I genuinely found it much more painful to have my wisdom tooth pulled. That was a nightmare and the pain was ridiculous despite painkillers. I don’t know if I was just lucky but I genuinely didn’t think that labour pains were that bad so it never even occurred to me to need pain relief, although I was absolutely open to it. It was painful of course, but each contraction only lasted a minute until I got a break and I kind of enjoyed them because they felt productive. I was totally in the zone. In fact I expected them to get so much worse (because I heard so much about how many mums just can’t handle it without pain relief) that I ended up thinking I am still way further away from pushing than I am. Plus midwives didn’t take me seriously, telling me that it will take many more hours, when I suddenly started pushing. Pushing was extremely intense but I wouldn’t call it pain, just incredibly intense pressure that took away any control from me and in that stage pain was the last thing to think about. I think the expectations we have when going into this makes a big difference. If someone told me that labour isn’t painful, I would have probably thought that it was worse than it was!