I have always wondered about the sensation I explicitly remember in bearing my first baby using the Lamaze "natural"(unmedicated) method of childbirth. When the pain became "unbearable", my sense of pain seemed to rise above my skull and my head/body became free of pain. When I sensed that my skull had allowed it, I received my sense of pain back but it was now not unbearable. I was not anesthetized at all. I and my baby were fully awake and aware.