Alcohol for pain relief in labour!

[Bethbe]

I'm trying to find out about use of Alcohol as pain relief for the first stage of labour and can't find a thing about it! Can anyone help?

If I feel like it I'm planning to down a half a bottle of wine (maybe more if it goes on too long), or perhaps take the odd shot! I can't find any information to say that I shouldn't........can anyone help?

Bethbe

still wondering why so fixated on alcohol - there is so much else you can use for the pain

and there is a wealth of anecdotal evidence that drinking in labour is not a good thing...is that not worthy of being analysed?

or there is but it isn't in the sense you mean

...

The worldwide expansion in the use of benzodiazepines has led to their frequent, and often inappropriate, use and to increase in their involvement in self-induced poisoning and iatrogenic overdosing. Flumazenil is a specific and competitive antagonist at the central benzodiazepine receptor, reversing all effects of benzodiazepine agonists without tranquillising or anticonvulsant actions. Incremental intravenous bolus injections of flumazenil 0.1 to 0.3 mg are the most effective and well tolerated in the diagnosis and treatment of pure benzodiazepine overdose; additional boluses or an infusion (0.3 to 0.5 mg/h) can be given to prevent patients from relapsing into coma. Intravenous flumazenil 10 to 20 micrograms/kg is effective in neonates and small children. Intramuscular, oral (20 to 25 mg 3 times daily or as required) and rectal administration may be used as alternatives in long term regimens. Patients with mixed-drug overdose require higher doses (up to 2 mg bolus, approximately equal to 1 mg/h infusion) to regain consciousness. Children and the elderly, chronically ill patients, and pregnant women and their fetuses all respond satisfactorily to flumazenil, but the usefulness of the drug in patients with hepatic encephalopathy and alcohol overdose is debatable. The use of flumazenil results in complete awakening with restoration of upper airway protective reflexes, thus enabling gastric lavage to be performed and transfer of the patient from the emergency room to another hospital department. Resumption of effective spontaneous respiration allows for expeditious extubation, weaning off mechanical ventilation or the avoidance of endotracheal intubation. While flumazenil is not associated with haemodynamic adverse effects, caution should be exercised when using this agent in patients who have co-ingested chloral hydrate to carbamazepine or whose ECG shows abnormalities typical to those seen after overdose with tricyclic antidepressants (TCAs); the use of flumazenil in the presence of these drugs can sometimes induce treatable cardiac dysrrhythmia. Flumazenil per se does not induce adverse effects. Coma reversal by flumazenil may cause mild, short-lived reactions caused by sudden awakening. Withdrawal symptoms in long term benzodiazepine users and seizures in patients who have taken an overdose of TCA or carbamazepine and a benzodiazepine can occur with flumazenil; these symptoms are avoidable by utilising slow flumazenil dose titration.

but the reason there is no research either way is that alcohol is not a pain killer and there are much more effective ways to relax..alcohol depresses and disinhibits rather than relaxes

I do know the occasional person who had a joint in early labour to relax them.

The last thing you want with a newborn is a hangover, and enough alcohol to have any effect on pain would give you a shocking hangover.

Well I won't even pretend I understand all of that, but it made me laugh at least!

The fixation with alcohol is simply that I have researched many other methods of pain relief and have found plenty of info, but this one was proving tricky, especially to find genuine arguments against, so I posted - that's all!

Research has to be sponsored and no one is going to sponsor pointless research into the use of alcohol as pain relief in labour because alcohol is not a pain relief agent and there has been sufficient research to show that alcohol in pregnancy is detrimental

there would be no reason to research this area except in relation to neonatal problems and maternal alcohol use

not sure what was funny?

anyhoo bethbe-- you 've had a lot of anecdotal and personal words here on alcohol in labour....do you feel any differently now than you did when you posted.....?

sorry thought she was a scientist

are you a sciencey person Zippi......you seem very learned...?

if there was an antidote for alcohol. Somebody would be very very rich indeed
Seriously though, the length of your 1st stage and the pain you feel is not predictable beforehand, so if you were self medicating with alcohol, you could not know whether your labour would suddenly rapidly progress or stop/stall.
Plus depending on actual amounts of alcohol needed to achieve relaxation, those same amounts could also inhibit your gross motor movements or any serious decisions you had to make during labour..
I mean the mistakes I've made when pissed
Beer googles for men is one thing, but for childbirth

no..I'm an arts graduate lol

beer goggles for labour!!!! can you imagine the repercussions!??? LOL

you still sound learned!!!

Yes thanks Lulu,

I've decided that I'll try hypnobirthing on a birthing ball whilst sucking on a joint and sipping champagne and getting my husband to give me the occassional electric shock!

Zippi, I'm a scientist, not a chemist! I don't know everything about every scientific area, I've just been trained to question things that's all!

well as far as labour is ocncerned i think the most important thing is to approach it with as little fear as possible..

so techniques in your control are good, company is good, being ready is good, being rested is good

Lulu,

Seriously, this has been very useful! I'm not sure what I'm going to do, - quite possibly drinking wine will be the last thing I feel like doing, - but it has been very interesting to hear people's views, and I do feel like I have more information, - perhaps not so much about alcohol itself, but how unpredictable labour possibly leading to regretting having had any!

no worries.....sorry if i sounded dismissive at first,,,i suppose we are so used to not thinkning about alcohol in pregnancy.....

i suppose keeping an open mind is a good idea....just don't do anything that could potentially not allow you to get the best recognised medical treatment.,..

but yes hypnobirthing, on a birth ball, with champagne and a tens machine might be what gets you through it....!

good luck!

no worries.....sorry if i sounded dismissive at first,,,i suppose we are so used to not thinkning about alcohol in pregnancy.....

i suppose keeping an open mind is a good idea....just don't do anything that could potentially not allow you to get the best recognised medical treatment.,..

but yes hypnobirthing, on a birth ball, with champagne and a tens machine might be what gets you through it....!

good luck!

Zippi - interesting post... to my knowledge, flumazenil would not be wholly effective, as alcohol and benzos effect slightly different receptors. Also flumazenil can cause fitting and an increase in anxiety in some cases - probably not ideal while you are trying to keep as calm as possible

Hypnobirthing sounds like an infinitely better idea !

Stick with the hypnobirthing Bethbe - now that is something I'd like to try for my next baby's birth!

Pethidine is an opiate, and you can use a drug that competes for the site that opiates act on. This reverses the effect of the opiate.

No such 'antidote' exsists for alcohol

(trust me I am a science teacher and have worked in the drugs industry on this kind of stuff as well! )

Re hypnobirthing.

My Dhs grandfather was a consultant Ob/Gyn. He once carried out a cesaerian secrion of a woman using only hypnosis (there were complex reasons why she couln't have a GA or epidural/spinal)

He also used to precribe champagne for women suffering mild PND (this was in the 50s)