Was Jesus' birth "painful, bloody and messy"?
The short answer
That claim presents as fact something the Church hasn't defined. The Church teaches that Mary bore her Son without violation of her virginal integrity, without specifying how. Generally, the Fathers and scholastics taught that she gave birth miraculously and without pain.
Not established fact
The statement is problematic because the Church has no official teaching on the physiological details of Jesus' birth.
What is taught
The Church teaches, as a doctrine of faith, that Mary bore her Son without any violation of her virginal integrity. Ludwig Ott explains that the dogma asserts the fact without determining how it is to be explained physiologically.
The tradition
Ott adds that the Fathers and scholastics generally understood it to mean Mary gave birth miraculously, without bodily injury and therefore without pain (see Summa Theologiae III, 28, 2).
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