Pain peak, not duration, the key factor in mother’s view of childbirth

The most severe moment of pain experienced by a woman during labor, rather then the actual length of the process, will contribute more than any other factor to the woman’s later assessment of the experience, a study conducted by researchers at Israel’s Open University suggests.

According to the study, which followed 320 pregnant women from the moment they entered the delivery room until their baby was born, a woman’s memory of the event is heavily shaped by the peak in pain, leading her to associate the moment of intense pain with childbirth in general, the Daily Mail reported on Tuesday.

As part of the study, the women were asked to rate the pain they experienced on a scale of 1 (not painful) to 100 (extremely painful) every 20 minutes throughout their labor. After recording the ratings, the researchers contacted the women two days later and asked them to describe how they remembered the experience. Finally, the women were presented with the same question two months after they had given birth.

The researchers found that women who received an epidural, an anesthetic procedure, recalled childbirth to be less difficult then women who did not, even though epidurals usually significantly prolong the labor process. The study’s findings also suggest that the level of pain experienced at the peak and at the end of labor were the best indicators of the women’s overall recollection of childbirth pains.

The study, which was published in the journal Psychological Science, relates to previous research on two other psychological hypotheses known as peak-end bias, which asserts that people remember the peak and end moments of an intense experience better, and duration neglect, according to which one’s judgment of painful experiences is not influenced by the duration of the experience.

Adiv Sterman contributed to this report.