ther does not seem to be a middle ground here. In Aus you can have pethedine plus gas and if you really want an epidural you can. But pushing a baby out is amazing.
I'm 28 wks with baby #2, and while I intended to try labor with out drugs for the first child, I got an epidural about halfway through and plan on getting one if I can (first labor was 10 hrs start to finish, I might not have enough time with this one!) for this delivery as well. All of this discussion of the *terrible* things that can happen with epidurals just makes me want to let all the preggo commenters out there know that I had one, it was blissfully easy, didn't hurt a BIT going in, no headaches, no missed areas, no total numbness. I felt the contractions as pressure/tightening at the end so that I could time my pushes with them, and pushed for 15 minutes before delivery an 8lb 13oz girl. I had some tearing but with a first kid that was that big, my midwife said it was to be expected. I don't mean to overshare, but I include all this to let you know that for me, the difference between vomiting from the pain and just having to go into a trance to survive 60 second contractions coming every 2 minutes, versus watching Pirates of the Caribbean and holding hands with my husband after I got the drugs was just, well huge. We were then both able to rest up for about 2 hours. I was happy, alert and calm when our daughter was born, whereas I cannot imagine what I would have been like after another 2-3 hrs of what labor had already been for me sans drugs. I agree with everyone that's said it's YOUR choice, but just know that labor/delivery is one of those things that you may have a plan for, a vision of, and it's almost always going to be very different than what you envisioned. Be prepared for anything going in, trust your provider, whether it's a doula/midwife at a homebirth or an OB with a scheduled c-section, and don't waste one goddamned minute worrying about what anybody's opinion is about you or your choices.
My question is how many of the women who chose an epidural were read the entire list of complications? The American medical community does a piss poor job of completing the full consent actions required by law. I'm not sure how Sweden works, but here the woman isn't told many, if any of the possible complications (not often, anyway), and is just given a sheet of paper to sign, consenting to the procedure.
I researched it myself, before going into labor, and by god, no one was coming anywhere near me with that needle!
@therealaliasmisskat: Again, the chances of these complications happening (and I was read all of them before my epidural here in the UK and I'm a lawyer so I actually understood the language) are about the same as being struck by a meteor.
So here's a feeling that I've already learned doesn't get much understanding from anyone when childbirth is being discussed: shame. My two deliveries left me with the profound conviction that I absolutely suck at childbirth. It took me years to overcome it.
When I was expecting my first baby, I wanted to go all natural. For all the reasons pro-natural people have expressed here, too - less complications, better for the baby, pain is normal, how bad can it be?, yadda yadda. Also, I'm good at dealing with pain. I've given myself a piercing. Suffered silently with a crushed elbow for hours. When my husband accidentally slammed the car door shut with my flattened thumb between it, I just very quietly asked him if he could open it and set me free, please. I was a badass.
About 24 hours after my water had broken and 19 hours of active labour - with no progress at all for the last 6 of them - my midwives *asked* me to take the epidural. I was so out of it with pain, so exhausted, so at the end of my line that I had even forgotten it was possible - there were simply no thoughts left in my mind. (It took another hour of excruciating agony for the anesthesiologist to get there.)
After the epidural hit me, I immediately fell asleep. When I woke up the pain hadn't returned, and I started to weep thinking it would come back. The good thing about the epidural was that it relaxed my body so that the cervix finally opened - yes, it can sometimes speed things up like that. And it wore out just in time for the pushing part. And you know what? *That* was the worst pain of my life. Exactly how you'd expect to feel if your vagina was slowly ripped in two for about 20 minutes. No, I haven't forgotten.
I had a beautiful little girl. And an utter, devastating feeling of failure.
I'm long over it now, but it still stings to read the pro-natural comments. And in a primitive setting, I would've probably become one of those women who die of exhaustion during days and nights of childbirth, with the baby still in their belly.
Second time around, I was in a country where they give you an epidural, no questions asked (which was the only reason I even dared to try). They hand you a remote control and you can adjust the amount yourself. I maxed out.
