To think women should be free to choose whatever pain relief in labour suits them without having to consider the environment

[FannyCann]

A colleague brought this article in to work today and it made me furious.

Apparently if women in labour would base their choice of analgesia in labour on the environment they should choose an epidural which has a far lower carbon footprint.
Using Entonox for four hours is the equivalent of driving 850 miles whilst an epidural is equivalent to just four.

It just reads like male doctors scolding women for wanting a simple safe form of pain relief when instead they could burn up manpower resources by demanding epidurals. They haven't considered where all the anaesthetists are meant to come from to provide epidurals for all!

Three female obstetric anaesthetists quite rightly responded in the letters that mothers shouldn't be guilt tripped about their choice of analgesia in labour.

Gas and air in labour ‘harms the planet’.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/3d011450-e354-11ec-8bdd-c253e043f5f0?shareToken=3d20235d87acf65d1bda38d59ef587e11_

I think people commonly underestimate just how important the environment is.

After having a baby you drive less anyway for at least the first 3 months.

So am going to call it even stevens.

I just won't drive that 850 miles as we won't do any long trips for a while after DC2 arrives and then I've broken even again

Well I don't underestimate how painful childbirth is.

I felt like mine were coming out sideways.

I'll walk to the shops a bit more often and turn on less lights for having had an epidural.

Don't give me that epidural, think of the environment.......said no woman ever.

What's the carbon footprint for fixing a broken nose 😂

Epidural comes with risks of more intervention. What’s the carbon footprint of a c section?

Well having a baby and adding another human to the world is a far bigger environmental issue so adding a few hundred miles to that isn’t here or there!

I think society as a whole can do a million other things for the environment before they come to take away labour drugs!

I think it’s fair to point this out.

Ok, that’s it, I’ve officially heard it all.

It's also unethical because epidurals do have risks, albeit low for long-term complications, but they do exist (as I just got to listen to the probabilities of them all ahead of my section on Friday).

Does anyone ever actually get an epidural when they ask? Seems to me (anecdotally) that it's not that often!

Speaking as a retired anaesthetist, I believe the article in question was written by some Dutch anaesthetists. They were quite correctly stating the relative environmental impact of different methods of analgesia in labour.
Far more nitrous oxide used to be used in operating theatres, as it was the default carrier gas, along with oxygen, to deliver the anaesthetic vapour (sevoflurane, isoflurane, etc).
Being aware of the environmental damage is important, as it leads to better methods of scavenging the nitrous oxide instead of releasing it to the atmosphere, or developing alternative methods of analgesia, such as epidurals, remifentanil infusions, etc.
I don’t think you need to view it as an attack on women’s choices - it wouldn’t have been intended as such.

850 miles you say? That's the equivalent of driving to visit to my mother. I didn't have any pain relief as DS was born in the street but I'm more than happy to not visit my mother to offset someone else's gas and air use.

If they want to be really environmentally friendly then they should close the hospitals and just let people die.

Why are these things only talked about for women only issues.

How much electricity is used by someone on a life support machine?

Hopefully men will consider the environmental impact of both child birth and child rearing whenever they feel horny.

Quite It's fucking ridiculous.

I'd be intensely displeased if someone tried to make me feel guilty about any pain relief I wanted, no matter what was wrong with me.

My boys are 15 and 12 now so no recent experience, but I had an epidural during both labours ,I was induced both times however

@Mamai90 I got my epidural within 15 mins if asking.

When he was done I thanked him for coming so quickly. He told me his wife had had their first baby a couple of weeks before and it had opened his eyes and put a rocket up his arse 😂

The carbon footprint of any pain relief choice in labour is going to be a drop in the ocean compared to the carbon footprint of having a child. So it seems a strange aspect to worry about.

I mean, I'm sure lots of women have gas and air and an epidural? I did.

I have to get a flight to visit mine.

I'm in. I can offset a few gas and air mothers.

I think anyone who comments about the carbon footprint of other individual people's activities and/or other individual people's very existence (which I seem to hear a lot in reference to children these days) should be handed the keys to a euthanasia suite and told to get on with it, for the good of the planet.

I had no pain relief in either of my two labours but I did have water births and being in the pool helped a lot. At the time (about 24 years ago) I recall a male midwife writing something to the effect that western women didn't know how lucky they were using multiple gallons of water for a water birth whilst in Africa women walked miles every day to carry a small pot of water back to the home for cooking and drinking.
It's really time someone looked at the environmental effect of water births.

While they're at it they can calculate the cost to the environment of HCPs washing their hands.

As if the NHS is going to be providing epidurals in the same numbers as it provides gas and air. I wonder how many of us there are who desperately wanted an epidural, were denied and instead were forced to rely on less effective gas and air for pain relief? Bet it's a fair few.