Scared and disgusted of pregnancy

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So was I and the doctors were amazed and acted like it was something unusual. I thought "don't all mothers read about it when they are expecting so they know what to do?" I realize now I was probably extreme with it like a typical aspie and the doctors were so impressed how much I knew. Then I lost interest in it after I had my baby.

I'm not saying it wasn't interesting to learn all the facts about pregnancy. It was. I just mean that, once you learn all the horrible things you will have to endure and all the side effects and things that could go wrong, it makes you feel more afraid of pregnancy and childbirth, not less.

Example: did you know that when the baby comes out, if its head comes out at a certain angle, it can break your tailbone?

There you are, in agony with all the pains of giving birth, and now to top it all you have a snapped tailbone. Ouch.

That is just ONE of the horrible facts I learned about childbirth when researching it. There are loads more.

Here is a video animation of childbirth in which you can clearly see the tailbone being bent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xath6kOf0NE

Whether or not it was actually considered broken in that animation, I have no idea, but it certainly bends! Also the part where the animation is showing the baby's head opening up the cervix to such a massive size just looks unbelievably painful. I mean, the hole in my cervix is about the size of a pencil lead. To open it up that much would freaking HURT!

If you get an epidural, it numbs you down there and you don't feel a thing. You still feel the contractions but you feel nothing down there. Some women don't feel them at all. I didn't feel them for three hours. But doctors told me they were amazed how well it worked and they said they got me in the right spot when they inserted it in my spine.

Some of this stuff also grossed me out when I was learning about it. It just made me want to avoid all childbirth stories like a plague.

I guess I was more of the mindset that I'd be playing the odds. And odds are that if you have a normal pregnancy, you'll have a normal birth, especially in a developed country. /shrug

I had an epidural both times and it was AWESOME. And yes, it's probably best to avoid the birth horror stories, especially since every birth is different and you don't know what yours will be like until you get there. I didn't think it was that bad, once I got pain relief. But I'm also a person that doesn't get grossed out by blood and bodily fluids. They gave me a mirror while I was giving birth to my second baby so I could see him emerge and that was so cool. Certainly not for everyone though, it was very...messy.

But pregnancy and childbirth are the easy part. The hard part comes when the baby is out.

^Some women get competitive about it and see you as soft if you get an epidural. I knew one woman who was like 'I didn't even have oxygen! Aren't I amazing!'

Yes, the competitive/judgemental moms...it's not just what kind of birth they had, they do it with other things too: breastfeeding, circumcision, attachment parenting, cloth diapering, "babywearing", co-sleeping, vaccinations, I could go on and on. Best to ignore them and do your own research as to what's best for you and your family. But I digress. If the pain worries you, the epidural rocks.

It´s hard for me to believe that when you get the injection of the epidural, you won´t be feeling a thing during the labour. You really did not feel ANYTHING? I don´t say you lie, I believe you, but maybe you have a high treshold of (feeling) pain. I just can´t bvelieve that anybody would give a birth to a child and would not feel anything. It must hurt you at least a bit! Or doesn´t it? I just simply CAN´T IMAGINE IT.

I also watched the baby come out of me I wished I had the movie camera for it. I had my husband take some pictures but he didn't take any of him coming out. He also took one right after he came out of me. I also saw myself down there after he came out of me and I wasn't grossed out by that either. He cried when he was halfway out of me. Right when his head popped out, he started crying and the doctor reached in there and pulled the rest of him out. I still remember those feelings I felt inside me when they put him on my chest. Just something I never felt before and it was a good feeling. It even felt like a dream.

How is it hard when the baby is out?

Oh yes I remember those in the groups at babycenter and some women say we are wussies when we get an epidural. Well tell that to someone who has had a miscarriage and had to have their uterus cleaned out by having everything get sucked out of it and they didn't even bother putting you to sleep for it. So the pain was tremendous worse than a 10 and they tell you "now you know how labor feels but it feels worse." Talk about trauma there and not wanting to go through it again so you ask for an epidural.

Honestly going through labor and childbirth wasn't even worse than what I experienced but if it weren't for the epidural, I may have experienced it.

No you don't. That is why they give it to you when you ask for it. But you do feel sore down there after you have had the baby. The drug wears off after they take the tubes out of you where the medicine was entering your body. They give you pain medicine for it to keep the pain down and you are sore down there for about two weeks. They also give you these pads that you wear and you bend them and bam they go cold and you wear them down there to help with the swelling down there. I am sure it's different for all women so I am only speaking from my experience.

While I don't share the OP's fear of pregnant women, I'm often horrified by the idea of childbirth. I feel frightened when I see images or hear the sound of women giving birth, to the point where it can make me panic. My mother's a midwife, so she often watches documentaries about pregnancy and childbirth; even when I'm overhearing them from another room, it sometimes stresses me out so much that I ask her to turn the volume down or put it off.

My issue probably stems from the fear of becoming pregnant myself: it scares me to think that my body's capable of carrying a child, and that I might have to go through the same pain these other women are experiencing if that ever happened.

I'm only 20 and I don't have any children, so I can't say I have any experience in the matter. I would, however, like to have them someday. I'm not afraid of being pregnant, but I am definitely afraid of childbirth. From what I know, it seems pretty awful.

I don't like to talk about my experience of childbirth, in a thread started by someone who is afraid of pregnancy and would like to get over that fear. However, I must say that I had the type of labour associated with the most pain, which regularly results in the mother requring an epidural and/or a c-section. It's pretty rare for women to suffer as much pain as I did. My labour was back to back and induced. My baby ended up being delivered with forceps and I required an episiotomy. I didn't have an epidural, not because I wanted to be 'strong', it was because it was too late to get one, by the time I felt I really needed it. I survived on gas and air and a shot of morphine, neither of which did anything for the pain, probably due to my responses to meds.

Would I go through it all again? Yes, in a heartbeat. It was very painful, but gallstones were worse and lacking in the tremendous joy at the end. If my type of labour is just about as painful as it gets, then I'd say childbirth for most isn't that bad. But, I'd have opted for an epidural, had I known that a back to back and induced labour was going to be so painful.

If you feel anything at all it's pressure. I felt the pressure of the contractions and the pressure on my cervix, but NO PAIN. Once they take the epidural out and it wears off, you feel sore and your muscles are exhausted like you've had a long hard workout, which you have.



Because then, your life with a newborn begins. And newborns are a LOT of work, and you have to do it all while you're the most exhausted you've ever been in your life.

My mother in law stayed with us for a week and took care of my baby while I rested and did my own thing. All I did was breast fed him while she did the rest. Then my parents came and mom helped me out and I did the rest on my own.