Labor and Birth

[StrawberryMumma]

I was expecting to squeeze DH's hand and break his fingers/ swear like a trooper and say "you did this to me, don't touch me!" but I was somehow pleasant and kept appologising to the midwife!

lol I was the same! I thought I would get really angry but it didn't happen.

And on the 'how the hell could it be less painful' thing, I can't say how, it just was. That's not playing it down, or being unrealistic, that's just my own feelings. It's not saying it wasn't painful, and afterwards it did take a lot to get over the intensity of the contractions and what had just happened but it was better then I expected. I didn't have any pain relief, and laboured at home for most of it. Being at home was the key for me.

[Emma1979]

yeah next time i plan to labour for as long as poss at home too.

[s361768]

Birth can be extremely traumatic especially if there is hospital staff around that dont give a toss about you.

The birth of my first son was not what I expected, I walked into it blindly and unprepared (I read one book and that was "what to expect when expecting" (an incredibly medicalized version of birth that recommends the "best odds diet" for everything), not a great read for a first timer.

My son was posterior, so it was an incredibly painful labour and I spent the whole ten hours of it asking my partner to kill me. The hospital staff were cruel and said and did some pretty cruel things.
I was only 20 (so just a baby myself really). I was left in stirrups for an hour, didn't get a bath for quite some time or to see my son until 9.00 at night after I birthed him at 2.30 in the afternoon. When I asked to hold him the nurse said no even though they had already resussed him and she was back in the room with him talking to the nurse, then she took him and he went up to intensive care nursery.

The wards were crammed full of beds and I kept hitting my head and feet in my tiny little cubicle. No midwifes helped with baby bathing etc or feeding. Asked for discharge next day and was only allowed to go if I bottle fed because I had not established breast feeding yet. Hope the RBWH has changed since then (I think the wards don't have so many beds in them anymore, or so I have heard).

So no my first birth experience was not at all what I expected but through the PND afterwards that is what I thought that I deserved.

[nic]

For me, the pushing and contractions were far less painful than I imagined. I use to have period pain worse than that of contractions, though I did have some gas.

The pain from it ending in an emergency c/s, hurt.

Nic

[ruby_8084]

it wasnt what i expected as i trully expected it to happen natuarlly (was induced) but the induction wasnt as bad as everyone told me would be!!! (never listen to what other ppl say
!!) but yes it was painfull but looking back its hard to descibe the type of pain and intensity as once i had dd i kinda forgot IYKWIM... but i remember wishing it would hurry up and be over

[paradise lost]

My labour was really weird to me. I had a homebirth.

When should i count "labour" from? My waters broke at 3am and ctx began right away, about 12-15mins apart, but they didn't hurt, i could just feel them. I dozed until about 7 or 8am then started to get the labour stuff ready. They continued until i went for a walk at about 9.30am, and then moved up to every five minutes and a bit breathtaking, but being still and breathing deeply through the peak of them was all i needed to do to cope with them. That was about 11am. At midday i felt like it was beginning to get a bit more "real" and i got in the bath which felt great as DD was a bit posterior and her head was giving me backache on the right side all the time and the hot water REALLY helped.

From about 2pm i was moaning softly through ctx and i'd say that was when labour in the sense of me having to work at integrating each and every ctx began. At 2.30pm i was checked and was 2-3cm and 50% effaced. I was a bit gutted, despite telling myself not to think about numbers.

I got out of the bath at about 3pm and did a few contractions walking about and it got REALLY hard to integrate them. It wasn't that they were too painful, more too intense, or overwhelming. The sensations felt really strong and if i didn't concentrate to keep relaxed i felt like i was drowning in them. I got a bit panicky then and told XP i'd have to go for an epidural in hospital as i couldn't cope lol. I'd been feeling "pushy" from 1pm, the MW said it was because she was a bit posterior and pressing on my sacrum and not to push. At about 4ish i got on my knees and chest for a ctx and i'd read it could help keep a posterior head off the sacrum and the pushing urge was getting really strong then. Well the pushing feeling got really major and i did push and i pooped and felt a deep searing pain. It was really painful that contraction.

