very well with the pain, the reality was very different.

Just because a woman has given birth with only paracetamol or gas and air in no way means that she had a less painful birth.
Sometimes, there is not a choice. I do not know of a way to make a doctor or midwife give you the pain relief you ask for.

"I do find calls to reduce pain relief during childbirth or numbers of CSs to be really weird."

There are no 'calls' to deny pain relief to women who've requested it. There are no plans to reduce anaesthetist cover in hospitals, or further restrict access to epidurals.

The call to reduce the number of avoidable emergency c/s is absolutely reasonable and sensible and is supported by both doctors and midwives. The main way to reduce the number of emergency surgeries while maintaining good fetal outcomes is to increase consultant cover in hospitals, up midwife numbers, and encourage more women to consider giving birth away from an obstetric setting. There is pretty consistent agreement that these three things will improve the quality of the childbirth experience for women generally, and result in better health outcomes for both mums and babies. Who can object to this?

ouf, leMis I can see that being at home in familiar surroundings with people you trust would help but even so ... you have my unadulterated admiratoin. Awe. I think you're a different order of being to me, because I was screaming!

The netherlands is notoriously low-intervention though. They're big on home births too and they get heavily pushed but women are voting with their feet and waddling to the hospitals so they at least have the option to ask for pain relief rather than nothing. This is seen as a bad thing, except by the women concerned.

My 2nd labour was more painful than the first And despite planning two home births I went in at about 7-8 cms to have an epidural with both of them (after 24 and 20 hours of contractions respectively). If I have a third I'll be up at the hospital at the first twinge demanding an epidural

Littlemiss - what research there is suggests that satisfaction in childbirth isn't linked to how much pain a woman experienced but her feelings of control, and being listened to.

Being ignored in labour is traumatising, no matter what the clinical outcome.

I felt completely disregarded in my first labour, and this was the reason I paid for a private midwife for my second and third - I wanted to guarantee I'd be listened to!

Reading this thread with interest. I had an awful experience - like some other posters, it was a factor in never having another child. I'd requested an epidural/pain relief on my birth plan, but was denied anything, except for gas and air. Childbirth was the most painful thing I have ever experienced and I too reached the scary point where I didn't care if I died, to release the pain. I had uncaring midwives coming and going and afterwards, DH and I got the strong feeling that the denial of pain relief was a cost-cutting exercise by the hospital (apparently it was too soon to have an epidural, then it was too late.) A terrible experience, mishandled at all turns (they didn't believe I was in labour until I started pushing and DH went and growled at them to put down their magazines and cups of tea and come and help, THANK YOU DH.) On the other hand, the SCBU intensive care team we needed after the midwife bitches messed up the birth, were truly wonderful. Looking back, we maybe should have held the midwife team more accountable. Sorry for the long post, feels good to articulate this.

I'm a redhead so supposed to have a lower pain threshold. Was in labour 4 days with DD who was back to back with her head flexed. It did hurt but not really much worse than period pain, it was the tiredness that got me. After pushing for 3 hours I had to have a section as she was getting distressed, I'd had some pethidine but it was more about exhaustion.

DS was very different. No idea what position he was in. The contractions were so bloody painful right away it that i only lasted a few hours before my 'trial of labour was over and I was whisked off to theatre again.

Don't think pain threshold was anything to do with it personally. I have gallstone attacks and can get through some if them without pain relief so don't think I can have a particularly low threshold.

about calls to reduce / minimize pain relief; ok im in the Netherlands but in my experience twice now, there's very much a thing of pushing the mother to be to avoid pain relief. Along with 'no meds for Hyperemesis Gravidarum'; 70% of the obs and midwives would literally you rather terminated than give you even cyclizine + B6.

I speak with the words of two doctors burned into my angry brain "well if you terminate that's your choice but we're not giving you any meds".

And "if you give birth at home you won't need any pain meds"

Ahem, my bitterness may be showing .

On the other hand, the quality of care was very good in other ways and I felt that every medical person could be trusted competence-wise and kindness-wise. It's just this insane thing that no meds and home births are best that saps the faith, because from experience I know that when the shit hits the fan with pain, you're on your own.

Yanbu

All women have different pain thresholds and there are so many variables that come into play during labour and childbirth. Of course women will vary in regards to how they rate their pain.

Fwiw my ds's labour and birth was painful but manageable on gas and air alone.

I know that this does not guarantee that I will experience same level of pain the next time around. I can only hope.

