>A good friend of mine got it in India and said the waves of pain whenever she had to defecate were worse than giving birth without anesthetics.

Did she give birth without anesthesia or how does she know?

She most probably participated in a birth event, some years ago

This thread is appropriately hackernews

I strongly plus one on this :proud-of-you-meme

What do you mean by "participated"? How would one know the subjective pain to compare it, unless she actually gave birth?

I suspect that it may be a figure of speech, like "that tastes like piss" (or "ass" or "sh#t").

I always wondered how people knew about that

I think giving birth without anesthesia is far more common that tasting piss or shit. But what do I know...

Pretty common. I did.

You might wish to clarify. The board guidelines do encourage to assume the best in any comment, but many do not.

Curious, would you say it was the most painful thing you’ve experienced?

I'm not the person you're asking, but I may be able to satisfy your curiosity a little. I have given birth without anesthesia -- in fact, I did so twice. I found it arduous and difficult, and there certainly were moments of pain, but I would not describe the experience overall as exactly painful.

You know how when you've been running for a long time and you really want to stop? That was the primary unpleasant sensation for me. Something between a muscle cramp and a side ache, though quite intense. Really uncomfortable, really hard work. Very distressing if you freak out about it and get frightened, but actually a pretty cool experience if you lean into it. Toward the end of labor there was some significant pain, enough to make me yell, but there was also so much going on that I was very distracted from it. You can experience some pretty significant pain and not be very badly distressed by it if you're super focused on some goal and working hard for it, and boy does childbirth have that effect. ;)

Now, you shouldn't overly generalize from my personal experiences. Every pregnancy is different, and every delivery is different. But I have always thought the characterization of childbirth as the greatest possible pain was overblown. In my experience, it was more like a major athletic event which involved some significant injury - a marathon or a boxing match or something in that neighborhood. You do really injure yourself enough that it takes some weeks to heal, but I honestly think that part of the equation is comparable to a bad sprain. Maybe a bit worse, but much more like an athletic injury than some of the horrible diseases people get.

At any rate, it is not the most significant pain I've personally experienced. That prize goes to an infected gall bladder / passed gall stone. I've also had leg cramps which I thought were more painful than childbirth, though they didn't last as long. To relate it to the original claim, I definitely think it's plausible that dysentary is worse. Internal organs dying is high on the pain scale.

(If you're curious about why I chose to avoid anaesthesia, I hadn't liked it during my first delivery. I had a long and painful labor during which anesthesia was delayed, and when I finally got it, I found it didn't much lift my distress -- I later understood that was because my pain wasn't pain exactly, it was me doing a poor job of working with my body. Aaand I was at a dumb hospital that had put me on my back, which is painful, and I didn't know any better. Anyway. I didn't see it as really relieving my discomfort, but it did confine me to bed for a couple days and robbed me of being my most alert and best self during a very important moment in my life. My second two deliveries were better experiences than my first.)

Yeah, I’m going to say you were pretty lucky. With my first I had pain significant enough to be traumatic, before the stage where I could get an epidural. I used to tell people if I’d gone out and had my husband run over my leg with the car, it would have hurt less and I could have gotten pain relief in the ER. It wasn’t as bad the second time though. It is truly a large range of experiences.

Thanks for asking this -- your question made me realize I don't have much experience with pain at all! The answer is pretty run of the mill stuff -- I got my finger stuck in a door-crack-like spot. Ugh.

Childbirth pain is not horrible and sharp like that. It feels a lot more productive, so to speak. It's not right to use the word "pain" to describe both things actually. Without that pain, you'd have to depend upon a nurse to tell you when to push -- there would be a delay between her seeing the monitor and asking you to push. It all seemed very unlikely to work to me (but of course it works). But if you feel the pain yourself, you will know when to push.

Also it comes in waves. After each wave of "pain", you get completely pain-free rest periods. But of course towards the end when the baby actually comes out, the rest periods shorten and the pain periods lengthen so it all kind of rolls into one. Many women are not so lucky as me and have prolonged labour, lasting into days. Mine only lasted a few hours so it was fine.

