Childbirth- inherently risky or inherently safe? Painful or not?

[WhatTheHellJustHappened]

My friend recently made the fatal mistake of saying in the company of some female colleagues that childbirth was the most painful, horrifying thing she had experienced. An argument ensued and majority of the ladies there believed it was wrong to call childbirth risky or painful. They said they pitied women who looked at such a beautiful and empowering experience in such a negative manner. They said that even sitting on a lawn was risky but sensible people didn't spend time fretting over it. My friend asked me later "When did it become a crime to call childbirth painful or risky? ".
While I personally agree that childbirth can be very empowering and rewarding, I also do agree that it is painful and potentially risky.

What are you views? Do you think childbirth is painful? Do you think it is inherently risky or safe?

I also think it would be appropriate to consider that everyone's expectations from the process are different and that everyone's threshold of risks and pain also varies.

I don't like it when women are judged for expressing their individual views on birth.

Well is more inherently risky and painful than sitting on a lawn. Sounds like a few women are very wedded to their NCT hypnobirthing world view and don't want to hear anything contrary to it.

I think that your friend was justified in stating her opinion of childbirth based on her experience, just as the other women were justified in stating their opinions based on theirs.

Unfortunately it's such an emotive subject that arguments do flare up over it - inevitably you will meet someone whose experience was a polar opposite to yours and their opinion will probably differ.

I think it can be dangerous but isn't necessarily so, and IME it was bloody painful!

As for inherently anything: I think you'd have to persuade thousands of women to undergo labour with no medical intervention and see how many died in order
to come to any scientific conclusion on that one.... probably not going to happen!

Childbirth is still potentially one of the most dangerous things a woman can go through. Women still die in childbirth in this country.

@chubfuddler
That's what I thought ;) I have absolutely nothing against the NCT in general but I find it quite strange that so many people nowadays get so offended if you call childbirth anything other than beautiful and rewarding. Historically and medically speaking, it is a risky process but I accept that others may disagree.
What I find really funny is that we are now required to call it painless. Unless there is pain relief involved how can natural childbirth be painless?

My three experiences of childbirth were all very different. With DD1 I was in agony (as was told to expect) but the birth itself was pretty uncomplicated, although my blood pressure did go through the roof at one point, the alarms started going off and medical staff burst into the room.

With DS, again it was agony. I wasn't expecting it to be worse than the first though! Complications were ongoing throughout the birth and it left me pretty traumatised to the point that when I found out I was pg with DD2, I was crying, hyperventilating, and when DS was ill and had to go into the hospital, I found it incredibly difficult to even walk through the doors to the place.

DD2, however was by far the easiest birth and zero complications.

I don't think it is wrong to call it painful or risky. In all three of my births it was definately painful and in 2 cases, potentially risky. That's not scaremongering. That's fact! I wish people had of been more open and honest about this kind of thing when I had DS. Based on my first experience, I though the next one would be a breeze and got a huge, traumatic shock when it turned out not to be.

since when are we requred to call childbirth painless - I think that all women would have to admit that it bloody hurts?!

Of course it's risky, although less so now that women have access to advanced medical care. Certainly more risky tha sitting on the lawn.

It was excruciatingly painful both times in my case. I believe there are women who have painless births, but I would think they are in a very small minority.

I've had one natural delivery and one c section. I found the natural delivery to be simultaneously beautiful and empowering and risky and painful. the c section was bliss

i would think both those words apply.

but i know people who have had births that really weren't all that painful, and pretty much everything you do has some level of risk....

i suppose 'beautiful and empowering' can also apply.

i don't really see that these things can't all apply to childbirth...there are risks, it is (most likely) going to be painful, can be beautiful and empowering.

ultimately you can't tell someone who had a 'painful horrifying' birth that it wasn't like that, nor can you tell someone else their birth wasn't 'beautiful and empowering' ...that really is a matter of personal view.

In 2008 in Afghanistan, there were 1575.1 deaths in childbirth per 100,000 live births. That's significantly higher than road deaths per 100,000 people in any country in the world (fewer than 40 in every single country worldwide.)

So I would say yes, childbirth is inherently risky, and we are very lucky to live in a country with good medical care which means your friend's colleagues can get away with being complacent about their good fortune.

And I also think that telling pg women that the birth has to be/will be an amazing spiritual/empowering/painless event if only they focus enough/breath properly/burn incense/listen to a hypnobirthing cd or whatever are doing them a huge disservice.

Lol at NCT type view: Shouldn't have pain relief as "it's painless" but those who endure with "nothing" or "just gas & air" are applauded for their efforts.
PLus
CS is the "easy way out" or "cheating" although "much longer recovery" & "more painful".

How dare you speak as you find :)

I hate reading threads like this.

I have had 2 easy straightforward births but never would I say to someone who hasn't that they are wrong.

Every woman and every birth is different.

To be tasteless for a moment, if you find yourself pregnant statistics will tell you from a mortality pov it is safer to terminate than go through with the pregnancy.

