To me, the first is kind of true anyway - otherwise no woman would willingly give birth to more than one child. Your brain is very good at brushing distressing things under the carpet, so trying to remember exactly how painful something was is pretty difficult. You can say, “Being in labour for 26 hours was agony.” but it’s almost like a dream a few days after the fact. And I’m okay with that. I’d be far more concerned about having a false memory of something. I find the whole idea of false memories quite disturbing - even though your brain has created a kind of false memory regarding how painful the giving birth was. The thought of me having ‘imagined’ a whole (distressing) event is more than a bit frightening.
IMO, the first is worse. It doesn't seem that memories of pain will actually hurt you, unless they come with effects other than just memory, like, for example, PTSD. And the pain may have been in the past, but just because you don't remember it doesn't mean it's the same as never having happened. The suffering is still important. Just like you'd actively avoid suffering in the future even though it hasn't happened yet, pain in the past is equally real and undesired.
And what type of torture does that?
Pain implies that your body is somehow being physically damaged. The former sounds better, but taking that implication into account, it's actually worse.
Important to note that bad false memories can also be considered some sort of damage, but of a mental nature. So I consider your question as a trade-off between physical and mental damage.
The latter sounds far worse
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