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?

Similar here. Gas and air to 9cm, two failed epidurals (first one stopped working due to positioning, so new one was inserted. That one also failed after a shoet time, and was removed when the spinal block was administered) and a spinal block. It was a LONG labour, though.

Surely eight epidurals would be really dangerous? They're injected into your spine after all. I had one, as gas and air didn't work for me, and the labour lasted over 28 hours. It also turned out that my baby weighed over 10lbs. The epidural was an absolute god-send.

Epidurals never made me feel out of it. I could walk to the loo both during and straight after labour with both of them. Gas and air was like taking a puff on a joint-a big high that immediately wore off after a few breaths. It's like falling over and smashing your teeth out drunk - you can still feel all the pain but your disconnected from it.

The only time I have ever felt out of it was in my first birth with no pain relief. I was induced cold turkey no pain relief on a drip from zero to pushing in one hour. It was too much and I had a out of body like experience like I was there as an observer.

I'd ask to see your notes and a debrief. It helped in time after my first birth to come to terms that there could have been no other outcome as I had pre eclampsia and my birth experience was the most palatable outcome overall.

I had three attempts at an epidural. None of them work so I got a spinal block. Think they promised another one when the first wore off but I was ready to push.

I was completely off my t* for the labour. Don’t remember a thing. High as a kite. No hallucinations but I remember wanting to fight people 😂The gas and air was amazing. My hypnobirthing and no pain relief plans went straight out the window.

Look, you know how an IV goes in your arm? That’s all an epidural is, except in your spine. For some reason, you had medication added to your epidural line by an anesthetist instead of pressing a button; so you’re equal to every other pregnant woman who had to have medication added to her epidural, because the initial dose wasn’t enough for all of labor. A lot of women probably pressed their “button” eight times. More importantly, a labor epidural doesn’t cause hallucinations. It numbs your lower body. In fact, they use epidurals specifically to avoid that drugged feeling you’re talking about - look up the thousands of scientific papers comparing epidurals VERSUS opiate pain relief (gas and air and pethidine) in labor, because women want pain relief but don’t want to feel drugged. They’re separate.

Your problem is not one epidural, or eight, or fifteen, or twenty-five. It’s gas and air and pethidine, and how are they supposed to control that in labor? Cut you off? Tell you they don’t care if you say you’re in pain? It’s a real problem with no easy solution. Nurses can’t just assume they know better than the woman how much her labor is hurting her and cut off her supply of painkillers. Even you say that your epidural was only 50% effective, and the other side was incredibly painful, so obviously you requested the gas and air and pethidine.

It sounds like you felt the way everyone who has ever had any hospital experience involving a lot of pain feels after - like a zombie for about a week. I have chronic diseases and I feel like I’ve been hit by a truck every time I leave a hospital, and I’m not even having a baby! It’s neither uncommon nor unnatural. It doesn’t affect bonding for most women. Maybe you have a touch of PND and this is one of the things you’ve fixated on as the root cause? If so, I’m very sorry, and please, do whatever you need to do to get some support. Whether you were drugged to the gills or not, it doesn’t make you any less of a wonderful mum who loves their baby.

I think you've misremembered the epidurals OP, I don't think it would be safe to have that many. Why don't you ask for the notes. Given it's on your mind it might help to know exactly what happened and have someone talk you through why the decisions were made, and what the alternatives would be for next time.

@Purplegras3 If you were so out of it you were hallucinating, you are very likely remembering other things wrong. The epidural is attached to a drip. The top up is basically changing a setting on the machine to make the drip go a bit faster for a short time. It doesn’t involve going back into your spine. He was probably trying to see if it was sited correctly as it wasn’t working well for you.

I had a weird hallucination of looking at my pet rats in their cage a day after the birth of my 2nd and thinking my newborns soul was in one of them. I only had G&A once I reached about 9cms for that birth. Are you sure it wasn't just the tiredness and hormones crashing the following week? I think that was the case for me.

