Hacker News Reader

It varies widely.

My wife had two pregnancies: one was 52 hours (with five hours of pushing!). The second was about 2 hours total.

Neither involved pitocin.

5 hours of pushing? Not to mention the 47 hours of labour? That can't be right. Is that really normal? My impression is that after 2 hours, artificial methods get used (pump, caesarean). And that's in Netherland, the country of natural home births.

There are a lot of variabilities in labour.

Labour, yes, but pushing shouldn't take nearly that long.

Yep. Normally doesn't. She made slow but steady progress the whole time, so they never resorted to any other means (besides the aforementioned suction device in the end).

It's right. But it's not normal! After 5 hours we employed a suction device (and would have gone to emergency c-section if that failed after 3 pushes).

Baby was 9 lbs, 9 oz (4.3 kg).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com