How Painful is Childbirth?

The journey of childbirth is a profound and intense experience. It’s exciting and new, but it can also be one filled with fear and anxiety. One of the most common concerns that arises when helping to prepare new parents for the joy of birth is around the subject of pain.

Because, let’s face it…when we think about giving birth, we all bring to mind those images of a woman on her back in a hospital bed screaming in agony. We’ve all heard those stories from friends and family telling us that birthing a baby is like sh*tting out a watermelon or like breaking every bone in your body.

Some Hypnobirthing practitioners may prefer to shy away from the topic of pain. The theory being that if you don’t think about it, you won’t keep worrying about it and the less anxious you’ll feel about your upcoming birth.

I take a different approach. I like to tackle the subject of pain head on. On a hypnobirthing course with me, we get right into the intricacies of pain, the sensations of birth and how to reframe the way that we see them.

I believe that avoiding the subject of pain altogether can leave you disillusioned and unprepared.

And this is what I’m going to share in this blog post.

So let’s get into it.

What is pain?

Pain is a versatile and intricate sensation that serves as a vital warning system for our bodies. At its core, pain is a signal—a message from our nervous system that something is amiss. It is our body's way of alerting us to potential harm or damage, urging us to take action to protect ourselves.

So for example, if we put our hand on something hot, the signals are sent to our brain which tells us to remove our hand from the source of the heat. This remarkable sensation arises from the complex interplay of nerve signals, neurotransmitters, and brain processing. When tissues are injured or under stress, specialised nerve receptors called nociceptors detect these changes and transmit signals to the brain, where they are interpreted as pain.

Pain is not just a physical sensation; it also encompasses emotional and psychological components. The way that we interpret pain is influenced by our past experiences, beliefs, and emotions. This interweaving of physical and emotional elements makes pain a subjective experience, unique to each individual. And studies have shown that if you EXPECT something to be painful, then you are more likely to experience or note pain when that something occurs.

In essence, pain is a fundamental aspect of our existence, evolved to ensure our survival and well-being. Understanding the nature of pain can help us appreciate its purpose and guide us in managing and coping with it effectively.

In the fantastic book Mindful Birthing, Nancy Bardacke describes three different types of pain. The pain that we feel when we are injured and the pain that we feel when we are unwell are the first two types of pain that she describes where our body is requiring us to take action.

The third type of pain is something that Bardacke describes as transformational pain. This is pain that is just a normal part of some sort of process such as teething or growing pains, and this is the category that labour pain falls into. Something within our body is transforming, which is causing us discomfort…but it doesn’t indicate that something is wrong or needs correcting.

The wonderful thing about transformational pain is that nature usually provides us with some sort of natural pain relief to help us through. So for example for infants who are experiencing teething pain, their mother’s breastmilk is a wonderful source of pain relief. And the same in childbirth, mother nature provides us with our own wonderful, natural pain relief in the form of oxytocin and endorphins.

Is birth painful?

The idea of birth being painful is hugely subjective. What one person describes as really quite painful, somebody else may not consider to be particularly painful at all. More than likely, yes there will be pain. Your body is undertaking a MONUMENTAL task. You are literally working to get an entire person who is inside you, onto the outside.

BUT I’m happy to make a very bold statement here and say that the type of pain you feel during labour, is NOT the agonising, mind-splitting pain that you often hear described. It is intense. It is powerful. But it is not agony (in my experience anyway!)

During a hypnobirthing course, you’ll learn about something that we describe as the FEAR-TENSION-PAIN cycle that was first coined by Dr Grantly Dick-Read in his pioneering book, Childbirth Without Fear. His lifetime of research lead him to discover that women that go into their birth fearing the pain of contractions are less likely to be able to cope with the pain. This is because the fear causes them to become tense, and the tension in their uterus causes the contraction to be more painful. Conversely, the women that went into birth with no pre-conceived ideas of contractions or with a more positive outlook were more able to cope with the pain of contractions. This is because they were more relaxed, which allowed the contractions to perform their functions.

