Sin produces pain.  It destroys joy.  It grabs our attention from its proper focus on our Creator.  When Adam and Eve sinned, God punished them, announcing the suffering that would follow.  In this text, Eve learns that her role as helper to her husband and as child bearer will be afflicted with pain.  Eve’s pain would not just be physical but spiritual, and the whole race would bear the weight of her punishment.  But God did not curse the woman as He had done the serpent.  Her hope, and ours, would be grounded in another childbirth.  Born of a woman, Jesus would bear the sorrow and pain of the world, and by His victory over Satan, enable mothers and wives, and their husbands, to live a life of repentance and forgiveness.