Good thing too, because my baby got stuck. My pelvic bones were too narrow (and she wasn't even big). She needed resuscitation after the doctors finally somehow wriggled her out of there (the emergency cesarean team had been assembling already), and I was told that next time around, unless the baby is really tiny, I should get a scheduled C-section.
She's 4 now, and these days I can say it aloud without shame (albeit with a twinge of sadness): I'm bad at giving birth. Full stop. And in a Third World country I'd probably be a maternal mortality figure.
@gilded (with sunflowers): You are being way to hard on yourself. I'd like to try natural childbirth, but not because I think its some kind of badge of honor. I don't even think most US hopsitals will let you go that long after your water broke.
@Diziet_Sma: It starts there, then moves on to breast feeding, then to weaning and vaccinations. Some people are just so invested with what other people do with their bodies/children. It's mystifying.
Susie Bright has some amazing ideas regarding birthing.
"I have a great photograph of me in the delivery room, dilated to six centimeters, with a blissful look on my face and my vibrator nestled against my pubic bone. I had no thought of climaxing, but the pleasure of the rhythm on my clit was like sweet icing on top of the deep, thick contractions in my womb."
Of all the birthing tips I've ever heard, this is the ONLY one that's made me consider the possibility of thinking about maybe having a child.
@vagenious: Thanks for your nice memories of my account. I also had an epidural at some point, when I stopped progressing. I basically did every station of the cross. I also got od'ed with anesthetic during the final hours and couldn't' stop shaking for a long time. It's an art, not a science, sometimes.
The best part of my prenatal classes was just understanding the physiology of everything that was going to happen. I wasn't frightened, like the other women I heard screaming down the hall. I understood the pain and how it was going to ebb and flow. i liked my doctors and my best friends were there. Actually, I was wildly optimistic considering all the problems that came up.
And vibrators do help, as a focus object and relief-distraction. All the midwives I saw kept saying: "these should be plugged in at every bed."
My mom had two natural births (this is also a woman who refused anesthesia for cavity fillings because she "doesn't like feeling numb"). I don't have her pain threshold but still agree with her recent proclamation that epidurals are "kind of wimpy." If women have been doing it drug free forever, I can do it drug free. I'll keep an open mind on the whole epidural thing cause I haven't been there, but you're SUPPOSED to feel pain during childbirth and I want the most natural experience possible if I have a low risk pregnancy.
@opalmarie: ha my mother refused anesthesia for cavity fillings on my behalf because as a doctor she'd had to deal with too many patients who had been fucked up by dental anaethesia gone wrong. Seriously none of us were allow it. Yes, i do have dental issues to this day.
@opalmarie: You could use the same argument to say you shouldn't take a pain killer with an injury because you are supposed to feel pain when you are injured. As somebody who needs to take pain medication to function in my daily life, I actually take offense at the use of the term wimpy. You can never know how another person feels pain.
@opalmarie: Oy vey. No one is supposed to feel pain during childbirth. There is no biological reason for it. What, you think nature wants you to NOT have another child? Talk to me about how epidurals are wimpy after you've had a baby.
@opalmarie: God, comments like this are so unhelpful. You don't even know what you're talking about. Epidurals don't make it some freaking walk in the park.
You know the problem is that sometimes things just don't go the way you want them to and it helps if you are not shamed by people because of that. Not that anyone here is shaming people but I have had an awful lot of judgement off people when they hear my daughter was a c-section without them bothering to find out why.
And the thing is I did read everything. I researched thoroughly. I was pretty keen on a natural birth but didn't rule out epidural if I changed my mind. I went to the classes and I had a doctor who was pro vaginal birth in the hospital in Manhattan with the lowest c-section rate in the five boroughs. And I still ended up with a 32 hour labour, concerns that my daughter was going into distress and ultimately an emergency c-section.
And to be honest i don't regret that because the moment i held my daughter which was no more than 30 minutes after the whole thing was still wonderful and still made me cry and laugh and everything that had gone before didn't matter.
