To think it's impossible to explain how painful labour is?

[Mamabear1475]

Sil is trying for a baby. She asked how painful it is. I told her there is no way to describe it. She said it must feel like something. I can't think of anything that explains the feeling

Im pregnant with my second and due in a few weeks...

Despite all ive read im still hypnobirthing and hopefull breathing techniques WILL help me.
The pain meds certainly didnt help me last time I just felt out of control and vulnerable.
Having it at home this time in a pool.

May be horrendous but at least ill have had a go at doing what I think will help.

My last birth was three days long induction and i kept begging the midwife to kill me.
Strangely this has not made me pro pain relief at all. In fact quite the opposite. I feel like I want to give birth alone in the woods this time.
If im going to go thru that much pain I want to be left the fuck alone to deal with it however I can. Not surrounded by strangers telling me to keep quiet.
(obviously there will be midwifes at my home birth im not totally crazy)

I think everyone experiences and handles pain differently and there are things you can try and do to deal with it and tjose things will be unique to every woman.
As ive said I was surprised i hated the drugs so much. I certainly had the attitude 'just take any pain relief offered' when i went in... but that genuinely ended up making my experience worse. I felt so out of control and humiliated.

People on this thread have been slating the whole natural birth movement.... which i think is unfair. It certainly will not help every woman and some women do just want, and will respond well to and should be given any pain medication they ask for and should not be made to feel ashamed.
But I think the point of the natural birth movement was to help those women who felt disempowered by the experience of their birth to the extent that that was causing them trauma. I am one of these women and I know others who have had the same experience and for whom hypnobirthing and all that stuff really genuinely DID help.
Its not all bollocks just because it doesnt work for everyone or not everyone would like it.
I hated the gas and air but I wouldnt say its bollocks and no one should use it because I know people who loved the gas and air during labour!

Since the pain of labour is all about muscles contracting the nearest experience is, possibly, constant and unremitting stomach cramps or spasms.

Girls have you forgotten, first tell them dont think of the pain, it does not matter. Once the baby is here you wont even remember the pain.
As a mother of 3 its speaks for its self, if it was that bad you would not do it again.
But here does I had one natural birth, got there to let for any drugs, had to be cut without any anisthetic, it was painful and thought what am I doing here I knew this was coming, use gas and air when you have to.
But I must say this I enjoyed this birth, it was easier and my body seemed to do all things it need to do all on its own, I just went with the flow.
And as always, all gone in seconds, and a beautiful babt to boot.
Do Not LIsten to HOW Bad it was Mums, drama queens.
Fair dues, some do have a very bad time, ask a midwife less than 1 in 500 are a worse than the norm, but they will know this prior labour due to the care you get these days,
I did not want to know because every one enjoyed making a big thing of it and make sound a bad experiance.
Nothing can replace the felling of love and joy of your new child.
Good luck, and enjoy this is a gift

To me it felt like wild horses were tied to my arms and legs and they were running in different directions.
I remember getting the epidural and the midwife started listing the possible side effects...I told her a side effect could be losing a limb and I still would have it.
At one point I said that if someone told me jumping off a multi-storey car park would stop the pain, then I’d do it.

Admittedly it was a drip induction 5 weeks before my due date, but looking back I’d do it again. I haven’t forgot the pain but it’s kind of like, I still don’t believe that something can hurt THAT much.

Labour #1 was exactly.like period cramps but much more intense. Like period cramps plus max trapped wind couple with a pushing sensation.

Labour #2 (Back to back) was like those pre-diarrhea cramps you get all in your back. At the start. By the end it was like period cramps Max in the back whilst someone put an angle grinder to my coccyxx. While my body pushed an oblong block of granite out of a small round hole.

So the pain can vary really.

I would say period cramps amplified by a million times!!

And I did it without pain relief except 2 paracetamol. It definitely was manageable! Everyone is different

I had an awful time. Had ptsd after it. I had a lot of drugs that didn't help the pain just made me feel a bit ... abused. Whole thing was horrendous. We used to watch a TV series called 24 which had lots of FBI type torture investigations. Like the pain you see on their face when they have a finger chopped off or a leg crushed through a metal machine... I told my DH that's what I felt like I'd been through. Bit grim isn't it!

"And it dId it without pain relief."

Fuck that. You don't get no prizes for being brave.

I never experienced period cramp pains at all. All my contractions were in my back. Is that back to back labour? I don't remember being told, but then again I don't think I even knew what day it was.

I don't like this view that 'If it were that bad you wouldn't do it again'. Not only due to the fact that for some it actually IS so traumatic that they don't do it again but just that the two aren't necessarily connected. You can't dismiss everyone's experiences because many people have multiple children, therefore labour 'can't be that bad'...

Oldmum56-do you use this analogy with other life events?
Domestic violence for example. Well if your dh was that bad you would leave straight away and divorce him.
Or if your home life was So bad then you would have backed up and left at 16.

I think for some women labour genuinely can be a positive experience. With DS1 he was a struggle and it was just an awful labour with so many awful moments. With DS2 is was incredible, like my body simply knew what to do. I know it was painful but it wasn't overwhelming, it wasn't the kind of pain that would have had me asking for pain relief.

