Is 20 hours a long labor?

It’s pretty long. I was in labor for twenty hours, followed by three hours of pushing before a Caesarean section. It was rough. Not sure what the average is.

In response to your last topic heading, they usually give you an enema when you first get in to the hospital.

From what I understand, the length of labor depends on a lot of factors (such as size of pelvis, overall size of the woman, etc.) and so it’s kind of inaccurate to throw out a general average length of labor as those times vary due to several physical factors of the woman and possibly the ban itself.

Since your asking for a number though, mothers generally can take 6–12 hours with first time mothers easily taking 17 hours.

But like I said, there are quite a few factors. For example, my mom was in labor for 48 hours give or take a bit. That is pretty damn long. However, she was an 88 pound woman prior to getting pregnant with me (her first child) and I was a 9 lb baby upon delivery. Also didn’t help that the doctor was one who believed I had to be born naturally and that even entertaining the notion of a c-section was a sin. Thankfully another doctor came in, threw that quack out and performed a c section pronto.

I had 12 hours of easy labor with my first and then headed to the hospital for 60 minutes of hard labor. That was 59 minutes too long as far as I was concerned.

It’s on the long side, but definitely not unheard of. My mom labored for 45 minutes with me and two hours with my sister. She barely made it to the hospital for my birth. Thing is, I have a feeling she might not be counting early labor. It would be like her to ignore twinges. Especially since she had false labor a week before. Or, maybe it just all happened that fast. My point with that is I think how some report labor time probably varies from woman to woman depending on their own perception if what is happening and how far apart contractions are in the beginning and how painful it is for them.

I have seen averages for labor from 8–12 and also seen it stated as 8–16 hours. I don’t know what is used as an official average.

A girlfriend of mine labored 8 hours and then the doctor told her they were ready to push. She pushed for over two hours. Then with her second baby she knew when she was ready to push and told the doctor. That pushing was less than 30 minutes. She feels now that she should have been allowed to labor longer with her first baby. She didn’t understand she would develop the urge to push when her body and the baby were ready. Sometimes it doesn’t all work correctly and maybe that would not have happened with the first, but she wishes she would have given it more time. The baby was never in distress.

In my personal experience it was. I was only in labor for a few hours. Three or so. And then the time to push came around. Took 3 pushes. OK. I’ll shut up now!

I was delivered right after getting to the hospital at 10 pm. less than 2 hours.

Apparently labour is considered to be underway when contractions last from 20–30 seconds. According to this site the first stage of labour may last from 12–14 hours but some women will be in this stage for longer, others for significantly less time.

With my first child, the first stage of labour was about six or seven hours but the second stage took a couple of hours. With the next two births, labour started and then stopped and I was in a hospital in no real discomfort for hours. I don’t consider myself to have been ‘in labour’ for that whole time though. Once labour started again, it took about 45 minutes for my second child to arrive and two hours for my third.

That 20 to 30 seconds in transition is a BITCH.

I don’t know @Dutchess_III… I think the 60 second plus contractions were the killer. They had me attached to a monitor so as well as feeling them, I could see the line on the machine as the contraction began, intensified, was sustained and then eventually dropped off. I remember screaming at the nurses at one point ‘It’s not going down!!!!!!!!!!!!’ As the line went on and on and on… I think I was panicking. Well no, I know I was panicking.

I don’t have any idea how long they actually lasted. I was out of my mind. Oh..I hated seeing them start to spike. They’d show up and the contractions would be a few second behind. I shuddered in terror!

It depends on several things, as mentioned above. My first two children were induced early due to complications. Those labors were about 15 and 16 hours each. My third child came on her own. I went through most of my labor at home, about 3 hours of steady contractions. We headed to the hospital as soon as the contractions were close enough and she was born within about 30inutes of getting to the hospital.

It is for the husband.

POOPING? Why pooping?