I was only allowed G&A for my first, but still hallucinated after the birth due to not sleeping for 48 hours. I did rinse the G&A for that birth though and was too fuckfaced to push, which is why I didn't go for the G&A as much with my second.

Eight epidurals sounds like a lot. I would want to ask about that.

The top up is basically changing a setting on the machine to make the drip go a bit faster for a short time. It doesn’t involve going back into your spine.

Agree, but the anaesthetists can disconnect the line to give boluses or other local anaesthetics. It’s how we do it in Paeds in my trust, obviously that’s not maternity so I don’t know what happens there.

We also use ice or cold water, or cold spray. Not needles!

I don’t think you had your epidural re-sited 8 times. Extra boluses or top ups are standard practice.

Diamorphine made me vomit vomit vomit. It was hideous. Did fuck all for my contraction pain.

Pethidine is the work of the devil (for me anyway). I was completely off my tits, was convinced the radio (Mark Radcliffe) was speaking to me and kept shouting at DH to make sure he put the recycling out. Apparently I kept falling asleep. The main problem was that I couldn't actually feel any contractions so the midwife had to tell me when to push. It was only afterwards that I found out you could ask for a half dose.

But I felt relatively sane by the morning and I don't think it affected bonding with DD.

My goodness, yes, same for me..Pethidine can take away the urge to push?
I absolutely didn't at all feel a single urge to push at all.

Midwife was shaking me awake and saying ''Push'' from what felt like a million miles away. I think the ''Red'' I remember was the sun streaming in via my closed eyelids.
I didn't want to push ..Had to be forced to try.
I really do regret pethidine.

Isn't there a better drug that helps ease contraction and that breaking back feeling than pethidine?
It robs one of ''Being present'' and affects the baby so much too.

Morphine is far less stupefying in my experience {given in hospital via button one presses oneself} than pethidine.. so why is the latter given?
Is pethidine a superior pain reliever?

I had diamorphine with dd (dc1) but never thought it really did anything that I recall.

I had gas and air as well, and did hallucinate a little bit - kept thinking I was in Camberwell catching a bus! I don’t live in Camberwell btw

It wore off in between “doses” (if you like) of the g and a, so I always assumed it was that rather than the diamorphine.

That said, with dc2 I only had g and a and I didn’t have any hallucinations

None of it made a difference to bonding though

@WishDragon

I’m a midwife. Not all trusts are the same but the vast majority have now moved to patient controlled analgesia so the patient presses a handheld button to administer their own top up. The system is set so that if one isn’t due when they press the button one isn’t administered but it means they don’t have more than they need. It would be quite unusual for an anaesthetist to disconnect the catheter to administer. A) because we don’t have enough anaesthetists with spare time to do this and B) because moving a labouring patient, who has no lower limb control, may be in pain, is connected to a CTG monitoring baby, is likely connected to other IV’s is just near on impossible.

To be fair, you could have had an epidural which uses top ups that isn’t connected to the pump and isn’t a pcA. We’ve only just moved over to the pumps. And moving on to your side to get more epidural down to that side for every top up.

@Madwife123 do your women not mobilise with their epidurals? It’s fairly standard at my trust for women to at least change position regularly with epidural but also get off the bed

You had 1 epidural that was topped up when necessary - normal.
You had pethidine - normal.
You had gas and air - normal.
You had a long labour - common, normal.
Zombie like state is perfectly normal and natural after giving birth, hormones and the sleep deprivation that comes with a newborn.
Not every mother bonds immediately with her baby.

You weren’t over drugged.

@YourUserNameMustBeAtLeast3Characters do you know how much blood you lost? I lost over a litre and a half, they initially said they were considering an infusion, I ended up with just iron tablets.

I had iron tablets too, they were discussing transfusion as my Hb was transfusion level but for some reason I just got tablets. It took me such a long time to recover, felt awful for ages. I was so pale.

No idea it was a long time ago. I didn’t even get iron tablets. I suppose they might have told me while I was out of my mind on sleep deprivation.

Yeah I was hallucinating due to the drugs I was given. God only knows what my poor son went through as well.