Childbirth in humans is much more complex and painful than in great apes. It was long believed that this was a result of humans' larger brains and the narrow dimensions of the mother's pelvis.
Virtually all human mothers experience pain in childbirth, and delivery takes much longer than in other mammals. For example, in University of New Mexico researcher Leah Albers's 1999 study of 2,500 full-term births, labor lasted on average almost nine hours for first-time mothers.
And almost every pain you can imagine is compared to the pain of childbirth. However, there are some things that women who have experienced both say hurt more than giving birth. Everyone experiences pain differently, so what might be more painful for one person may not be for another.
Humans have a relatively hard time giving birth. Compared with other species, human newborns are large for their birth canal. This means that humans face the surprisingly high risk of our babies getting stuck during labor—which can be fatal for the mother, the newborn, or both.
Labor pain is one of the most severe pains which has ever evaluated and its fear is one of the reasons women wouldn't go for natural delivery.
The survey also notes that most participants compared the worst pain to "extreme menstrual cramps," "bad back pain," and "a broken bone." While everyone's pain tolerance and birth experience are different, here's what you need to know about the difference between contraction pain and pushing pain during labor.
While the experience is different for everyone, labor typically feels like extremely strong menstrual cramps that get progressively more and more intense as time goes on1.
Some people describe the feeling as being like intense period cramps, others say it feels like a tightening or pounding feeling in your uterus or across your belly, others describe the feeling as being like very intense muscle cramps, while still other people describe contractions as being like the sort of wrenching ...
While the combination of long labor times, big infant heads, and narrow maternal hips is often cited as a particular challenge for human mothers, some other mammals face difficulties that may be just as painful. One factor that can make labor more challenging is the size of the fetus relative to the mother.
“However,” she said, “one person's kidney stones could be as severe as another person's childbirth.” The neurological process involved in pain is pretty similar regardless of your gender—find out How Pain Reaches Your Brain—but there is one important difference.
Some people can handle more pain than others
Everyone's pain tolerance is different and can depend on a range of factors including your age, gender, genetics, culture and social environment. The way we process pain cognitively affects our pain tolerance.
Human infants are also almost always born with assistance from other humans because of the way that the pelvis is shaped. Since the pelvis and opening of birth canal face backwards, humans have difficulty giving birth themselves because they cannot guide the baby out of the canal.
In evolving from other early primates, two distinctly human features – big brains and walking upright – have led to difficult childbirth. As the evolutionary tale goes: as we progressed to walk upright, the human pelvis became narrower and the birth canal more complex than other primates.
Greek: And he said to the woman, "I will multiply your pains and your groans, you will bear children in pain and your turning will be to your husband, and he will rule over you." Old Latin: To the woman He said, "I will greatly multiply your sorrows and your anguish.
Lochia is the vaginal discharge you have after giving birth. It contains a mix of blood, mucus and uterine tissue. It has a stale, musty odor like menstrual period discharge and can last several weeks.
Most women will feel increased pressure in their perineum, rectum, and low back at this stage. For many women, the rectal pressure feels the same as having a bowel movement. As the baby's head begins to appear, you may feel a stretching or burning sensation.
Some women have pains for a few days after birth. After-birth pains can feel like labour pains or mild to moderate period pain. This pain comes from your uterus contracting towards its pre-pregnancy size. They are more common in women who have had other babies than in women who have just had their first baby.
They concluded that “obstetrical orgasm,” as it's termed medically, was observed in 0.3 percent of births. That's not many, for sure. And there's evidence that this number misses a lot of women who experience sexual pleasure and even orgasm during labor.
Lochia lasts for about six weeks, starting with heavier bleeding that may contain clots, and gradually turning to a whitish or yellowish discharge. Lochia typically smells similar to a menstrual period and may smell slightly metallic, stale, or musty.
Until recently, women have been asked to start pushing as soon as the cervix has dilated to 10 centimeters, but as long as you do not have a fever and your baby's heart rate is normal, there are many benefits to waiting to push until you feel the need to push.
Most women find the most painful part of labor and delivery to be the contractions, while some others may feel pushing or post-delivery is most painful. Pain during labor and delivery may also be caused by pressure on the bladder and bowels by the baby's head and the stretching of the birth canal and vagina.