Labor and delivery curiosity!

[anyakitty.livejournal.com]

Okay, I have always been SO curious about the nitty gritty details of labor and delivery. I am fascinated by those shows that come on TLC sometimes depicting natural and home births. I don't ever plan on having children but I just simply must know:

1. Is it really as bad as it is in the movies? Do people really scream/go crazy from the pain? Can you compare contractions to menstrual cramps to give me an idea of how much worse they are?

2. This is the big one... do a lot of women tear? How does THAT feel? Do they stitch you up or do you have to just let it heal or does it just simply depend?

3. After you give birth vaginally, is your vagina really never the same ever again? Is this only a physical, inside thing but also a visual, outside thing?

Please, don't spare me any details, I want it all no matter how questionable. It's either this or asking my boyfriend's sister who is pregnant for the second time and I'd rather not, haha. Thanks in advance!

Comments

[archangelbeth]

My mom had four, and I'm pretty sure she said that only the last one produced vaginal tearing -- and this includes the next-to-last, who was ten pounds, eight ounces and had elbow presentation, as in wrapped-over-his-head. (That one, she swears that if she'd been doped to the gills as was tradition in the hospitals in that era and area, she'd not have been coherent enough to decide to live. The attending doctor did not like what her blood pressure was doing there for a while, though.)

But the last one, she said the contractions were so hard and fast that she didn't have a long, drawn-out pushing, so... tearing.