to want to slap the girl on 'one born every minute'?

[HoopsIsGettingMassive]

in the title really, she is really making a meal of it!!

Pain is very valuable to the body. It tells you something might be quite, quite wrong.

Yes of course it is and that is my whole argument if you like - there's no place for it in a normal labour, how many times have you been told that labour pain is like really bad cramp ? So it actually shouldn't be happening because the uterus muscles should not be cramped as a result of reduced blood flow due to the adrenaline sending the blood to vital organs because it is panicked into believing it's in a flight or flight situation when it is not.

Should anything be quite wrong you wouldn't know would you if you were too busy screaming your head off.

MillyMollyMoo I hope you are not suggesting that any woman who felt pain in labour was doing it wrong. As I tried to explain in my above post if you give birth in this hospital you are screwed really. It is geared towards ease of life for the staff not the labouring mother. I can imagine it would have been an altogether different birth if it had been in a small birth centre, moving around, and constant midwife support.

Agree with Expat: the mother was doing that stiff-upper-lip thing that is sometimes exactly what we need in situations of extreme discomfort or fear. She knows her own daughter.

I'm glad I had an epi, too, for my back-to-back labour with a fairly large baby.

'Should anything be quite wrong you wouldn't know would you if you were too busy screaming your head off.'

So in other words, people who have something go quite wrong, you know, when their appendix is about to rupture or something, something we can't see, shouldn't be screaming their heads off or we won't know there's something wrong with them.

I'll tell my husband that.

He yelled at the top of his lungs when his appendix ruptured in A&E.

He wasn't told to calm down or that he was making a fuss. He was given pain relief and then rushed to theatre.

Someone who's screaming in pain has something wrong with them.

My textbook normal labour hurt like a mutha fucka. I screamed to high heaven because it felt like I was being disembowelled.

Interesting 'argument'.

No what i am suggesting is that something like an appendix is quite clearly something wrong, something like a baby coming out of the hole it's meant to is not anything wrong is it ?

As for birth I'm sure there is a way that it can be done without a mother experiencing pain, in fact I know there is because I've never had an experience anything like those shown on TV or often described here.
My third child was back to back and that was uncomfortable but not painful and I am no bloody hero, I sobbed like a baby when I broke my finger.

Chutes I think you're right, the fact that the ward was being run by a woman who'd never given birth herself for a start seemed a bit strange. But then the professionals seem to think they know better than the women themselves in most area's of pre/postnatal care, which is a shame.

'No what i am suggesting is that something like an appendix is quite clearly something wrong, something like a baby coming out of the hole it's meant to is not anything wrong is it ?'

if it's coming out the wrong way, malpresented, cord round its neck or body so it doesn't descend, etc., it's can be very wrong indeed.

it can cause unbearable pain and cause someone to scream blue murder as if they were being stabbed or that.

you may have felt uncomfortable.

others may have been in utter agony.

i was.

But expat that is exactly the point i'm making if any of those things you describe are happening how would you know if you were too busy screaming the place down in the first twinges ?

The girl in this case came in howling like a banshee at 2cm's, she didn't listen to her body at all, made everything 10 times worse for herself.

My point is you may well have been in agony, I don't doubt that, but you needn't have been.

Jeez, I had a textbook labour lasting 9 hours and it was the most painful, traumatic thing I have ever experienced.

It may be natural, but so is dying and noone suggests you should do that without appropriate pain relief, love and support.

Um, and I stayed extremely calm and at home sans pain relief until 8 cm dilated.

And it was still horrificly painful.

Like having my guts ripped apart.

I didn't scream or shout. I did make a variety of farm animal noises.

Glad you ahd a reasonable experience Milly, but not everyone does. I shudder to think how awful a more complicated birth would be. Or one I was completely unprepared for.

You cannot judge other's pain.

have oyu slapped her yet or not

I am not trying to judge other peoples pain, merely pointing out that it is not going to be less painful by screaming your head off, but as you all seem intent on scarring the living daylights out of any first timers by telling your war stories I'd ask how is that helpful ?

MILLY : but as you all seem intent on scarring the living daylights out of any first timers by telling your war stories I'd ask how is that helpful ?

Eh???? This is a thread started by someone wanting to slap a women in labour. That comment pissed alot of women off, who are explaining how bad their labour was to justify said screamers behaviour

Noone is trying to scare anyoone. This is NOT purporting to be a thread offering support for first time mums....

Hoops, I hope now that you've read all the posts here you'll be willing to concede that you may have been a little bit hasty in your judgement of the girl in the programme.

You may be pregnant at the moment but you haven't actually had a baby yet.

Hopefully in a cuple of months from now, you will be logging on here with a little baby in your arms feeling well and happy and you will finally have a tale of your own to tell and your very own birth experience. At that point I might have a little more respect for your views on the subject of childbirth than I do at this particular moment in time.

