Yikes!!! Did you and your friend who was a nurse report Nurse Bad Day and make her have an even Worse Day? Because withholding pain meds is unethical.

Exactly… I used HypnoBabies and it can be amazing. Only pain I had was when I panicked a little during transformation.

To a point… my first birth, I wasn’t really afraid, but I did have an expectation of pain (I was well prepared, had a great toolbox of coping techniques, etc, but I figured it wouldn’t feel great). As it turned out, I felt pressure and what I can only describe as “intensity,” but the only two times I felt what I would call “pain” were when I was trying to breathe through pushing contractions (because I wasn’t in pain, so I clearly hadn’t gone through transition yet, and anyway I’d “just” been checked and was only 6cm, ROFL), and when my placenta was FORCED out afterward because they were concerned about infection (I had the Martian Death Flu, but it wasn’t related to the pregnancy/baby/uterus/etc at all).

My second birth, also no fear, and an expectation of no pain, based on my first birth. It would be a piece of cake, right? Well, it got downright uncomfortable toward the end (I still wouldn’t have said “painful”) when I was complete with no urge to push for over two hours, probably due to a very round large waterbag of steel.

My third birth, I didn’t think too much about it, but for the first time, I experienced what I would describe as “pain,” and a rather difficult transition (that lasted maybe 25 minutes). Strange.

I’ve decided to use HypnoBabies for my fourth birth this coming spring, largely because I feel like I’m way too much in my head in many ways (mostly not related to the birth), and I’d like to improve my internal relaxation practices. I still laugh when I look at some of the pictures from my third birth. I was in transition in the pool, on my hands and knees, rocking and moaning through each contraction. It was the hardest thing I ever did, and I didn’t think I was doing a good job relaxing. In the pictures of those transition contractions, my face is perfectly smooth, my eyes closed, my jaw slack. You’d look at it and think, “there’s someone who knows how to handle transition!” I’d like to feel that way inside, too, next time.

My first labor felt exactly like food poisoning–apparent intestinal cramps, sick at both ends, the works. I didn’t feel anything in my uterus until I was at the pushing stage, and then it was, well, push-pain. Lifting something heavy is uncomfortable too. Crowning stung like hell for a couple of minutes–the only time during the entire labor when I was hollering OWW OWWW YEOWCH–but actually getting the baby out felt like something I had never felt before. It was as though I had been itching right inside there for so long that I had stopped noticing it until the baby’s shoulders passing through scratched that itch. Such profound satisfaction!

My last labor was similar. I experienced pressure but no actual pain until I hit transition at ninety miles an hour. Even then it wasn’t horrible, “kill me right now” pain. My daughter was born about ten minutes later.
The funny part was that the nurses had just been in to tell me that according to my mood and labor pattern I was not in active labor. (I was being induced due to pre eclampsia and had received cervidil). I was just not in enough pain to be in labor.
My water broke as they were telling me all this.

I guess my daughter didn’t realize I wasn’t in labor?

I felt no pain until transition (and very manageable then) with my second. To such a degree that, had my waters not leaked a bit, we might not have made it to the hospital in time as I didn’t even feel most of my contractions happening until just before I (think I) hit transition. Then I felt them – they hurt a little bit – but had I not known I was already a 6 when admitted, I’d've figured that was “active labor” not “transition”…and waited for an hour of it before going in. Or rather, I’d've realized what a bad idea that was when the urge to push hit, because he was in my arms about an hour and ten after I started feeling contractions, 50 minutes after they started hurting. Heh.

I so agree with this! Yes, many women will feel some pain in labor, and it’s generally intense even when it’s not painful, but to be perfectly honest, I’ve had ankle sprains and food poisoning that were a LOT worse than any labor I’ve ever had.

I once banged my (dodgy) knee & it hurt so much that whinged about it for DAYS (I couldn’t walk properly for a week). 36 hours of labour? Intense? Yes. Tiring? Yes. Painful? Not in the slightest until we transferred to hospital where they made me get on my back, started yanking on the cord & shoving large suppositories up you-know-where!

Control. They can’t give a woman a pain-free labor without medications with side effects. Which means that admitting it is possible to have one means there is something desirable (at least to most of their patients) that they cannot accomplish, that can only happen or not happen on its own.

I think also they’re afraid that someone who wants a natural birth and is trying to deal with the pain in those ways may lose their ability to cope at a bad moment and have a difficult time (or “be a difficult patient”), which is a mistake partially based in the fact that they think the woman *expects* a pain-free birth. That’s a guess, but I got a very good response at my most recent (as in they all relaxed), when I said, “I’m not looking forward to pain, but I’d rather hurt than wonder if we could’ve done more for my son if I was able to move around.” The acknowledgement that I expected pain (or at least the possibility of it) seemed to help.

Either that or being a martyr is just more acceptable than being a strong woman. Either way, if it meant they didn’t flutter around me, I figure it was a good thing.

(And, while there was some pain, there wasn’t actually as much as I’d expected. In part because I’d been worried about my firstborn’s experience, including a stuck shoulder and a third-degree tear. This labor went a lot better…maybe because I was walking/moving right up until pushing, maybe because #2 was just a bit lower weight and with narrower shoulders.)

*hugs* that is awful treatment! I’m so sorry.

See, it is stuff like this that makes me wonder how people can say, “You should just trust your doctors to know what is right! Be more compliant!!!” And mean it.

I’m only asking because I’m really curious- What are the religious reasons you are against hypnosis? I’ve heard that before, but I’ve never gotten an explanation.