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@DesertDreams88: Dude, I'm sorry they made you push like that. I know you had a difficult labor though so it might have been necessary to get him here safely, but I was able to push with my body on my own cues and it was so great (painful, but great).

It surprised me that they kept having to move the monitors down to keep the heartbeat as she descended. It hurt really badly.

@DesertDreams88: I didn't have to push like that! Like @avivoca: I was allowed to just push as my body told me to, and however it told me to.

I'm trying to think... I don't know if there were any surprises with DD, but everything went smoothly with no complications with her.

Oh yeah, though, another big surprise for me was how impossible it initially felt when I started to push. Everyone says it's like pooping. Well pooping involves a lot of soft and stretchy body parts, whereas in labor I could clearly feel the hardness of her skull pushing against the hardness of my cervix, and the idea of pushing two hard things against each other felt completely ludicrous. I was holding back for a good while before I was able to convince myself to really push hard.

Hm. Most of it was pretty close to what I expected. Surprises were:

1. I didn't even notice transition. I was all worried about it after reading how hard it can be, but it wasn't significantly different than the rest of labor, for me.
2. Pushing hurt way more than I expected.
3. The biggest surprise was that I never really had a super strong urge to push (no meds, so it wasn't that an epidural dulled the sensation). I pushed because I knew I was supposed to push during the contractions, but I never had the "Oh my god I HAVE to push" feeling. Even at the very end, I was able to "sit out" contractions when I was so exhausted I couldn't push. Which may be why my pushing lasted 3 hours!

A few things:

1. I was surprised at how much it hurt before I got the epidural (it turns out that I was transitioning), I was shaking like crazy with the pain.

2. Once I was fully dilated and effaced (confirmed right after the epi placement), I was told that we'd allow the baby a couple of hours to descend further on his own. I guess this is labouring down (?) although no one referred to it as that, and it wasn't mentioned in my class.

3. How hard it was to figure out how to push properly. I wasn't very good at it at first. I was told that my muscles were too tight, and that made it difficult to get him down and out. I've still never heard of anyone being told that. Pushing was 4 hours, consequently, and then vacuum assist.

4. Lastly, I was just really amazed at how it all looked in the mirror during pushing (I didn't see the actual birth part)!.

That I never dilated on my own because of cervical scar tissue. I had 17 hrs of unmedicated labor and they thought I was getting ready to push - checked me and I was 1cm. That SUCKED.

I was surprised by:

The feeling of my water breaking.
How fast my labor was (6 hours total)
And, that we had a girl. We were team green.

Looking back, I remember being so shocked at how painful & powerful it all was. My brain blocked a lot of it. I remember thinking having a home birth would be this blissed-out experience. While it was amazing & beautiful, it still hurt (!!!!), and was a completely out of body experience.

The doctor asked me if I wanted to hold the baby right away and I said yes. I took that to mean immediate skin to skin but she meant "do you want to help catch your own baby?" So that happened. I'm sure they had extra hands down there but yes I wound up helping.

Also amazed that it's possible for the cervix to be 100% effaced and almost totally closed up. I was totally effaced and 0.5 cm dilated when I arrived at the hospital. An hour later I was 2.5 cm, and an hour and a half after that (probably less, but it's when they next checked) I was fully dilated. So, also surprised at how fast that part went, longer than my pushing!

@snowjewelz: yes about the shakes! I was like, "is this normal???"

@travellingbee: I also was surprised by how much time had passed, I completely lost track. My birth prep class (hypnobirthing) was big on not watching the clock, though, and my care team respected that.

Finally, the sheer physicality of pushing surprised me. I wish someone had told me that it's pretty much like jumping straight into a marathon when you usually don't run more than a block to catch the bus, haha.

@PurplePeony: my husband was freaked out by the shaking and he kept asking the nurses.. They were like "she's fine."

I thought of a couple more!

Time! I had no sense of time. When they told me the time he was born, I had to ask if it was AM or PM.

Also, they had a mirror set up so I could see everything and told me I should look because you could see the baby's head. Yeah. I would not have known that was the head if I wasn't told. It was all white and wrinkled. I had a wild thought that I was looking at brain and the baby had some sort of cranial defect. But it was just wrinkled skin because he was being squished through the birth canal. Head looked totally normal once it was out. Later on, my husband also commented that it looked super weird.

The only surprise for me was how big he was (over 9 lbs). I always measured exactly right every week and never had any indication he'd be that big. When they weighed him and told me what it was, my jaw dropped. I had always just assumed I'd have at least an 8 lber because that's how big I was but had no clue he'd be that big.

@littlejoy: oh yeah- that my first was a girl! We were team green but EVERYONE was sure it was a boy. I was sure it was a boy. When they said it was a girl we were both like, wait, really???

I had no idea what back labor was.
All the books kind of glossed over it. I never once felt a contraction in my abdomen.
Also, when my water broke, I felt his entire body fall down. Right after that labor started immediately, fast and furious. No gradual build up. Black-out, ears ringing, tasting metallic contractions. I thought I was having a seizure!

For me I was surprised how easy pushing was (which is pretty much opposite of what everyone else is saying!) lo1 I was convinced I needed to push but nobody believed me because i was 5cm a few minutes beforehand - baby was born less then 5 minutes after that with 1 push. Baby number 2 was 3 pushes. I also prepared myself for the ring of fire both times but never felt it.

@BrandNewMom: I had a similar issue. My contractions started out about 3 minutes apart and stayed that way! I called my doula super confused because it didn't fit the pattern everyone tells you to look for.

My contractions also did this thing where they would be regular for a long time and then I'd have a break of like five or six minutes, and then the next contraction would be more intense. It was this stair-step thing, which was pretty cool. My water broke on one of those step-up contractions!

Finally, I was surprised that pushing was so much worse than regular contractions! So many people say that pushing is a relief after labor, but for me it was so much worse! Thankfully it only went on for 40 minutes before DD made her appearance!

@Mrs. Rain: Mine started at 2 mins apart, but we were told in class that they should be less than 5 mins for an hour. So I waited 45 mins before waking DH up, and then waited the full hour before calling the hospital. I have been told that next time I should not wait that long, but I was confused, because it didn't meet my expectations.

I think I have completely blocked out most memories from my labor, but I do remember both times being WAY easier than I had anticipated. I had 2 of the easiest deliveries on the face of the planet. Both were under 9 hours, pushed like 3 times for both, had amazing epidurals... I have been extremely lucky. Felt like a truck hit me afterwards, but the labors themselves were easy.