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?

Agree Myleencrass and the culprits are other women in most cases. I just don't understand why. As other mners have said, it is luck, luck and luck..or the opposite in some cases

Victoria I think you are wrong. I had G&A and a tens machine with DS1 and nothing with DS2. So no medical intervention with them. The pain is as far as I am concerned is indescribable. I have never experienced pain like it.

Actually why am I having another??

I'm with chub.

I was lead to believe my first birth would be a natural, empowering hypnobirthing type experience. The reality was 67 hours of labour, baby got stuck, failed epidural down one side, paralysed from neck down for 48 hours afterwards and a ventouse delivery with such a large episiotomy that I couldn't walk or sit without agony for 6 weeks. No amount of hypnosis or whatever else would have changed that. Cue c section for this secondbaby (29 wks preg).

I sometimes think the rose tinted childbirth glasses give people very uinrealistic expectations of what happens. But then I guess some people are lucky and have good births. I think it is luck and anatomy though, nothoing more.

Kayzr, I'm with you on this. Had G&A for babies 1 & 2, nothing for 3rd. The pain of a complicated broken ankle was nothing compared to the pain of labour. The only other pain I've come close to labour is when I've accidentally drunk tea (I have a problem with tea). I was actually relieved to be told I had to have a crash CS for no 4 if only from the pain point of view.

Myleenecrass nobody on this thread is implying that a complicated birth is the mother's fault, and those who do in RL need a slap reality check.

For me the best way forward was to convince myself that it wouldn't be painful and it worked - I don't describe any of my births as painful in comparison to the full daily dose of paracetamol+nurofen I took for the afterpains! It's a shame that women who've had a positive experience are shot down in flames for suggesting that other women can have that experience too.

Isn't it better to focus on the positives all round rather than get in a total state while pregnant? If you believe everything then why would anyone have babies: the birth is painful and life threatening, BF will leave your boobs split and bleeding, your baby will never sleep unless you put them in a routine, your kids will be scarred for life if you do/don't return to work...... Denying the potential risks and problems isn't going to help anyone but neither is focusing on them and expecting them to happen.

naturalbaby I can see where you are coming from but I am not sure you can say that the reason your labour wasn't painful was that you convinced yourself it wouldn't be. May be you were just lucky. However, if what you are saying is true then all the women who describle labour as indescribable agony have only themselves to blame for not being positive enough.

I don't think anyone is shooting you down for having a positive experience - good for you. But you can't generalise from your experience to everyone else. We all view risks and benefits differently so what is needed is realistic information

I also don't necessarily agree with the implication that a low risk pregnancy means that the birth will be a breeze. The easiest pregnancies can end with a complicated delivery.

As for big babies, some studies show that various complications are noted in many deliveries of babies weighing over 3.5 kilos around 7.7 pounds. I know very few people who had babies weighing less than 7 pounds(unless they were premature) so this is really something to think about.

Ushy No I can't say my labour wasn't painful purely because I convinced myself it wouldn't be, because I can't go back and labour without hypnobirthing. Nobody can say it didn't work because for me, it did the job. I'm saying being positive worked for me, I'm not generalising or saying that all women who had a painful labour are deluded!

For me it was realistic, for others it clearly isn't. People are as dismissive of my experience as much as the OP's reference of the other end of the spectrum, as you've just demonstrated.

naturalbaby I don't think anyone is being dismissive of your experience.

The reality of birth is that for most people it is incredibly painful. IMO no amount of hypnobirthing or positive thinking would have changed the level of pain I experienced with one of my children's births into a positive experience.

For no 2, I dismissed all the midwives pleadings of 'you can do it' 'you'll be so proud if you do it' told them to get an epidural at the first whim of a labour pain and, after a major row to get the epi, had the best, most peaceful calm and painless birth imaginable.

What puzzled me afterwards was why the midwives had been so keen to deprive me of a really good positive experience and potentially substitute it for an agonisingly painful destructive one that I made very clear I did not want. Epidurals may lead to a VERY few more interventions but then we should be focussing on reducing their side effects not telling women to grit their teeth or scream!

May be that is all down to the cultural attitudes the OP is hinting at.

naturalbaby nobody is dismissive of your experience or doubts it was great - but you've been lucky.

fair enough, but "However, if what you are saying is true then all the women who describle labour as indescribable agony have only themselves to blame for not being positive enough" sounds pretty dismissive.

It's hard for a woman who had a pain free labour to imagine how it can be so agonising and vice versa. It's human nature to want to help isn't it? Women who've had a pain free birth want to help others by trying to tell them they can have the same experience.
There does seem to be bit of an attempt at a shift of thinking more towards the positive, but like the BF 'support, this seems to be taken the wrong way and the women it doesn't work for get very defensive.

@Ushy
I am so disturbed to hear about your experience.
Do people actually have to fight and row to get epidurals in hospitals?
This is my first so I had no idea that there could actually be trouble in requesting pain relief. :(

natural baby I did not mean that to be dismissive at all - just a logical follow on from the point you were making when you wrote this:

"For me the best way forward was to convince myself that it wouldn't be painful and it worked ... It's a shame that women who've had a positive experience are shot down in flames for suggesting that other women can have that experience too."

That isn't to say being positive isn't a good thing because I agree with you, but it doesn't, absolutely 100% doesn't, guarantee a pain free positive birth.

