pethidine - positive experiences?

[iamamummy]

hi ladies

I am due to give birth in 5ish weeks hopefully at home if the midwives agree.

All i have heard is negative stories about pethidine and how out of control/sick it makes you feel. so when i gave birth to ds1 i never really considered it.

I just want to know is it really that bad?

thanks

angrywasp - have you actually had pethidine, or is your point purely a (misguided) political one?

all i can share is my own experience of pethidine for a homebirth - i had two doses in my first (60 hr back-to-back) labour. the first dose gave me an hour or so's rest and relief from the pain (significantly greater than g&a, alternative/natural methods, save hypnobirthing techniques, never tried those), the second dose (unusual, but i insisted and the midwives agreed) enabled me to manage the ambulance journey to hospital. baby was born many hours later by ventouse in theatre following (mobile) epidural and several hours pushing. i don't believe the pethidine interfered in the labour in any way, conversely, it allowed me to continue labouring in my preferred environment at home in the hope that rest/relaxation were what was required (not a chance, it turned out).

in my second attempted homebirth i bypassed the pethidine in favour of an earlier (i.e. after 1 day not 2 of established labour) transfer to hospital as i was basically getting flashbacks to my previous labour (second time also back-to-back, 30+ hours) and was more open to the help/pain relief available in hospital than i had been first time (well informed, stubborn etc.).

i was fully aware/informed of the potential implications of pethidine - actual, not scaremongering - in the run up to my labours, but i had no way of predicting the actual path my labours would take. i would recommend an awareness tempered with openness to all interventions in response to your own personal circumstances/experience, which really can't be compared to other people's.

btw my interest in the correlation between pethidine and c-sec is the direction of causality. surely pethidine is more likely to be given during "difficult" labours, which are in turn more likely to end in c-sec. is it actually right to say that the use of pethidine results in more c-secs?

The problem is that you don't know how it will take you until you have it. I should have known as morphine makes me extremely sick. I agreed to Pethadine when the mw kept asking me questions in the middle of difficult contractions. I also wonder whether I should have been given a smaller dose as I'm so short .

I don't remember most of the pushing and was very sick afterwards. Ds was very sleepy for about 24 hours.

Not quite the positive story you were after, but then I might have had a worse labour if I hadn't had it. There's no way of telling.

eased the pain yes but horrible stuff made me talk utter spaced out rubbish whilst in labour first time also vomited instantaneously everywhere. had it for 2nd labour exactly the same except this time i managed to to lean over the bed in time and instead filled dps shoes with vomit. gross
3rd time will NOT be having it diamorphine loads better.

millenium Of course I've had pethedine. What a rude post.

aw: i take exception to people expressing matters of opinion as though they were fact, particularly when it comes to informing women about choices in childbirth, which can have long lasting physical and emotional consequences.

as for rude, had your initial post been less provocative i can assure you my response would have been more measured.

millennium This is a discussion board. Opinions are the 'point' of it. However, I do have very good reasons to consider my opinion to be in line with 'fact'.

Also, there are people on this very thread that have suggested that my post rang true with them.

You may be absolutely right that the pethedine you were given did not intefere with your labour, but statistically, it will for most. That is a fact, as well as interfering with breastfeeding.

There was nothing wrong with my post, even if it were 'just' opinion.

Angrywasp - no i was in agony with back-to-back labour but after the pethidine took effect i fell asleep and woke up ready to push! The fact that I'd had no sleep that night may have been influencial in this though - as well as me being a generally sleepy person!)

(well actually i woke up almost fully dilated and ended up with second degree tearing but YKWIM)

Godzillas I take your point but suggest perhaps that sometimes pethedine interfering with labour is a good thing. Statistically it is likely to prolong it, but that might not always be a bad thing if it gives you the chance to rest for the 2nd stage.

I don't deny that it has it's place but I do think that people should be quite aware of what it isn't, and it isn't pain relief.

I wouldn't say mine was exactly a positive experience anyway, but both labours i had pethidine, both were fairly short, i fell aslepp during both, and it wasn't absolutely awful i guess!

I think wasp's posts a re interesting. I wish I'd founf out more about pethidine before my labours.

I think I ha ddiapmorphine with dd1. It made me very sleepy and spacey and seemd to stop my labour. Gave me a spacey breather but was ultimately frustrating because my labour hadn;'t advanced at all after three hours.

I had pethidine very late on with dd2 - about 45 minutes before she was born. I wasn't aware that it made any difference at that stage.

Well I had it and loved it. It did help with the pain, much more than g&a although appreciate that everyone's experiences are different. The contractions were getting extremely painful and I was exhausted, so it gave me the chance to chill out and get some sleep. Yes it did make me feel out of it but for me that was a good thing. It did however make me lie down on the bed which slowed everything down. Obviously it isn't ideal and I wanted to try and do without it, but tbh I got to the point where all I could think about was trying to do something to stop the pain (and I was in an active birth unit, encouraged to move around, had hot baths, tens, g&a, brilliant midwifes etc). I would say do your research by all means but like most birth plans they often go totally out of the window once you are actually in labour. I did have problems with feeding but more because ds seemed too impatient to try to suckle rather than him being particularly sleepy.

