Realistic Labor Pain Description For Men

Let me start, rather than end like most women, by saying that it's all worth everything to bring a new life into the world.  I could go on forever about that, but that's another topic. Also, everyone's experience is totally different, so I will only describe my own.

One night my husband and I were watching TV and I must have looked restless to him. He asked what was wrong and I said nothing, but that I was timing. He said, "Timing...what?" I said, "Hopefully just a horrible stomachache." (because it was a little early yet.) It wasn't, but later he asked me with sadness in his face, "Aw, honey, is it really like a horrible stomachache?" (If he has a twinge, he's dying.) All I could say at that moment was, "Well...it starts out that good." But that got me trying to put the whole thing into realistic words too.

Now, have you ever had a stomachache so bad that if the pain  won't go away, you just want to crawl into bed and double over? I'm thinking like gas pain, that kind of low, deep, sharp, dark pain. Imagine being in the throes of the worst bout of that you've ever had.

This is where many women exaggerate or get dramatic and say it's 50 or 100 times that. I have a high pain tolerance and only dilated to a 6 before having an emergency C-section. On the other hand, I had pitocin, which intensifies the contractions. But I would say for me, realistically, it was more like 15-20 times that worst stomachache. But it gets stronger and harder with each contraction. For me, it started deep and low and radiated to about the navel. So only the bottom half of my belly hurt. I had pain and discomfort in other places too, back, legs, etc. But the massive pain was concentrated in the lower belly.

So I understand why lots of people scream during labor but I didn't. It affected me the other way. I couldn't talk or even really move. So each time I felt a contraction coming on, I would get into the position I wanted and brace myself. Even though I couldn't really move, I still felt like I was writhing in uncontrollable, agonizing, excruciating pain.

It may be a comfort to a new mom or her husband that although I can remember the words for the pain, I can't really imagine the actual, physical feelings very well any more. And I'm trying to. Part of the reason for getting this all down is that we're trying for another one and I'm trying to prepare myself by remembering.