There isn't one way to give, there's simply the way you give birth and the sooner people stop thinking that their way trumps everyone else's the better in my personal opinion.
@emilyanne: No one should ever judge! Everyone is different. And, whatever you do (natural, epi, c-section) the hard work starts when you get the baby home.
Oh, and a whole new set of judgements on you for your parenting skills, of course!
@gangey: ha so so true, it's unbelievable how much people can find to judge. I actually think that the only thing that was in my favour after the c-section was the fact that the drugs they gave me for afterwards made the first six week pass in a very pleasant haze. My husband still can't understand why I don't remember it more painfully.
I've learned pain control techniques and they take a heck of a lot of concentration. I don't see how you could concentrate on pushing or not pushing as appropriate while also concentrating on the pain control.
I went natural (with an open mind about an epidural if things got rough) for several reasons: I felt like it was an experience common to women for thousands of years and I wanted to know what it was like. I don't always react well to pain relieving drugs. And it is cheaper. I was able to do it because my contractions, while painful, weren't terrible (the 2 1/2 hours of pushing, however, was brutal work).
That said, I didn't attend any Lamaze or hypnobirthing courses. I just managed to not be afraid of the whole process, embraced the fact that it would be painful, and took solace in the idea that I could choose the drugs at any time. I don't think any reasonable woman planning a natural birth thinks there is any chance it will be pain-free. And the study's results don't surprise me. Some labors and contractions are much worse than others, and the women who have it bad are usually going to choose drugs, no matter what kind of classes they took beforehand.
My sister is a serious natural birth proponent, and she says that both of her children were amazingly alert directly after birth. She also said that you kind of forget how much it hurt, but I call bull shit on that one.
@MissAmy: to be honest though that's probably just the child - my daughter was unbelievably alert - a fact commented on by the midwives - after birth and she was born by emergency c-section following drugs, some kids just are.
@MissAmy: I only have one child, a 10 year old girl, because the pain was SO BAD. Oh yes, I still remember. I knew as soon as she was born that I was never, ever, going to do that again.
No one tells you that after the baby is born, there is more hurt coming when the doc sticks her hand into your uterus scooping around for any lost bits of placenta. Oh yes, SCOOPING.
@MissAmy: I forgot. It is a total adrenaline rush for some people. They put my baby in my arms and I looked up into my husband's sweaty, deathly pale face, and said "that wasn't so bad, was it?"
His jaw dropped, and he said "Dude, weren't you here for all that? The crying? Remember?"
@gangey: ha I threw up over the aneasthetist, burst into tears, and then asked my husband if he'd mind getting the sunday papers as i wanted something to read later on. But actually I did have a pretty good adrelanine rush, although that could have just been the post-morphine haze.
@emilyanne: I threw up, pooped, peed, cried, grunted, sweated, and pushed so hard for 2 1/2 hours I broke all the blood vessels in my eyes and eyelids. And somehow, I really can't remember the pain too much. I was totally in a zone.
But the 5 minutes it took the doc to sew up my episiotomy were TORTURE. Go figure.
@MissAmy: Epidurals don't affect the alertness of the baby because the drugs don't mix with the mother's blood. They are injected directly into the spinal column. That's why epidurals are preferable over opiate-based pain meds which can make the baby lethargic.
Also, my favorite thing about Knocked Up is how Anne Hathaway purportedly dropped out because she didn't like the scene with the stunt vagina. I can't say I blame her-it felt a bit unnecessary, and honestly, do women shave their hooha before going into labor? I mean seriously, do they? It looked impeccably groomed.
@SylvanSylph: That's what I thought. At nine months, I don't even know if I could see down there. I would just assume and hope the ladyparts are there so a baby can emerge from whence.
@lalaland13: Actually, shaving used to be standard practice in the hospitals upon admitting a woman in labor. I cannot IMAGINE dealing with itchy pube regrowth and a newborn.
