Pain Tolerance

Before I get into this post, I would like to add a disclaimer that I’m not trying to take away from what women have to go through during pregnancy and child birth. After watching what my poor wife has been put through the last 3 weeks, I have never been more pleased with my body’s lack of a uterus. And my wife hasn’t even had to give birth yet – just 3 weeks worth of painful contractions and even more painful drugs to stop the contractions. My wife is handling everything extremely well and is a very brave woman and I’ll love her forever for what she is going through.

That being said, what I do not appreciate are all the smug comments that nurses make towards me such as “you guys will never understand” and “guys could never go through this”. Alright, let’s talk about that for a second. First of all, it’s very easy to be smug with comments like “guys don’t understand” because everyone knows guys will never have babies. Thanks for pointing out the obvious. But then again, no one ever can really understand what any other person is ever going through because no one ever goes through the exact same things in the exact same ways, so theoretically I could say – you have no idea how stressful it is for me to try to pee into the toilet every day and not make a mess. If all mankind decided together and decided to claim that it was the most stressful thing in the world, no woman could ever dispute it. Then every time we peed we could say, “Darn, that was rough! I’m so stressed right now…you’ll never understand how hard that was!” Another example is getting kicked in the nuts. For all we know, getting kicked in the nuts is just as painful as labor, but we’ll never know because women never get kicked in the nuts and men never go through labor. There is no way to compare the two. Again, I’m not saying they are equally as painful, I’m trying to make a very bad and ill-thought out point.

Also, how do you know men couldn’t handle labor? Why make the assumption that women are stronger than men because they are “able” to go through labor while men apparently “can’t”. The reason we can’t go through labor has everything to do with us not having female organs and nothing to do with our pain tolerance. I hear all the time that women have higher pain tolerances than men. What does that mean? Granted labor appears t to be miserable and painful on all accounts, but why assume a man couldn’t do it? It isn’t like the majority of women are dealing with this ordeal with a dignity and grace that is unfathomable from a man. Woman scream and cuss through it and a man probably would too. But I don’t think women go through the whole thing saying…”this doesn’t hurt…bring it on! I have tremendous tolerance to pain and this doesn’t bother me!” They complain just like a man would. I mean, once labor starts, a woman’s options are pretty limited at that point anyways. I’m guessing they can’t get halfway through labor and say…”hold on, time out. This sucks. Let’s not do this. This hurts way too much and I’d rather stop and not be in labor anymore.” I’m sure if they had that option, a percentage of women greater than 0% would take it. I would too. But the ship has sailed at that point and they do what they have to do. I’m convinced I would do the same…I wouldn’t have a choice, right?

How do people know woman have a higher tolerance to pain than men anyways? Where are the studies? I would like to see them. What does “tolerance” mean in this context? Does it mean withstanding pain without complaining? If that is the meaning, than I don’t think women have much of a case. Does it mean being able to handle pain without passing-out or dying? I think that must be what it means, but how did they figure that out? Did they torture men and women with equal torture tactics and see who died first? I just don’t understand what they are trying to say and I don’t buy it.

I wish I could get pregnant just to prove my point. I don’t doubt it would suck and probably be the worst thing I ever had to go through, but I bet I wouldn’t die. Again, I appreciate women and what mother’s go through. I appreciate the sacrifices and pain and everything mothers go through in pregnancy and child birth. I also understand you can’t make generalizations about men and women as all women are different and all men are different and everyone deals with things differently. But then again, I’m not the one who started with the generalizations – it’s those darn nurses.

I knew there was a reason I didn’t have a blog before. Maybe not documenting my thoughts was a good thing. Before anyone gets too mad at me, remember...I’m fighting cancer!