What do you think of the pain of labour after giving birth?

[WhatIsPink]

Ive just had my third child, labour was wild and as anyone who’s been through it knows the pain. I was lucky to be fast and furious with very short active labour but quite a few stitches.

Every time I was surprised that I was doing it again, especially when I am in active labour , as it was not traumatised enough enough, however I seem to forget what happened last time and only see that beautiful child.

Just an after delivery though and what’s on your mind after all that painful delivery?

It's just a few hours of pain and then you have a beloved child for the rest of your life. Just a bit of pain. You're not abused, tortured, interrogated. Not in an unsafe and scary environment. You have your partner supporting you and kind midwives around you. A bit of pain is not a high price to pay to have all those wonderful days with your children, see their smily faces every morning. I'm saying this after two vaginal births, no pain relief (not even gas and air) and I remember them vividly - the last one was two months ago.

War, torture, imprisonment, famine is tragedy. Childbirth is just a task.

My gallbladder attack was 100% worse than labour pain, I heard kidney stones are too!

What a diminishment of what women go through. Labour is not "just a bit of pain." And not every body does have that perfect safe birthing environment with kind midwives, even in this country.

War, torture and famine don't have anything to do with the pain of labour.

When I went into labour with my second DD I had this moment of panic “wtf am I doing, I have to give birth again?!!”, you really do forget how bad it is!
I also after she was born kept thinking thank god I have 2 kids now, I never had to do that again.
I did get broody again for a little while when she was 18m ish but DH wasn’t keen and then the feeling passed.
I was a bit traumatised after my first birth though I think, for the first week I kept replaying it in my mind and couldn’t sleep even though I was exhausted.
It faded quite quickly

I've had three. All induced. All painful but I accepted it as the process of getting my child out into the world. I so much preferred giving birth to actually being pregnant.

It was fine. I’ve definitely had more painful periods and they lasted far longer! Only 18 hours for first DC and then shorter after that.

I have had two vaginal births, both very different . First one was induced back to back preterm labour, my body was not ready and neither was my baby. It was horrendous, I still remember it now 20 years on. I thought I was going to die, it was that bad, I did eventually get an epidural which took away the pain for the later stages, and I was very grateful for that.

My second birth with a big baby at term was much quicker but undoubtedly the most extreme pain I have ever experienced,

There is a reason women often say “I can’t do this any more” before they actually birth the baby.

I am agog at people saying childbirth was not the most painful thing they have experienced. It’s a huge baby passing down a small channel and exiting an opening that is only just big enough to permit a human head through. On top of that, you have some really extreme muscle contractions to propel thst baby/ head in the right direction.

There must be a selective pressure and biological mechanism toward forgetting labour pain, as otherwise no-one would have more than one child and the human race would have become extinct. If I could have accurately recreated the sheer terror and pain of being in labour, I’m fairly sure I’d never have had sex again. Ever. But I couldn’t, so I did.

First born, I was induced, TENS machine (no help) then epidural, 12 hour labour, ended up in theatre for C-section (which didn’t happen, as I pushed and consultant pulled) daughter born safely weighing 8lb 12oz.
Second, four years later (I knew he was bigger) I suffered severe PSD throughout, after initially being given gas & air, it was taken off me, and the pain was so excruciating I had an ‘out of body experience’ while he was being born, I suffered a ‘Chronic Gracilis tear’, he was 9lb 6oz.
I have had almost continuous pain since - he’s now 21.
I don’t regret either, but, with hindsight, a c-section would have been better, long term, with the second.

I only laboured once, and it was induced and ended in emergency c section, so I don't know how much worse it could have got.

A couple of people have mentioned feeling like their spine was going to snap and that was my experience. I remember in my mind I was in some sort of vice and being pulled and twisted. It wasn't just "pain", it was the feeling of my spine about to snap that was horrendous.

Lots of things went wrong with that one and the did mention afterwards that he was in a very bad position and they think presenting with his face.

I couldn't contemplate having a second for a long time. When I did I absolutely ruled out induction but I wanted a VBAC. In the end it was a planned c section due to medical issues with the baby, so it was an entirely different experience.

This is belittling of people who have experienced obstetric violence and traumatic births, and end up with life changing injuries and long term issues.

I had an easy pregnancy and a straightforward birth, but 2 women in my antenatal class of 10 had a truly horrendous time. One was in labour for about 4 days before they finally delivered by C-section as baby was in so much distress. In the photo she shared with the group, she looked like a barely reanimated corpse. The other had a forceps delivery, resulting in a 3rd degree tear (though she remembers hearing the crew arguing about whether it was a 4th), which got infected multiple times over the following weeks.

So hardly "a few hours of pain". And some women have to go through it all just to deliver a stillborn baby, or a child who dies in the cradle.

Two precipitous labours - second one under an hour and accidentally giving birth at home - but that felt 1000% easier with much better recovery than being forced to remain on a bed with legs in stirrups and episiotomy but ending up with a bad tear anyway. Very slow and painful recovery with everything put down to ‘it’s because you’ve had a baby’ when actually it was because of complications/infection/poor recovery. Both times the stitches were by far the worst part, especially having them redone x3 the second birth. But agree with PP - forget immediately about it and feel SO much better than being heavily pregnant that you get that first contraction and think ‘it couldn’t possibly have been this bad last time or I wouldn’t be doing this again’ ! Also agree with other PPs about kidney stones - had that and genuinely thought I was dying - probably because with labour at least you know why it is! That was probably my worst ever pain.

