Can you eat during labour?

[bob1985]

Been reflecting on DDs birth recently. It was a hard 24hrs of 'active' labour. Fairly early on the midwife said I couldn't eat, which meant by the end of the birth I basically had nothing for 48hrs (waters had broken had been a bit too nervous/distracted to each much).

I thought this was pretty standard but on speaking to a friend she said she was eating right up until she started to really push.

I do think my lack of energy prolonged the labour as I was so tired. A bit of sugar definitely would have helped

Does anyone know why i wasn't allowed to eat? DD was born at 33+6 so I'm wondering if this was the reason.

I was told not to eat anymore once the midwife noticed ds wasn’t coming out at the right angle.. before that I’d been threatening to castrate my dp if he didn’t give me chocolate buttons... the bugger was eating like a horse and kept moving my water away or water boarding me with the cup.

I’d been up from 4am with contractions so I wasn’t really a happy fluffy bunny on 3 hours sleep..

Most c sections are under a spinal but not catergory 1 when they need to get baby out immediately.

I thinking something like sugary jelly would have helped.
I agree! They wouldn’t even let me have water except for some ice chips.
Labours were 17 hours and then 6.

I haven't wanted to eat in either of my labours, it made me sick. I did use sports drinks for extra energy though, rather than just water. As long as it's a clear, non-fizzy drink it should be allowed in most cases even if food isn't.

Midwife encouraged me to eat throughout - I was in hospital in active labour for 16 hours and had been in labour for a day and a half before that.

There is no 'allowed'. I can't believe if people have been told they aren't allowed to eat, especially in a normal labour. They can advise, stating risks and benefits. I am damn well going to eat if I want to.

And when the anaesthetist is hoovering food out of your airway I'll bet you'll be really glad you exercised your autonomy.

What anaesthetist? Obviously if it looks likely I'll need an intervention that eating is bad with, I will take that into consideration. But some of the people on here were told not to eat when having a normal vaginal birth which seems totally counter productive. My point was that the term 'allowed', which is often bandied about around birth, is not accurate.

Done a bit of digging into the research about this. What I have discovered :

1. The latest cochrane review finds that there is no evidence of risks or benefits and so advises that women should be free to choose. This is also in various other bits of guidance for midwives.
2. There seem to be two reasons people have been told not to eat.

• it was raised in the 1940s that there is a risk of aspirating food. This is related to general anaesthetic, which is no longer commonplace in childbirth. The actual incidence is extremely low, but if you are at higher risk of needing a general (not just regional) anaesthetic then this could still be a factor.
• concerns that labour may delay stomach emptying. But, as the cochrane review shows, there doesn't in fact seem to be greater risks. Also, opioid drugs delay stomach emptying. (but you are allowed them!)

I wasn’t ‘allowed’ to eat once I’d decided to have the epidural. By allowed I mean the midwife told me to stop when my husband passed me some haribo before they got the epidural in and later refused to get me any toast when she made some for my husband. I was starving!!!! Went in to labour overnight and gave birth at 4pm so not a ridiculous amount of time but quite a long time on only a few sneaky haribos!!

Friend went in with waters broken and discovered baby was breech at that point, so had a c section. She’d had a single biscuit in the car on the way to hospital and they made her wait 6 hours for the ceserean because of it! It wasn’t under general either 🤷‍♀️

@modgepodge even if a CS is done under spinal, there is a small but significant chance that it will be necessary to convert to GA during the case, so fasting is necessary unless it's an emergency where delaying would be more dangerous. Even "just one biscuit" can cause enough trouble if it comes back up at the wrong time! Far more commonly than conversion to GA is that women feel nauseated and/or vomit while on the table, and as they're flat on their backs it's still pretty difficult and unpleasant for them to clear it themselves.

@brightbird do you have a link for the Cochrane review? Would be interested to read. Labour is unique from an anaesthetist's POV when it comes to fasting - for any elective surgery if a patient hadn't followed the guidelines we would just cancel/postpone them, and even for emergency surgery we try to delay until adequately fasted if possible, but you can't do that on labour ward! The patient is going through a process which should hopefully need us nowhere near, but while we can attempt to risk stratify people who may be more likely to need anaesthetic involvement, this is far from perfect, so there will be plenty of women who are denied food unnecessarily, and some who are allowed to eat and still end up needing an anaesthetic.

FWIW I couldn't face food in either of my labours although I would have been allowed it first time (had epidural with the second so clear fluids only). Vomited everything except water and lucozade sport. But was ravenously hungry straight afterwards - sent husband to the chippy as I'd missed dinnertime! Unfortunately I then bled heavily while he was out, so was made NBM again in case I had to go to theatre, the smell of the chips getting progressively colder was torment!

Thanks for explaining sock queen, that makes sense about the c section. What about my epidural? Is it dangerous to eat with an epidural, or is it just that epidural increases the chances of it turning in to a c section in the end so they’re being cautious?

This is the summary www.cochrane.org/CD003930/PREG_eating-and-drinking-in-labour
There's more available I guess if you click through but I can't remember exactly!
Somewhere, not sure if it was the same doc, there was a bit about the aspiration risk in childbirth which is vanishingly small in terms of incidence but hasn't fallen for the last 20 or 30 years, so it is a thing, just not one I feel I should worry about really!
Interesting to hear your perspective, I take it you are an anaesthetist? App women tend to want less and less food anyway as labour progresses which makes sense to me but I hope I don't have your level of aversion!

Sorry meant to tag @SockQueen in that post!

Where I had mine there was a midwife led unit and a shared care/consultant led one. In the MLU you could eat but not in the consultant led one. You couldn’t drink either. All they would let you do was suck ice. It was an instruction from the anaesthetists apparently in case a CS under GA was required.

I was in the shared care unit and was dismayed at the thought of not eating lol but like a PP I vomit in labour anyway. First labour they stuck me on a glucose drip as I’d thrown everything up I’d eaten before even getting to hospital

I was encouraged to eat.

I was not told anything about eating.

But I absolutely cannot imagine eating during labour. From the second my contractions started, I was in pain and when I was pushing 10 hours later I was screaming in agony. Food not exactly on my mind :/

Even with my first, where I had time for an epidural, I had zero thoughts of food because there was so much going on, and the epidural made me cold and shaky.

My pain did not stop, only lessened, between contractions, I'm wondering if that's not normal? I am that people ate at full dilation.

My pain did not stop, only lessened, between contractions, I'm wondering if that's not normal?

Same here. In my first labour I did have gas and air which helped reduce the pain between contractions. The fuck would I have handed that over in exchange for food!

I was allowed to eat, but only actually did during one of my labours.
I know I ate within a few hours of all their births though.

My pain did not stop, only lessened, between contractions, I'm wondering if that's not normal?

Since you were in a hospital with an epidural, they likely augmented your labour with pitocin. Pitocin strengthens the contractions and also causes pain between contractions.

Pitocin is also called Oxytocin.

Plan I did indeed have oxytocin with my first, but my second baby was a natural labour and it was the same. Both babies were poorly positioned, maybe that is the reason?

My baby was back to back and I had constant pain which worsened during contractions but didn’t disappear completely in between. I was told this was due to her position.

I had a 3 day labour and didn't eat at all. They also forgot to feed me after the birth so my first meal was a microwaved hospital omelette 18 hours after my son was born