

You have to think that for most of human history, the women who were educated and well off enough to write about the pain of child birth were upper class white women who had never really undergone physical hardship.
From my wife’s account, being pregnant is great, birth is fine except for the last 2-3 contractions, which are pretty rough. Then again she runs marathons for fun and it’s an OB gyn nurse, so she understands that having a baby is like any other extreme physical activity



This is just because they don’t get paid enough to afford it in the first place, so it never develops as a habit.