It’s about motivation @trolltoll. People are not motivated to have a kidney stone. It just happens and they won’t know they have it until the pain comes. So the two situations are not comparable. Pain we expect and have chosen to experience and that has a positive outcome compared to pain that suddenly occurs and is outside of our control.
A woman who is pregnant is usually motivated to be pregnant. They have made a conscious decision to give birth to a baby. They are motivated by the fact that after the pain they know they will endure, they will have a baby. That’s an enormous and usually positive motivation to endure the pain of childbirth, even if that pain is extreme and long-lasting. The delivery of a baby is the reason they repeatedly choose to go through the pain of childbirth, not because it’s not really that painful.
@JLeslie, I have had gallstone pain and I’ve experienced childbirth. I don’t believe the pain is comparable. It isn’t that the intensity of the pain is worse or better than the other, but the resolution of the pain is different. In my case, the gallstone pain passed after a few hours (it recurred a couple of times). Childbirth lasted many more hours and came in waves. The intensity of the pain as labour progressed was at least as bad, if not worse than the pain I experienced when having a gallstone episode. However, I knew the childbirth pain would end when the baby was delivered and I had chosen to be in that position. With gallstone pain, the pain was unexpected when it occurred and while I expected the pain would end, I had no idea when it would end or what would prevent it happening again. As I recall the pain intensity, childbirth was worse.
However, this is my experience. Some women experience much more painful childbirth than I did (for some it is less painful) and I’m sure the kidney or gallstone pain others experience is also worse (or better) than my experience. Again, how bad the pain is is also affected by our own personal tolerance limits.