to get really fed up with hearing people trying to out do each other with regards to who had the worst labour?

[flixx]

Its not a competition! Oh and I don't mean on MN! I mean in RL.

YABU mine was the worst in history

O no mine was VT...by far...shall I tell all...

YANBU my SIL is like this but then again she tries to outdo me in every aspect of parenting.

right, you want horror stories,pull up a chair

you think yours was the worst ?....

Seriously though...many women find the whole birth process traumatic to some extent and its very cathartic to talk through your labour with others so you are probably being a little BU. Either think of yourself as a community counsellor - say you're just too squeamish to listen and walk away

I knew you all do this!

But mine was the absolute worst, I was in labour for 72 days, and they had to perform an episiotmy using a chain saw. I lost 135 litres of blood and in the end the midwife had to send a full pot-holing team in there complete with headlamps and guy-ropes to pull the little bugger out by her ankles!

hell it is a competition!i win hands down for atrocious birth story.you are all big girls bra

meeee-heeeee-heeee only kidding
or am i

You think that's bad? You were lucky....

Was still having sex again the next day in the loos at the hospital though...

puppy

Puppy really

omg puppy, please say that's not true

It's not a competition but if you have had the kind of birth that leaves you so traumatised you are having screaming nightmares every night for 3 months and are in a lot of physical pain, not to mention still pooing yourself and unable to walk properly for several months afterwards, it is kind of going to be on your mind a bit and may spill out into conversation occasionally. Sorry about that, like.

OOoh no, not me really, honest. Somebody told that story on another thread today though!! The one about the sex with stitches.

well i gave birth to a 3 year old sized baby while looking at a packet of paracetemol, so tell them in RL to close the competition and get on with the next one instead..maybe How My Baby Slept Through From Week 2? Or didn't, if tales of woe are what they prefer

I much prefer the ones who frown upon pain relief

It seems if you have a terrible labour and no pain relief, it makes you braver.

oooh choose me choose me ....

I just tell them they're idiots and tell them how lovely my elcs was

Ditto Headfairy I've got 3 kids and never even had a labour pain,ignorance is bliss!!!!!!!

most competitive birthers are the i chanted an incantation hanging upside down from a tree analgesia free of course

3 kids here too, i like to work my way through the pain relief menu and my head spins and i swear like the girl from The Exorcist until i get it!

My eldest sister had a genuinely terrible traumatic birth. My mum was with her and had had 9 children herself so I take her word for it that it was terrible. She never talks about it.
Other sister had two births which have amazingly managed to get longer and more traumatic as the years have passed. She talks about it a lot.

I personally think there is a corrolation between how bad your birth really was and how little you talk about it. People who won't even discuss have usually had it the worst and anyone who starts to tell me about their terrible birth (in RL) usually has a very sceptical audience....

YABU. Agree with TPL, some people may be talking about their labours through genuine distress rather than in a spirit of oneupmanship.

I don't think the OP was saying that sharing all birth stories are one upmanships - I think we can all tell the difference between when one person is trying to talk cathartically about something, and when one person tells a story then the next woman will top trump it. I have been to so many evenings like that - DH now takes the mick if I'm going off an a girlie night out and asks me to time how long before the gory birth stuff starts.... oh, but there's always one smug person in the corner who says - all mine were 30 seconds long with no pain relief and if yours weren't you can't have been doing it properly - or words to that effect.