You should start contractions, which may or may not be consecutive. Some women get them right in order..so many minutes apart, and going down. Some are all over the board. Your water may break, or just start leaking. You may develope some back aching. If you are home when it happens, they will tell you to get to the hospital before you get down to 5 minutes apart or under for the pains. You may already be there, and they will monitor you. If you are induced, they give you the IV drip, then watch you until you are dialate 10 cm. there is little pain these days with all the drugs available, and what pain you have, you probably won't remember much of afterwards. It's different for every woman, so it's hard to predict what you will go through, but that's the jist of it. If you are having a c-section, you go in on a specific day, and that's it!

im not sure if I want to have the epidural and pain killers, or if I just want to go natrual, because I heard that its not good on the baby sometimes to have all those medications. Do you know if it really harms the baby in any way?

Honey, women been using those meds for years, and it doesn't hurt the baby at all. Natural childbirth IS very painful, so if you go that route, I hope you are up for it! My daughter-in-law just had a baby 8 months ago, they induced her, and gave her all those drugs and she gave birth to a happy, healthy almost 9 pound baby boy!

ok, im pretty sure ill need the meds, even though i am pretty good with handling pain. i hear childbirth is one of the most agonizing things.

i had diamorphine with both. no epidural offered but although at the time i would have wanted 1 i am now glad i didnt as it increases likelihood of instrumental delivery. my latent phase of labour lasted 1 day and then after that i dilated quickly and pushed 4 abt 1hr with 1st baby. at the time it was painful but not so bad coz i was pregnant again when my baby turned 1. every1 is different. i know some1 who was not dilated at 7.30am but by 10.15 she'd had her baby!

Hi Everyone. Im about 5 weeks and the thing im worried about is labor. And i just read that you pushed for an hour!!!??? Wow.. I think im gonna need drugs as well.

an hour is pretty standard with your 1st baby, if not longer but if it's any consolation when u r actually goin thru it it doesn't seem that long. expect to feel some sort of pain, i won't kid u! some people feel more than others so hopefully u wont get it 2 bad. it generally starts off like period pains and gets stronger and longer. the pushing pains feel different. just remember that each contraction brings u closer 2 meeting that special little baby u have created. have a wonderful pregnancy and pleas dont stress 2 much abt the birth (he/she has 2 come out anyway!) xxx

yeah, my cousins first baby, she was only pushing for about a half hour. I hope its like that for me =] Im not too worried about it, because I know that once my baby is here, Im gonna be so distracted by that, Ill forget about the pain. But does an epidural really increase the chance of the doctors having to use instruments during delivery?

that is wot i have read as u r not mobile. it doesnt mean u wil need an instrumental delivery tho!

alright. cause I took a parenthood class this year and went to visit the hospital and they showed us the tools. they never talked much about labor or delivry, but they showed us a placenta, one that they had saved from earlier that day, and it made so many people sick. I was kinda of mad that they took our trip to the hospital, and turned it into a "gross out fest" instead of something educational we could learn from.

If you can handle the pain then try to do it naturally, if you can't, request the medication and they will give it to you.

That's what I did. I wanted it natural but I just wasn't good at relaxing and taking the painful contractions. So I requested the epidural after 8 hours of labor and my son was born perfectly healthy 6 hours later.

And take labor classes! Parenthood are good too - but labor classes are KEY to learning the comfortable positions to handle labor 'gracefully'.

are the classes expensive and do you know how I can find them? also, will I be uncomfortable in there, maybe being the only teen in the class =/

Mariee, its too late to worry what others think, and quite frankly it doesn't matter. Your physician should be able to tell you what facilities offer child labor classes. Also, you can go to your local health department or library and check out labor movies. The Health Channel has the Baby Stories and you can watch that if you have cable? The World has information at your fingertips so let your fingers do the walking

I guess its not that i really worry about what they think, but if I walked into a class filled with women in their late twenties, and was being stared at, I would be nervous, lol. Ive looked at all the movies I can. Babycenter.com was a really good site for me to watch =]

Sweetie that is a complex within you need to work on. I know this is your first baby and I have read your post again. It is with my observation you express excitement, fear, uncertainty, and yes even some immaturity. Every woman will experience child birth differently. My pain tolerance will not be the same as yours and vice-verse. Us ole timers would even say to much reading will just cause anxiety. Life is lived and learned through experience. No book, movie, internet, and/or person can truly prepare you for childbirth. Knowledge is power and I commend you for preparing for your lil one. Just don't put to much stock in one thing. Take it all in. And hey relax......enjoy mother-hood.

Thank you Breck. I probably should calm down a little about it. Its just Im excited to know everything I can about what Im going to go through. I think even my curiosity may be causeing me to be a little anxious. I just want to be as prepared as I can be. I dont like going into things, without having a little knowledge on what to expect.

You are doing fine You can only prepare yourself so much. The rest is mother nature

Believe me when I tell you that all this is going to happen so fast... (even though it may take several hours..) there will be so much going on around you, nurses coming in and out, by the time you are done, you won't even remember what the pain was really like. And don't worry about being a teen and going to those classes...probably most of the girls are teens....that's the way it is these days...