Giving birth hurts, but you can handle it

This is an amazing article about pain in labour and birth, by Karen Fisk. It looks at the topic with a lens that is honest and empowering. I haven’t found this piece in full anywhere online, and I think so many more women should have the opportunity to read it! I’ll paste it here in its entirety [bolding is mine], with full credit to author Karen Fisk, and to Mothering magazine . . . enjoy.

The Transcendent Quality of Pain in Childbirth

by Karen Fisk

Mothering, Spring 1997, pp 57-60

With my new baby at my breast, I turned to a friend who was eight months pregnant and said, “It hurt worse than anything you can imagine.” The male friend who was sitting between us shushed me. “Don’t scare her,” he said under his breath. It, of course, was labor. I had no intention of frightening my pregnant friend with tales of agony. I simply wanted her to know the truth. Giving birth hurts, but she could handle it, and she would have the strength of a survivor to help her move into the next challenge: motherhood.

I had not educated myself enough about labor. I was the first of my friends to have a baby, so birth was a mystery to them. My mother had a forceps birth with an early-labor epidural; she could not really remember how it felt. Despite childbirth classes, I went into labor misinformed.

As I began heavy labor, moving restlessly back and forth from a rocking chair to a crouch position on my living room floor, I was filled with anger at the Lamaze instructors who told me that if I breathed correctly, labor wasn’t going to hurt.

Shrouding information about birth in silence hides the fact that labor and birthing pain is a positive key to transformation. Preparation for and expectation of that pain leads to self-awareness. Thus, birth becomes not only a passage for your child, but a passage for you into instinctual and effective parenting.

A recent study shows that 15 women who had undergone at least one vaginal birth were more tolerant of pain than 27 women who had never given birth. That is, women who experience labor and birthing increase their threshold for pain.¹

It is, however, important to note that although natural childbirth is being reclaimed by women and their midwives, unusual births do occur, births that previously would have resulted in the death of mother or child without modern medical technology. In fact, 10 percent of births needfully culminate in intervention. Self-esteem depends on salvaging the most important truth from your experience: Birth cannot be controlled. It is a mystery.

Not every woman experiences unaided, natural childbirth, yet many women hope for it. To strive for birth as a peak experience – to withstand this “trial by fire” – a woman must learn what labor pain is and be prepared to accept and work with it. And she must also prepare for the unexpected.

Central to coping with pain is learning not to fear it. For one thing, fear decreases levels of oxytocin, a hormone that triggers the uterus to contract. (Nursing mothers may be familiar with the rushes of nurturing joy that oxytocin also triggers.) Secondly, maternal anxiety may limit an infant’s oxygen supply.² Also, if a woman does not feel safe during her labor – if she considers the pain an enemy or a sign of danger – her fears could impede the process of labor.

If we downplay labor pain with the idea of protecting those we love from distress, we’re actually sending expectant mothers into a realm that they have no means to define, accept, or use to their advantage. Women must erect a solid framework of truthful information that includes the many possible scenarios of childbirth experience. But in addition to general knowledge gathered from other women, mothers benefit from knowledge of themselves. Women must be able to respond to the unpredictability of childbirth knowing their own inner resources.³ And, being aware that labor is hard work, women must surround themselves with advocates who can speak for them if they are unable to speak for themselves.

The “pain” of labor is a healthy pain, not the indication of disease or injury, but the body’s signal of preparation for birth.^4,5,6,7 The pain is our rite of passage. Indeed, giving birth can change a woman’s personal belief systems – often paradigm shifts to healthier body- and psyche-centered activities.^8,9 “Birth is the doorway for integration of body and mind,” says Gayle Peterson in An Easier Childbirth.¹⁰ Pain is an integral part of the profound process of transformation from pregnant woman to mother.

Pain has an important function for a culture that is trying desperately to escape discomfort. Pain keeps human in touch with the reality of our mortality: We are consciousness encased in mortal shells. But our physical vulnerability does not preclude invincible will – in fact, dignified suffering makes way for transcendent consciousness.¹¹

Elaine Scarry, in The Body of Pain, refers to childbirth as an “exceptional state of consciousness.” Labor has more to do with the body than with the mind, yet the pain experienced by the physical self is essential for the transcendence of the spiritual self.¹²

Another pain researcher, David Bakan, suggests that labor pain is necessary as the only thing “that can make tolerable the otherwise intolerable separation of . . . a woman from her baby.”¹³ In other words, pain is nature’s way of impelling a woman to release her baby from the safety of the womb into the outside world.

