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'It felt like a car was backing over me' Real life mothers share stories on the pain of childbirth

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One mother described childbirth as 'worse than being in a torture prison'

Due to the romanticizing of giving birth as part of the rosy life of a woman, a blogger decided to ask some mothers for their personal takes. Using different names for anonymity, most of the responding mothers gave horrific descriptions on the pain endured, far from what television shows and films illustrate.

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Highlights

MUNTINLUPA, PHILIPPINES (Catholic Online) - Giving birth is unique to every mother, as emphasized by the blogger herself, so the pain may have the scariest description to the lightest image from the participating mothers.

"I'm one of those women who absolutely knows that I want to have kids some day and while I do want to adopt, I'm also really interested in getting pregnant and carrying my own babies," wrote Emma McGowan, the blogger from Bustle who conducted the interviews.


Another human is what a mother carries during pregnancy, so she was curious if the media portrayal of birthing is something aspiring moms should believe in. She found that most of the time, TV and movie images of birth were far from the truth.

"It feels like your core muscles are ripping apart your abdomen," said Emma, 29, while Brittany, 28, described it as the worst diarrhea of her life and "like an alien is trying to eat its way out of your tailbone" in a roller coaster ride of feelings.

"Like your uterus is suddenly your worst enemy," said Sarah D., 40. An 80-hour labor was experienced by Claire, 38, who described her labor pains as "very, very, very bad menstrual cramps."

"It felt like a car was backing over me, again and again, in my hospital bed," shared Yuki, 40, who experienced birth 13 years ago, but still vividly remembers the pain.

Most of those who experienced extreme pain, like "worse than being in a torture prison," expressed they would rather adopt and never again go through the same experience.

Yet, there are some who gave birth with relatively pain-less experiences. "Long, but not as painful as I thought it would be. The pain was very manageable, in fact, and no worse than very bad cramps for me," said Pooja.

Marianne, 46, said her mother gave birth relatively painless, which she didn't had.

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