This question came up during a previous Childbirth Conversation gathering I had, and it is a really good one. During the gathering people answered this question from their experience, but no one could really answer the question.
Why?
There are as many answers as there are women who have had babies.
Labor is unique to each woman and in many ways unique to each birth. One of my friends, when she found out about the first Childbirth Conversation gathering I was having, she told me to tell the women there that it was the worst pain of your life. At the gathering I passed along her message, but then promptly said, “But that may not be true for you!”
With my first baby, it was not the worst pain of my life. Not even close! I had severe menstrual cramps growing up, so for me it was like a period that got a little more intense at the end when I needed to push. I gave birth and immediately thought, “Let’s do it again!” My second baby was very similar and happened so fast I didn’t even have time to hurt. In fact, my post partum pain was far worse than my labor.
It was not until my fifth that I would have described what I felt as pain, and that labor was vastly different in many ways. My seventh baby was positioned wrong in my uterus and so that labor was also more painful as his head pressed into my pelvic bone.
Though six of the eight were very similar, none were the same!
Some women have dull aches in the front of their abdomen. Other women have sharp pains throughout their abdomen, perineum and back. Still other women have intense back pain. And every woman feels it differently. Therefore, unfortunately, I cannot tell you exactly what labor feels like. I can only tell you what labor feels like for me.
How about you? Share how you experienced labor.