why are people so against epidurals

[porcamiseria]

I am just curious, as the general vibe here (MN) and with the NCT and some midwifes is they are a bad thing.

I had one as was induced and literally could not cope with pain. I wont go into the whole story but its the usual ventouse, stitches etc. But baby was healthy and fine

My point is for me the epi was a godsend and the intense pains were not bearable.

If it happens again, I will have an epi if I can't cope. am due August, so its pertinent for me

It upsets me rather this attitude that they are to be avoided, as if you DO have one some people might feel like a failure?

Against epis? Are you kidding me? Next time round I'm just going to save time and get one inserted after getting my BFP!

Best decision I ever made, to have an epi. Midwives tried to talk me out of it, but after a 36 hour labour, it was the one and only time I could relax, if only for a half an hour or so. Was a godsend, 100%.

As long as know that you have a top notch anaesthetist giving you the epidural.

It makes a huge difference when it comes to the placement and the dose.

One mum I know was in a wheelchair for 2 months due to a dodgy epidural.

SalbySea - thinking about your post, it's rather like this:

Some women make a positive decision to do everything they can to achieve a natural birth, practising breathing and relaxation, booking a home birth or MLU etc. (I was one of these)

Some women don't plan this sort of birth, and would be quite happy to have pain relief, but have very fast or unexpected labours so don't have time for it, and have a natural birth.

So, a parallel to your post, is me saying, "I had a natural birth, but don't bunch me in with all those women who also had a natural birth but might have had pain relief if they could!!"

Technically correct, but just plain weird! It implies a 'pecking order' of births, and just seems judgemental by stealth if nothing else.

Not this one again. Who cares!

(hides thread)

Harder In response to your question what would happen if a woman needed an epidural in order to cope and didn't get one, the answer is this:

3 years and counting of untreatable PTSD and mental health problems.

As long as you are aware of the risks of epidurals, as already mentioned, than who cares.

I only had g&a as I was terrified of the needle in the back and the tube being left in there. My labour was agony and ended with a ventouse and would have done regardless of pain relief.

So, if you do what you are comfortable with for your reasons than who cares what anyone else thinks.

When watching the American birth programmes on Sky, the majority of women across there seem to have epis in pretty quickly. They then seem to have a happy experience with lots of family present. However, its also seems to have a lot of medical intervention, the babies are all delivered by a dr rather than a mw, a lot are in stirrups, they're draped in sheets, the medical team are wearing face masks etc.... It's really all down to personal choice given the protocols in the place where you choose to give birth.

Very few of the women I've talked to here are actually happy about their birth experiences in hindsight. Birth trauma is epidemic and caesarean rates in my area are approaching 50 percent.

Most women here didn't know what they were signing up for. The hospital birth classes are deeply misleading.

I think the unnatural stress of the hospital enviroment is one of the largest causes for women to need epidurals.

I suspect it's also because you rarely get the one to one care that women often need, especially if it's their first labour and they're scared.

VioletHill I know a group of 9 mums, of these 5 had planned home births, and 4 had planned hospital care. I was one of the 4 and had a very positive experience,I chose a big hospital - of the other 3 - 2 were planned C sections which went well, and another had an epi but was ok.

The 5 planned home births - well only 1 happened and it was a very quick labour - the other four all had complications and in the end had to go to hospital, most had very traumatic births and were sad that they did not get to use their hypno-birthing, yoga etc and seemed extremely shocked but in the end 4 of the 5 were very happy with their mw care in hospital.

I had great midwife care, encouragement to stay active to, in a large hospital - my hospital classes prepared me for the experience and I felt that I could make the hospital birthing room my own.

I guess what I am saying is that you simply can not generalise like you have - when you are talking about such small samples

During the first 12 hours of labour I just had to get by on breathing exercises as the gas and air was making me feel sick, it did nothing for me. It then started getting so I thought that I had to have some sort of pain relief so I had pethidine, but that only worked for 2 hours and I'm pretty sure it slowed the labour process down and I ended up in more pain and I am not embarrassed to say I could not cope with the pain so I asked for an epidural. The epdidural was a godsend at the time as it worked so quickly and I felt no pain, but I then ended up having an emergency c-sec. At the end of the day, we are all different and we shouldn't judge each other on our choices.

Look at this

www.rcog.org.uk/files/rcog-corp/uploaded-files/NEBCSectionFull.pdf

So epidurals have no effect on likelihood of cs. Neither, incidentally, do walking in labour or position during second stage.

Imagine a young man making his first attempt at sexual penetration. Ask him to set about the project in a special sex centre where there are 'experts' he has never met before, ready to supervise and tell him how it ought to be done. Presume that his partner is as inexperienced as himself, and that he is asked if he is going to 'try and acheive an errection'. When he starts, a busy 'expert' who may never have experienced sexual relations, starts talking to him and telling him how to do it and inspects his body with critical expression, prodding him and his partner in an insensitve manner. By the bed there is viagra and an artificial penis, put there, as the young man is told, 'just in case you can't manage it; many young men can't make it. It is not their fault, nature often fails'. He looks around the room and believes this is so given all the support machinary.

Adapted from 'The politics of breastfeeding' - Gabrielle Palmer

scarycanary - I totally agree that there will always be a number of people whose pregnancies or births have complications - and that may lead to a different birth experience to the one that had mentally planned and wished for.

I'm not disagreeing with you there.

My point is simply supporting the evidence that Carmen showed, which is that there are many factors which influence the type of birth a woman has, and things like, mental state (is she scared? is she feeling in control? is she being well supported?) the range of options offered to her (keeping mobile/water/hypnobirthing) do have an effect on the outcome.

Clearly you were very comfortable being in a big hospital, and had a positive experience, which was great. Clearly 4 of the 5 women in your group were very unlucky in having had straightforward enough pregnancies to book a home birth, but then subsequent complications which meant transfer to hospital.

