I’ve gotta be honest, I rarely get sick and when I do, it comes for me bad. Like I feel like death is knocking on my door kind of bad. Ok, I’m being a bit dramatic. As I was laying in my death bed this weekend, it occurred to me that being sick is worse than labor and delivery.

WHAAAAAT!?!? I know right? And then who gives me the authority to say such nonsense!

Well, I’ve had both of my daughters sans pain medicine. With mini, I was in 12 hours of active labor. I’m sure it would have progressed a lot faster but I was sleepy and decided to sleep through the pain. With abc, I was in about an hour and forty-five minutes of active labor AND I had a Satan pitocin drip.

So after enduring both of these labors, HOW could I possibly think that a “simple” virus is worse? Here’s how…

  1. I knew ahead of time what was coming giving birth. Yep. When I got pregnant with mini, I took this amazing hypnobirthing class (hence my excessive sleepiness through labor) that taught us “power” words in handling labor. Like you aren’t in pain, it’s discomfort. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Keeping it all the way 100–it’s painful. Discomfort is what i feel when I’ve laid on my side too long. Pain is pushing a huge head and shoulders out of a not-so-huge hole OR feeling like you’re swallowing razor blades every.single.time I swallow. I didn’t know this was coming. I had no time to re-listen to all my hypnobirthing CDs to get me in the proper mind-frame for handling this.
  2. There’s a specific diagnosis. On Tuesday when the feeling of death first hit me and I was feeling like I was going to be seeing doubles, I went to the walk-in clinic. After a rather quick yet personal check up (she managed to get swabs down my throat further than my husband had ever been–yes, a dirty joke), I was told I had a fever and some kind of virus. <insert blank stare> She basically told me that there was something wrong but it wasn’t strep throat and that I should take some Advil and use a Neti Pot. But then 2 days later I was given a prescription for Amoxicillin for a maybe infection? Yay. With pregnancy, I knew exactly what was going on. I knew there was a baby in my belly, I needed to take prenatal vitamins, drink lots of water and eat and extra 500 calories per day. In approximately 10 months, i would be pushing (or having one cut) a baby out. Boom. Done. Yay.
  3. There’s a pre-defined time-limit for pregnancy. Who knows how long my cold will last. My babies are born. Boom. Done. I knew approximate time frames and I was comfortable with that. This virus/cold/killer sore throat that isn’t strep? A week later and I’m still feeling rather crappy. When is this going to be over? When will I feel the normal exhaustion I normally feel? I just want the stuff that coffee and an extra 5 minutes to be read as 5 days of sleep.
  4. I didn’t have to nurse a baby at the same time. I love my nursing relationship with abc. She’s pretty much stopped trying gnaw my nipples off so we’re pleasant again. My body has hurt so badly just to touch that even what is normally comforting brings pain. Many women nurse while pregnant–I wasn’t one of them.
  5. Things progressively get worse with pregnancy, with this here “virus”, it came on fast and strong and there are no moments of joy with it.
  6. At the end of labor and delivery, you get this beautiful baby that your body worked hard to create. Once you’re done being sick, you get to return to your normal duties, trying to make up for the lost time. This sounds crazy, but my favorite part of pregnancy has always been delivery (yes, all two times). I love the contractions and that final feeling of the “the baby is coming”. I love all of that. And I have loved my seeing my little people that I’ve created. This being sick? Ugh. Once it’s gone, no one will even remember how i triumphed over the double edged swords being jammed down my throat with every swallow or how the mucus in my ears caused incredible pain with every loud noise. All they’ll see is another warm body to dump work on. Yay. Emails.

Yes, it’s a long-shot to say that a death threat in the form of a viral infection is worse than labor and delivery but as a mom of two being down for 1-week courtesy of one, I’ll take labor any day over this.