Most painful part of birth?

[PSL1990]

What was the most painful part of labour and birth for you?

A year of agony afterwards with the aftermath of infected stitches caused by poor hospital care. The surgical repair a year later brought me back to a new normal.

The contractions for me. Baby was back to back.

First poop after birth!

Crowning. I was very lucky I had no pain from stitches with my first two even with episiotomy the first time.

The afternoons after baby 3 were worse than Labour and lasted days and days.

Crowning for sure. Was the only part that made me swear second time around. I pushed him out between two contractions as I was NOT being stuck crowning for any longer than I had to.

Honourable mention for the four (!!) painful local anaesthetic injections which didn't work for my stitches to repair tearing in first birth. No I didn't have an epidural, but what annoys me years later is that I now know I need a bit of extra time to let things like dental anaesthetic work - if they'd just waited I wouldn't have had four injections and I wouldn't have had to feel the stitches.

I found transition and actual pushing positively enjoyable to everything that came before, but then again I had been pumped full of syntocinon for slow progression before they realised DD was back to back - not a good combination - and a failed epidural.

Either being 10cm with the contractions and pressure of my body automatically pushing and me trying to hold it in (without knowing it was baby arriving) I just thought it was babys head really low against my butthole . I was holding off going into hospital as I'd only been in a few hours before at 2cm. I called the hospital crying in pain asking if theyd give me more codeine if I went in.

And then the crowning. Oh the crowning! It burns!

With DC1, the tearing

With DC2, the afterpains. I delivered with no pain relief but had to have codeine for the afterpains!

DC1- the week after, couldn't move for the stitches, was on a camp bed in the living room for 10 days as couldn't get up the stairs. I guess that was the tearing/100000 stitches.

DC2- breastfeeding the first two weeks because your stomach contracts. Agony.

My transition was 20 minutes. I was on the syntocin drip, my epidural failed and I didnt even have gas & air. It was horrific but 'manageable', apparently I went very quiet and stared out of the window

Random query, but did anyone else have zero urge to push? Even when I was 10cm all I felt was the pain of the contractions, I didnt feel any pressure/urges whatsoever. I just pushed like I was on the loo, which I had read about somewhere

If anything I had too much urge to push, I always wanted to push when it was too early and had to be helped to stop

apparently I went very quiet and stared out of the window

Ah yes, I did something similar - but the wall, that wall is etched on my memory.

I had zero urge to push as well @Wolfgirrl. I was just told to push like I was doing a poo, and not to shout. Shouting =/= Effective pushing.

I was quite lucky and also didn't experience the ring of fire of crowning. Drip induced contractions hurt like hell though. Diamorphine took the edge off, but the peak of each contraction still needed me huffing gas and air.

@dyra that's interesting, so not just me! I have wondered if it was due to my failed epidural, but if you didn't have one then maybe it wasn't. I felt like I was doing it all wrong as I couldn't feel baby moving down or anything. Eventually had a forceps delivery as I was wrecked & falling asleep between contractions.

All of it...

I had all my contraction pains in my back which radiated down to the back of my kness.

The pre stretching - two hands in

The episiotomy, followed by forceps

Thought the crowning was pretty bad but then came the shoulders....

Stitches = horrific

The blood transfusion- feeling incredibly cold down one side of your body

The fingers up my bum the next day to check for anal tearing or mixed tissue stitching

Not being able to go to the pub for ages

No epidural. First baby.

For me, I had assumed the lack of an urge to push was down to the diamorphine. Although it had pretty much worn off at that point. They'd also turned the drip down, but then my contractions started dying off. That plus not having any involuntary pushing meant it got turned all the way back up. I also couldn't really feel or sense baby moving down.

Quite curious if anyone ever had the lack of the urge to push on later children. Or for more than one child.

Having the balloon fitted was worse than my whole labour and being stitched back together. Stupid small cervix

Transition 100% if someone had handed me a gun to shoot myself I would have taken it. i didn’t know i was that far in when I went hospital, thought it was still begining stages and was ready to beg for any pain relief ( gas and air helped a lot) then got told i was ready to push, wanted to hug the midwife

Didn’t find crowning painful, it was uncomfortable, maybe in my head I knew i was close to the end so it didn’t seem as bad.

My placenta had to be manually removed by the doctor sticking her hand up me. That was probably the worst bit - as well as being very painful it also just felt so wrong because I could feel that her hand was inside my uterus and you just shouldn't be able to feel other people's hands in your internal organs.

Transition was pretty dreadful but that's mostly because they'd earlier sent me home without examining me - 'there's no way you're in labour' - and so we didn't go back into hospital until I was pushing. I had no idea I was in transition, I thought it must still be early labour and that unrelatedly I must be dying. That car journey in while I was trying not to push, because I didn't realise I needed to, and so was sort of convulsing wasn't great either...

That all said, I think it was actually quite a good birth overall - reasonably quick, one second-degree tear that healed well, and it really is true that I've forgotten a lot of the pain now.

@Dyra I didn't have the urge to push with my second but it was hurting like fuck so I tried it and luckily DS started to come out.

For me, crowing was the worst but I had two babies with heads on the 98th centile. Stitches didn't seem to hurt. I chugged gas and air and felt pretty relieved that it was over with.