Why dont women faint in labour, considering the amount of pain endured?

Question

Is there a medical explanation as to why women don't faint while giving birth? Why do some people faint when they are in severe pain, yet I have never heard of a woman fainting while giving birth from the pain, particularly the final stages of labour?

Answer 1

drugs

Answer 2

They give you a shot/ vitamins, when ya in pain it will keep ya up!

Answer 3

As a mother, I think it's because you know that at the end of all that pain, you have a beautiful child... besides, I think most women have a higher pain threshold than men. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.  ;-)

Answer 4

women have a higher pain tolerance because they need to go through child birth. It is also why they get less stressed out by things like long distance running. It is just evolution doing its thing. pain has to be much higher for women to pass out then childbirth makes happen.

Answer 5

i dont know good question, the brain wont allow them to escape the pain.

when you know you have to do something and are dedicated to it nothing can put you out the path. some people faint because the goal isn't strong enough...

its like when you know you have a rolex lying in gutter your not going to walk away and leave it your going to pick it up!

Answer 6

Surely the pain would bring you back to conciousness? I've yet to go through it myself.

Answer 7

That is actually a very good question.  However, there have been cases of women fainting.  I think that is the purpose of the breathing technique.  During my last labor, the doctors or nurses did not instruct me on how to push.  My body automatically told me to push without taking a breath.  I would have fainted if my husband wouldn't have yelled at me to breathe.

Answer 8

I'm not super religious, but some things are just obvious.

God created women to have babies!  If a woman passes out while giving birth, who's gonna push the baby out??  

God seemed to have thought of that!

: )

Answer 9

let me tell u a true story :

in a school a new table was brought to it and it took like five men to carry it to the school play ground and there were kids playing around the table somehow the table fell on a kid n his mother rushed to him and lift the table with one arm and pulled her son out             so wat i was trying to say that womans body is created to be very tough

Answer 10

I'm sure they do. Just how a person going into shock might pass out, there are probably some women who are in so much pain or are so weakened from the pain that they lose consciousness. Whether it's documented somewhere or not, I have no idea. But I don't see why it couldn't happen.

Answer 11

Because women are freakin amazing!

Answer 12

all the energy is drained through their body as they go through and endure so much ain, i think this is the reason why woman faint.

Answer 13

Your adrenaline is too pumped up, your body  and brain is capable of getting people through amzing things at critical times

Answer 14

Evolution.

Women have a higher pain tolerance because we're built to give birth. If we fainted with the pain, there's a higher risk of birth complications because the child would be trapped in the birth canal. People with the genetic disposition to faint (i.e. have a lower pain tolerance) are less likely to successfully pass their genes on to a child -- because the child dies in utero.  It's natural selection.

Answer 15

Kat has it right..... long before doctors and anesthetics, women just 'gave birth' to the little ones.... fainting wouldn't have been a good thing at all....it's the same in all animals... have never seen a cow, horse, dog, cat, lion, zebra etc faint... have you?.....

a wise woman told me that childbirth was the most and the hardest WORK I'd ever have to do.... as I looked at it that way, I realized it really is.... those who feel so much awful pains are feeling their fear instead of feeling their bodies doing the work they were designed for.... and it's amazing!!....

Answer 16

I never once fainted during my 72 hour plus labour.

And not one pain killer either.

Instead I lost consciousness between contractions!

I was in too much pain to bloody faint! LOL.

Seriously though with all the loss of consciuosness made the staff and me relise something was seriously wrong.

After 100 years of improvements in labour, woman still die. I was going to be of these statistics.

Have the pain killers.

And yes. Us woman are ruddy tough.

Why do you think ONLY woman can give birth??????

Answer 17

Because the female body is made to give birth.

In fact, when labor starts natrually, the contractions come at a pace that can be handled without drugs. It is when interventions, such as pitocin, come into play that contrations become too strong to handle...that and being stuck in bed from all the monitors the hospital puts on a laboring woman. After that, who wouldn't want an epidural?