My mom was laughing when she had me, thanks to ye olde epidural. I'm more worried about inducing labor than getting an epidural-while anecdotes don't make scientific fact, I've heard, from more than one mom, that being induced makes contractions stronger.
But sometimes it can't be avoided, and I don't think using or not using drugs makes you a bad/good mom. Just as long as you get a safe and healthy baby, do what you have to do.
I'm nowhere near having a baby, but I lean towards the no drugs side not because of the baby or any romantic notions about birth- I just think I'd rather be in control of my body and not numb. But that so could change.
Is our Dutch poster back from her banning? I wrote a paper awhile ago about pre and post natal care in different countries and I think epidurals are pretty much unheard of in the Netherlands. Most mothers give birth in birthing centers and are home in a couple of hours, but I didn't get the impression that this was something Dutch women had a problem with.
And for the Brits, isn't their a standard pre-birth class. The NCT women says prental ed is limited, which isn't what I remember from the aforementioned paper.
A lot of how we view childbirth is cultural. Even in the developed world, how it is handled varies a lot.
@Lymed has a Mr. Lymed: Its not that I enjoy pain, but it isn't surgery, you have to push. There is a real argument for fewer complications if you opt out of the epi. You are more likely to have mobility which makes tearing less of a possibility. So it isn't as simple as pain versus no pain.
Also, my mom's epi for me hurt like hell. It didn't happen the next time, but it can happen.
@clevernamehere: A large percentage of Dutch women even have their babies at home. I was born in my parents' bed, which is a nice idea.
Epidurals are frowned upon in Holland -- you literally have to scream and beg to get one. Personally, I think women should have a choice.
Most of my friends have opted for natural childbirths -- and have done fine without drugs. But there are a few who have had unnecessary painful labors, which were quite traumatic. Again: women should have a choice.
@clevernamehere: I'm not saying you enjoy pain. But when I am in severe pain, I don't have control over my body, the pain has control over my body. Everybody feels pain differently. I have an extremely high pain tolerance, but I also feel a lot of pain. It's very possible that, without an epidural, I couldn't push.
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I researched it myself, before going into labor, and by god, no one was coming anywhere near me with that needle!
05/29/09
05/28/09
When I was expecting my first baby, I wanted to go all natural. For all the reasons pro-natural people have expressed here, too - less complications, better for the baby, pain is normal, how bad can it be?, yadda yadda. Also, I'm good at dealing with pain. I've given myself a piercing. Suffered silently with a crushed elbow for hours. When my husband accidentally slammed the car door shut with my flattened thumb between it, I just very quietly asked him if he could open it and set me free, please. I was a badass.
About 24 hours after my water had broken and 19 hours of active labour - with no progress at all for the last 6 of them - my midwives *asked* me to take the epidural. I was so out of it with pain, so exhausted, so at the end of my line that I had even forgotten it was possible - there were simply no thoughts left in my mind. (It took another hour of excruciating agony for the anesthesiologist to get there.)
After the epidural hit me, I immediately fell asleep. When I woke up the pain hadn't returned, and I started to weep thinking it would come back. The good thing about the epidural was that it relaxed my body so that the cervix finally opened - yes, it can sometimes speed things up like that. And it wore out just in time for the pushing part. And you know what? *That* was the worst pain of my life. Exactly how you'd expect to feel if your vagina was slowly ripped in two for about 20 minutes. No, I haven't forgotten.
I had a beautiful little girl. And an utter, devastating feeling of failure.
I'm long over it now, but it still stings to read the pro-natural comments. And in a primitive setting, I would've probably become one of those women who die of exhaustion during days and nights of childbirth, with the baby still in their belly.
Second time around, I was in a country where they give you an epidural, no questions asked (which was the only reason I even dared to try). They hand you a remote control and you can adjust the amount yourself. I maxed out.
Good thing too, because my baby got stuck. My pelvic bones were too narrow (and she wasn't even big). She needed resuscitation after the doctors finally somehow wriggled her out of there (the emergency cesarean team had been assembling already), and I was told that next time around, unless the baby is really tiny, I should get a scheduled C-section.