After that i sat on a chair, facing backwards and mooed and then roared through the peaks to stop myself pushing again. The midwives came back at 4.20 and found me like that and gave me gas and air to suck on at about 5pm. That didn't make it hurt less because it didn't really hurt in a normal sense and it didn't make it less intense either BUT the mouthpiece made this great loud "click" when you inhaled and it helped me keep my breathing calmer so i only had to drop it to roar through the peaks for the longer ones (they were 90-120 seconds long and 3 mins apart by then). If i had my labour over again i'd get them to just give me the mouth piece and not the actual gas.

I never got a 2nd stage. That really surprised and shocked me. I was expecting a pushing stage because especially with a first baby everyone i know had to push for at least 40 minutes, usually more like 60+. I did feel my 1st stage was going on a bit by then and it had been hours since i'd been really scared (transition, but i didn't know it) and since the big pain when i was on my knees (DD coming into the birth canal, but i didn't know that either). I was beginning to think i was mad when the MW sent me to pee and with a great cracking burning she came through my bones while i was on the loo and crowned. Luckily i waddled back to the bed with her crowning between ctx and birthed her there with the MW's. I distinctly remember holding her a few minutes later and wondering WHEN they were going to let me push. My eyes could see her, my body knew she was there and went on with the 3rd stage, but my brain just couldn't register that she was out already.

As far as pain goes it wasn't anything LIKE as painful as i thought it'd be. My ctx felt like a chinese burn at my cervix and that was it, i never got pain higher up or anywhere else and the back pain from her head was annoying but not as bad as when i had my second miscarriage. If i'm honest there were only 2 moments when i can say it was really painful, when i was on my knees and her head began to descend and when i was sat on the loo and she crowned. The rest of it was very manageable and if i'd been pushing when my body was trying to make me push i definitely wouldn't have taken any gas, although in fact i didn't ask for it, the MW just gave it to me.

Both of my miscarriages hurt more than labour and the second one especially, as i felt it in my back, even though i was so early on (tested BFP at 4wks, BFN at 5wks, began to bleed a week later). I think some of that is psychological though as i was utterly miserable my baby had died and the pain felt hateful - it was expelling my baby when it wasn't supposed to, i was fighting it all the way. In labour there was always my big kicking baby reminding me what it was all about and at 11 days past the EDD i was SO excited to finally meet her.

I once twisted my ankle and tore the ligaments at one side, and that was the worse pain of my life, much much worse than my labour pains. I also once chipped my arm bone just below the elbow, that was worse too.

Pain response is so individual and labile (changeable). Like expelling my barely-there baby from my 2nd m/c was more painful than getting my almost-8lb baby out because i felt angry, upset, scared and lonely during my m/c and i was well-supported during my labour. And i went around for 4 days with a broken wrist once, so i think my pain response is not middle-of-the-road. Our pain responses are formed when we're tiny infants by sensation and response, the nerve paths are formed when we're not aware of such things. For people that found labour to be so agonising it was traumatic - i don't think that labour doesn't hurt, just that MY labour didn't hurt ME. My SIL had an indiction so painful and traumatising that she still can't talk about it 5 years on, and a 2nd, normal labour that with a bit of peth she described as "easy, almost fun!". So what a difference circumstance can make. I wasn't braver than anyone, it just did not hurt me that much.

What a novel! As usual....

Bx

[sconeonamission]

Could have been the peth, but could have also been due to fact my body was tired and needed build up energy. If we're counting labour from the moment my water broke, it started at 1am... and who the hell is prepared for labour to start in the middle of the night. I'd been out all day and was exhausted.

[Neenee Jellybeanie]

No, it wasn't.

I kept reading that "the first part of labour is usually easy, the contractions may be unnoticeable or you might be able to sleep through them." HA! I was begging for pain relief at 1cm, though I had horrible midwives through my labour and I think that was a big part of it. I was more scared than anything, they knew that (my partner harrassed them for ages to help us and they told him that i was scared and that HE needed to somehow calm me down), and didn't bother to even speak to me. They just told me to go away into the bath until things had progressed further.