I completely agree with the other person who replied to you. Personally I said no to anaesthesia because they put that in your spine -- shudder.

You did what exactly now?

Oh you sweet, sweet summer child... While it's possible that you're right, I don't think that's as clear as you make it out to be. A quick google didn't give me any concrete numbers, but at least for Urine, according to Wikpedia, " watersports (meaning urolagnia) was ranked ninth in popularity among sexual fetishes in the United Kingdom"[0], and " 1999 study of 164 males in Finland from two SM clubs found that 18.2% had engaged in coprophilia"[1] (of course, this number is for a sub-population that is more likely to try out kinks).

I don't have good numbers for birthing without any anesthesia either, but the Australian Institute of Health and Wealthfare claims that "In 2022, 4 in 5 (80%) women who had labour in Australia received pain relief"[2].

Giving birth is a "0-3 times in a lifetime" event, while sex is a much more high-frequency thing. I'm assuming even people who engage in these fetishes do that every time they have sex, but still many more times than they'd give birth.

So let's try to come up with some numbers: lets say we have 8 billion people on earth, and 1% of the adult population engages in watersports or scat, and they do so 10 times a year for 30 years of their life. That's 300 * 80M = 24B times someone eats shit / drinks piss in the next 30 years.

On the other hand, let's say we have ~4 billion women on earth, each gives an average of 2 children in the next 30 years, and 20% do that without pain relief. That's 4B * 2 * 0.2 = 2B births without pain relief in the next 30 years.

I don't think that what you're saying adds up.

Sources:

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urolagnia

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coprophilia

[2] https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/mothers-babies/australias-mo...

Australia is a wealthy country with a low birth rate. It is not representative of global non-anesthetic rates. The average woman globally is poorer (less likely to have pain relief) and more likely to be pregnant in her lifetime.

And just because someone “engages in watersports” doesn’t mean they know what urine or feces taste like.

And the question was about the number of people. You included statistics regarding the number of events. Going off your own numbers, 1% play water sports, 20% of women (10% of people) give birth without pain killers. Seems pretty clear to me.

The discussion is pointless and was meant as a jest, but

> And the question was about the number of people. You included statistics regarding the number of events.

The poster just said "more common". It's your interpretation that this was "a question about the number of people". But that's just one of many possible framings of the question. "The number of events" is an equally valid one.

> "In 2022, 4 in 5 (80%) women who had labour in Australia received pain relief"[2].

20% not having any pain relieve puts it into "fairly common" category. Yes it is a minority, but it is also rather large minority. It means that more then 20% of women who have children had at least one of them without pain relief.

Let it go man. Nobody cares

>oh you sweet summer child

Is the condescension really necessary? Also, the phrase is really overused at this point.

The presence of that phrase alone is enough to instantly downvote and flag any and every post on sight, even those that are otherwise neutral or even positive. It's usually intended as somewhat lighthearted, but it comes across as smug and pandering, and extremely condescending, like you said.

> The presence of that phrase alone is enough to instantly downvote and flag any and every post on sight, even those that are otherwise neutral or even positive

I feel you're severely overreacting. If everyone would act that way, this community would definitely be much a worse place. Kant's Imperative and all that.

I disagree firmly. The phrase embodies a sense of superiority and "knowing better" than those it's directed at which is directly contrary to the Guidelines of HN.

Well, most of our sense of taste is actually smell. And many people have smelled these things before.

I think the smell gives you a good idea

clearly you didn't have the right group of friends in college

Births without anesthesia are not unusual at all. Tho it is also a figure of speech.

The use of epidural, spinal, or combined spinal-epidural blockade is fairly common, now. Up to 80% in some parts of the US.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle...

20% is enough to make it "not rare". It means that more then 20% of women with children have experienced that - because if you have multiple children, one could be with epidural and another without it.