[JulieG]

The pain is unbearable. You don't know whether you or the baby will survive. At the time all you can think about is the pain. I was given morphine and later I had an epidural after screaming for pain relief for a further 50 minutes. It failed and they gave me another epidural about 5 hours later which worked thankfully.

I want another baby desperately. I fight with the decision each day, should I take the risk having another child or not. I don't want my son to grow up with no siblings. I am part of a large family and I know what he'd miss out on. Having seen what I went through, my husband doesn't want to take the risk. If we decide to try for a baby again then we will have made the decision to risk it.

I have absolutely no intention of going through natural labour again - next time it will be an arranged C section. I think the reason women go through childbirth again is because a planned C section becomes an option, where it is rarely encouraged for the first pregnancy.

What I question is why, if there is a safer way to deliver the baby, women are still encouraged to have a natural birth?

With regards to the pain of childbirth measured against the pain caused by gall stones, I would say that the pain of childbirth is almost on a par with it. I had problems with gall stones after the delivery of my baby. The stones blocked ducts causing Pancreatitis and Liver failure and before my baby was 2 weeks old I was back in hospital with this similar pain becoming more intense like contractions. This was more scary though because there was no apparent reason for the pain and no end in sight. It was two months before I had my gall bladder removed so I had several attacks. Comparing it in hindsight, morphine worked as pain relief for the gall stones, but not for childbirth, so maybe childbirth was worse after all.

Please don't assume that women dramatise childbirth, mothers and babies die everyday from the trauma and yet nature finds its way...