Manybags, with all due respect, you don't have a clue as to what you are talking about here. First of all, you have a penis, not a vagina, and in my opinion, you DO NOT have any right to even put the words labor, and "easy way out" in the same room, much less the same paragraph. I am a huge believer in not talking about things in which you have not experienced, have gone through, or are not educated in. And just because you happen to have produced offspring, and may have been in the same room with your then wife when she was giving birth, makes you neither a doctor, or one who's experienced labor.
If you were to have experienced what labor really feels like then you too would have looked for, as you put it, "an easy way out". I pray to God that one day you get the joy of passing a huge kidney stone out through your penis. It will be hours upon hours of red hot pain that will make you wish you were dead, and you will probably beg the nurses to put you out of your misery at some point. Then maybe you might know a little of what labor feels like, maybe...?
The beauty of medical advancements is that we learn more about how our bodies work, why they work, and how to fix them. If we are smart enough to prevent things such as pain, stress, anxiety, and other such things, then doesn't it make sense to do so?
If you were not a layman then you would know that enemas do absolutely NOTHING for a pregnant woman in labor except make her usually more uncomfortable than she already is and exhaust her. The only thing enemas do is maybe prevent the doctor from getting pooped on, and preventing the mother from embarrassment should said poop happen, which, at that point, she really couldn't give a shit, pun intended. Back when your wife was having her babies, and your mother as well, people didn't question the orders of the doctor, you did what you were told. Also back then, enemas were more common place than they are now. People didn't think anything about that sort of thing.
While you didn't come out and say it, I am going to assume that because you mention that your ex had 3 kids, and your mom 5 kids, then you go on to say the phrase, "easy way out", that you assume that if both of them could handle it, then anyone who can't must be weak. I may be putting words in your mouth here, but again, I have to say that these words could only come from a man, and a layman at that. Do you have any idea how many women and babies have been saved because of medical advancements during pregnancy, labor and delivery? Pain control for example during child birth helps a lot of women be able to endure the process and helps from keeping them from exhaustion. As a layman and as a man, you would probably not know that when the mother is stressed, the baby is stressed too, which can cause all kinds of fetal distress in a thousand different ways. And yes, chemicals can and do cross the placenta, but really, it's so little when the medication is given correctly and we are not talking about crack. Get real please.
In a nutshell it seems to me as if you just slapped almost every mother on the planet in the face by minimalizing labor and childbirth and all that we go through. To suggest that we are "taking the easy way out" by requesting pain medications or what not is very very wrong. And to suggest that we should just suck it up and take it as is, as nature intended is at best, inhumane. Again, when you get the chance to pass a huge kidney stone, I hope an ER nurse looks you in the face and tells you to suck it up, it's natures way. Then maybe she will tell you to remember your Lamaz breathing, focus on your happy place, and push through the pain. Remember, it's a medical fact that women handle pain better than men, that's why we have the babies. If we didn't, the human race would have died off a long time ago.
Mashie