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'm with you in this!

I mean, I think it should be available in France for that reason.

I do think the lack of pain relief options other than epidurals is a negative rather than a positive thing. There are some hospitals in France, mostly in Paris, where they have gas and air and birthing pools to cater for the international community and the small but growing number of French women who wish to try for an unmedicated birth, but that's not much help if you don't live near one.

That said, I had a very negative view of epidurals, I wanted to try and manage without one, and I wasn't happy about the fact that no gas and air would be available. I think my feelings were very shaped by the fact that most of the information I was getting about childbirth was from UK sources, and I feel that there is a very strong message that the "best" way to give birth is with as little pain relief as possible, just a bit of gas and air. If that's what you actually want to do, having done your research, more power to you. If you're in the middle of a painful labour and you are refusing anything more than gas and air because you've been led to believe that epidurals are bad, that's not so good. If you're asking for an epidural and being told by a midwife that you don't need one, obviously that is completely unacceptable.

There does seem to be a bit of a cult of "natural childbirth" in the UK which leads to women either refusing or being denied stronger pain relief due to a systemic belief that it is bad. And having given birth in a country where they have the opposite belief, I'm not sure I agree with that.

*I was going to try and say something serious, but on reflection offsetting is def the way forward.

So many twats we can all stop visiting AND be supporting labouring mothers. This needs to be a world-wide campaign!*

When I was in labour if someone had told me they could fly in am anaesthetist from another galaxy to provide pain relief I'd have happily accepted. As it happened there was no anaesthetist available in my galaxy and no one to administer pethidine either so I didn't hsvr any pain relief. I didn't like entonox. Can I go and visit my mum now?

babyjellyfish

same here, I gave birth in epidural friendly France.
I got a red button to push to call for one when the pain got too much.
Maximum wait 1/2 hour.
Team of dedicated anaesthetists in the maternity section.

Apparently something over 90% have epidurals, the ones who don't are too late and the British !

What happened to Michel Odent and the Pithiviers unit @babyjellyfish ?

He was all the fashion in the 80's which is literally the olden days.

I do think there's an inbetween place, where ideally safety and mother's choice meet. Or there should be.

Many women have straightforward and quite quick births with no intervention and I'm lucky to be one of those. It would be a huge waste of resources to impose and medicalised birth on those women, quite apart from their needs and choices.

I agree with this. I am past childbearing, but being green I would have welcomed there being information available on the environmental impacts of different birth choices. There wasn’t much information at the time other than breastfeeding and cloth nappies being more environmentally conscious choices compared to formula and disposable nappies. I don’t think that having this information or giving it to women is to attack their choices. It’s really more about making those choices better informed.

Doesn't appear to have made a big impact in France!

I had to stay in hospital for 10 extra days after an epidural, botched of course. I doubt there was no carbon footprint for all the effort dealing with me. I wish I'd stuck to gas and air. All very well giving the facts but it's dangerous not to say "you can save the planet by having an epidural instead of gas, but your knackered anaesthetist might kill you in the process ".

Men being entirely uninvolved in the process?

Sadly I think epidurals are more likely to be botched in countries like the UK where they do far fewer of them and maternity units don't have their own dedicated anaesthetists.

An epidural puts you at a much higher risk of needing a more medicalised birth though

that obviously puts both mum and baby at a higher risk of complications

This ^

I wonder whether you could offset the use of Entonox against all the other occasions that women are denied appropriate levels of pain relief?

I sincerely hope this research is used to develop less environmentally-impactful methods, instead of whacking people about with the shame hammer. Big corporations produce more emissions per year than many of us will ever produce in our entire lives, epidural or not.

Nah, easier to berate the bitches instead.

I don't think the original article was intended as an attack on women but I have seen it being used to shame women.

There is a solution, its possible to harvest gases from the air. I remember seeing an article in a back copy of New Scientist describing a manufactured gravel that would trap specific molecules. It could be used in an air conditioning system, the gas could then be harvested from the gravel.

Of course women should be able to have the pain relief they want.

I do think though, this thread highlights a point regarding expectations. It's interesting that in France, gas and air is considered a waste of time because it doesn't stop the pain. During my antenatal classes it was made very clear to us that g and a isn't a pain blocker; rather, it alters your perception so you sort of don't care about the pain as much. Epidurals were explained as a total pain blocker.

I had my first baby the same month as a close friend had hers. I had g and a and found it fantastic. Of course it still hurt like buggery but it really helped that I wasn't expecting total pain relief- I wanted something to take the edge off.

Conversely my friend had an epidural and was massively upset that it didn't 'take' all over so she had an area of pain on one side. She had expected total pain relief.

The nbest way to protect the environment is not to have the baby at all...

I would personally have melted some ice caps and burnt down a shit load of trees if it had been necessary to get my epidural

'Sadly I think epidurals are more likely to be botched in countries like the UK where they do far fewer of them and maternity units don't have their own dedicated anaesthetists.'

All UK maternity wards have a dedicated obstetric anaesthetist (sometimes two although that's less common). It will be someone like me on call, middle grade registrar, and a consultant around in daylight hours. I do plenty of epidurals a shift so I'm not sure where people get the idea we don't do many! The problem comes when I am stuck in (obstetric) theatre with back to back emergencies and I can't find any of the other hospital anaesthetist to come and help if an epidural is waiting. It's not ideal but unfortunately as with most areas of NHS staff are leaving and rotas are not sufficient to meet the demands of the service.

In regards to the nitrous issue, no single woman should be taking the environmental impact of the use but a unit must do more to stop wastage of a resource that is harmful. I've entirely stopped using it as part of a general anaesthetic.

And the carbon footprint of a vasectomy is?…. Drum roll..

i will only guilt trip ppl about pain relief in labour when all men have had vasectomies without pain relief… bet that will win some volunteers … not…

Agree. It’s men and women deciding to have children.

And you can be very “bothered about the environment” and choose to have children.

Its only the eco-fascists that view humans as parasites and make spurious claims that by having children you are destroying the planet and don’t really care about the environment.

Moderate environmentalists recognise that humans are part of nature and the environment, that like every other life form we are worthy of continuing as a species, but as conscious beings it is our responsibility to live as lightly on the Earth as we can depending on our circumstances.

Entinox isn't just used for childbirth though. Typically targeting women's choices.

Well, that would be great but they refused me an epidural, so... And, anyway, NO ONE should be trying to guilt women who are pushing a human from their vagina.