Click for simple, affordable ways to make the most of what's left of summer. We aren’t preparing women for the excruciating pain of back labor I thought I’d know a contraction when I felt one. I want other moms to know that’s not always the case.
Nobody told meback labor was a thing. Not until I was 20 weeks pregnant, sitting across from a friend at a small Chinese restaurant, asking her to walk me through her labor, detail by detail. It was the back pain, she said in words too colorful to repeat here, that really took her by surprise.
The rest, I didn’t let myself hear, blissfully attempting to manifest an easier fate. Her description—what I let myself absorb of it, anyway—wasn’t far from the clinical one. Wilson-Manigat continues.
Here’s the science behind why it hit so hard. I’d find out what she meant soon enough. Fast-forward to week 37, and I woke from a nightmare about back pain, only to realize it was real and inescapable.
I was certain labor had started, and just as certain this was the back labor I’d been warned about. At the hospital, my pain was so intense I still can’t fully explain or remember it. I asked a nurse if that’s what this was.
She answered kindly but simply: “It could be!” I was sent home to rest. The baby was fine, and the pain, for the moment, came and went. But it returned the next night, harder and with vomiting, sending us straight back to the hospital.
Extract — continue reading at the source.
