My last blog entry talked about the misconceptions many women get from the media about labor and birth. We hear even crazier ideas, believe it or not, from experienced mothers.

How is that possible? Shouldn't we get the clearest picture from eyes that have seen birth? My proposed book (Learn more at the My Birth Choice page), in fact, is based on the idea that first person birth stories are valuable in addition to descriptions of birth methods.

What causes some stories to be helpful to new moms and some to be misleading is that while many women are happy to share their experiences in helpful ways, others tend to exaggerate or give bizarre birth advice. There are three main reasons this happens:

First, it's the ultimate woman's fish story. Just like a fisherman will talk about a five-foot trout to add drama, some women love to roll their eyes, put their hands to their hearts, and recount in faint accents how enormous their second babies were. Many of us will experience no greater drama than the fear, excitement, joy, and pain of childbirth. Who can blame the women who amp up the drama? Well, I can, but I digress.

Second, for some women it's just been a long time. If your Great-aunt Sally is telling you that the doctor tied her hands to the table and made her drink peroxide, there's a good chance that she's describing outdated methods (yes, doctors did tie women's hands down during labor to keep them out of the so-called sterile field surrounding the vagina) or that she's gotten a couple of things mixed up (it's been 54 years--is she absolutely certain that was peroxide and not antacid?).

Third, second-hand information gets twisted in translation. If Carol is telling you what Jan said Melinda said about Alexa's labor, it's possible that 31 hours became 39 hours became over three days became FOUR STRAIGHT DAYS OF LABOR. My advice about second-hand stories is don't believe a word of them because you can't be certain of a single word of what Alexa really said.

There's no way for me to know all the crazy ideas women have given other women about birth (please feel free to add some of the jewels you received to the comments section), but here are some of the most common (or just some that made me laugh):

What Experienced Women Get Wrong about Labor #1: Intensity of Pain

Amanda says that while pregnant, she was shooting pool with her husband, and a stranger told her, "Oh, believe me, you'll NEED that epidural. The pain is horrible! I was screaming and tears were streaming down my face and I was throwing up...believe me, just get the epidural, you'll be so much happier!"

I'm not saying labor doesn't hurt (although some methods such as HypnoBirthing teach that it doesn't hurt unless your conditioning teaches you so). If you've never labored before, however, the tales women share with you of the unbearable pain usually leave out a few key details.

The first is that when a woman says she was in labor for 12 hours (the average for a first-time mother), it doesn't mean she was in that kind of serious pain for 12 hours. Early labor begins so gently that you may be a few hours into it before you're even sure you're in labor and not feeling mild practice contractions (called Braxton Hicks contractions).

Active labor, a few hours into labor, requires more concentration and pain management such as Bradley's relaxation methods or an epidural. If you choose pain medication, you will usually get relief before feeling extraordinary pain, although it's important to study some basics of easing labor pain on the off chance that the epidural doesn't work or the only anesthesiologist in town gets stuck in surgery (hey, it happened to me). If you have prepared for un-medicated birth, though, you will have had training to help you significantly minimize or interpret contractions in a positive light.

Transition, the intense part of labor that most women describe when scaring new mothers for no good reason, is not only usually brief (an hour or maybe two), but is a signal that birth is imminent. If everything goes well with an epidural, you may not even know it's happening, and with un-medicated birth, you may find it encouraging to know you're almost ready for the actual birth.

"Too bad at the time I didn't know any better," says Amanda of her pool hall advice, "or I would've told her that her screaming/crying/throwing up was transition and if she had held out a little bit longer, she wouldn't have needed that epi!"

My personal belief (again, not all agree) is that intense pain during labor is inevitable for most women, although just as with menstrual cramps, some feel significantly more or less than average. However, it's encouraging to know that the worst of it doesn't last the entirety of labor, there are great ways to overcome or avoid it, and the most intense part is also the shortest part of the experience.

What Experienced Women Get Wrong about Labor #2: Just One Way

Vanessa, who believes strongly in co-sleeping, says it irks her to hear women tell others, "Oh, be sure to take advantage and the send the baby to the nursery while you're in the hospital." If anyone had given me that advice, though, it would have been pointless because neither of the hospitals in the small towns where I gave birth had nurseries. The bassinets, when not in the mothers' rooms, were kept in the small areas behind the nurses' stations. When I asked a nurse to keep my daughter for a couple of hours during my second night in the hospital, she told me that there were so many women in labor that they were too understaffed to take her right then.

I'm as guilty as anyone of the assumption that my experience or the experience of someone I know is How Things Are. If a friend of mine had severe headaches after an epidural, I might be more likely to go with a med-free method. If a friend had extremely painful labor followed by a successful epidural, however, I may assume that's how it goes for everyone.

Similarly, some women have had such wonderful birth experiences that they believe their way is the best way. Believing that, if they care about their ideas or even just love you a lot, they may be highly motivated to convince you to follow in their footsteps. If I have a blissful experience with an epidural after an unusually painful labor, I might be gung ho about trying to convince my friends not to suffer. If I have a life affirming, earth shaking experience with the HypnoBabies method, I may send you three books on natural childbirth as soon as I hear you're pregnant.

