Natural birth

[Weirdbigtoe]

What is classed as a natural birth-is it vaginal birth with no pain relief at all?
I had a vaginal birth, but requested epidural. My mum to this day still asks why, I can’t remember being massively informed at the time, but just basically not wanting any pain, is this weird? It seems incredulous to my mum. It wouldn’t have affected my Dd would it?
Where I am they don’t have gas & air, the only option was epidural or not, hence why I went for it, if they had gas and air I would have had that

How sure can you be that that "rush" wasn't down to the sheer relief of no longer being in excruciating pain?

Anyway, it reads as though this woman is discounting other women's births. It reads as though she thinks no woman who has used pain relief will ever get that true experience of childbirth, the amazing "rush", the sense of achievement, whatever.

Sure we do. We just get those things without wanting to die first.

The studies are more reliable than what you’ve been up to which is just blind comparison of % epidurals to % c-sections in only the U.K. and France, and ignoring the rest of the world.

I was there? It was my body and I know the difference between feeling the absence of pain compared to an endorphin rush.

I don't believe they are reliable if they are only focusing on one country, with one specific anti-epidural culture which the UK clearly has.

Focusing on two countries is clearly better than only focusing on one, especially if what you are comparing is outcomes in two otherwise very similar countries where one has a very low epidural rate and the other has a very high epidural rate.

If you can find a proper peer reviewed study comparing this, I'd be interested to read it.

Right but you weren't at anybody else's birth, and neither was the author of this silly article.

I have been at other childbirths. Several of my friends, and my younger sisters’ births. Over a dozen other than my own.

Our experiences of unmedicated childbirth as including a rush at the moment of birth are hardly uncommon.

You have wondered all through this thread why women choose it and that is because you just will not accept that unmedicated childbirth is more than merely deciding to accept the pain.

I respect your choice and your experiences, but you seem very determined to rubbish the experiences of women who have chosen differently.

Again, because there are many many factors that affect risk of c-section it doesn’t make sense to do a blind comparison like you are doing. If science were as easy as compare stats between countries with very different health systems and protocols, then we wouldn’t need anyone to have a PhD or do any actual studies.

Guidance shows a woman should be allowed it at any time.

Because it can be incredibly empowering. You seem to be pushing epidural even for very straightforward births.

No, I think you are - perhaps deliberately - misunderstanding me.

If it were clear that you get a "rush of endorphins" after an unmedicated birth which you do not get if you use pain relief, and that that "rush of endorphins" is so amazing that it completely makes up for all the pain experienced in childbirth and then some, it should be possible to convince women of the benefits of unmedicated childbirth on that basis alone.

But we aren't being told to avoid epidurals so we can get that "rush of endorphins" at the end. The "rush of endorphins" is barely a footnote in the discourse on this subject.

We are being told to avoid epidurals because they supposedly interfere with our ability to give birth naturally, slow down labour and increase the risk of interventions such as assisted deliveries and emergency C-sections.

If you are going to advise women to do something excruciatingly painful without pain relief, on the basis that the highly effective pain relief that is available significantly increases the risk of negative outcomes, you need to have high quality, credible evidence to support those claims.

That evidence does not appear to exist.

Like I said. If women are choosing to labour without pain relief because they're chasing that high that definitely exists when you give birth without drugs and definitely doesn't exist when you give birth without it, fine. More power to them. But if they're choosing to labour without pain relief on the basis of scare stories which aren't supported by reliable data, that's not so great, is it?

So you don't think it's at all useful to look at what other countries are doing then?

There's a difference between a woman being allowed something and it actually being safe to do it though.

@MargotBamborough " But if they're choosing to labour without pain relief on the basis of scare stories which aren't supported by reliable data, that's not so great, is it?"

But this entire thread has been about how weird and ridiculous women who want to labour without intervention are, and how they are putting their baby's life at risk. Surely it works both ways?

I haven't seen any discussion on this thread about putting the baby's life at risk, more about pain relief and whether it does or doesn't lead to other interventions.

