Why does it have to hurt!?!

[SuddenlyScared]

I'm ready to be laughed at here (I KNOW this is a stupid question) but I am due to have my baby quite soon and what I want to know is, why does it have to hurt? I don't mean in the philosophical sense of course, more that with the availability of drugs and especially epidurals, why is it STILL so bad!!? Can you not just insist on an epidural relatively early on? Or is this just a desperate hope of mine? Does it hurt because people try to do it without drugs, or wait for as long as they can? I know this is naive but ... I AM suddenly quite scared!

The Joan Rivers version is...

'Knocked out before it starts and woken up when the hairdresser arrives.'

Gotta love that gal!

The thought that helped me cope with the pain was that every pain bought me closer to meeting my baby - and every contraction over with was one I never needed to have agin! I also got dh to count through the contractions - so I knew how far through them I was and when the pain would start to ease up. And I had some gas and air

It is hard to think - 'I am designed to do this and I am going to do it!' - but it helped me.

I prefer to be doped up to the nines in such situations.

I see no valour in pain.

Better living through chemistry.

just to give a different opinion, i didn't find the head crowning the worst bit, i prefered it to the contractions and i had a 3rd degree tear! So don't be too afraid of that bit, it means you're about to meet your baby very soon!

Could I just add to the person who thought there was pressure on women to have a natural birth and not use pain relief: I have had pressure put on me to use drugs for pain relief when I didn't want them. It works both ways. Just like breastfeeding, there are women complaining about pressure put on them either to bf or to ff. Whatever you do there will be some one who thinks you should do it the other way, so do what suits you.

I was glad to have the option of pain relief available, though I didn't want to use it and am glad in retrospect that I didn't.

Some women are built for birth, some are not. I think it is hard for some people to understand that birth may have been relatively easy for them but isn't for everybody, and this isn't just about the wrong attitude, being weak willed or a cry baby.

If you are not well designed for giving birth then don't blame yourself, and embrace any pain relief going or a section without guilt.

The good birth experiences tens to be the relatively quick ones imo. I would advise my friends that if they have been struggling for a long time they should insist on a section and not wait another 5 hours until all hopes of a natural delivery have gradually ebbed away as that is the worst of all worlds, a long long labour and a c-section at the end of it. Far too common in my experience.

Women in labour are not best placed to make clinical decisions, Darth Vader. But it's a good idea for them to have some one with them at the birth, either doula or dh/p to question clinical decisions made by health professionals. You are probably right, that some emergency c sections are performed later than they should be. It is also true that some interventions are performed too early, and might not have been needed at all, had nature been allowed to take its course.

I totally agree with DarthVader, my friend was put through 24hrs of labour and ended up with a c section...... she was a wreck. I had mine after 12hours induction and was in a much better state.

I did a hynpobirthing course......was fab! If you can get hold of the Marie Morgan hb book and the rainbow relaxation cd - it was brilliant. I was still using it 3 months after the birth to help me sleep.

And don't forget post-natal care......can you afford a private room......was worth every penny in my case.

micegg - totally recommend Hypnobirthing. I initially just bought the book and cd but I was very childbirth phobic and went for the classes in the end. It was very flexible, I think it was about 4 sessions on a Saturday morning spaced out over 4 months, but I think each teacher will do this differently. Best money I ever spent.

Sparklyjen - I didn't mean to dismiss bad experiences as a result of being tense, every woman and every birth situation is different. I just mean that the more relaxed you can be, the better and I found the Hypno classes really useful.

"it is the price humanity has paid for walking upright and high intelligence- small hips, large heads".

Quite agree and this is why it hurts! As Desmond Morris in the "Naked Ape" puts it "the demands of vertical locomotion have not been kind to the female of our species; the penalty for this progressive step is a sentence of several hours' hard labour"

The cervix is a very strong muscle, holding everything in, which in the space of hours has to distort into a completely different shape. Everyone's pain threshold is different, but epidurals are an option that lots of women take advantage of. There are disadvantages such as slowing down labour and lack of feeling when pushing the baby out.

It's true that some women seem to pop them out like shelling peas. It's a bit unfair perhaps and certainly the fear=difficult birth/no fear=easy birth thing is not a good description of many people's experiences - for one thing, it totally discounts the position of the baby and the input of the midwife or doctor or partner, which have a huge bearing on how labour goes.
Nobody should feel they failed. A good number of women should feel they were failed by a system that is not that well set up for ensuring decent birth experiences. And by a publishing industry that continues pushing pap like What to Expect and Miriam Stoppard on us and assuming that is all we can handle reading.
And there is nothing wrong with epidurals except that they stop movement, and movement is essential to how the pelvis works, which is, after all, where the baby has to come through. If you are in wretched pain, it is a no-brainer, though.

From my experience of childbirth - dc 1 and 3 natural births, dc2 caesarian under epidural (and therefore pretty much pain free) I'd make the following observations:

1. Yes, it's painful, but as someone pointed out earlier, it's NOT like the kind of pain when you injure yourself. It's more like a physically demanding marathon where you are working damn hard!
2. For many women in the 21st century, a 'good' birth has become equated with 'painfree'. I think this view has a lot to answer for. My 1st birth in particular was incredibly painful; however, I'd also say it was my 'best ' birth because I felt in control, and supported by a wonderful midwife. My csection was almost painfree, but I felt it was a medicalised procedure which was done 'to' me. An epidural may relieve you of pain, but the downside is it relieves you of feeling.
3. As with many things, the apprehension can be worse than the reality. Often women in labour find that they harness an inner strength which they would never have beleived they had, and this is enormously empowering.

