long or short labours

[MummyToToby]

did you take after your mums or not? a lot of people have told me they took after theirs and i'm hoping i will as my mum had very quick labours - about an hour long!!

I didn't... mum had a 5 hour labour but I had a 24h one... due to baby being badly positioned.... made the whole thing much longer. Sorry :-(
Having said that people who have very short labour often don't like them as they are too intense... did she like hers?

I haven't so far. My mum had long labours with both my brother and I, but I had DD in 4 1/2 hours.

she can't remember!!she was induced though which can make labour shorter, but can also make it longer. mw says i may have to be induced cos baby is big for dates. i don't know if it is likely that i will react in the same way and have a short labour too though.

Nope - my mum was overdue with all 3 of her babies and had long labours. My DD came 3 weeks early in less than 8 hours.

what do you think re: the induction thing?

I didn't take after my mother: hers were 28 and 36 hr labours, she is still traumatised by them.
Mine was short, easy and the relief in her voice when I told her was clear.

there are lots of vriables.... in particular the lifestyles we lead tend to be more sedentary than our mothers, leading to poor positioning etc
but there is a genetic element, so you have a natural advantage yes

Inductions speed things up if your body is ready to go in labour it only is very slow (and quite often leading to a lot of intervention) if you are induced and your body isn't ready at all.
Big dates babies.... LOL... do a search and you'll see how many false alarms there have been!!!! Babies born in normal size!

My mum was in labour for over a day with me and it was 12 days late. I was 12 hours with dd and she was 4 days overdue.

moms labours were pretty average in length but Ds was prem and i wasnt.
Both my labours with DD1 and DD2 very odd,dd1-no pain and 5cm dilated then about 4hours of painful labour.
dd2 very rapid gave birth in about 55mins on bathroom floor 10 mins after dp arrived home!