To think I was over-drugged for giving birth?

[Purplegras3]

How much anaesthetic did you have giving birth? Looking back now I think I was super over-medicated and it did me no favours bonding with my baby. For the first week after birth I was like a glazed zombie until the drugs left my system. I had 8 epidurals, mountains of gas & air and some other drug I can't remember the name of. I was full-on hallucinating that I was in my favourite tv shows. I couldn't see the room I was in. When the anaesthetist asked me to turn over for another epidural, I asked to whose side was I to turn? And I named the characters I could see around my bed. I could also see my dm at the foot of the bed, naked and standing on a plinth, painted head-to-toe in gold, holding up a bunch of grapes! 😆It's funny looking back but also fucking serious because I couldn't walk for 24hrs after and I couldn't be present to my baby's needs either. Anyone else experience the same as me?

Absolutely. All of those drugs clear from the body very quickly. I had morphine after my c section which made me a bit weird for a while, but it wore off quickly. Any effects I had after that (apart from sheer trauma) were probably due to blood loss, stress and hormonal changes.

Sounds like you has a tottering time anyway. Hope you're recovering okay.

I hallucinated from tiredness the day after DC1 was born. I’d been awake for 48 hours of labour plus a day and most of a night with a screaming newborn. So doesn’t need to be the drugs.

My friend was in labour at the same time as me and I could hear her off her head on the gas and air from 2 rooms down. She was having fun at a festival apparently (seems to be a common theme).

Oh and also I’d had enough blood loss that the midwife on my next pregnancy booking-in appointment saw it in my notes and was surprised I hadn’t had a blood transfusion. They didn’t tell me that at the time though.

Pethidine is a crazy drug. I was singing on it. Totally away with the fairies

Gas and air made me feel sick, I refused to have it for my second, nothing worse being in labour and retching at same time. I had the epidural with my first as well.. It resulted in forceps and my poor baby bursting a blood vessel in her eye, she looked like the devil's kid for a few weeks. Plus she was out cold for hours, very sleepy, as opposed to my second all natural birth ( didn't have choice as was 10cm dilated and about to give birth) came out like a screaming demon lol so I think the drugs make babies sleepy, which could either be good or bad depending on how tired you are

I didn't have any pain medication but I did hallucinate while showering when I got home, from sheer exhaustion I think. I thought I saw shadows of loads of people behind the shower curtain. I knew it wasn't real and that I was hallucinating but I was pretty freaked out that my brain did that!!

I had gas and air, pethidine, epidural, spinal block (I believe they're different?!) and then a general anaesthetic to get my eldest out. You do just feel rubbish afterwards, but everything leaves your system fairly quickly. It sounds like the epidural wasn't quite working, hence the top ups. But it all sounds fairly normal.

It's a very difficult time Op, I felt like I'd been hit by a truck for a week or so after! Labour is physically exhausting for your body to go through. Take care of yourself!

They can't win can they! Half the time women are moaning the hospital wouldn't give them more anaesthesia, when adhere to patient's request they complain that it was too much!

Unlikely she had 8 top up boluses either. You usually try to avoid giving a top up that frequently, because they affect blood pressure/heart rate. 8 top ups aren't impossible but they are unlikely - the pinprick test I described is a more likely explanation.

Pervading made me hallucinate The Numskulls (old cartoon strip in a comic from years ago) were in my brain & controlling my limbs. I could actually see them moving a lever to increase my contractions & pulling it back when the contraction eased off.

My sister hallucinated on it as well, but she saw Hungarians getting on & off trains behind a privacy screen.

OP, it sounds like you had an epidural that gave one sided pain relief and normally what happens then is the patient turns on their side so that the side that’s not working is lowest and a top-up dose is given lying like that. The effect of gravity sometimes gets the epidural to work better on the bad side. Sometimes the epidural tube can be pulled back slightly if it’s not working evenly to try & improve it (which involves taking the dressing off & a bit of faff with sterile technique so may feel like a 2nd procedure’s being done). Pethidine, entonox, exhaustion and pain can all cause hallucinations. Analgesic epidurals do often have fentanyl in, which can cause similar side-effects to pethidine, but the epidural dose is low and general absorption so slow from the epidural that it doesn’t usually cause a problem.

About 1:8 epidurals don’t work well enough to be the sole mode of pain relief (quoted in the Ob’s Anaesthetist Association patient info card about epidurals) and a ome women do still need additional pain relief in that case.

If an epidural doesn’t work at all then taking it out and resiting it is often possible. The second attempt would often be a space above or below the first attempt. Most anaesthetists wouldn’t do more than 2, maybe 3 goes (getting as far as actually putting the catheter in) because of the risk of complications the more times you stick a big needle in the back.