The fact is, not all women who end up giving birth in large hospitals, or having epidurals, or forceps, or other interventions are happy with the experience afterwards. Some are, which is fine. I have a couple of friends who were not remotely bothered about trying for a natural birth, their feeling was that they wanted as much pain relief as possible, and they felt happy with their choice. That's fine. But many women do want a natural birth, and do start labour with the potential to achieve it. They end up with invasive procedures not because of medical need, but because of all sorts of other factors - fear, lack of support, doctors and midwives being overstretched.

My midwife (who was with me right the way through my first birth in a MLU) told me afterwards that my birth had been long and pretty tough (I had nothing to compare it with - I just knew it had hurt like hell!). She told me that if I;d been in hospital, I'd in all probablity have been pushed into having interventions earlier. There isn't always 'only one way' a birth can go. Mine could have been highly medicalised, or it could (as it turned out) be natural.

I agree with a lot of your post. But to me your Mw's comment about how in all probability you would have been pushed into having interventions earlier at a hospital is one that would actually contribute to the fear that women might have about hospitals.

Women really should have support in hospitals - they should have the mindset, if possible, that the hospital environment is there for them and their babies. I agree that I was fortunate with the care I received.

However, women should also demand evidence when health professionals like your mw provide their views.

I recall an independent mw telling me that I would be more likely to have interventions at hospital as part of her selling of her services, when I requested evidence she was not able to come up with any.

shaz10, you have hit the nub of this whole issue

I believe strongly that if women had one to one care in labour the need for epidurals would go down. Utter terror, and being left alone for long periods of time to get on with labour = labour not progressing = more intervention

It's what's wrong with the whole system. Lack of resources means lack of one to one care and we women at the end of it all...comparing labours....feeling inadequate......blaming ourselves.....experiencing trauma and even mental health problems.....

I think we should all focus less on how we birthed, to be honest. If we get rid of the culture of "well done, no pain relief for you!" then we get rid of the opposite, implied judgments and criticisms

We should be talking about how supported our labour was, not how drug free, imvho.

It doesn't surprise me that position during 2nd stage does not affect the CS risk because by 2nd stage the cervix is fully open - however the report does say that supine position in labour does increase likelihood of an instrumental delivery and episiotomy etc.

Interestingly per this report the main factor that reduces CS rates is one to one support in labour, another factor is a homebirth.

So what I read into that is the more relaxed / calm / emotionally comfortable & supported the women is the lower the CS rate - ties into what angry wasp is saying above.

I would add that I had one to one care through out my labour - I asked my mw and dh never to leave my side and they stayed by me, and when I had suffered blood loss I asked the mw and dh to stay with the baby.

One to one support is indeed key - IMO. I can not imagine being left alone during labour.

wow, scary - what a brilliant MW! I had a 50 hour labour (the last 24 hours in hosp I think) They basically showed me and DH to a room and left us there for hours. Popped in when I asked for gas and air and looked at me as if I had two heads and made me feel utterly stupid for not realising the TENS machine could be turned up further Went away again for hours. We had to buzz for any visits at all, until much later when things were going wrong for me. I still wonder how many people things wouldn't go wrong for, if they had a MW to see them through labour

They were crap.

I like that AngryWasp.

I am not against epidurals. Every woman should have the choice to manage her pain as she wants to do. No woman should ever feel that she is being judged/coerced into doing anything when it comes to labour and birth (or at any time ).

What an epidural represents to me though symboliclly is medicalisation, lack of control, lack of instinct, de-feminisation...

To see birth reduced to a patient woman bed-bound, catheterised, canulated, monitored in every way and coached, with the room looking like an HDU makes me feel sad.

I know of the many situations when an epidural is absolutely the best thing that a woman can choose. But to see birth as an horrendous torturous experience which women need to be rid of at all costs is wrong IMO.

The relevance of the sex centre article is that natural childbirth is actually a similar physiological process to sexual intercourse. The same hormones are at work. The environment is equally important.

It is also worth considering how differently things might have developed it if was mens sexual reproduction processes that we were talking about.

I had one-to-one care through my labour each time, and this was in 3 different countries. From what I hear from British friends, and reading things like this site, people in the UK have shocking experiences in childbirth, that I would not expect in a developed country.

My epidurals were lovely. I could move around, was not bed bound, could feel my contractions, the crowning and to push, but was not in much pain. I could enjoy the whole experience together with my husband, really.

I had DD aged 22 and no-one, no-one told me how painful giving birth would be!! I knew it would hurt a lot but as I have a very high pain threshold I thought I would cope. How wrong was I! If someone would have passed me a gun I would have shot myself in the head the pain was so intense. I was 2 weeks and a day overdue and been in labour for 30 hours before I was begging for an epidural. They did warn me that it could prolong labour but I just needed the relief. The only people I know who haven't had epi's are those who find giving birth quick and easy and have not struggled through a painful labour for days. Unfortunately dd was born with erbs palsy after shoulder dystocia but this was caused by fundal pressure being applied to try to pop her out and had nothing to do with the epidural, in fact they would not top it up from 9cms dilation on so I had no pain relief at all when I started pushing. The only thing I didn't like was my sacrum had a small numb patch on it for years after, a small discomfort compared to giving birth!! Good luck and hope you enjoy a pain free labour!!

I'm not at all against epidurals.
I've never had one though, as my first baby was born in Milan and at that time it was difficult to get one, and I had a very easy, fast labour with my second, so I didn't really get to a stage where I felt I needed some help with my pain.

Actually, I recently read some Italian statistics: in regions where epidurals are done routinely the rate of c sections is actually lower than in regions where epidurals aren't performed regularly.