Pain Relief Options

[Strawberrimoon]

Hi all, FTM here looking for some personal experiences and advice about pain relief during labour.
I am a Nurse so I do have quite a bit of knowledge about pain reliefs but as this is my first experience of giving birth, I wanted to ask if anyone has any recommendations as I have a low pain threshold!
I originally had planned to ask for an epidural as soon as I arrived 😂 I've now decided to start with Entonox and take things from there.
Most commonly I tend to hear people talking about having an epidural or diamorphine in labour. These three pain reliefs are also the main forms of analgesia that the midwife mentioned at my Antenatal class. However she quickly mentioned another but didn't go into much details about - Remifentanil PCA (patient controlled analgesia).
Has anyone ever used the Remifentanil PCA during their labour in the past? If so what did you think?
Thanks! 😊

I have one of the lowest pain thresholds going - so bad I fainted after having my belly button pierced... and cry if I stub my toe! When it came to giving birth for the first time I thought how will I cope.. and somehow I did I managed to! I did the whole thing with nothing not even gas and air! My body went into a state of calm it was so strange! You may suprise your self! It's not that I didn't want pain relief I went in really opened minded and knew my body would tell me what it needs! Good luck whatever you decide x

I had epidurals in my first two labours, this time I had an appointment with an anaesthetist and he mentioned remifentanil to me when I said I'd like to do it without an epidural this time, so I'd be interested to hear from someone who has had it too!

From what I've read it's not widely offered yet. Sounds good but not offered round here unfortunately, I'm presuming it's an option for you if your midwife mentioned it though! I think it'd be great to be able to use it as needed as the main thing putting me off pethidine is once you've had that's it's for 4 hours ish until it wears off and you have to cope with any side effects like sickness or feeling out of it until then.

Remifentanil has a really short half life, usually only 2 minutes with the dose on a PCA so the problem is timing it correctly so you get the relief at the height of the contraction and not that you are fast asleep in between contractions and screaming out with them! In our trust they only offer it to women who cannot have an epidural for medical reasons.

Yeah its been an option in my trust for a couple of years. We do not offer pethidine anymore, instead Diamorphine is given.
I know all about the PCA etc, but I just wonder whether it's actually any better than having the Diamorphine/epidural. If you have Diamorphine during you have to wait 4hrs before you can have the Remifentanil PCA.. I'll probably end up just taking the epidural anyway 😂 Would just be good to hear from someone's personal experience though about having used it. XO