Maybe the NCT brigade didn't want other women to be scared off by reports of horrific pain? Which is a nice enough motive, but bloody risky if some poor woman suddenly ends up with a horrible series of procedures in labour that she hadn't heard of and hadn't planned for.

I went to NCT classes btw - very nice, but they do make epidurals sound like the work of Satan.

Risky and painful.
I feel a huge sense of pride and achievement at having given birth to my DCs. I feel greatly empowered, if I can do that, what else can I achieve?
However my health was on the line throughout my pregnancies and I was continually having to consider the risk and possible outcomes of various options. Luckily the worst didn't happen in the end - but I needed to be fully informed.

My lovely NCT group have been together 11 years and we now share 16 birth experiences and I don't think either before or after these births any of us were dreamy believers in hynobirthing.
Just a down to earth bunch trying make the best of birth and parent hood we can.

I guess I'm the nearest to lentil weaving given DD2 was a home birth, but lots of GA, pethadine on standby and a manage third stage makes her pretty conventional really

Oh FGS, all you have to do is look at childbirth in developing countries and see that it is inherently risky and painful. There are ways to manage that risk and that pain, but they are definitely part of the process.

I don't know why we have this idea that childbirth is the same for everyone. Why can't we accept that some women have more pain than others? It seems to get twisted into the idea that some women are worse at dealing with the pain, rather than that some women actually have more pain.

Agghh! I would have told them to fuck off! Childbirth is by far the most painful thing I've ever gone through. Also, both me and DD were at serious risk of death (HELLP syndrome for me; meconium aspiration for her). If we hadn't have been in an modern hospital we would certainly both have died. Childbirth is a major cause of death in all places where good medical care is not available, as is neonatal death.

I also hate it when people tell me smugly that they didn't have any pain relief in childbirth as if they should have a medal for it, and then it turns out that they had a straight-forward 8 hour labour or something. I didn't have any pain relief for around 32 hours, but I got a bit bored of the pain after that. The epidural I finally got was one of the most intense feelings of my life, and the part of the entire labour and birth process that I look back on with the most fondness (though admittedly the rest of it was a bit fucked up!)

I was totally into the NCT natural birth thing beforehand, and still think this is best if everything goes smoothly and its not too difficult, but childbirth is painful and risky, and we are all thankful to take advantage of modern medicine when we need to.

Yes, DS would not have gotten through my pelvis apparently, we would both be dead if not for modern medicine.

I would be asking these ladies why they feel so empowered if it's all just a skip through the park then.

I think, based on the massively long and comprehensive list of things that can go wrong in childbirth, it's quite foolish to argue that it isn't risky. Of course it is.

But obviously, not everyone encounters the potential issues, and those that do encounter them do so with varying degrees of severity.

Again, it's clearly a painful experience, but the levels of pain are largely dependent on the person.

I do agree that there seems to be this innate need to perpetuate how natural and empowering childbirth is, and whilst it can be like this for some women, it can also be an incredibly traumatic experience for others. I think the balance has to be a positive mental attitude towards it combined with a good understanding and knowledge of what your body might and will go through.

I am one of those NCT hypnobirthing types and owed everything the the firm belief that childbirth is normal and natural. I was told "that the birth has to be/will be an amazing spiritual/empowering/painless event if only they focus enough/breath properly/burn incense/listen to a hypnobirthing cd" and it was the best thing that happened to me. I was very lucky but was not naive enough to ignore the fact that women do die in childbirth - that it can be risky and life threatening for mum and baby. One of the main reasons why it worked so well is my total belief that the hypnobirthing would work, and that it would not be painful - I don't describe any of my births as painful.

I have seen the fear put into a mum to be through only exposing her to 'horror' stories and think it's unfair and unrealistic for a mum to be to only focus on the negatives. I do believe in the self fulfilling prophesy factor.

The OP seems to be just about discussing post birth experiences though, and from that point of view it seems a bit rediculous to deny a mother's description and experiences of childbirth.

It didn't work for you because you swallowed the hypnobirthing guff whole. It worked in spite of it. If your baby had got stuck all the whale music in the world wouldn't have gotten him out. But whatever.

Interesting this, because in my office we fall about laughing at all the 'birth is beautiful and empowering' comments because all of us found childbirth utterly horrific and brutal. The only one who hasn't had a baby has decided she doesn't want to be present at the birth -or at least if she is there she wants a genaral anaesthetic.

What I find a mystery is why some NCT teachers are so anti epidural and anti caesarean. Out of the births of my DS &DDs the best births were the epidural and caesarean ones and the worst by a million miles was the natural birth. I know they go on about all the interventions but the psychological damage after the natural birth was a thousand times worse.

I actually think UK maternity services are very very bad. Unless you are prepared to cause a scene (as I am afraid we did after horror birth) you get
get 'supported' to thrash around in mindless pain like a wounded animal and 'encouraged' to cope without pain relief. I fully support women who themselves choose natural birth but may be midwives and the medical profession should start listening to those of us that think that in the 21st century this kind of treatment is brutal and mysogynist.