When I was pregnant with my son, all I heard were labor horror stories.
My friends would coyly say things like, “Oh…we’ll talk about what I went through after your baby is born,” followed by comments like, “Yeah, the epidural only worked on half of my body,” or, “I thought I was going to die. Seriously.” Because that didn’t freak me out.
Being the masochist that every pregnant woman becomes, I immediately bought every childbirth book I could get my hands on and devoured them at the same rate I was putting away pancakes. All that newfound knowledge did was (a) scare the crap out of me and (b) leave me wondering whether it was possible to invent a new way to give birth within the next few months—preferably one didn’t involve a small human coming out of my vagina. (I’m still working on that, BTW.)
When my labor day arrived, I was no closer to a solution and still completely freaked about what lay ahead. The fun kicked off during a normal check-in after doctors realized that my son was ready to come out and decided to induce me…20 minutes before I was supposed to be at work. Cue hysterical crying, frantic e-mails to coworkers, and multiple phone calls to my husband, Chris, to ask him to bring everything from my overnight bag to a bagel and the biggest decaf latte he could find. I’d read the books: I was going to need every ounce of safe-for-pregnancy strength I had to get through this experience.
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And I can honestly say that was the craziest part of my labor experience. When I look back at the 24 hours leading up to my son’s birth, the biggest thing that jumps out at me is that there was a Top Chef marathon running all night. I would know—I watched most of it when I wasn’t chatting with Chris and my mom. When the time came for my son’s big debut, he was out in five pushes. It was easy. My hair even looked awesome afterward, bizarrely enough.
It was the complete opposite of everything that I’d heard. There was no screaming, no cursing, no shrieking “You did this to me!!!” at Chris. I’m kind of bummed about the last one—it sounds liberating. I essentially hung out in a hospital, snuck a bagel when I wasn’t supposed to be eating solids (I know—I’m a rebel), watched a bunch of TV, and then my baby arrived. That’s it.
Don’t get me wrong: It wasn’t exactly fun when they realized my son was facing the wrong direction and had to turn him, or when I was induced with a drug that gives you hard and fast contractions right away. But it was tolerable, and the pain was short-lived, like being forced to sit through Britney Spears’s Crossroads just before a screening of Magic Mike. I had an epidural after a while, which doctors typically recommend when you’re induced, and I can honestly say I didn’t feel a damn thing afterward.
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“You know you were insanely lucky, right?” said my friend Julie afterward. Totally! But…was my experience that rare? My friend Liz had twins after a three-hour labor. “Mine was easy, too,” she says. “I feel like a jerk for saying that.”
Curious to know whether I scored the Grand Slam of labors, I reached out to board-certified OB-GYN Bruce Lee, M.D., co-founder and chief medical officer of Halt Medical, Inc. He says that the definition of “easy” varies for women depending on pain tolerance, anxiousness, preparedness, and expectations—and that all of those factors can even impact the labor. It’s possible that by expecting days of agony, I was pleasantly surprised when my labor didn’t measure up.
It also might have helped that I ran several miles a day until the day my son was born. Lee says that physical fitness and good general health are crucial elements to having a good labor, along with good nutrition and a healthy attitude. Aside from developing a serious fudge brownie habit, I’d say I met all of those criteria.
Lee adds that labors are rarely “easy” but that some women are able to deliver easier than others—we just don’t hear about it as often. “Labor stories are like war stories,” he says. “We all love to talk about the difficult things, and this often produces a fearful reaction in others. Bad labor stories can overshadow the good ones.”
So, okay: I had an epidural. I get that if I’d had a natural childbirth, this would probably be a different story. I have plenty of friends who chose to go au natural, and more power to them. It was never for me, and it didn’t work out that way, anyway. I also know that my story is completely obnoxious to women who had a tough time of it—epidural or no epidural. I had no major complications, and I’m so thankful for that.
But I’m happy to tell women who are freaked at the idea of giving birth that it’s possible to have an easy labor. If it happened to me, it can happen to you. (And I’m really, really glad it happened to me.)
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Korin Miller is a writer, SEO nerd, wife, and mom to a little one-year-old dude named Miles. Korin has worked for The Washington Post, New York Daily News, and Cosmopolitan, where she learned more than anyone ever should about sex. She has an unhealthy addiction to gifs.
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