@TokyoTantrum exactly! Not to mention that some women still die in childbirth, or from complications afterwards!

You said it much better than I did.

I don’t remember much but constant pain and fear last time up until I got the epidural at 5cm. After that I quite enjoyed labour because I could feel just enough for it to be interesting and was lucky not to have any complications.

But the first 10 hours I was really convinced I was dying and I felt like the baby’s head was already through my cervix (even though it definitely wasn’t) and that I couldn’t change position because I would surely kill her, and also like my entire body was being torn apart. And I don’t remember the contractions having any kind of rhythm or rest period - it felt almost constant. Reading about it since I wonder if it was back to back, but the midwives didn’t tell me anything about positioning (or even introduce themselves for that matter).

Currently 36 weeks with DD2 and I’m sort of looking forward to it. I’m really curious to see if expecting the pain and knowing I’m not actually dying will make it any easier to manage, or if I’m just in total denial. I’m going to a different hospital with a better reputation for bedside manner, so hoping that will help too. But of course there’s no way to know what’s going to happen. I want to see if I can make it through without an epidural because I’m curious about what it really feels like to want to push, since the midwives had to tell me when to push last time.

I didn’t forget the pain of childbirth or the horrible nine months of pregnancy, which is why I never went through it again.

One word - horrendous

Completely not joking when I say I have PTSD from the pain. I have not forgotten it. Giving birth was horrific and traumatic. No pain like it. I remember thinking that the gas&air did sod all, and the pethadine I had with my 2nd did very little. Honestly I don't understand why, with all the modern medicine, there is so little available to make the experience more bearable. Perhaps because men think we're exaggerating??

As soon as I had my positive pregnancy test I was certain I wanted an epidural…absolutely no regrets!

I've had two dc both vaginal births.

Both times I would not use the term pain to describe labouring. That I felt was just overwhelming. Complete loss of control. Scary. The worst part. Both times a lot better when in water.

The actual births were not painful, more like a large, hot apple being released.

I was nearly silent throughout both, so get intensely irritated by tv and film portrayls of birth as being a series of screaming fits.

Sunroof club! 😂

I have to say the c section did hurt though! My first I literally thought I had been hit by a bus!

Second I think everything had already been pryed apart so less pain. Both times I don’t think they put my organs back in same place. That’s quite unsettling 😅

Just have an epidural. They help a lot.

I only had one (induced) vaginal birth (due to my second being breech) - 8 hours, with gas and air, and a dose of pethidine going into transition.

It might be a little silly considering it's something all mammals go through, but I felt incredibly strong and powerful for getting through it without screaming or falling to bits, as my pain threshold usually isn't great. It was the worst pain I've ever felt, and yet it was strangely invigorating - combined with no tearing or soiling myself, I was actually really disappointed not to be able to do it with my second, as I'd enjoyed the experience so much.

Perhaps I just had a really strong chemical reaction, with a major adrenaline rush/oxytocin, because I was floating on air for days, whereas after my c section I felt much more emotionally drained and in pain.

Absolutely ridiculous amount of pain. Went on for eleven hours full on labour with the first - even the midwife said you have very strong contractions - exhausted eventually and demanded an epidural which was like the sun coming out.

With the second I wanted to die but it was only three hours.

I don’t believe people who say it wasn’t that bad feel the same level of pain. I couldn’t go in on myself or focus on what I needed to do because I was in ridiculous amounts of pain.

Luckily it stops as soon as the baby is born and you forget what that much pain feels like although you don’t forget that it was bad.

I only remember precisely just how bad it is when I'm in it again! I distinctively remember a point in my second and third labours where I went to myself omg omg I remember this now, why am I here again?!! I'm having a 4th soon, I was admittedly happy knowing I would never have to do this again after the 3rd, but here we are! I can't exactly remember the pain, but I know it is the most awful painful thing I have experienced by a country mile, my labours are always a 24 hour drawn out process where i have vv painful close together contractions for the majority of it, long, slow, painful. I will be very happy to never have to do it ever again this time!

Same here. There isn’t even a word that can describe it. It felt like my mind left my body and the pain completely took over my entire body and mind, to the point where I couldn’t even remember existing outside of that pain.

Both of my labours were extremely fast — I went from 5 cm to fully dilated in just 20 minutes, which probably explains the unbearable intensity of the pain. I remember begging the midwife to just cut the baby out and let me die. And yet, here I am, pregnant with my third baby now.

Even though I got an epidural when I arrived at the hospital, it didn’t have enough time to take effect, so I’m terrified that I’ll have to experience that level of pain again.

I was mostly silent during both births. That was the one thing I felt I could control. Also, screaming takes a lot of energy, and I needed to save every bit of strength I had.

I also used to get frustrated watching birth on tv where someone’s waters break and the baby is born two minutes later, with the woman screaming for 30 seconds. It is so unrealistic, and I think that’s why I was so unprepared for what birth would actually be like.

I’ve had gallstones which were agony. But certainly not more painful than childbirth. Probably on a par. But at least people don’t tell you it’s natural and thousands of people do it when you’re having gallstones pain!