Let me guess. You’ve typed some version of this question into Google at an unreasonable hour, then immediately wished you hadn’t. Because the internet — the birth forums, the Facebook groups, the horror stories shared with a certain relish at dinner parties — has given you a very clear answer.
Yes. Unbearable. The worst thing you will ever experience. Good luck.
And here you are, carrying a baby, trying to be rational about something that feels increasingly unsurvivable.
So let me offer you something different. Not reassurance. Not a reframe. Not “it’s not that bad, honestly.” I want to give you the actual science. Because once you understand what’s happening in your body — really understand it — the answer to your question changes completely.
First: the belief itself is part of the problem
Here’s something that took me years to be able to say clearly, and that I now say to every single person who sits in my course:
The belief that birth is unbearably painful is one of the things that makes it so.
That’s not blame. It’s biology.
Your uterus has two sets of muscles working together during labour — inner circular muscles that are drawn upward by the outer longitudinal muscles. In the first stage of labour these muscles work together to give baby space to move out, and in second stage they move baby down and out. When these two muscle layers work in harmony, with good blood flow and space to do their job, they are remarkably efficient. Powerful? Yes. Intense? Can be. But working as designed.
Now here’s where fear comes in.
When you’re frightened — genuinely, physiologically frightened — your body does what it has always done in the presence of a threat. It activates the sympathetic nervous system. Fight or flight. Adrenaline floods your system. Blood is diverted away from your uterus and toward your legs and arms, so you can run.
The problem? You are not running anywhere. You are in labour.
With the blood supply reduced, the muscles of your uterus have to work significantly harder to do the same job. And here is the crucial piece: when adrenaline is present, your body cannot produce oxytocin. Oxytocin is the hormone that drives labour — and that also releases your natural beta-endorphins, your body’s own powerful pain relief.
Fear → adrenaline → reduced blood flow → harder working muscles → more sensation → more fear.
That is not a birth horror story. That is a feedback loop. And it has a name: the fear-tension-pain cycle. It was first described by obstetrician Grantly Dick-Read in the 1940s, and the physiology has been confirmed by decades of research since.
The pain so many people describe in labour is, in a very real and measurable way, significantly amplified by fear.
But what about the ones who don’t know this?
This is the question I find most interesting. Because we all know someone — or we’ve heard of someone — who seemed to breeze through birth. Who described it as intense but manageable. Who maybe even used words like powerful or incredible.
Were they just lucky? Superhuman? Did they have an unusually straightforward anatomy?
Sometimes, yes, there are physical factors at play. But far more often, those people had something else: an absence of the fear response, or a body that managed to stay in the parasympathetic nervous system — calm, open, flooded with oxytocin and endorphins — for much of their labour.
They didn’t know they were doing anything clever. They just weren’t in their fight or flight state.
The rest of us — the ones who’ve read everything, heard everything, imagined every possible worst case — have stacked the fear so high by the time we get to the birth room that our nervous systems are already in emergency mode before a single contraction begins.
So what does this actually mean for you?
It means the question isn’t really “is birth painful?”
It means the better question is: “what would birth feel like if I weren’t afraid?”
And the remarkable thing is — you can find out. Not by pretending the fear isn’t there. Not by white-knuckling your way through positive thinking. But by doing the actual, evidence-based subconscious work to release it.
That’s what hypnobirthing is. Not a beach visualisation. Not a technique for gritting your teeth in a more zen manner. It’s a way of reprogramming the fear response — so that when your contractions begin, your body reads them as the powerful, purposeful muscular work they actually are, rather than as an emergency to flee.
Your body’s natural response to being calm is to produce oxytocin and endorphins. That’s not a promise I’m making. That’s physiology.
You don’t have to believe me yet
I know how this sounds if you’re still in the “birth is terrifying and anyone who says otherwise is either deluded or very fortunate” camp. I was in that camp. I was a primary school teacher in 2004, pregnant with my first daughter, completely convinced that birth was something I simply had to survive. I dragged my husband to a hypnobirthing class because of a video I’d seen on telly and I was desperate enough to try anything.
Freja was born at 36 weeks, unexpectedly, and it was an amazing, transformative experience. My next two children were both born at home.
I’m not telling you that because your birth will look like mine. It very likely will not. Each birth is unique, and I won’t pretend otherwise. What I’m telling you is that the woman who dragged herself into that class in terror, and the woman who walked out of her third birth thinking I did that — those are the same person. The only thing that changed was what she understood about her own body.
That’s what I want for you.
The bottom line
Is birth painful? For many people, in the way it’s commonly experienced — yes, it can be. But the version most people are imagining when they type that question at midnight? The version filled with unmanageable, unbearable, out-of-control agony?
That version has fear baked into it at a chemical level.
And fear — unlike the muscles of your uterus — is something you can actually prepare for.
Nancy Keen is a senior KGHypnobirthing teacher and trainer based in Narberth, Pembrokeshire, working with families across West Wales and beyond. If you’d like to find out more about the Birthright Hypnobirthing course, you can get in touch at nancy@birthright-hypnobirthing.co.uk or visit birthright-hypnobirthing.co.uk