I have been thinking about this since you posted, and truth be told, I'm still not really sure how to answer.

I live with chronic pain each and every day of my life - I've learned to block it out and filter things so that I rarely need pain relief. I found this most useful in early labour - but I was also pretty stressed and anxious as I found myself in labour at 36 weeks and completely unprepared for it.

As things progressed, I did find myself using gas - but only on a very low setting and it was actually more something to help me focus my breathing through each contraction rather than actually doing anything at all... Again, using things I'd figured out when dealing with pain. I often distract myself and try to keep busy.

But later in labour I found myself going from 5cm to pushing in the space of two contractions. A change in position switched things from a slow, posterior labour to a hard and fast labour as Sam changed position with me... I don't think anything could have prepared me for that!

When it came to pushing - the pain of Sam crowning was unlike anything else I'd ever experienced and I had a lot of trouble dealing with that. It was only when I was threatened with an episiotomy that I managed to go through that pain and get him out. I ended up with some nasty tearing from it, but it was necessary as Sam was being strangled by his umbilical cord and they needed him out NOW.

One thing I hadn't thought about was recovery. I find that my condition gives me a VERY slow recovery rate. I was unable to walk for 24 hours after birth - not because of any epidural or anything like that - just simply because I was far too exhausted and drained by what I had been through. On day 10 when we finally left the hospital (it was over Christmas, quiet and a private hospital so when I refused to leave before Christmas without my premature baby, they just let me stay in as a patient until he was ready to go home too) I was still extremely weak and shaky.

I guess in summary - it helped for some parts of labour, didn't help at all for others and left me with a much slower recovery than I ever would have imagined. I can only imagine how long it would have taken me to be ok if I'd had a c-section!

BW