Now, obviously I am not suggesting that if you go into the birth of your baby with happy thoughts and some breathing exercises that your birth will be completely pain free. What I AM suggesting is that if you can use Hypnobirthing to recondition your brain to be less afraid of birth and the pain that comes with it, you can learn to relax during your contractions and SURRENDER to them. This will make them far more pleasant and, to quote a recent client of mine “doable”.

What happens during a contraction?

Your uterus is made up of several layers of muscle. It’s incredibly intricate. During a contraction, there are two layers that are mainly used. The outer layer consists of vertical muscles that go up and over the top of the uterus. The inner layer consists of horizontal muscles that go around the uterus.

During a contraction, the outer layer of muscle will contract and bunch up, all the way to the top of the uterus. It stays contracted for about 5 or 6 seconds, and then begins to release again.

While the outer layer of muscle is bunching up, the inner layer of horizontal muscles are moving outwards, and it is this action that slowly over the course of the first stage of labour opens your cervix.

Usually a contraction will last about a minute. There’s quite a common misconception that once labour starts, you’re in constant pain for the duration of your labour. This isn’t true at all. You only feel pain during contractions. In between contractions, you feel COMPLETELY normal and there isn’t any pain at all. I always tell my Hypnobirthing clients to enjoy the minutes in between your contractions. They are GLORIOUS!

At the beginning of your labour, contractions come sporadically, perhaps every 20 or 30 minutes. And they may be quite mild sensations. As your labour progresses, your contractions will become stronger and closer together.

Usually a contraction lasts for about a minute. A contraction can be described as sort of like a wave. It starts off small, builds and builds and builds, reaches a crescendo and then drops away again. It’s during that peak, or crescendo of the contraction that you’ll be feeling the strongest sensations and remember, this peak only lasts for about 5 or 6 seconds before flowing away again.

So let’s do a little bit of “contraction maths”

Let’s say that for the first 6 hours of labour, you’re getting a contraction every 20 minutes. That’s 18 contractions.

Then, perhaps things ramp up a bit so for the next 6 hours you’re getting 3 contractions in every 10 minutes. So that’s around 108 contractions.

Then let’s imagine that for the next hour you’re getting a contraction every 2 minutes. That’s 30 contractions.

After that, you may go into transition which is the most challenging part of your labour, this may last around 15 minutes with contractions coming every 2 minutes again. So let’s say 7 contractions.

After transition, your contractions will change as you start to feel the urge to push. Rather than tight or painful, you’ll feel a pressure and the urge to bear down which will bring you relief.

So that means that over the course of a roughly 14 hour labour, you’d have maybe 163 contractions. That means that over the course of 14 hours, you’d only be in pain for around 163 minutes, with massive gaps in which to rest in between. This to me, sounds far more “doable” than the constant pain I believed I would be in when I was preparing for my first birth!

And if we break it down a little bit further, we know that the most, the absolute maximum amount of pain that you’ll be in, will be at the peak of those waves (contractions) which last for around 5 or 6 seconds. That means that over the course of a 14 hour labour, you may only experience the absolute MAXIMUM pain sensations for around 16 minutes! With massive gaps in between in which to rest! That sounds amazing!

Now, obviously don’t take this description of labour as gospel because every single person’s labour is very, VERY different. I did these very rough, quick calculations based on my own labours which were both about 12-14 hours.

But you get my point. However long your labour is, you will NOT be in agony constantly for that whole time. You get these amazing gaps in between your contractions where you feel completely normal. I encourage my clients to focus on those gaps. Look forward to those gaps.

And remember that once a contraction is done, it’s done. You never have to do that contraction again. And you are one contraction closer to meeting your baby.

Is it possible to have a pain free natural birth?

So, is it possible to get through labour without experiencing any pain? Again, the idea of pain is hugely subjective.

