Labors Lost? Memories of Childbirth

The Huffington Post:

I’m told, by women I trust, that childbirth is an experience unlike any other. These women have vivid and enduring memories of labor and birth, becoming a mother, giving life. They recall the event as profound and magical and life-changing — and also very painful.

Nobody questions the physical intensity of labor and childbirth, but how do we know how painful the experience really is? Does recall — especially months and years later — accurately reflect the experienced pain?

This is not just an academic question. Mothers’ lasting feelings about the experience of childbirth — good or bad — are closely tied to remembered pain. So a team of psychological scientists decided to measure women’s actual experiences of pain in a hospital delivery room. They wanted to examine, as precisely as possible, the relationship between the experience of labor pain in real time and its recollection later on.

Read the whole story: The Huffington Post

Wray Herbert is an author and award-winning journalist who writes two popular blogs for APS, We’re Only Human and Full Frontal Psychology. Follow Wray on Twitter @wrayherbert.