In fairness once I was hospitalized for a uterine infection that was tipping strongly over into sepsis, they did give meds then (Iv broad-spectrum antibiotics) and were very supportive. But for 'natural' problems you were on your own.

Having said in my birth plan id wanted a natural birth and MAY want gas and air if it got too bad, loads went wrong I took all the drugs on offer and had an emergency C section. I didn't find it painful because of the drugs. Afterwards wasn't good and I needed a blood patch.

My husband was so traumatised and felt helpless so his previous wish for 2 kids disappeared, I'd only wanted 1, but when I said I'd be happy to go for another he 'declined' poor man.

Currently have mastitis which, for me, is miles worse than giving birth to DS without pain relief four months ago. I think these things are subjective.

I hope this thread isn't freaking out any first-time-mums-to-be too much. It would have terrified me in December! If anyone is out there quaking then I would really recommend doing an antenatal hypnotherapy course if you can find one. It's much less woo than you would think, and I found it really helpful. Plus, it helped DH be the most amazing birth partner.

The only rule should be no judging

I was in a lot of pain (crying with it) with DS1, and I only got to 2cm before having an emcs. With DS2, I listened to a hypnobirthing cd, thought lots of positive thoughts and figured I was doing a grand job until I got to 5cm and the pain got completely beyond me. Thankfully, it took less than 2 hours to get to 10cm as I wanted to tear off my own skin and escape. With DC3, I tried to think calm thoughts, but I had the fear right from early pregnancy. When my waters broke first, it set me into a panic spiral, as I was sure things would go how they had with DS1. Early labour was protracted and manageably painful, but I was hugely anxious because I knew that it would get so much worse. I had planned to not have an epidural, but once the fear hit, I wanted one. However, early labour seemed to be doing nothing, so they sent H home and sent me down to ante-natal. 10 minutes later I was in indescribable agony. I had my eyes tightly shut and was howling with agony. They wheeled me down the corridor to delivery, on my hands and knees on the trolley, screaming my head off, completely unable to articulate anything. DC3 was born 40 minutes after the first 'big' contraction, and there was no respite at all in that time - even pushing felt agonising. I'm really glad I'm not having any more babies, I would be a gibbering wreck at the prospect of labouring again.

The main way to reduce the number of emergency surgeries while maintaining good fetal outcomes is to increase consultant cover in hospitals, up midwife numbers, and encourage more women to consider giving birth away from an obstetric setting. There is pretty consistent agreement that these three things will improve the quality of the childbirth experience for women generally, and result in better health outcomes for both mums and babies. Who can object to this?

These measures will only be any good, imo, if:

a) the increased staff are properly trained to support women throughout birth, INCLUDING early labour

b) women are not bullied into seeing epidurals as the work of the devil which only selfish, wimpy mothers seek out

Incidentally, perhaps another way to reduce emergency CS's would be to allow easier choice to elective CS to those who have previously had difficult births?

I had 3 awful labours and only 2 with epidurals

by far the 'worst' bonding experience was from the 'natural' 36 hour labour followed by ECS ...

My pelvis doesn't do what it is supposed to - all 3 deliveries where dramatic - the second was assisted in theatre and the third was also an ECS - thankfully for those I had epidurals

Purply - the Quality Care Commission survey, done in UK hospitals, asked women 'did you get the pain relief you wanted' and 9 out of 10 said 'yes'.

So, apparently there were 813,200 births in the UK in 2013, which means that proportionally, 81,320 women would have said 'no'. Which is not an insubstantial number.

Plus, you can add in the factor that women are bullied encouraged to have as 'natural' ie pain-relief-free births as possible, and many may just tick the box out of a misplaced sense of heroism at having 'managed without'.

If you started a thread here saying 'Who felt that they received insufficient pain relief during labour' you would be left in no doubt that many women feel very strongly about this.

I had two gas and air births and I'm convinced I managed it because my waters went late..... It was absolutely agony once the waters had gone.

I have no idea how people cope if their waters go early.

My first I screamed the place down and felt like I'd need counseling afterwards. It was horrific, yet only 3.5 hours!

The second, well I've had period pains that were that bad and it only lasted 40 minutes. It was perfectly tolerable. I paid for that with some severe afterpains for a couple of weeks afterwards!

I had 3 different pain relief and none of it worked. Gas and air made me puke, green and orange sick. Pethidine made me feel so high, i didnt care about the pain. Then an epidural, that didnt work at all.

Then after the EMCS, I was on Morphine and just didnt give a shit about anything.

i think everyone finds it painful , even the ones that had just a bit of gas and air