“Let it be a short hour” We usually hear when, pregnant, the time to give birth is approaching. No wonder, if we associate the pain to give birth, the less it lasts, the better. Although the women who are giving birth to a pleasant experience surely would not have cared that the time of giving birth was lengthened ...
But the duration of labor is very variable and it depends on multiple factors that make it impossible to predict, although we can influence in different ways to facilitate dilation.
That is why we would like to know your experiences and know how long your delivery lasted (or those of your partners). We refer to the active phases of childbirth, active dilation or when the contractions are rhythmic, effective and painful, and to the expulsion period in which the baby completely crosses the birth canal.
The theory says that the phase of expulsion can be of very variable duration, approximately between 30 and 60 minutes when it comes to the first birth and between 15 and 30 minutes when there have been other deliveries. And if variable is the duration of the expulsive, what will we say about the dilation that precedes it.
Surely you have heard cases of women who were dilating for two days (which is said soon!) And others that reached 10 centimeters in a couple of hours or even in a jiffy, or at least without realizing it, like those unusual deliveries "When I went to the bathroom."
What is usually general is that the first delivery is longer than the following, because the woman's organism has already gone through the whole process and the “memory” of the dilation causes it to be carried out more rapidly under normal conditions.
In my two births I was fortunate to really spend "short hours", and I will never get tired of recommending pregnant women to prepare their body if possible facilitate dilation of the cervix.
If we arrive at the hospital with three centimeters of dilation and the neck softened, "erased" (task of early or latent dilation) better than if we arrived with zero centimeters and the neck "green", hard.
In my first birth, which was induced, it took about four hours to complete dilation and birth, although there was no expulsion because it ended in caesarean section. In my second birth, started naturally, another four hours passed, which can be divided:
- Two hours dilatation at home
- Two hours dilatation in the hospital
- Five minutes of bids
I do not count in this sum of times the final part, of the birth (expulsion of the placenta and suture), because that one made me eternal!
Although I believe that, as happens with the memory of pain, over time our mind becomes blurred over the course of our journey ... because the reward is our little treasures.
In your case, how long did the delivery last? Do we have any “record” mom among our readers? Tell us how you lived those few or many hours to give birth.
Photos | Robbert van der Steeg and jaredandmelanie on Flickr-CC
In Babies and more | Childbirth: when it occurs, Artificial rupture of the bag does not imply a faster delivery, how long does a delivery last ?, What is the most comfortable position to give birth?
