Wow. As a guy I don’t really have much right to say anything about your experience. I can only tremble and recognize my threshold of pain is no where near what I’ve witnessed of my own wife.

I’ve only observed birth through the birth of my children (my youngest was c-sectioned — we both joke that she was not “of woman born” — Shakespeare — although her mother would violently beg to differ — with good reason).

I am reminded that even the pagans used childbirth in a power/control way. The cult of Artemis (Ephesus) taught that if a woman ever left the cult they would die in childbirth (Artemis was the goddess of child bearing) and thus Paul’s statement in 1 Timothy (he was in Ephesus) about a woman being “saved in child bearing”. He wasn’t commenting on the “curse of Eve” he was saying to women who left the Artemis cult, “Don’t worry, leaving her won’t cause your death.”