It is well-documented that birth produces endorphins and hormones that increase motherly feelings, and perhaps the actual pain of labor plays a role in this.¹⁴ At the very least, the body’s reaction to the pain allows the mother to remain alert and care for the baby.

Speaking Out

Today we don’t live in an age of silence; we feel free to discuss intimate details of our daily lives. But why is birthing pain legendary and yet still taboo as a subject with pregnant women? We employ euphemisms like “discomfort” and dismiss the anxieties of expectant mothers.¹⁵ We allow ourselves to believe in and promote the myth of painless childbirth.

The fact is that before pregnancy and birth were veiled by Victorian distaste at bodily functions and usurped by doctors who “delivered women of their babies,” cultures freely discussed the experience of childbirth and labor was considered an “unthreatening and fulfilling feminine activity.”^16,17 We need to assuage the anxiety that accompanies the “unknown” by communicating with one another, since women who know what to expect are more likely to have an experience of ecstasy, despite the pain.¹⁸ We need to return to that era of unthreatening natural birth. And finally, we need to comprehend the notion that is widely understood in Mayan culture, that “the laboring woman’s distress is normal and that her suffering will pass, as it did for other women.”¹⁹

In fact, we need to recognize and rejoice fully in the power women gain through birth and “suffering” pain. Paulina Perez, who edited Special Woman: The Role of the Professional Labor Assistant, states, “When a woman births without drugs . . . she learns that she is strong and powerful . . . She learns to trust herself, even in the face of powerful authority figures. Once she realizes her own strength and power, she will have a different attitude for the rest of her life, about pain, illness, disease, fatigue, and difficult situations.”²⁰ Elizabeth Noble, author of Childbirth with Insight, concurs: “The confidence that couples gain through a positive pregnancy and birth experience enables them to raise their child with self-assurance, depending less on professionals and outside experts. Confident parents trust their natural responses and exercise common sense.”^{21,22,23,24,25}

Management of anxiety is essential to a successful birth experience. My pregnant friend needed to hear how my own fear impeded my labor, until my husband’s touch strengthened me and my midwife’s confidence inspired me to have confidence in myself. My friend needed to hear about my feelings of euphoria mingled with travail when seeing my baby for the first time. She needed to know my crying was a rejoicing in the miracle of life. Labor is a powerful life lesson.

Notes

1. E.G. Hapidou and D. deCantanzaro, “Responsives to Laboratory Pain in Women as a Function of Age and Childbirth Pain Experience,” Pain (February 1992).
2. Gayle Peterson, An Easier Childbirth, 1993.
3. Elizabeth Noble, Childbirth with Insight, 1983.
4. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run With Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype, 1992.
5. Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World, 1985.
6. Robbie E. David-Floyd, Birth as an American Rite of Passage, 1992.
7. Adrienne B. Lieberman, Easing Labor Pain: The Complete Guide to Achieving a More Comfortable and Rewarding Birth, 1987.
8. See Note 6.
9. Claudia Panuthos, Transformation Through Birth: A Woman’s Guide, 1984.
10. See Note 2.
11. Ivan Illich, Medical Nemesis: The Expropriation of Health, 1976.
12. See Note 5.
13. David Bakan, Disease, Pain, and Sacrifice: Toward a Psychology of Suffering, 1968.
14. See Note 7.
15. Sheila Kitzinger, Women as Mothers, 1978.
16. Richard W. and Dorothy C. Werz, Lying In: A History of Childbirth in America, 1977.
17. See Note 15.
18. Deborah Tanzer, Why Natural Childbirth?, 1972.
19. Birgitte Jordan, Birth in Four Cultures: A Cross-Cultural Investigation of Childbirth in Yucatan, Holland, Sweden, and the United States, 1978.
20. Paulina Perez, ed., Special Woman: The Role of the Professional Labor Assistant, 1990.
21. See Note 3.
22. See Note 6.
23. See Note 4.
24. See Note 15.
25. See Note 9.