The best way to get around the idea that all births are like the three you've heard and even to get around the friend who is determined to convert you is to research the methods and read as many birth stories as possible. Here I go promoting the book proposal again, but I just gotta throw in that this is exactly what My Birth Choice aims to do.

What Experienced Women Get Wrong about Labor #3: Birth and Bonding

Sandra says, "I had one lady tell me that I should just go ahead and get a c-section. She did it with her only child and was 'blessed' with a wonderful birth. She said that had she had to push out the baby she was sure she would have hated that child. And she was serious."

I know I'll probably get some arguments about this, but I don't feel that the method of birth you choose can irrevocably harm the bond you develop with your baby. Granted, on very rare occasions a woman will have a birth experience so different from what she had hoped or simply so traumatic that it can influence how she feels about her child for a few hours or days.

I'm about to do exactly what I warned about in my second wrong idea, but for what little it may be worth, I had three extremely different experiences (perfect epidural, horrible accidental natural, and wonderful planned natural) and my bonding with each of my children was the same.

A normal (by which I simply mean without severe mental problems), generally loving woman who wants the best for her child is not going to bring him to Goodwill because he had to go to NICU after a c-section and she just never fell in love with him. A woman who pushed for three hours (very unusual, FYI; some methods discourage having women push at all) won't even let the child cry more because she resents having to cry during labor. I can believe that a mentally healthy woman might resent or feel unattached to her child or a short period of time due to her birth experience. Never bonding at all due solely to her choice of birth method--I don't buy it.

What Experienced Women Get Wrong about Labor #4: Birth is Dangerous

When Alycia wanted to stop the flow of well-meaning advice from friends, she said telling them she planned a homebirth would usually do the trick. It simply shocked them into silence. While homebirths have been shown to be statistically as safe as hospital or birth center births for low-risk women, the reason many would never consider one is the pervasive idea in Western culture that birth is inherently dangerous enough to require hospital staff. (Learn more about the statistics of homebirths and the answers to common questions such as what happens in case of emergency in the Homebirth part of the Birth Method and Location section of my Links page.)

Whatever feelings you have about homebirth, it's still good to keep in mind that the vast majority of women in other cultures give birth without the benefit of a surgical team on standby. I am incredibly grateful for the advances of modern medicine that save the lives of women and babies who would not survive or survive whole without it, but those situations are far, far rarer than most of us realize.

My grandpa, a wonderful man with a flair for adding drama to any story (and many stories that he kept on file for retelling), was the only friend to tell me stories about women and babies dying during birth. After a few hair-raising horror stories while pregnant with my first child, I ended up stopping him in mid-sentence when he started any story at all to tell him I didn't want to hear it if it had a sad ending.

Whether you labor in a hospital 20 yards from an operating room or in a mud hut amid incense and chants, please don't let the horror stories make you fear birth or doubt your body's ability to do it without significant intervention. Even high-risk women can take steps during pregnancy and birth to be perfectly safe, thanks to the blessings of modern medicine. For low-risk women (i.e. the vast majority of us) labor is extremely normal and safe without any mucking about with medical intervention at all.

What Experienced Women Get Wrong about Labor #5: Plain WEIRD stuff

Some truly strange ideas sound perfectly normal if you just don't know better (understandably if you've never studied birth before). Melissa says, "I told [some married friends] how I'd been wondering whether my having unusually painful menstrual cramps for years would have prepared me for the pain of labor, or whether it meant that my labor would be much more painful. My friend's husband basically told me that if I couldn't handle my cramps, I would totally wimp out when it came to childbirth. Fortunately, I didn't let it bother me, because, , what the heck does he know about it?! And as it turns out, he was wrong, and I handled childbirth VERY well, thankyouverymuch. [My husband] was sure to tell him what a champ I was, too."

Because it's hard to know what advice is good and what's simply nonsensical without having experienced labor and birth yourself, researching methods and reading up on birth stories is more important than most women realize. So do at least a little studying, but don't worry: you're going to do great at this!

I followed this link from earthymommies. As a first time pregnant woman, I completely agree. I am astounded by the kinds of things friends and family seem to be compelled to tell me.

Because I am a small woman, I often get stories about large babies. What I think is remarkable about these stories is that they come from the mouths of intelligent, rational people who have thrown rationality and fact-checking out the window. A friend who told me the story of a friend of his who "was just like me," (meaning petite) and had a 9 + pound baby couldn't tell me weather or not it was difficult for her to birth that baby or if there were complications because of the child's size (I suspect there weren't). Which makes me wonder, why did he tell me that if it's not going to be useful? A family member told me that my husband and his brother were both huge babies, when in reality my husband was an average sized baby and his brother was only larger because he was two weeks late (despite being a fourth child). Why tell me something that might upset me, without verifying if its even true?

These comments are relatively minor problems for me because I have taken Bradley classes, read many birth stories, viewed natural birth videos and analyze the stories for what value they provide (or fail to provide) but I feel badly for women who haven't had the benefit of being educated about childbirth. It's really quite easy to simply believe what people say and has even had an effect on me, though I can reason beyond the comments.

It's unfortunate that any woman would fear birth simply because of birth stories that are factually incorrect or incomplete.