How long did you labor?

[Thmom]

including pushing
I'm posting this in UC and homebirth too so please answer the one that best suites how you planned your birth.

[fire_in_july]

First child - 5 1/2 hours from first contractions to last push

Second child - 3 1/2 hours for the same thing

They were fairly fast, but they were no-breaks-between-make-me-want-to-die-contractions INTENSE.

Edited to add: Hmm, the poll choices just popped up. Since I can't pick one for each labor, I will pick 2-5 hours since the average of my 2 labors is there.

[Thmom]

I didn't even think of needing multiple choices DUH!
an average or most recent would be fine thanks!

[rockinmama]

I counted from the first little pangs of "am i in labor? maybe i'll time this..." about 20 hours.
But from when i woke up in the middle of the night and said "O.K.!!!" -to birth was about 4 1/2 hours.
It will be really interesting to see if there is a trend among the different birthing techniques-

[USAmma]

I was only allowed to select one but I had two children.

Abi took 8 hours of labor from start to finish. About 20 mins or less of pushing.

Nitara took slightly longer with labor but very, very short pushing, about 3 pushes.

With both of them I had an epidural in place at 4-5 cm. Abi's water broke during transition. I gave my permission for Nitara's to be broken at 10 cm because she was fully engaged and I was ready to have her.

[MonicaS]

I voted 5-8.

My 1st was a failed induction to c/s w/ 14.5 hrs total labor.

My 2nd(hospital VBAC) was a pretty quick, un-augmented, 5hrs of active labor.

My 3rd(homebirth) was a pretty rough 7 hrs of active labor.(w/ nuchal hand)

[teachinmaof3]

I can't vote twice....

#1 - 5 hours
#2 - 3 hours

[andreac]

From my water breaking to birth was 15 hours. Ctx started about 1 hour after my water broke and were 5 minutes apart from the start. Pushed for about 40 minutes. Stayed home for the first 7 hours.

[stafl]

DD1 - never really was in labor, what contractions I was having stalled out when I got to the hospital and nothing could get them started back up again. Had emergency cesarean when attempted induction resulted in baby's heartbeat dropping to ten beats a minute.

DD2 - about three hours from start to finish, but had lots of warning signs that labor was close for about a day and a half beforehand.

[sevenkids]

My first and last were hospital births, 5 homebirths in between.
dd 1, 5 hours, 45 minutes pushing, 8#
ds 7, 3 hours, 4 pushes, 8# 4 oz

[Amylcd]

12 hours - emergency csection

4 hours - planned cesection

[FrumDoula]

Went into labor on Monday, May 3rd at 8 pm or so. By that night, contractions were 3 minutes apart, lasting 60-90 seconds long.

I gave birth on Saturday, May 8, 1999 at 4:35 pm.
Vaginal birth, no epidural, 10 lb. 1 oz. bundle of joy.

So that's about 5.5 days.

My doula is still recovering.

[MrsMoe]

24 hours total and I was 3cm when I started true active labor.

At 8 cm I had to have waters broken... labor still did not progress so I was given pitocin to progress my stalled labor (was in danger due to BP 210/117 and labor couldn't be allowed to continue much longer.) No epidural, pain relief was breathing and a doula.

[hottmama]

6.5 hours from first contraction to birth. I was 3 cm dilated for weeks beforehand, and the first 4 hours of labor (at home) got me from 3-4cm, then it took 2 (in the hospital) to get from 4-10. I pushed for about 5 minutes, 8 lb. 3 oz. baby.

[hubris]

I voted with my most recent labor info.

DS #1: 22 hours from the beginning of active labor to his birth, including 4 hours of pushing.

DS #2: 6.5 hours of active labor, including 30 minutes of pushing.

Both were unmedicated hospital births.

[starbarrett]

45 hours from my first "wow, so that's a contraction" to birth including 3 hours of pushing. I voted even though it was a home birth not a hospital birth. Should I not have?

I had heard of long labors, but I thought it was unusual until after mine. Since giving birth, I've learned that it's really common for people who have natural births-- especially talking with people from my mom's generation before cesereans became vogue. Nowadays I think that if it's gonna take that long, doctors jump in with the knife before the body has a chance to do its thing.

[amanda2b2]

1. 9 hours
2. 4.5 hours
3. just under 2 hours but I had irregular contractions for the last month I was pregnant.

[Belle]

I woke up at 1:00am with contractions every two minutes and had her at 11:56am so almost exactly 11 hours

[NightOwl]

hm...well I'm not going to vote in the poll because I planned a birth center birth, but ended up at the hospital. I was in labor for 36 hours total. Including about 21 hours of active labor and 1 hour of pushing.

[MrsMoe]

I wonder if some of the mothers here had hospital labors due to medical reasons, which may not provide accurate results to your study of typical lengths of time for hospital births vs home births.

I know of quite a few mommies here who wanted home births either in the past or in the future but cannot due to medical issues.