What do you make of this then?

[gwackywacky]

Guardian article about some pretty terrifying labour experiences.

I don't have children but its something I'm thinking about lately as I'm early 30s. Do you reckon we dont hear enough about this or do you think these are just "horror stories"?

I kind of think these experiences are played down in wider society? Just interested in what you think generally.

www.theguardian.com/society/2019/oct/20/i-had-to-get-to-know-my-body-again-readers-on-how-birth-changed-them

A good friend of mine is a specialist gynae physio.

She also had an ELCS. She did say to me it's seeing the serious birth injuries that made her adamant.

Should add I had a second degree tear, so very painful to sit afterwards, suggest getting a hermeroid cushion and arnica bath oil for at least a week afterwards

Some women sail through pregnancy , give birth in 20 minutes with no pain relief, and have no after effects.
Others struggle through the whole thing. Some have an easy pregnancy but awful labour and every combination therein.

Everyone is different and everyone has their own idea of what is awful and what is not . You really can’t compare anyone’s experience of pregnancy and child birth with anyone else.

I agree, OP. That sense led me to a lot of research on the issue and elective c sections (very difficult to separate it the data for EMCS, ELCS with an underlying medical reason and ELCS for pure maternal choice) and opted for an ELCS (and deliberately self-referred to a hospital I knew followed NICE in its policy). I wasn't fearful, certainly not pathologically so, of labour but preferred the risk profile of an ELCS.

It's not for everyone and there are risks, short and long term, for both, but I'm very happy I knew enough to read more. It was the right choice for me.

’I’ve also been reading mumsnet for long enough to know that I should be fucking terrified of it

Please don’t be. Like anything, it’s the negative stories we tend to hear while all the very many positive ones aren’t spoken about.

OP, why not search out some of those many, many positive stories for proper balance?

And a specialist gynae physio would only see people who needed to be seen. The many millions of women who dont need a gynae physio because they dont have birth injuries seem to have passed her/him by!!

It’s like a man saying he’d never have sex because he’d read more than one story about someone’s penis reading during it!

Being pregnant and giving birth is amazing. Most people have no problems or, if they do, very minor problems at that.

As for vaginal prolapse, an elderly relative had that but not due to childbirth (she was decades past the menopause). Hers was put down to old age.

Penis reading???? Sorry - penis breaking

I see your point, @BreatheAndFocus, but I would counter that with, you don’t KNOW whether yours is going to be the awful, debilitating negative experience until it has happened to you. And then it’s too late. That just feels like too big of a gamble to me.

People say all the time, “You’ll have a baby, it’s worth all the pain, etc etc.” I don’t like that. At what point does my humanity and health cease to matter? Why do women accept injury and prolonged pain as a sacrifice they make to procreate?

@ShirleyPhallus for your more normal stories... my worst after effect was piles so really not that bad. Could have been a lot worse. I think that's pretty standard and prolapses etc are very uncommon. Nothing like that in my NCT group anyway. A lot of people lost lots of blood in labour which shocked me, even me but that isn't as bad as it sounds as they manage it very well and I hardly noticed. Husband was freaking out but I didn't really know anything was going on

'Being pregnant and giving birth is amazing.'

To you perhaps I found 'being pregnant' horrific. Others like yourself find it all 'amazing'

and I do hate one to generalise on womens' behalf

To give a different perspective, I read every positive pregnancy and labour book out there, I did hypnobirthing and pregnancy yoga classes and fully convinced myself I could do it all naturally. I went into it calm and feeling strong. I came out of it feeling completely defrauded. Breathing and listening to nice music did sweet f.a. when it came to it and I felt like a failure. You can do it, and the horror stories are not helpful but neither are the stories of rainbows and butterflies.