The technique for siting epidurals is blind (kind of obviously) and depends very much on how a back ‘feels’ as the needle’s going through the different tissues. The epidural space can be anywhere from about 3cm to 12cm deep and it isn’t always obvious which end of that spectrum it’s likely to be. Normally about 4-5cm of epidural tubing is inserted into the space so that it doesn’t work well there’s some scope for fiddling (pulling it back). If the catheter is off to one side/ has ended up somewhere a bit weird because there is scar tissue or unusual anatomy then the epidural may not work despite being sited as well as possible. No anaesthetist on earth would site one ‘incorrectly’ on purpose as a) it’s really quite nice relieving people’s pain and b) the ones that don’t work make so much more work it makes no sense to not make each one the best go possible!

HTH!

The gas and air made me think I was at a club night

Hey op, I’m sorry you are struggling. Why don’t you organise a debrief on what happened? It’s very easy to be confused. And some of the things you’re writing are unlikely. Like a week to clear the drugs. Gas and air you control.

I was convinced I was rushed to intensive care a couple,of days after for one reason , it was months later I found out it was I had sepsis and was in septic shock. I think it’s good to have a debrief to make sense of it.

I must have a very high tolerance to drugs, as during my labour I had codeine, gas and air, and diamorphine (twice) - none of which made any notable difference. The only thing that did make a difference was a spinal block.

I did however hallucinate in the first couple of weeks after labour, which I put down to sleep deprivation.

Jesus, which country did you. Give birth in? Did the NHS drug you like that???

RTFT and stop over-dramatising.

Sorry but I laughed so hard at the vision you had of your mum ! I had gas and air and pethidine and remember thinking I was a comedian doing a gig ! They did cut me off at one point as I was totally out of it.

I had gas and air, pethidine and an epidural that needed topped up straight away as it was one sided and then again later on.

I was pretty away with it for various parts of labour - but it definitely didn’t take anything like a week to wear off, I was alert during and after giving birth and after that pretty normal except for very tired even though it took about the full day till the epidural properly wore off.

It's possible that they were rolling you onto your side to help the epidural to take effect better on the side you were still feeling pain. Anesthetist may have had to come back to adjust/resite the epidural catheter (although 8 times seems very excessive!) If you are feeling like you want answers check out if you can get a debrief from someone from your hospital

Something doesn't add up here. Why did the anaesthetist have to come back in just to top up your epidural? That's not a thing. It gets put in once, and once it's in, you can then keep topping the drug up until you no longer need it. It's just one procedure. It's not 8 procedures, but that's what you're suggesting. So either you're lying, or you're failing to grasp the concept of an epidural...

It doesn't sound like too many drugs....from a non medical perspective.

You can ask for a review as previous posters have suggested.

Did you have a C-section?

Xx

Hi OP, just wanted to say in case it's at all comforting that I had absolutely zero drugs with DC1 - was meant to use the gas and air but was doing it wrong (pressing button when I shouldn't have been - d'oh) so I gave birth on no medication at all.

I was hallucinating afterwards through sheer tiredness and exertion - kept hearing voices and seeing faces popping in and out of the blank walls. It was about 40 hours from first contraction to birth for me and although I napped a tiny bit I was out of my tree afterwards mostly from just the lack of sleep and proper food (couldn't keep anything down once the contractions started).

So it can happen that way for some women even without the drugs, and as long as you and bub are doing ok now I'd try not to fixate too much on "what was to blame" - because maybe it was the drugs but maybe it wasn't.

Hope you are getting all the support you need. Congratulations on your baby!

The epidural will take about 24 hours to wear off fully, and unfortunately moving around with one in isnt a possibility, your legs are not fully functioning. Gas and air takes around 30 minutes and is very short acting, no matter how much you use, you can't overdose on it. So I think you had an awful reaction to the Pethedine, which is just one of those things. Make sure there is a note of this in future and say you are sensitive to it so you can't have it again. Even so it is out of the body in about 6 hours, so maybe the week long spaced out feeling was from the exaustion of giving birth. Don't underestimate it.

@whatfreshheck
They may have had three attempts but only one epidural. Once they have the line in they wouldn't resite it.

I had two and a spinal block on different points in my spine. The first didn't work at all, they took it out and it seems to have folded while inserting so thats why it didn't work. They put the second epidural a little bit higher than the first. It didn'y work 100% on both sides but was enough to keep me happy. Then dd's heart rate went funny and I needed an EMCS. Because my epidural didn't work 100% they needed to do a spinal block above both epidural attempts. So you can have epidurals on different points in your spine. I didn't have any other drugs, not even paracetamol.