Labour vs MC pain?

[buonasera]

Hope this hasn't been covered elsewhere but if it has, I'd be grateful if someone could point me to it...

For those of you who've had a "natural" miscarriage (i.e. no surgery, no pain relief) and a natural labour, how do they compare? The reason I ask is that I'm 19w after recurrent MC, trying to make some birth plan decisions and don't know what to expect in terms of pain. I know everyone always says labour pain is indescribable and all that but I figure it must be fairly similar to MC pain, if not so intense... what do you all think?

There was a thread on this quite a while back, I read it after my MC - sorry I don't think I could find it though. There was no consensus from what I could say, what with both MCs and labour being so individual (even for the same woman). One of the key points I picked up on though was the point that MC pain is unremitting unlike with labour and also at least with labour you know there is something positive to come at the end of it.
Personally I don't really believe it would be in possible to find new pain thresholds for what I went through with the MC. I should find out for sure in June though.

Have had both- mc was more unremitting scarier (you know what labour is meant to do , you don't know what is "normal" with a mc) and you are in different state of mind.

Labour goes in waves and you can manage the pain. To be honest it was more an endurance test as it does exhaust you .

I may have had a lucky experience or used pain relief but my natural mc was certainly comparable to some of contractions i had (probably worse). Can't comment about actual birth as had an epidural (and would recommend it ).

And dizzy you are right- don't underestimate how much the fact you are having your baby and will take pretty much anything (that was my mindset after several mc and losing a baby to abnormalities ) helps .

I think it depends a lot on how far along you are. I was 10 weeks, spontaneous so could have been a less developed baby potentially, anyway it was a lot like early labour pains and I was having pains in the form of contractions with my mc.
However, my mc was far worse in terms of how much blood I lost and how awful I was feeling. With my labour it was much more painful but it had a positive purpose to it and was more manageable. I had paracetamol with my mc that did f all and entonox with labour which also did f all. lol

My earlier loss was just like a heavy period although smelt and looked different from a normal period and same sort of pain, not contractiony at all.

Good luck :)

Thanks very much for sharing guys. I guess the only way to find out is to go and do it... my MCs were 11w, had contraction-like pain and was certainly the most painful thing I've ever experienced, by far - oh who knows eh?

Sorry to hear that Buonasera I would say that you will find it very similar, and maybe recognise labour starting more easily because of your experiences, I bet you get to about 7cm without batting an eyelid. Best of luck :)

Thanks purple! I'm hoping it'll be like that, if it comes to VB. Still more or less hoping one of the small ones will be awkwardly positioned and need a CS, to be honest.

Are you having twins? I can understand that a VB when you have had mcs would be very scary, but truly it won't be as bad as you think as you will feel happy about it. If you are worried do talk to your MW, they will understand :)

The pain's not the scary aspect really - it's just that I've had to deal with a lot of healthcare professionals and my experience has led me to trust the people at the more medicalised end like obstetricians, theatre nurses and anaesthetists - midwives I've met have tended not to listen much and been dismissive of (what turned out to be legitimate) concerns I had. In my experience they have been very good at routine stuff but a bit lost and slow to recognise when things are going wrong. Maybe they're totally different when you're in labour but if not it'll be too late to do anything about it.

I was in a large hospital, when things got a bit hairy with my labour with DD, the MW picked up on it and literally ran with my bed to a delivery suite full of medical people and I then had various registrars and senior docs checking on me from then on. My care was excellent by the MWs, however I know it can vary.
I think you can request seeing a consultant and then have a chat about your concerns, maybe you have a legitimate compliant to make about your previous treatment? The last thing you need is to be worried about these things.
Are you going to a main hospital, I am hoping to just got the local midwife led unit, but I definitely have the choice to got to the main hospital, I have the choice of two main hospitals in fact! Could you switch hospitals at all?

I had an erpc for an mmc last year and the pain I experienced after that was the same as the pain I had this year after the birth off dd 10 weeks ago. So it was in no way similar to labour (but not a natural mc) but I'm just warning you that even if this is dc1, you may still get after pains which noone warns you about. I also found it quite upsetting as it brought back memories and feelings.