But yes, I do believe it is possible to get through labour without experiencing pain. Why do I think this? Well…because I describe my second birth with my daughter as pain-free. The sensations that I felt during that labour were powerful, they were intense, they were really hard work. But honestly I’ve never described those sensations as painful. They’re certainly not in the same category as breaking a bone or burning yourself (both of which I have done!).

Something that really helped me during my labour was changing the way I was viewing contractions. I deliberately didn’t think of them as causing me pain. Instead, I described them as POWER.

Did you know that at the height of a contraction once you’re in established labour, the muscles in your uterus are creating around 60lbs of pressure. That’s roughly the same amount of pressure needed to crush a watermelon! That’s your body doing that!

Knowing this fact meant that during a contraction, instead of thinking “wow this really hurts”, I was thinking “wow my body is so incredibly powerful!” and I loved it!

Does Hypnobirthing make birth pain free?

There are some descriptions of Hypnobirthing I’ve come across where women have been lead to believe that if they practise their hypnobirthing enough, nail the breathing exercises and the visualisations that their birth will be pain free. They’re basically lead to believe that if they felt pain then they “did it wrong”.

If this happened to you, then I am sorry. That wasn’t fair. It’s not okay to mislead someone in that way.

Because no, Hypnobirthing is not pain relief and we shouldn’t pretend that it is.

A more accurate way to describe hypnobirthing is as a coping strategy or acceptance. Accepting that the pain WILL happen and that it has a function, a purpose, a role is a much more productive way of changing your mindset than trying to get rid of the pain…which won’t happen unless you opt for pharmaceutical pain relief.

Hypnobirthing will help you to surrender to your contractions. Allowing them to happen and wash over you. As you learned earlier, tensing up and fighting your contractions will make them worse, and will potentially prolong your labour.

Hypnobirthing also gives you the confidence to know that you CAN cope with pain and that you CAN do hard things.

I asked one of my past Hypnobirthing clients, Rachel how she would describe the pain of childbirth and she gave me a very honest answer:

“So I would say that childbirth was the most painful thing I've ever experienced... but hear me out here, because that's not the whole story and not meant to scare anyone. My first I had a water birth and the water was an amazing help, with a little gas & air which for me personally didn't have muct effect but did give me something to focus on…My second was a dry land completely unmedicated birth and it was painful, but manageable and... actually... both were absolutely amazing! I focused on my breathing and that was all I needed, THAT was the best pain relief. Oxytocin is incredible, do not underestimate it! For me personally (and every experience and situation is different which I completely respect), it was magical to let my body birth my babies and be able to feel and have control over that, then have babies born with no medication in their system. The pain was intense... but not what I had expected from horror stories heard growing up. I was in control and hypnobirthing gave me that”

Natural methods of pain relief

So to finish off this article I’m going to share with you my top 3 natural methods of pain relief (or comfort measures) to use during labour. I share these tips and LOADS more with all of my hypnobirthing clients and they all get amazing results at helping these lovely women cope with the sensations of labour.

1. Water

   Labouring and giving birth in a birthing pool is probably the most effective natural form of pain relief there is. The feeling of relief when you get into the warm water is just indescribable. Often, midwives describe that babies born into water are calmer and make a better transition to the world than babies born on land. Most hospitals and birth centres are equipped with birth pools these days. If you’re birthing at home, it is very easy to buy your own pool or hire one like I did!

2. Aromatherapy

   Using essential oils during birth is becoming increasingly more popular. There are lots of essential oils that are safe to use during pregnancy and birth that have been used for centuries for calming and pain relief. You can read a blog post of mine all about the use of lavender during labour here.

3. The Comb

   Across the palm of your hand, you have a pressure point. During your contractions, you can use a simple wooden comb to squeeze in your hand which triggers this pressure point and relieves the sensation of contractions (or at least distracts you from it!). You can buy wooden combs that are specifically designed to activate this pressure point such as the Yuula Comb.

So after reading that, I hope you feel a little bit more confident about your upcoming birth and that you know you’ll be able to ride the waves of birth with ease.

Remember that every single pregnancy journey and birth is different and unique to you.

All my love,

Ellie xx