She's 4 now, and these days I can say it aloud without shame (albeit with a twinge of sadness): I'm bad at giving birth. Full stop. And in a Third World country I'd probably be a maternal mortality figure.
05/28/09
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05/28/09
"I have a great photograph of me in the delivery room, dilated to six centimeters, with a blissful look on my face and my vibrator nestled against my pubic bone. I had no thought of climaxing, but the pleasure of the rhythm on my clit was like sweet icing on top of the deep, thick contractions in my womb."
Of all the birthing tips I've ever heard, this is the ONLY one that's made me consider the possibility of thinking about maybe having a child.
[susiebright.blogs.com]
05/29/09
The best part of my prenatal classes was just understanding the physiology of everything that was going to happen. I wasn't frightened, like the other women I heard screaming down the hall. I understood the pain and how it was going to ebb and flow. i liked my doctors and my best friends were there. Actually, I was wildly optimistic considering all the problems that came up.
And vibrators do help, as a focus object and relief-distraction. All the midwives I saw kept saying: "these should be plugged in at every bed."
05/28/09
05/28/09
05/28/09
05/28/09
05/28/09
05/28/09
And the thing is I did read everything. I researched thoroughly. I was pretty keen on a natural birth but didn't rule out epidural if I changed my mind. I went to the classes and I had a doctor who was pro vaginal birth in the hospital in Manhattan with the lowest c-section rate in the five boroughs. And I still ended up with a 32 hour labour, concerns that my daughter was going into distress and ultimately an emergency c-section.
And to be honest i don't regret that because the moment i held my daughter which was no more than 30 minutes after the whole thing was still wonderful and still made me cry and laugh and everything that had gone before didn't matter.
There isn't one way to give, there's simply the way you give birth and the sooner people stop thinking that their way trumps everyone else's the better in my personal opinion.
05/28/09
Oh, and a whole new set of judgements on you for your parenting skills, of course!
05/28/09
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05/28/09
05/28/09
You move on.
05/28/09
05/28/09
That said, I didn't attend any Lamaze or hypnobirthing courses. I just managed to not be afraid of the whole process, embraced the fact that it would be painful, and took solace in the idea that I could choose the drugs at any time. I don't think any reasonable woman planning a natural birth thinks there is any chance it will be pain-free. And the study's results don't surprise me. Some labors and contractions are much worse than others, and the women who have it bad are usually going to choose drugs, no matter what kind of classes they took beforehand.
05/28/09
05/28/09
05/28/09
No one tells you that after the baby is born, there is more hurt coming when the doc sticks her hand into your uterus scooping around for any lost bits of placenta. Oh yes, SCOOPING.
05/28/09
05/28/09
His jaw dropped, and he said "Dude, weren't you here for all that? The crying? Remember?"
05/28/09
05/28/09
But the 5 minutes it took the doc to sew up my episiotomy were TORTURE. Go figure.
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But sometimes it can't be avoided, and I don't think using or not using drugs makes you a bad/good mom. Just as long as you get a safe and healthy baby, do what you have to do.
05/28/09
Is our Dutch poster back from her banning? I wrote a paper awhile ago about pre and post natal care in different countries and I think epidurals are pretty much unheard of in the Netherlands. Most mothers give birth in birthing centers and are home in a couple of hours, but I didn't get the impression that this was something Dutch women had a problem with.
And for the Brits, isn't their a standard pre-birth class. The NCT women says prental ed is limited, which isn't what I remember from the aforementioned paper.
A lot of how we view childbirth is cultural. Even in the developed world, how it is handled varies a lot.
05/28/09
05/28/09
Also, my mom's epi for me hurt like hell. It didn't happen the next time, but it can happen.
05/28/09
Epidurals are frowned upon in Holland -- you literally have to scream and beg to get one. Personally, I think women should have a choice.
Most of my friends have opted for natural childbirths -- and have done fine without drugs. But there are a few who have had unnecessary painful labors, which were quite traumatic. Again: women should have a choice.
05/28/09