Christiana - I needed an epidural because my baby was back to back, so long, long labour. Since then I wonder if I would have needed an epidural had I had better midwifery care. The midwife was in and out of the room, she didn't try to help me find other ways to cope with the labour. TBH, she didn't want to actually touch me in any way, just kept encouraging me to take pethidine so I'd go quiet and stop making demands for support. I also had a posterior baby with my third baby, again very, very long labour, longer and more painful than my first. That time around I had a brilliant midwife and a friend act as doula, was at home for most of it, and didn't find myself needing an epidural to get through the labour, even though once again it was very long and very painful.
"surely a temporary drop in blood pressure - 'unpleasant sensation' - is better than the continue pain that 'necessitated' your epidural (if i'm wrong and you needed an epidural for other reasons I'm sorry)"
What an odd thing to say. I wasn't complaining about the drop in blood pressure or being 'ungrateful' for the relief I got from the pain. What I was trying to flag up was the fact that I found the experience of having an epidural very frightening, because I hadn't been properly informed as to what to expect.
I'm not surprised you want an epidural for your next birth. Induced labours can be so horribly, unnaturally painful. I feel very sorry for people who are put through all that without the option of an epidural.
Re: the issue of NCT teachers and midwives being keen on 'natural birth' - I think it's really odd that people can't see the reasons for this. I'm a doula and I know from my work and from what my colleagues say that most women WANT to have a birth without interventions if possible. It's a perfectly rational thing to want. If interventions like induction, monitoring and operative birth are avoidable and a mother and baby can get through safely without them, then surely that's best for everyone concerned? Interventions are only beneficial if they serve a purpose. Otherwise they're positively harmful. There's a huge amount of concern about the high levels of routine intervention in normal birth in this country. I have not yet met a midwife or doula that doesn't think that this is a major worrying issue, and that induction, monitoring, instrumental births, augmentation etc, should NOT be happening at the current levels. Almost all of them feel that women are having huge amounts of intervention because of overstretched midwifery care, bad management in hospitals and a fear based hospital culture.
BTW, my 'proof' for saying that levels of intervetion are way too high comes from the research on homebirth. Basically low risk women who have homebirths have half the rates of instrumental birth (forceps/ventouse/c-section) compared to similar low risk mums who give birth in hospital, and that's when you include in the homebirth figures all the women who transfer in during labour because their births have gone pear shaped. If intervention levels in hospital were appropriate then you'd expect to see similar levels in low risk mums giving birth in non-medical settings, but you don't. If you're someone working with low risk mums (like an NCT teacher) and you keep seeing healthy women who've had normal pregnancies going into hospital and coming out after having had every single intervention in the book, over and over again, and you KNOW there's a fair chance that some of them could have avoided all that if they'd been cared for in a different way - well, of course it gets frustrating! I feel for them. It's not just NCT teachers who despair over this - it's midwives as well. Why on earth do you think they're leaving the profession in droves!