@SachaStark I absolutely agree with you I think on balance right now I'm 80% leaning towards not doing it. The gamble is too much of a risk for me personally

Vaginal prolapse and the like are not that common to be fair.
Best advise I ever got was the midwife who delivered my 1sr DD in Spain.
Shut up. Listen to my voice. It'll be fine.
I was 25. Not too worried but I also knew there were no pain relief options so it was, as she said, shut up, because pushing with your mouth open wont help.
I had an easy birth with both though they came early. Small. SCBU afterwards jaundice. Etc
Body healed up ok, but never the same.
It is an enormous change but no one can really tell you how it will impact you directly. Some people like to scarw the shit out of new mums, I think that is true, because there are those who think no one ever had a baby before them. And perhaps they ha ent processed the change that well themselves either.
There is elation that can never be matched. Indescribable joy because you are all in 1 piece, you have met this person face to face at last and the relief it's all over.
It's really hard to pick apart the factors but dont have any expectations is my advice. Have your experience, with your baby, be as open to it in a positive way as possible.

“There were no pain relief options.”

See, this is just fucking unacceptable as far as I’m concerned. I seem to read this a lot on MN as well. Women expected to have this well-documented-for-its-near-unendurable-pain experience, and its aftermath, and adequate pain relief is somehow not a priority.

What the fuck?? Where else in a hospital would a patient be expected to put up with actual days’ worth of pain, and be offered nothing beyond a couple of paracetamol?

So many women asking for epidurals, to be told there are none available. Bollocks to that, they should be on demand in labour and delivery, and they should employ enough anaesthetists to always be present.

The thing is, all these stories about what might happen after birth are so subjective to the individual. My birth experience could be considered pretty rough to some, five days of labour, turned away from hospital twice, ending up with waters broken for me, baby in distress, oxytocin drip, episiotomy, stitches, small prolapse, total loss of feeling in one leg for nearly 48 hours, followed by mastitis and ongoing stress incontinence. It was a bit of a ride, and could have been very traumatic.

But in reality, I had exceptional care for the most part, the active labour was very peaceful and calm, i felt like a fucking hero afterwards, and every issue I've highlighted to medical people since has been handled with all due seriousness and respect. I asked my body to do something seriously challenging, and that came with some consequences and recovery requirements. If I'd asked it to run a marathon I would expect consequences and a need to recover, possibly ongoing injuries as a result. Pregnancy and birth is no different.

Sachastark this was the situation in Spain in 1993. Pain relief was not standard. 12 years ago here UK, with DD2, my labour was induced and went so quickly, there was no time for drugs. That's how it worked out for me and it wasnt fun but I survived. There is so little we can control during labour and to think we can us delusional.
Whale music hypno what have you...try hypnotizing yourself out of a broken leg. Or it even being suggested that you do so, makes me laugh.
Positive support from staff, and good antenatal care all help.
Continuity of care as well is good.
But, all that means investment in services which we all k ow is not high up any lists.

I think the exact opposite to what you said in your previous comment. All I ever heard about before and during pregnancy was absolute horror stories about labor which people seemed to delight in telling me! Honestly it put me off having a baby for so long and made my pregnancies anxiety ridden. After my birth which was fine, when speaking to other people about how surprised I was that it was fine, I found many other women who had easy labors and after a bit of pondering we realized that it’s almost socially unacceptable to say that you didn’t think the birth was bad - it was seen almost as bragging in the same way that saying you have an easy baby who sleeps through the night, for example, is seen as bragging and almost insensitive to mention!

Also I gave birth abroad and didn’t even speak the same language as the nurses so it was probably more stressful than a birth at home! But I actually found Hypnobirthing incredibly helpful as much as I’d thought it was ridiculous to suggest it might help when I first heard about it. For my first I was induced and had an epidural at the last minute, I didn’t find the contractions particularly painful but wanted the epidural as I suffer from anxiety and thought it would help. It did and I didn’t feel a thing! Second birth I tried hypnobirthing and couldn’t believe it when I realised the baby was about to come as it helped so much with the contractions that they didn’t seem anywhere near painful enough, I thought I must still be in the early stages! Must admit it didn’t help with the actual birth part though... i remember being furious that I’d not got an epidural and genuinely couldn’t even begin to start to try to meditate/calm myself at that stage! But, although horrible, it was quick. Having tried both (epidural and hypnobirthing without epidural) I’d choose an epidural any day.

