AIBU to think Mothers should be honest about birth?

[TheHouseOnTheLane]

To other women who've not gone through it yet? There's so much

"Oh it's different for everyone"

And shilly shallying about around the subject.

I guess a tiny minority DO have "easy" or even pleasant experiences of birth but all the women I know were traumatized and horrified and in agony.

This was inspired by another thread. Sorry if I'm offending anyone as I know it's an emotive subject.

But my own experience was that dreadful I don't think I COULD lie if another woman asked me directly. Yet some people seem to be all coy about this fact.

I just say "I had an u usuall hard time - ill spare you the details". Why scare the crap out of someone in advance.

I'm honest if my friends ask. It was long, painful and slow going (baby back to back) for 15 hours, then I had an epidural and the next 12 hours were great. Had a little bit of intervention but that was related to hospital policy regarding waters breaking pre-contractions and I was quite happy to go along with it. I tore a bit and was sore for about 3 weeks afterwards. Overall I think it was a positive experience.

When you're with a group of people all talking about their awful, traumatic births, you don't feel you can say 'my birth was really easy, not a single scratch or tear'. I had a home birth and used Hypnobirthing. It worked for me and I used the same technique for my second birth which was very easy as well. But, I never tell anyone because I know most people think it's a load of old rot and I don't want to be responsible for telling a pregnant woman how good it was only for them to try it and think it's all a load of rubbish. Also I really don't want to sound smug, I would never say what I have written in this post out loud in RL. I might have had an easy birth in a hospital, I thought I'd be more relaxed at home so thought the birth would be easier - who knows?

Shesastar

That's probably true, similarly if everyone is talking about their non sleeping babies you can't pipe up saying how well yours sleeps (even though it would be nice to be able to share).