‘I Can Feel Everything’: Women Are Speaking Up About Pain During C-Sections

There’s no other major surgery where you’re expected to be awake and possibly feel it. Yet that’s what happened to Elizabeth, Blair, Susanna, and thousands of other women during one of the most common surgeries in the U.S.: a Cesarean section (C-section).

In a short video for The New York Times, journalist Susan Burton recounts what she’s learned from listeners of her podcast The Retrievals, many of whom reached out after hearing Season 1’s investigation into dismissed pain during fertility procedures. Their new stories? Even more harrowing: women who felt “everything” while doctors sliced into their bodies during C-sections.

One-third of births in the U.S. happen via C-section. According to Burton, “the best estimate of how many patients feel significant pain during their C-sections is 8%.” A review of studies published in Self this July puts the number even higher (11%), which translates to over 100,000 people annually.

Let that sink in.

“I said, no. I feel everything.”

The video begins with firsthand accounts. Elizabeth remembers being rushed into surgery and feeling the operation start. Blair says, “There was this nurse on my right side. I just remember holding her hand and telling her over and over again that I can feel everything.”

Susanna shares that what she felt “was like a blunt instrument being run round inside me.” When the doctor asked Blair if she felt pressure, she replied, “No. I feel. Everything.”

Burton explains that while anesthesia is standard, usually spinal or epidural, it doesn’t always work as expected. “There are all kinds of reasons this anesthesia might not work the way it should,” she says, “but a common denominator seems to be the widespread dismissal of women’s pain.”

As Susanna put it: “I was lying on my back, looking up into the face of someone who’s convinced that the block would be working… I knew I had given the wrong answer when I felt the first incision. It felt like I was a beanbag being opened up.”

Why pain during C-section happens, according to experts

So, how does this happen in the first place?

According to Self, the standard forms of anesthesia used during C-sections (spinal blocks and epidurals) are supposed to render patients fully numb from the nipple line down. But there are plenty of ways this can fail.

Sometimes the anesthesia doesn’t spread far enough. Sometimes there’s not enough time for it to kick in. And sometimes, as happened to Clara, a nurse featured in “The Retrievals,” the medical team insists everything’s fine when it’s clearly not.

Clara, who her own coworkers operated on, felt “every cut, pull, tug, even the sealing of blood vessels with a red-hot instrument.” When she cried out, the attending physician told a nurse to reassure her it was “okay.”

Even when pre-surgical tests suggest the patient is numb, such as by touching the skin with ice or a sharp tool, those methods aren’t foolproof. An incision and internal organ manipulation are at a completely different level of sensation.

Pain during C-section doesn’t just hurt. It can traumatize

In Burton’s report, Vanessa says: “We’re happy and we have a healthy little girl. But part of me also feels like that is not the only reason why I don’t want more children, ‘cause it really scares me to have to go through that again.”

Elizabeth adds: “I don’t think I really started talking about it until I’d had my second child, and I believed myself. I just felt traumatized.”

Data backs up that feeling. The study Intraoperative pain during caesarean delivery, published in 2022 in Anaesthesia Reports, found that 11.9% of people undergoing elective C-sections under spinal anesthesia experienced intraoperative pain. And 1.11% experienced severe pain, scoring their experience at a seven or higher on a 10-point scale.

Physicians often failed to recognize it. Researchers noted a significant gap between what patients felt and what doctors thought they felt. Anesthesiologists and obstetricians underestimated pain in the majority of cases.

The study concluded, “Obstetricians and anaesthesiologists underestimated maternal pain.”

The long-term impact goes beyond the OR

According to Self, women who report pain during surgery are more likely to develop PTSD, postpartum depression, and even physical complications. Emily, a labor and delivery nurse who had a C-section herself, said the pain was so intense she still feels it years later. Even today, her daughter being nearly five years old, she can “still feel the scalpel crossing her abdomen.”

Burton says the problem isn’t just physical. “This pain that patients experience, it doesn’t just matter for a few minutes. The consequences can last for years.”

That’s part of why the UK issued new guidelines in 2022 emphasizing the importance of communication, validation, and patient-centered care. The guideline explicitly states: “A woman must be listened to and her account of events accepted as her genuine experience.”

Pain during C-section can be treated if doctors actually listen

In many cases, the pain could be managed if providers took the patient seriously.

Dr. Shannon Clark told Self that if someone is in pain mid-surgery, doctors can administer more meds, sedate the patient, or even switch to general anesthesia. But some providers delay or resist these interventions, either out of fear of risk, personal ego, or systemic bias.

According to the American Society of Anesthesiologists’ (ASA) 2023 statement on pain during cesarean delivery, “significant pain during cesarean may affect the patient experience and has been associated as an independent risk factor for postpartum post-traumatic stress disorder.”

The ASA’s guidance urges clinicians to listen, pause the surgery if needed, and include patients in decisions before and during the procedure. Shared decision-making, especially about what to do if pain arises, is now considered a best practice.

Medical bias plays a major role

Painful C-sections don’t happen in a vacuum. They’re part of a larger, deeply gendered problem in healthcare.

As previously reported on FIERCE, studies show women wait longer for pain relief in ERs and are less likely to receive meds than men, even with the same symptoms. A 2024 study published in PNAS revealed nurses were 10% less likely even to record women’s pain scores.

And according to the ASA, racial disparities also exist. Hispanic and Black women are more likely to receive general anesthesia (often associated with higher risks) during C-sections than white women, even when controlling for other factors.

This all contributes to what researchers call “epistemic injustice,” when people in power dismiss your reality. Burton, reflecting on the women who reached out to her, noted that many didn’t start sharing their stories until years later. “They didn’t believe themselves,” she says.

What needs to change to prevent more trauma from pain during C-section?

More research. Better training. Stronger policies. And most importantly, listening to patients.

The ASA recommends that anesthesia care teams routinely discuss pain risk and pain plans with patients before surgery. They also stress that physicians must be willing to acknowledge when a spinal or epidural isn’t working and pivot accordingly, rather than insisting everything is “normal.”

As Dr. Clark put it: “Would I rather my patient not go to sleep? For sure. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to sit there and let her scream and cry and feel it.”

Until these conversations happen in every operating room, women will continue telling their stories, and demanding to be believed.