That story clearly isn't about terrifying birth experiences, it's about the potential after effects.

Most women, the over whelming majority make a full recovery. Yes your body may change but that's common knowledge.

I have a horror story, I spent a month in hospital after having my daughter, and I then had to keep going back for a year, first weekly, then twice a month, and then monthly before they decided I was ok and côuld stop, for that year every single medical proffessal I encountered tried to talk me into sterilisation as I wouldn't survive another pregnancy. I was 28.

I recall going to my gp for something unrelated and as he pulled up my records, across the top, in capital and bold, was "serious pregnancy complications".

But I'm all healed now, and like most women, made a full recovery. Was it terrifying, no not really. Because when you're very ill, you don't really encounter emotion such as terror, because you're either passed out, sedated, and on heavy duty pain killers. Conscious thought isn't something you encounter.

I’ve given birth twice - both times ending up with episiotomies and forceps. But in both cases, the next day I was up and running around just fine. No problems immediately afterwards or in the weeks/months following.
HOWEVER, I am now post menopause and suffer from mild incontinence - something I have never experienced before - even in the aftermath of giving birth.
Do your pelvic floor exercises ladies, I didn’t and am now paying the price.

For some reason the likelihood that i would be labouring for more than an hour or two had completely passed me by despite classes and reading everything.

I’ve had both c-section delivery and vaginal delivery. C-Section was emergency so a bit torrid emotionally until I was in the room and all I felt was an odd pressure on my abdomen, recovery was fairly straight forward, the numbness around the area was disconcerting and I think the lochia bleeding was a lot worse than after the vaginal delivery. Mostly my concern was popping my stitches but I was sensible enough (despite having to travel miles 2 days later by car to go to the hospital my twins had been transferred to on the day of their birth... I shouldn’t have from a medical perspective but I’d already been kept away from them for 2 days!).

Vaginal birth hurt like hell but not to such a traumatic level that I’d be against doing it again - the weirdest thing for me after the fact was the fact that my downstairs area had changed a fair bit, due to my tearing and subsequent healing I’ve definitely noticed there’s been an ever so slight shift of things down there and whilst it’s only mild it is rather disconcerting if I’m being honest.

But hey ho, two standard deliveries by both methods and fairly standard recoveries from both... each had their own risks and bits that were less than enjoyable, but they weren’t life changing to such a degree as others experience.

I do think more information like this should be offered to women though and men - from minor changes to major ones, it’s important we actually educate properly on the after effects on a woman’s body as so far - the most I’ve heard said on the matter was “just means she’ll be a bit loose after” - said by my not so charming 18yo NDN who recently got his 17yo GF pregnant —— not envy!

I see your point, @BreatheAndFocus, but I would counter that with, you don’t KNOW whether yours is going to be the awful, debilitating negative experience until it has happened to you. And then it’s too late. That just feels like too big of a gamble to me.

People say all the time, “You’ll have a baby, it’s worth all the pain, etc etc.” I don’t like that. At what point does my humanity and health cease to matter? Why do women accept injury and prolonged pain as a sacrifice they make to procreate?

@SachaStark Whether to have a baby or not is absolutely your decision. We all have different priorities, different fears, different hopes. Do what’s right for you.

I found any pain perfectly bearable and the end result worth it a million times over. No, you don’t know what kind of birth you’ll have until it happens, but most don’t involve prolapses, unmedicated agony, etc. You would have options. But if that’s not enough for you personally, then don’t do it. That decision is yours to make and whatever you decide will be the right choice for you.

@ShirleyPhallus I think part of the reason you don’t hear good labour and birth stories is that people are reluctant to tell them if another woman in their cohort has had a shitty experience. You also have to remember that one woman’s nightmare would be within the realm of what another was expecting.

For what it’s worth, I had two “easy” labours and births. (It still hurt like hell though.) However, my definition of easy and yours might be poles apart. Eight-ish hours of labour both times, gas and air, I managed to avoid stitches. I will say that I think the birth experience is almost entirely down to the standard of care you receive. Sadly, that’s the one thing you can’t do anything about.

You sound quite immature op.