do the 'hours' of labour go fast or slow compared to normal time?

[riskit4abiskit]

reading people's birth stories on here, I notice people saying they were having contractions for x number of hours before pushing - we are expecting our first baby and this sounds awful - hours and hours of pain?

so my question is, did the time in these hours pass slowly or quickly for you?

(please excuse this question if its a bit naïve and silly!)

Neither fast nor slow, it was kind of out of time.

24 hours of pain was pretty horrible though!

Both for me. I was lucky i suppose in that i managed to doze on and off between contractions/pushing and that seemed to make it go faster but there were points where i also felt i had been pushing for hours and it was only half an hour. It was odd how time felt. I think the pethidine/ gas and air had an effect on it tbh.

From start to finish ds2's labour felt far longer than ds1s even though it was shorter by 5/6 hours but i think that's because with ds1 i laboured through the night on my own and tried to sleep before telling my mum i was in labour at 8am ( didnt want to wake her ) but with ds2 first contractions were very painful straight away at 3am so exp and i went straight to hosp so was awake and mobile for all of it ( except when pethidine kicked in)

The part where I was in real pain seemed much too long but was probably quite short as I then got my epidural and went to sleep for the rest of the first stage. Was woken up in order to start pushing. Seemed to take about 5 minutes and 3 pushes but I expect it was an hour or so. Total labour was under 12 hours I think. Was turned away from hospital in the evening as not far enough advanced so went to a nearby restaurant for dinner. Back in 10 pm-ish, epidural perhaps around midnight or early hours? Baby born around 6:30 am. So certainly not intolerably long, by any means.

Sorry, didn't really answer question. I would say no faster or slower than normal time really - but as described above my labour was not particularly traumatic or eventful.

What I think is a bit scary/difficult is that you just don't know what kind of birth you are going to have so can't prepare yourself mentally.

Felt like it was very slow until getting down to the nitty gritty of pushing. It seemed like seconds!

Mine felt very fast. I totally zoned out and focused on the job. I went into labour overnight and went from one huge contraction to waters going and 6 cm within an hour. Went fairly quickly from there so I didn't really experience the hours on a birthing ball in early labour (although I spent a few weeks before feeling like that)

I went in at 1am, DD born at 11.30am. Second stage was 3 hours and really hard work as DD got stuck, I couldn't believe it when the MW told me I'd been pushing for 3 hours and therefore they were getting consultant, I thought I'd been at it half an hour or so (thats not to say I wasn't knackered, I just thought I'd got knackered really quickly)

I found it hard to believe when they told me I'd been in 10 hours, felt more like a couple at the most. However, I think the pethedine had something to do with that

Really fast.

Active labour was 12 hours and it flew by. I wouldn't say I wasn't aware of what time it was as there was a clock in the room! But it just went really fast. The pushing bit seemed like minutes to me, it was actually 26 mins and I was really surprised it was so long (although it wasn't relatively).

My second stage lasted 20 hours, and it passed like a drunken afternoon (not as pleasant though!) I pushed for an hour and a half - felt like 10 minutes.

Every so often, I looked at the clock and it'd be several hours later. I was in the bath for an hour at one time. Literally felt like I'd dunked my bum and got out.

The zone is like being in a magic land where nothing makes sense. Actually, thats a lie. Time travel made sense to me when I was in the zone