Ugth. Okay, so for educational purposes:
So, first of all, you've spent the last month feeling exactly like a deathfat. You are heavy as fuck, cannot move in anything quicker than a slow lumber, and you can barely breathe because your future darling offspring is shoving your guts up into your lungs and squeezing all the air out. You are annoyed and fed up and you probably want the damn thing out of you yesterday.
Then you start feeling the pain. It won't be that bad at first, feeling just like period cramps or I guess stomach cramps, if you've ever had really bad diarrhoea. This will escalate. Have you ever had a charley horse? Like when your calf muscle seizes up suddenly and goes rock hard and all you can do is sit down and try to bend your foot back until it stops? It feels like that, except in your whole body instead of just your calf. Repeatedly. It will ease off a little until it is only uncomfortable and then, boom! Full body charley horse (it spares the arms and head, but everything else will hurt).
This is what surprised me: this is actually frightening. It's like having someone standing over you stabbing you with a knife. You know something incredibly painful is about to happen and you can't stop it. You might think this sounds weak but remember it is happening every few minutes for hours, and not just a few hours either. You start to get to the point of being afraid because you can regularly anticipate that in another minute or a few seconds your body is going to seize up and it's going to be incredibly painful. Again.
The stereotypical movie moment happens here: some well meaning asshole will tell you to breathe. And you will want to murder them because they have absolutely no idea what they are talking about. It's like telling one of those pajeets bisected on a railway to breathe. The fucking fool has so seriously underestimated the severity of the situation that it is enraging, especially when you have spent the last month being an immobile elephant and the last few hours in agony. Fuck the fuck off and keep fucking off until you can learn to say something more helpful.
I am unable to help you with much more, as at this point they got the blessed epidural guy to come and put a needle in my spine. I had thought this sounded horrible and was scared of it before, but by the time it came to call him, a needle in the spine was like, what'evs, bro.
Actually getting the kid out was fine after that. It is the same muscles as taking a shit so you just basically strain like that when they tell you to. The first one is the worst, and the later ones come out much more easily. You're at the wrong end to see the gross stuff. They will grab the umbilical cord and pull out the placenta, which feels weird. Exactly as you would expect if someone had a big slimy rope attached to something inside of you and yanked it out. You get the baby covered in white gunge and the doctor sews you up. Again, I was pretty numb so I could feel the vibrations of the stitching but not the pain.
It will also hurt like fuck for ages afterward, as your uterus contracts down to a normal size. This is a lot like the contractions but you are no longer allowed the good drugs and must beg for Percocet the minute it becomes time again. You bleed for days. My milk came in and my breasts swelled up into massive, straining, hot, sore, purple balloons, which also hurt but, eh, not the worst part of the process.
So... yeah. Like that.