I read up a great deal after DS1 and before DS2 on positive birth stories, things women had used and done to help aid their labour and of course some was nonsense administrated by mad folk, but some genuinely helped me see that my stress levels going into labour with DS2 could have an enormous impact on how I laboured. I took care of myself, taught myself yoga and meditation, taught myself every breathing exercise known to mankind and whilst I know it wouldn't work for every woman, for me that knowledge bank to draw on helped me feel far more in control during DS2's birth and I wouldn't hesitate to go down that route again.

The idea that you can read your way out of a negative birth experience can often be very dangerous and misleading as well.

Many second/third births are better experiences simply because your body 'knows what to do'. However, many subsequent births are far worse experiences than first ones - therefore also negating the 'It can't be that bad or women would have multiple births' argument. How do you know peoples second experience didn't put them off a third, for example? Women have only or multiple children for a host of complex reasons, stating that birth mustn't put them off and on the other side of the coin, must be the reason they carry on is very simplistic at best.

As for the 'drama queens' comment...Perhaps oldermum, YOUR experiences do not automatically qualify you to speak for the rest of the female population.

"You don't get no prize for being brave". Well, no. But you also aren't obliged to take drugs if you don't want to. I didn't have any pain relief with DC1, and had a birth pool for pain relief with DC2. That was all. And it wasn't because I wanted some kind of prize, or thought that it was some kind of superior thing to do - I just didn't ever get to a point where I wanted to take anything for the pain. I set things up as much as possible to give myself a good chance of a good birth, but that's maybe 25% of the reason, and the rest is down to good luck. But I tend to be quite vague in conversations about birth stories, because people assume I'm trying to be smug.

"some do have a very bad time, ask a midwife less than 1 in 500 are a worse than the norm, but they will know this prior labour due to the care you get these days"

how on earth would the midwife know how much pain is experienced by somebody else? and in particular, how would they know beforehand?

I was very ill when I had my second dc (to the point that a midwife kept watch over me for the whole night afterwards); with my first dc I tore so badly that it is still causing me trouble 21 years later; I also bled quite heavily

neither of those translated into an experience of unbearable pain

otoh I know that some friends who were in less danger had far more painful births

there is NO way a midwife could have known who was in most pain

Oldmum I keep seeing attitudes like yours on mn. The idea that if you are a mum of older children or of you've been through childbirth and raising kids more than once it makes you an expert. It doesnt. Everyone is different. Every baby is different. Every birth is different. I'm getting tired of the patronising way of speaking to first timers/ young mums.

Everyone processes stress differently. Two women could have the exact same experience (which would probably never happen) and one may suffer PTSD and the other won't!

I wouldn't give advice to a new expectant mother. Perhaps only talk about my experience if they really insisted. And I would say that if I did it again, I'd have the epidural straight away!

The pain with my first was so bad I literally wanted to die- epidural didn't work.
With my second it was nearly as/equally bad - no pain relief but didn't get to the point that I wanted to die as was a third of the time.
With my third I went for an epidural as soon as I got in the delivery room. Declined gas and air and pethadine.
No pain like it!

What the hell is 'the norm'? Surely this thread shows there's no such thing.

Once the baby is here you wont even remember the pain.

Um, I remember the pain vividly and my baby is two year old.

My mum remembers the pain vividly too and her youngest is 18.

if it was that bad you would not do it again.

I'm not doing it again. Three day induction, on the third day when they started the oxytocin drip after the ARM the contractions went from bearable with gaps to constant, all consuming, screaming the place down agony.

I can't describe it adequately, but will say I wasn't afraid I was dying because there was no room for that thought. Everything was pain, there was nothing else.

I've also not forgotten, apparently forgetting depends on how painful the labour was, so severe pain makes you less likely to forget, and whether you get the 'halo effect' from holding and being with your baby afterwards , I didn't get that as I only held my baby for a few seconds and then he was taken to SCBU and I didn't see him again until the next day.

For me it was like the cramps you get when you have the runs, only worse.

When I arrived at hospital I was 7cm, and the pain hadn't been too bad up to that point, the midwives tried to talk me out of an epidural as they said they thought I had a high pain threshold - what were other people's experiences that way as I don't think i have a high threshold at all?

So do most of you, who experienced excruciating 'I might die' pain recommend epidurals and cesarean sections?

I cannot imagine why anyone would voluntarily put themselves through that more than once? Or do you just live in hope that it's different the next time?!

I may be alone in this, but I didn't think the pain was that bad, in a spontaneous labour.

I had two spontaneous labour, and no pain relief other than a little bit of gas and air at the end.

Labour induced with a syntocinon drip is completely different on the other hand.

Spontaneous labour felt like strong period pains, and certainly manageable.

I had worse pain when I had surgery under local anesthesia which didn't work.

Boy am I glad I had a cs!

Had it in the morning, lied down and mostly slept that day. By the next day I was already feeling OK and walking around, and I thought to myself - if this was labour it probably wouldn't even be finished by now. I'd still be pushing! And screaming! How awful.

You vb ladies sure are brave.