Next time, I am having a homebirth because my first hospital experience was awful. I'm still upset and angry about it 4 months later.

[Heaven]

Interesting thread!! Would be good to hear more responses!

[Crystalwings]

Nothing like I expected and am still traumatised 3mths on.
I thought I knew what I was in for as I had done heaps of reading, anti-natal classes etc but it was soooo much more full on then I expected and I also wasn't expecting to labour for 50hrs of with bubs in a posterior position and have to have a forceps delivery, loads of stitches, a massive blood loss. I was actually really excited for the first day which I wasn't expecting but once I got taken to a larger hospital by ambulance and put on syntocin felt really out of control. I'm so glad I had my mum and DH cause they were my rocks and were a great support to each other. I was also expecting to be screaming but was quite calm most of the time and I think that kept baby calm through our ordeal. I also wasn't expecting the pushing stage to last for 2hrs and for it to feel like I needed to go to the toilet. Oh god I hope it's easier next time, DH said the other day "next time can you just get a ceaser after 10hrs cause that was really traumatic!"
Your friggin telling me! In saying that I am glad I have experienced it and feel like i'm part of some secret mothers covern that nobody tell you about until after.

[Roryrory]

When I first became pregnant I was quite terrified at the prospect of giving birth. My DH was against us using an OB (he said the species wouldn't have survived so long if birth was so dangerous that we needed OBs to help us) but I insisted.

Then I started reading BB more and went to one of Rhea Dempsey's classes - and I got scared of using my OB in a private hospital LOL!!!

My first son's birth was quite medicalised thought I did it without pain relief or forceps. I pushed a posterior baby out while lying on my back. So the pain was worse than I expected because I was in such a dumb position.

Labour pain was quite bearable for me though, I got to 9cm dialated before I got to hospital (after 7 hours of labour at home)

[Julie Doula]

It is interesting the role expectations have on what happens at birth.

I was 30 when I had my first baby.

In my pre-natal class, we had to draw pictures of what we thought labour would be like. Most women drew picture of being sawed in half, lightening rods hitting their abdomen - the pictures looked like the torture on the rack.

The ante-natal teacher had loaned me a copy of Ina May Gaskin's 'Spiritual Midwifery' and my head was full of stories of women having 'rushed', feeling the love, and all kinds of warm fuzzy concepts.

My picture was of waves on the ocean. I felt so silly and naive compared to the others, my picture stood out like a sore thumb.

Everyone in our group of 10 couples had caesareans except for one super-fit woman - and me. (I had mine at home, and a birth pool featured strongly through my labour.)

I've always wondered about that 'expectation' thing.

But also, I had an insider's knowledge of how women are routinely treated in hospitals during birth, as a result of my nursing background. I knew enough to know that being in a hospital would not suit me, so I chose homebirth, where I thought I'd have more freedom, control and respect. Had I been in a hospital, I may well have ended up as a primip c/s too (or an instrumental vaginal birth and a dose a birth trauma.) I had about 36 hours of contractions all up, the others were getting ceasered after about 16 hours, which is hardly a fair go for a primip.

I was speaking to a woman yesterday at a Blessingway for one of my clients. She attended a birth preparation session at her Yoga class. They had to discuss their fears. She said she was looking forward to giving birth and had no fears (she's planning a homebirth). The others looked at her strangely. They spoke a lot about interventions and emergencies. She said one woman is a theatre nurse. She has witnessed hundreds of caesareans and only three vaginal births. How does that influence her with respect to her expectations for her own birth?

I interveiwed a pharmacologist during my doula training, who told me that as a student, she's witnessed a forceps delivery with the woman in stirrups. All the students had to witness one birth and that's the one she got assigned. She was so traumatised my this, that when she was pregnant, she told her obstetrician she wanted a c/s under general, and why, and he complied with her wishes.

Expectations are powerful things indeed. i have heard that they show some pretty upsetting births at some hospital pre-natal classes. I think viewing some normal, gentle and unhindered births can make a huge difference in women's consciousness about what is possible and what they deserve ... what they can hope for ... Check out these births - a picture tells a thousand words.