Pain is interesting. You'll quickly forget the second by second details, but remember the event as an overall bad experience. And, in some respects, we experience a whole lot of pain in a short interval during some sort of body repair, rather than lesser pain over a longer interval without the repair. It's sort of like filling a pain bucket in a quick deluge or a trickle.

Men are such wimps. Think about a woman looking forward to their next birth.