Yeah. Husband would give me a “warning.” The line is going up now. “STFU!!!!” Don’t tell me that! I’m perfectly fine being in total denial this whole time.

For me, my water broke at 1:00 a.m on Tuesday morning and she came out 10:30 p.m. Thursday night (almost 48 hours later). The “active pushing” part, what they call “active labor” was 2 hours. As far as your topic “pooping” the nurse told me that enemas are no longer a required part of the birthing process, @janbb, unless the mother requests it.

I think around 15–20 hours of labor seems normal for your first kid.

I don’t personally know of anyone who got an enema beforehand. I’ve heard the nurses clean it up without a bat of an eye without you even realizing it.

First kid, water broke Saturday night. Induced Sunday. Had her Monday morning.

When I was delivering my children, enemas were routine and required…no opting out.

@gailcalled Interesting. I wonder if they stopped doing enemas like how they stopped doing episiotomies? Or maybe it’s a regional thing?

EDIT
Quick google search pulled this up:
“A substantial portion of women in labor will have bowel movements, whether or not enemas are given,” especially during both early labor and pushing (Mahan and McKay 1983:247). Available evidence indicates that enemas do not in fact decrease the chances of elimination during birth nor the incidence of fecal contamination during labor, whereas they do often cause considerable pain and distress to the laboring mother (Romney and Gordon 1981; Whitley and Mack 1980). Moreover, the expulsion of feces during labor does not seem to increase infection rates: in a study of 274 birthing women randomly assigned to enema or no enema groups, no difference in infection rates was found (Romney 1981), and the risk of neonatal infection was very remote (seven babies from each group showed signs of infection which may or may not have had to do with bowel organisms). Another finding of this study was that the two groups had similar durations of labor, contradicting the notion that enemas shorten labor.

I don’t know. I also had episiotomies both times.

(enemas) do often cause considerable pain and distress to the laboring mother.. Aint’ that the truth

@gailcalled I don’t know how old your kids are, but back in the day when I was born, America for the most part was not allowing husbands in for delivery, and they were still knocking some women out for delivery. They also used forceps more often, and we had more babies with brain damage and facial nerve damage and some other complications because of it. They did all sorts of things in the past to women for labor and delivery routinely, or fairly routinely, that now seem odd.

Two of my labors were over ten hours, one was not. The difference between my longest labor, and my shortest was over ten hours in fact.
The one that went fast, was because I had heavy Braxton Hicks contractions throughout the second and third trimester. That is false labor, but by the third trimester, I was experiencing the contractions every day. The final month, it was day and night, for hours at a time. My abdomen took strange shapes during the contractions, and became rock hard. I was afraid. I thought my baby was being crushed under such conditions. The doctor chuckled, and told me the baby was just practicing. Sure enough, when he came out, he was just fine, until he developed pneumonia. It was so frightening to see him be hooked up to those tubes and monitors. He grew up healthy though.
Labor is nature, and nature is so often unpredictable.

My Mom was knocked out when she had me. For the next 3 kids she said, “NO!” She wanted to be awake. The way she tells it, with the next kid she wasn’t given any drugs because she declined them. The pain wasn’t that bad, she said.
Then she said, “But, they did give me drugs when I started pushing, so I didn’t have to go through the pain of pushing.”
I said, “Um…actually, the pushing is actually enjoyable, compared to the labor! It feels good!”
She was surprised to hear that. So, my Mom went through her entire labor, transition and everything, with no drugs, because it didn’t hurt that bad.

Seems to me I remember reading that our bodies tend to automatically eliminate feces a few hours before hand. I did, anyway. Have no idea if I was given an enema.

People sticking their arms up your vagina whilst one is having a contraction will lead to thoughts of murder and/or suicide.

Oh, and the hospital billed the insurance company for stitches and staples and shite. I called the hospital and said, “I didn’t have stitches or staples! I didn’t have an epistemology!”
I had them knock about 10 items off of that standard list.