Shannon wrote:
When people say that the pain becomes unbearable, what do they mean
exactly? At what point do you know the pain is unbearable?

By my definition, unbearable is the point at which you feel that you are
feeling fear and stress as well as pain during contractions and cannot relax
between contractions because you are already fearing the next. When that
happens for any individual is impossible to pointpoint. But especially when
you lose the ability to relax between contractions, you're in trouble, IMO.

Another component of the bearability index is also exhaustion. I think many
women who opt for pain medication after planning not to have it give in
because they have been laboring for a long, long time and are so tired that
they're no longer able to muster the mental and physical resources required
to cope with the contractions.

Does the pain become unbearable for the mother (ie. you pass out)?

I've never heard of this happening, though I suppose it might. I think,
mostly, unbearable to me just means that you are not able to exert any
mental or physical strength to cope with the pain any more.

Or does it become unbearable for the baby (ie. they become
stressed)?

Maternal pain doesn't induce fetal stress, to my knowledge. Although fetal
stress certainly can occur during labor, I don't believe it has any
relationship to the mother's experience of pain.

Has anyone experienced a birth that was unmedicated and you went
past the point where you could have an epidural and it became
unbearable?

Nope. I had an epidural in my first labor and wasn't really at the point
where it was unbearable (though I didn't really have much rest between
contractions, something I attribute to the pitocin). In retrospect, I know
had less than an hour to go to full dilation and it probably would not have
gotten much worst than it was.
--
Be well, Barbara
Mom to Sin (Vernon, 2), Misery (Aurora, 4), and the Rising Son (Julian, 6)

Aurora (in the bathroom with her dad)--"It looks like an elephant, Daddy."
Me (later)--"You should feel flattered."

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