• Bladder Infections
  Bladder infections and urinary tract infections also made the list. This searing pain was described as ten times worse than having a baby. The commenter mentioned the ring of fire that last for days. That hurts just to think about…
• Root Canal
  I know it’s common to mention dental work and the pain of childbirth, but it did come up. To those who like to say that you wouldn’t have a root canal without pain relief, why would you have a baby that way? I’d like to point out that our bodies weren’t meant to have root canals, but that they were designed to give birth. That said, as in birth, sometimes the pain relief doesn’t work and you can feel the root canal. There is also the aftermath of the root canal to deal with which can effect your daily activities for a couple of days.
• Surgery
  Having any type of surgery can be more painful than giving birth vaginally. Cesarean surgery was specifically mentioned as was surgery in general. Obviously some surgeries are bigger than others, just as some labors are more painful than others, but the simple fact of cutting into the body can be very painful to recover from, even if you don’t fell the pain at the time of the incision.
• Induced Labor
  I’d be remiss not to mention that induced labor was brought up in my comments. This is typically believed to be because your body is thrown into labor and rather than a slow build up, the goal is to get you to contractions every three minutes as quickly as possible and stay there until the baby comes out. I’d like to add that there are also many interventions used in labor, that add to the pain for labor, usually by restricting movement or causing fear in labor. Choosing interventions wisely and using them in ways to alleviate these potential side effects can address this. A birth plan is a great way to address that issue.

The good news is that there are a lot of ways to cope with pain in labor. There are methods that involve using relaxation, movement, water, IV medications as well as epidural anesthesia. There aren’t any wrong or right choices, just personal ones.

Though the next time you find yourself thinking that childbirth is the most painful thing you can go through, why don’t you stop and try to retrain your brain. Tell yourself that a pain experienced in labor is only temporary, typically does not last for days, and it is intermittent. Remind yourself that you have many more tools to deal with labor that you learn in childbirth class than you would if you had broken your arm. That labor is more predictable than a gallstone or kidney stone. And the outcome is much happier than a root canal.

"We have a secret in our culture, it's not that birth is painful, it's that women are strong." - Laura Stavoe Harm