Explaining labor pain to men

I saw on another website some men asking to have labor pain described to them, one in order to figure out why he'd gotten punched in the nose several months earlier! The discussion was closed, but it got me thinking. Most women were just sarcastic and gave answers that were impossible for men to imagine, like passing a bowling ball or pulling your lip over your head. So I started thinking of a way they could possibly relate to or at least imagine in a realistic way.

Everyone's experience is very different, so I will just describe how it felt to me. And I'll start with how worthwhile it all is and how I'd do it over and over, rather than ending with that.

For me, it started very low and deep and radiated up to about the navel. So only the lower half of my belly was in pain, not the upper half. I had aches and pains in other places too, back, legs, etc., but never really back labor and the massive pain was all in front. Now, have you ever had a stomachache so bad that if the pain wouldn't go away, you just wanted to crawl into bed and double over? Like I'm thinking from gas pain, that kind of low, deep, sharp, dark pain. Think of being in the throes of the worst bout of that you've ever had.

Now I think some people exaggerate and get dramatic and say it's 50 times worse than that. Well, I have a pretty high pain tolerance and only ever got dilated to a 6 before needing a C-section. But on the other hand I did have Pitocin, which intensifies the contractions. But I'd only say it's about 10-15 times worse than that worst stomachache. But it gets harder with each contraction.

So I can understand why a lot of people scream during labor. I never did, it affected me the other way. I couldn't talk or really move. So with each contraction, I'd get into the position I wanted and braced myself. Even though I couldn't move, I still felt like I was writhing in uncontrollable, agonizing, excruciating pain. Between contractions, I was only miserable, so that was a big relief.

Part of why I tell this story is that we're trying for another one. I'm trying to prepare myself by remembering. It may be comforting to women and their husbands that although I can remember the words to describe it, I can't remember most of the actual physical feeling.