Welcome to Gaia! ::

childbirth is the easy part, especially if you keep in mind that it's "good" pain.

My first was born with epidural - long-ish labour, and I was induced, and found the pain difficult to manage. It made delivery a bit slower, but at the time, I was so exsauhsted I didn't care!

my second was "natural" as I only had gas and air, it was a much shorter delivery with very little intervention at all. (Infact I had to ask them to check me, as I started getting the urge to push, and assumed that after only 3 hours of labour, none of it amazingly painful it must be far too soon. They checked, I was only 7cm dilated, but 5 minutes later I was pushing, as they said to follow my bodies natural instincts. (great midwife I had!!)

Epidurals, like anything may cause a few problems, but nothing horrendous, and I certainly don't think they are wrong.

Good Luck to Blue Yuna, labour really isn't all that bad, you do forget all about the pain as soon as you are holding your beautiful baby in your arms. (The only thing that surrpised me was the colour of the ubilical cord... I didn't expect it to be so blue!)

Wow, it didn't hurt like that for me. sweatdrop

thanks for the confidence.........i do appreciate you're support.......

thank you for your advice and story....i do appreciate it........i didn't know the umbilical cord will be blue, wow.....i thought it would be whittish and red........

*grabs the soap box and jumps on it*

This isn't really a rant, but you did push it aside for us to use. Anyway....

With my first daughter, the birth was completely natural. And I'm NOT kidding. I had felt what HAD to be contractions, but since they were no where near eachother, nor uniform (5min here, 20min there, 30sec over there....) the doctor sent me home. I get home, take a nap, wake up for dinner with the strongest urge to pee I'd ever had in my life. Go to the bathroom, water breaks. Walk from the bathroom to the bedroom and by the time I got there, my daughters' head was poking out. Honestly it was painless, but still disturbing. So I had my first one at home with no help from medication. Unless you count the two Tylenol I took before my nap.

Then comes my second daughter. The year before I met my second (and only) husband I had suffered severe back trauma. I got shoved into a metal kitchen counter at work and there was severe swelling around my spine and I now have a couple of screwed up disks. I honestly didn't know I was dialating with my second until I went to my 39 week check up and found out I was already 3cm along. So off to the hospital we went. Everything was fine until they broke my water, and then it started coming bad!!! I have a surprisingly high pain tolerance (burnt my arm one day at work and didn't notice till it blistered), so it started worrying my husband when each contraction made me cry. Again the contractions weren't uniform or consistant. My hubby didn't know weather to be pissed at the doctor for breaking my water, or crying with me since he hates to see me in pain. So more for him than me, I got the epidural. It was niiiiiiiice. I had one that I could self dose. Only got 4 doses an hour though. Even then it didn't prevent me from feeling the pushing sensation so I had no issues there. About 2 hours after getting the epidural I went to the delivery room, and 5 min. from there I had a beautiful little girl in my arms.

I don't get why people (especially those WITHOUT kids), seem to think it's some sort of hellish sin to get some kind of medication while giving birth. If you have an excellent doctor and an even better anesthesiologist, things go smoothly with no risk to you or your child. In the end it all depends on the doctors' attention span. So tell those who think your getting an epidural is the ultimate sin to stuff it! It's not their child, their body, nor their decision. If your decision to get an epidural doesn't bother you, it shouldn't bother them. Like I said, your choice, not theirs! Nuff said.

*gets off the soapbox and pushes it to the next person*

That sucks! I got lucky though, it was an hour drive to the hospital and my dr. figured that I'd be dialated enough by the time I got there. He paid attention to my medical history, and sure enough, by the time we got there I was at 7cm.

I've gotten lucky then, because I've never had to get cut nor have I torn. Vicodin land is fun though.