-=> Quoting Ward Dossche to Carol Shenkenberger on 01-03-07  13:01 <=-

 WD> The only thing that was disturbing was the duration of delivery. My
 WD> wife had a sister (she actually has 8) and when towards the end of her
 WD> pregnancy she felt a first cramp, she needed to press her knees
 WD> together and be raced to a hospital to prevent the baby from just
 WD> dropping-out prematurely. She had a window of about 20 minutes. No
 WD> pushing, no yelling, no pain. 

That's pretty uncommon, although I did know someone that was similar for
her second pregnancy/delivery.

 WD> So when it was our "moment of glory" we expected
something the same,
 WD> but what a miscalculation. Contractions started something like 9pm,
 WD> baby was born 6.35pm the next day. Very painful. I thought we were

I went from 2am to 1:31pm the next day.  One of my sisters went for just
about 2 days with her first child... finally delivered normally.  Her
last child was an emergency C-section due to fetal distress (the cord
was wrapped around the neck twice, as it turned out).  Bottom line
though, is that, despite some similarities, every pregnancy and every
delivery is different from any others...

 WD> going to be a one-child family because I didn't want my wife to suffer
 WD> that way, so was quite surprised when 1+ year later she started talking
 WD> about a #2. 

The pains of childbirth are forgotten (mostly) in the joy of the birth. 

 WD> That was a Ceasarian, a year later followed by a #3 via the normal way
 WD> and 4 years later #4, also normal childbirth. A lot of doctors say that
 WD> "once a ceasarian, always a ceasarian" but that obviously
is not true.

It partly depends on how the caesarian is done.  There are some ways
that can make having a normal delivery more risky, others that don't
have much impact on that at all.  Another sister, living in England, had
4 children, 1st and 4th were c-section, 2 and 3 were normal.  There they
only allow 2 C-sections.

 WD> Now I can tell a somewhat funny story about contractions on an
 WD> airplane. 

I bet it was less funny as it was happening?  :)

ttyl       neb

... What if there were no hypothetical situations?

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