I hope you have a smooth and trouble-free birth like lots of other women seem to be lucky enough to have. I was not so lucky and despite prior to the event feeling like you probably do now, fully prepared having read extensivly, attended all manner of ante-natal classes and eagerly absorbed every baby-related fact for the preceeding 9 months, when push came to shove (pardon the pun!) I was not prepared for:

(a) the severity of the pain I found myself in from the absolute outset and the length of time I had to endure that level of pain without relief
(b) how terrifying it was to be told that my baby was in distress
(c) how I would react to both of those things, despite having people with me to support me.

I can assure you Hoops that when you feel:

(a) in absolute agony
(b) terrified
(c) out of control
(d) alone (despite having support with you)
(e) vulnerable

You will most certainly not hope that your Mother gives you a slap and tells you to get a grip of yourself. You will react in ways that will surprise you and hope that people wil be there to help and understand you and cut you a bit of slack at what is a very difficult and trying time, not judge you or chastise you.

Yes, you are right when you say that women are actually designed to have babies and that's the whole reason they are put on this earth but you might not be so readily able to rationalise that particular fact when you find yourself in the circumstances I've outlined above. All you can think about then is self-preservation. That's an absolute animal instinct.

You're also right of course when you say that as women who become pregnant we've all made our beds and have to lie in them and that the babies have to come out somehow but as someone else said, this is not a contest. No medals are handed out on labour wards by midwives to the women who have been the quiestest throughout labour, the most uncomplaining or the most stoical.

Everyone is different, every birth is different, everyone's tolerance to pain and fear is different.

I hope when you have been through this experience it will allow you to be a little more empathetic, which is something you can't be now.

Of course, there's also the possibility that you might pop it out in 45 minutes from start to finish with no pain relief and you'll be 100 times worse than you are now!!

For your sake though, I hope you don't end up with a 36 hour back-to-back labour where you're refused an epidural, end up with an instrumental delivery and 4th degree tear and then overhear someone in the adjoining room saying "oooh I could have slapped that woman next door making all that fuss"

well said Mrs Hawkings, well said

Oh dear, I have read this entire thread with interest. I am 39 weeks today with my first baby and tbh, I wish I hadn't read any of this!!!

I have been watching the show with interest just to get some insight into how a labour ward works and to be more informed.

I think I will go and bury my head back in the sand and stick my fingers in my ears until the baby shows up!

I was thinking Abs that I wish I'd read this thread before I had ds. It might have scared me before labour, but actually being in labour I think I might have found the pain less frightening.

Milly, if you don't mind me saying, as someone who hasn't had her babies yet, I am more scared and pressured by what you're saying than any so-called 'battle stories'.

I don't want to feel, if I get torn or cut or whatever, that alongside everything else, I have to pretend that if only I'd done it right, this wouldn't be painful and I wouldn't be getting cut about/worrying about my baby.

To everyone who is yet to give birth - just go with the flow and just "be". Don't put any pressure on yourselves.

If just "being" means you curse and wail and cry and thrash about on the bed so fucking what?

The babies will all come out eventually and you'll all live to tell the tale and probably go on to have another baby (or even more).

Honestly, what you've read in books will not be your primary concern when you're there and in the midst of it all.

And once you have your baby in your arms you won't give a fish's tit about any of it.

'But Peachy that's the whole point you can control your reaction to anything and if you can't you are probably about 12 and your frontal lobe hasn't developed sufficiently, beyond that you can control whether you whip yourself into a complete state or not.
Plenty is out of your control but how you react is very much within your power.
'

Thanks then,I will pass that on to Dh who got depression after the boys were dx'd then shall I? Or anyone who ever got PTSD?

I shall ignore the event eprsonal attack buried in there.

You may be like that, many of us are not.

"it is not going to be less painful by screaming your head off"

Probably the least insightful comment I've read on this thread so far.

The best piece of advice I ever had in ante natal classes was from the midwife who said that after every contraction, remind yourself that 'that' contraction is over and done with, it's one less to cope with and you are one contraction nearer to having your baby. when i was at the 'I can't do this anymore stage' the midwife stole my mantra and kept telling me that I'd already done all those contractions and wouldn't have to do THEM again - it REALLY helped.

Yes a woman's body is designed to give birth but Mother Nature doesn't get it right every time, does she? Hence why so very many women died in childbirth before we had the medical interventions we have now.

Why are people so obtuse as to believe that staying calm and doing a bit of reading are going to be enough to stop things from going wrong? Sheer arrogance I assume.

Gouhlsareloud- in some countries, women still have a very high chance of dying in childbirth - I think a lifetime's chance of one in eight, very high odds. And those odds do not even include the morbidity resulting from childbirth.

IMO we are not all made to give birth naturally any more.

Previously, lots of women died in childbirth - if you weren't designed by nature to give birth then you died in childbirth and never passed on those genes that made it hard to give birth naturally.

Now people have birth interventions and don't often die. They pass on their genes. So now lots of us are badly designed for birth.

Just as short sighted people would have died before there were glasses and would not have passed on the short sightedness gene - now short sightedness is commonplace. And telling short sighted people to stop making a fuss doesn't help them with their sight at all, strangely enough.