Women prefer longer labor over more intense pain: study

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Women prefer longer labor over more intense pain: study

By Kathryn Doyle NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - If you were giving birth, what would be your choice: a longer labor with relatively less pain, or a shorter labor with terrible pain?  That’s the question researchers posed to 40 pregnant women. Less-intense pain, at the cost of a longer labor.   “Interestingly, intensity is the driver,” said lead author Dr. Brendan Carvalho, from the Stanford University School of Medicine in California.  Using an epidural “may prolong labor but reduces pain intensity, and it seems that would be preferable to most,” he told Reuters Health in an email. For the study, Carvalho and his colleagues gave a seven-item questionnaire to expectant mothers who had arrived at the hospital to have labor induced but were not yet having painful contractions. The questionnaire pitted hypothetical pain level, on a scale of zero to 10, against hours of labor.

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