Ushy- I think your comment about 'attractive women' is extremely offensive.

It is accepted that induced labours are more painful than spontaneous ones.

Also second and third births preceded by spontaneous vaginal deliveries are almost always safer and less painful unless there is an additional risk factor.

Age is also a significant factor- the best biological age is 19, the further away from that you get in either direction heightens risk.

Pain is both a physical and psychological experience. Anything which causes levels of adrenaline to rise in a labouring woman eg being in an unfamiliar environment, a hostile or dismissive midwife etc will increase the level of pain experienced. This can't always be completely controlled but it should be considered more in care delivery.

What the hell justhappened Re epidurals, it does depend on the midwife on duty but it was the case in the two different hospitals I went to. There was a massive post about this problem on Mumsnet and it actually got in the papers becasue so many women posted in a short space of time www.mumsnet.com/Talk/childbirth/1147361-Anyone-else-tricked-out-of-epidural/AllOnOnePage

I did find though, that as soon as I said we were going to make a formal complaint, the resistance dropped and they went to get an anaesthetist.

I wouldn't worry, the chances are you will have good midwives but if you get a bad one record the time and if nothing has happened in 20 minutes use the 'complaint' card. Also get the epidural before you are in so much pain you can't keep still. It is safer and they are much less likely to fail.

Naughtily, I might add the midwives told me the anaesthetist was 'in theatre.' When he was doing the epi, I said "Sorry I hope I haven't dragged you out of theatre", he said that he wasn't needed until an hour later. I gave some very black looks in the direction of the midwife who went very quiet and avoided eye contact ... I felt really annoyed about that - I just did not think that was a professional way to behave.

"Age is also a significant factor- the best biological age is 19, the further away from that you get in either direction heightens risk."

funnily enough socio-economic factors are more powerful than age, and more powerful than size of baby. (birthplace study, homebirthers significantly older, have babies 4oz larger...risk factor of half national average judging by the stats used...)

yet i have never heard of a doctor advising earlier induction/ counselling against MLU/HB because mother is poor/single. why? not politically acceptable.

the type of care you receive in labour has a strong effect on whether you request pain relief, and experience intervention - no guarantee of course, but it is a strong influencing factor.

Edlessallenpoe I thought the risk was higher for homebirth? www.nhs.uk/news/2011/11November/Pages/hospital-births-home-births-compared.aspx

you misunderstand, even though first time home birthers are older and give birth to larger babies, in order to statistically 'correct' the results of the study (where the actual incidence of risk was lower than CLU) they doubled the result. Maternal outcomes for this group was still significantly better by a clear margin.

conclusion: being wealthier, whiter, more married.... = lower risk than average (by half) despite being older & having larger babies.

and it was still safer for second & subsequent babies even with that heavy 'correcting' factor - bearing in mind 28% of HB mothers are over 35 vs only 17% of CLU mothers....... and double the number of 40+ mums!

YANBU. Totally agree with what you said OP: "While I personally agree that childbirth can be very empowering and rewarding, I also do agree that it is painful and potentially risky."

I don't think childbirth is either inherently risky or inherently safe. It depends on the mother and the pregnancy and levels of risk etc.
As for the pain - well, again, it depends. If you lay on your back for example for most women that's going to be a more painful experience but there are so many variable I don't think you can make blanket statements.

Maybe it wouldn't have been such a problem if your friend had said 'can be' or 'was for me' rather than 'is' such and such?

When I was first pg I told my checking in midwife that I was only going to have my baby by c-section because everyone I know had had such awful births. I the listed their experiences - in about a dozen, 2 nearly died, 3 had forceps and 10 had emergency cs. After I regaled her with my story she just said "ok" - as did my consultant. I gave birth both times by planned c-sections - the second time it saved my life as I had placenta accreta.

Every woman I know who has experienced labour has had an awful time and either her or her child has been in special care afterwards or as had severe physiological or psychological problems afterwards.

So - I'd go for inherently risky.

Try having an induction which, when it finally worked, gave me contractions which lasted for THIRTY MINUTES on, then ten seconds off, for eight hours. (Yes, I did complain to the hospital - yes, I got post traumatic stress disorder and PND as a result). Oh, and that was the short bit, the labour then went on for another 30 hours. If those women had said to my face it's wrong to describe labour as painful, I would probably have inflicted some pain of my own.

This sort of hippy shit really pisses me off because theirs is not the experience of most women (although my case was extreme).

Three words, ladies-
White Ribbon Trust!
A wonderful organisation devoted to making childbirth safer, ie not lethal or maiming, for women the world over. We do not live in the Third World or in the Nineteenth Century and so childbirth is relatively risk free for us but is never without risk. My friend's aunt died of complications, a neighbor nearly bled to death. We are so lucky that these incidents are rare in the
Uk.

PS Lenten alms would be most welcome at the above named charity. A c section for a woman out there somewhere is around £ 10 and could save her life and that of her baby.

I thought it was kind of a positive experience mainly because I got a baby at the end of it !

But it was still painful (from experience), and risky (from the stats and friends experiences)

So I think an honest summary is positive yet painful. It can be both of these things.

And just for the record DD was born 13 years ago today in a water pool

But that doesn't mean I have to deny that it was painful at times.