For me, whether it's ridiculous to want to labour without drugs or not depends on what your reasoning is. If it's because you want a home birth, yep, fair enough. If it's because you think your baby will be "born drugged" if you have an epidural, no, that's ridiculous, and women need to get angrier about some of the nonsense being fed to them.

Informed choices on the basis of credible evidence. That's all I'm promoting here.

@MargotBamborough "
So you don't think it's at all useful to look at what other countries are doing then?"

I think it's very important. I might have questions about a country that thinks women who choose a non medicated birth are "crazy" though...

@Ididivfama what guidance are you referring to? I'm an anesthetist of over ten years and no chance am I or any of my colleagues are going anywhere near a patient with an epidural needle if we deem it to be unsafe. the first rule of medicine is 'do no harm'.

I'm certainly not 'pushing' for epidurals and epidurals are not just for complicated births. but I advocate for patients rights to make a properly informed decision not based on misinformation or scaremongering. I would like all mums to have the choice and access to solid pain relief. unfortunately we do not actually have the resources to offer this in the NHS because there simply isn't enough staff. I have worked in one of the largest labour units in the country and sometimes we are unable to fulfil requests for epidural due to multiple emergencies happening at the same time eg 2 emergency sections at the same time.

OK.

Imagine you lived in a country where the vast majority of women have an epidural, none of your friends, family or doctors believe that epidurals increase the risk of assisted deliveries or emergency C-sections, and where the only woman you knew who had given birth without an epidural had gone from 0-10cm dilated in 20 minutes, not had time for any pain relief and found the experience horribly traumatic.

Would that change your views on whether women who decline pain relief in childbirth are crazy or not?

Oh for goodness sake. That’s so patronising. You have never been in another woman’s shoes. Childbirth is a normal process you know and there are actually some positives to it for some people. It’s like how you get a rush of endorphins when you first start contracting.

"It’s like how you get a rush of endorphins when you first start contracting."

Really?

Give over. You know that you were rubbishing the difference between the two types of birth and implying women who choose unmedicated births are deluded. I did not misunderstand any of that at all.

We have already gone over the scientific evidence regarding epidurals and C-sections and as it is mixed, sone studies say yes there is added risk and other studies say no there isn’t added risk so the answer is it is unknown whether epidurals add a significant risk of csection or not.

The natural birth influencers are known for cherry picking studies showing epidurals have risk, just like YOU are literally deciding epidurals have no risk simply by comparing statistics having done no actual study whatsoever on France or the U.K. in terms of epidurals and C-sections. Oh and declaring that “all [scientific] studies are unreliable” how convenient.

Yes if women make choices based on incomplete information that isn’t great, but frankly you are doing the same thing to push women to choose an epidural as some of the natural birth influencers by rubbishing lived experiences and not using any scientific data to back up your epidurals have no risk assertion.

I do. That’s why I posted studies from countries that are as comparable to the U.K. as France is. You rubbished them.

Again, no.

I'm not trying to push anyone into having an epidural.

I'm saying they shouldn't decide not to have one based on nonsense.

Epidurals are proven to be safe and effective pain relief. If you think there is a downside, namely that they statistically increase the risk of other interventions, it's on you to demonstrate that, not on others to disprove it.

The USA isn't comparable to the UK in any way at all, least of all where healthcare is concerned.

Sigh. You called a lot of things “nonsense” that had nothing to do with epidurals/csection links that were not nonsense.

You have done more than assert that epidurals are safe and effective…btw safe is a different qualifier from no risk. Most medications approved as safe and effective can actually have fatal side effects for a tiny % of people. So safe doesn’t mean without risk. I have not implied that epidurals are unsafe or ineffective, so I do not need to prove anything of the sort.

In terms of studying the risks and side effects of medications it absolutely is comparable. Last I looked Americans were human beings with a very similar culture, language and lifestyle to British.

If you think there are risks associated, you need to be able to articulate what those risks are and what the increased likelihood of them is with an epidural vs without an epidural.

Otherwise, just muttering about risks is, at best, unhelpful, and at worst, misinformation.