I LURVED my epi

TBH, I would have been fine if the labour hadn't dragged endlessly on for 26 hours and would have preferred not to have had one so I coul have got off the bed straight after giving birth rather than having to sit there for four hours afterwards in all of my blood/gunk and waters (they were too busy to change the bed!!)

But the blissfullness of being able to sleep whilst in active labour..........

Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

I listened to natal hypnotherapy CDs throughout the pregnancy and they were great - gave me ways of handling a long, slow, painful induced birth. Dp was hugely sceptical about the hypnosis CDs before the birth, wouldn't listen to them, but once we were in the throes of it he was all 'Breathe in the light, breathe out the pain, go to your island' as if he'd been studying! It helped him too to have something he could use to talk me through it.

I also had every form of pain relief I could, one after the other, everything listed earlier in the thread, from gas and air up to epidural (the absolute best bit, sent dp off home for half an hour to feed the cat after that!), and forceps delivery - baby was v. big and positioned wrongly, hence the slow progression. But the hypnosis definitely helped me to cope for longer at each stage.

I suspect I might have ended up with section if I'd had epi earlier because things progressed so slowly - though of course you don't know what might have been. But I was also, and remain, remarkably untraumatised by what was a pretty difficult experience, and I think the hypnosis must take some credit for that.

ive often wondered the answer to this one myself. it doesn't seem fair, animals don't appear to have the same amount of pain that we do when giving birth.

Maybe a combination of disproportionately large head - to accommodate extra-large human brain - and evolution of walking upright, which changed our pelvis shape and angle?

THere is a theory (I forget whose) that the pain also plays a part in bonding - something like "Well that was hell, but it was worth it, look at what I made!".
I dunno...I'm not convinced by that.

I didn't know at the time that you couldn't be on all fours or standing up with an epi. For a start, it only worked on one side and then I had this ridiculous urge to be on all fours and I asked if I could...obviously not!!!

The gas and air was better.

A poster earlier questioned the wisdom of a thread where women are honest about how much labour hurts.

All I can say is that I wish people in general - and my ante-natal class teacher in particular - had been more honest with me.

All the first-time mums who have asked me to tell them about my experiences have emphasised that they are not idiots, they are not little delicate fluffy bunnies to be lied to, and they would like to know the truth about birth experiences, both the good and the bad.

I haven't seen any posts here that seem to be scaremongering, or exaggerating for effect. Just a lot of women sharing their birth experiences, which can only be a good thing IMO.

I didn´t think childbieth hurt as such, was just damn hard work. I never had any pain relief at all with my children and really enjoyed both births. Maybe I was lucky, but I think having a positive outlook on giving birth can olnly help...

I think a positive outlook is great and I would never encourage women to dread childbirth. I'd simply encourage them to educate themselves about all the options.

I'd also say that a positive outlook works wonders when things go OK, but it doesn't help much when, for example, the cord is wrapped around your baby's neck twice and he is stuck, which is why you have been pushing for two and a half hours without a break. At that point the ventouse helped.

And yes, I think luck does have an awful lot to do with it. I was unlucky. Friends of mine have been lucky, or unlucky. Always best to be prepared for both. That's what I plan to be for my next, anyway!

I don't know veryfrustated, I was kind of looking forward to my labour, I certainly wasn't worried about it. I had read lots of books which made me think it would be 'empowering' and it wasn't. despite having a perfectly normal labour and a positive outlook I hated it and was traumatised for a while.

The OP's question seemed to me to be: why is there pain in spite of modern pain relief? Why can't you just opt for pain killers to take it all away? Some answers might be:

labour can take a long time
(depends from case to case)

you may not be able to take a certain pain killer for hours on end, for medical or comfort reasons
(gas made me feel sick after a while)

there are different types of pain during the course of labour- not all pain killers are equally effective for all of them (I found the TENS machine brilliant for the early stages, but useless towards the end)

not all drugs work equally well on all people

there may be medical reasons not to take certain drugs
(e.g. pethidine if there are concerns about baby's health)

unexpected things can happen during labour (e.g. my dd's head got stuck just as the midwife thought I was going to push her out, took an hour to shift her, which obviously altered the pain killer situation somewhat)

different people have VERY different pain thresholds: what seems bearable to you may be unendurable to me
(this is not about being a whimp, or doesn't have to be, it's also about how your nerves report sensations to the brain)

people may have very different expectations:

some people feel let down if they didn't get the labour they wanted, and this affects their perception of the whole thing;
others may feel so relieved that they got through that they forget about the pain very quickly
others still may come to remember the pain as a positive experience (I coped with this challenge)

Oh, and I just wanted to add:

the negative experience of an emergency C-section reported by a poster above is also something that can vary from case to case: I quite enjoyed my C-section as soon as I felt reassured that my baby would be ok. They were a very jolly operating team, who kept laughing and joking; I thought it was nice that my son's birth should be such a happy occasion. But then I wasn't someone who cared greatly about how the birth happened, as long as I got the thing out...
(and I have also had a natural birth, felt the same about that, getting the baby out mattered more than how).

I think it's something to do with Eve tempting Adam with an apple he wasn't supposed to eat, and Adam being a daft bugger and a MAN to boot, had a problem saying no!

Cheers mate!!