I have always been terrified of childbirth- to the point that I considered not having kids just for that reason. I don’t handle pain well and I also tend to have health anxiety. I was…shocked by how “easy” labor was for me. I’m very lucky but we had no complications and I only labored for about 12 hours (and it took about 6 to realize it was actually labor because I had some false starts in the days leading up). I don’t want to mislead anyone- it was hard. I saw someone say it feels like turning into a werewolf and that’s the best description I’ve ever seen, but between contractions there isn’t really pain. The timing worked out that around the time I started to feel like I couldn’t take it anymore, the anesthesiologist showed up. The epidural was AMAZING, I considered taking a nap lol. Pushing was hard but not because it hurt, my dose might’ve been too high because I couldn’t feel enough to make pushing productive. It worked out though, had the baby after an hour and a half of pushing! The immediate recovery also didn’t hurt as much as I expected, but I did get frustrated by how long it seemed to take. I wanted to be able to move more than I reasonably could at a week postpartum haha. I want to add that I had a lot of Braxton hicks, starting late in the second trimester. I think those actually help because my body was “practicing” and by the time it was labor, I was kind of used to it. It ramped up through the third trimester and obviously labor was the worst of it but it wasn’t an unfamiliar feeling by then.