"but I do think that people should be quite aware of what it isn't, and it isn't pain relief."

This was my experience too.

"Also, there are people on this very thread that have suggested that my post rang true with them."

Me, for one.

As a Theatre Nurse when Pg with DS I was advised by Anaesthetist not to have it as if I wanted an Epidural,at some stage, they couldn't give me one.

Kept resisting the offers of Pethidine during labour,but eventually when I explained what I'd been told MW said "Rubbish",and gave it to me,and Epidural was given and topped up.

I felt great with it,took the "edge" off the pain,so that I could cope.

But to be honest,Gas and Air did that for me.
Neither made me feel sick.DS was ok when he was born,but I think I had the Pethidine at lunchtime when they thought he was very imminent,but he was born at 7.30pm.

I was induced and had a shot in early labour. It enabled me to doze a bit through the afternoon. This was pre-labour suite and the tens machine just wasn't doing it. I had another shot when I moved to the labour suite I think, but then the G&A was available. I never felt sick,but I was definitely off with the fairies through the whole experience.

I have to say my experience with pethidine was the same as angrywasp.

I arrived at the hospital at 39wks with dd1 bleeding but no contractions. They were very busy and shift change. I was seen by the doctor was told i was already 9cm i wasn't in any pain and still having no contraction. The senior midwife came in introduced herself at the same time as giving an injection. 4hrs later i woke and gave birth withn 10mins.

I still do not understand the reason as to why i was given pethidine other then to make me sleep and to take the presure of the midwives.

lizziemum at your last comment. I was given it during the transition stage when I was becoming a bit stroppy and maybe a tad unreasonable. It certainly shut me up for a while!

I had long labour with DS and had a couple of shots of pethidine in the middle, when I'd been sort-of in labour for about 24 hours (my contractions had spent most of that time being three minutes apart - three minutes apart - three minutes apart - oops, about four minutes apart that time - three minutes apart - etc., which meant I wasn't officially in established labour because I couldn't keep up the three minutes for quite long enough, but I had to stay in hospital because my waters had gone with an unengaged baby) and I was tired and just fed up with it hurting.

I loved the pethidine and if it were only legal could get quite attached to it; everything still sort of hurt but I didn't care. I would have loved to be able to sleep on it but there was no way on earth that was happening (I didn't not care that much!). Plus the times when I was on pethidine were the only parts of the whole experience where I wasn't throwing up regularly and copiously (presumably because of the anti-emetic in the shot) and it was nice to have a break from that.

I don't think it slowed down my labour, because the reason for my slow progress was DS's position, which could quite probably have been corrected by a good experienced midwife if it had been spotted early enough rather than them pumping me full of syntocinon to get me to dilate and then realising after I'd been pushing for an hour and a half and he was well and truly wedged that he wasn't going to come out at that angle. But I digress...

Didn't use it at all with DD, which was absolutely the right thing in terms of the labour but I kind of regretted from a recreational point of view...

It seriously was one of the worst experiences of my life I felt like I was paralysed trapped in pain and this after a good 18hrs of labour did not give birth until 24hrs later

just awful still bothers me

on the other hand my sister had it with her first and she thought it was just fine

'paralysed trapped in pain'

Sums it up perfectly for me, and the experience left me with PTSD flashbacks!

I had a great time on pethidine, bit like daily mail could do with some more often. My MIL had warned me that it made her sick, but then so does two glasses of wine .

I would try to avoid it next time though, because DD was very sleepy and she lost a lot of weight and wasn't very interested in feeding. Maybe she would have been anyway though, she never turned into the 'hungriest' baby.

I asked, nay demanded, Pethidine after they said I was too advanced for the epidural.
All through my pregnancy I was adamant I wouldn't have it, but I totally caved because I wanted something for the pain and I didn't give a shit what it was.
It didn't take the pain away, but with the G&A it made time pass quickly. I remeber looking at the clock and thinking, "this isn't so bad, I've had shifts at work that have gone slower than this."
The time thing was a blessing because I had to hold off pushing for an hour and then had another hour and 20 minutes of actual pushing. It would have felt much longer without the pethidine.

Loved it. Had been labouring for officially 12hours but 36hrs in bed. Wasn't dilating very fast and given it so i could get some sleep. As I slip into sleep it felt the same as when your a child and your so tired you just relax and nod off whereever you are. Totally relaxed, as I went off I was imagining i was on a soft comfy battered sofa in a corn field - trippy man. Vaguely felt contractions but didnt wake up fully with them. I've since been told by a paramedic friend they can give you an injection to reverse the effect if you react badly to it but don't know how often they do in practice?

hated it - awful stuff.
I only had it cos they said it would be about 6 hours till baby arrived and I thought it would allow me to rest and be out my system before baby was born.
Baby arrived after 2 hours, I was completely 'off my face', felt sick, felt out of control, so sleepy I couldn't concentrate.
It really spolit the experience for me, I didn't have it with ds2 and it was so much better.
good luck with your special delivery.

thanks again ladies, in my area its only gas and air for pain relief at home so it has made my decision far far easier, should i have to transfer to hospital it will be for an epidural straight away no faffing about with pethidine etc.