Earth Babies Blog

This is probably the biggest fear factor when it comes to birth – just how sore is it going to be??
Once that little baby is in there this thought consumes you – I think every mother has that moment of realisation and blind panic that now that baby is in – it has to come out – “turn back the clocks!”.
It is probably for this reason that pregnancy becomes so uncomfortable towards the end, so that you can reach that space where you no longer care whether birth is painful or not – you just want baby out.

Here is a clip from 60secDoulas discussing this topic –
it is not all positive but honest in that it reflects how subjective labour is (for some it is painful and for others not).
Because of this and because each experience is so individual and contractions felt in so many different ways it is a very difficult thing to try and explain in words. Even when painful though, it is a positive pain – it is not one you pull away from but work with and the results are a beautiful gift of life.

There is always the comparison of the pain of natural birth vs ‘no pain’ of a c-section but in reality both forms bring some experience of pain – we just never when choosing think of the time after the birth but only of the moments of getting baby out. The one may bring pain for the hours during labour and the other is for the days, weeks of recovery after surgery.

From my own personal births I had one where I will be honest, in the moment it was painful, overwhelming and just plain unpleasant (however minutes after giving birth I was already planning my next waterbirth – so maybe it was not that bad afterall!?).
I was a lot more afraid second time around because now I KNEW what was to come and then I went in to labour naturally (first one was induced), gave birth and it was all so underwhelming compared to what i had anticipated. Second time I cannot remember one moment where I felt ‘this is too much’ or ‘I cannot do this’ or ‘it is so sore’ (I remember those phrases playing on loop first time around). I do remember clearly saying within seconds of of birthing “Gosh if they are all this easy I will have 10 more”.

Our birth story today is raw and honest – one of those where the mom is overwhelmed but like every mom the day after it is a distant memory and she is already thinking about next time.

In antenatal classes they spoke of the fear, tension, pain cycle – where because of fear your body fills with stress and your muscles tense and this increases the experience of pain. There are ways and things you can do to be better mentally prepared which drops the emotional stress of birth which lessens the physical pain of labour and birth – we will cover this over the next few weeks.

A similar question was asked here – the replies make interesting reading, some are honest, some ignorant and some just plain funny.

Previous blog – Walking or Being upright can shorten labour without complication

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