Remifentanil pain relief in labour

[Thekindyoufindinasecondhand]

Has anyone had experience with using remifentanil during labour? Someone I know at work had it and raves about it, but as I know it's not as popular as the big two (epidural/pethadine!) haven't been able to find much else on it.

My hospital do use it, I'm not sure how hard it is to be able to have the option of using it as haven't asked yet, but if you did ask for it, was your hospital happy to offer?

I didnt use it in labour but asked a lot of questions on it. In my hospital it was available but you had to do to the labour suite rather than the midwifery suite. They said it can make people feel quite ill so would give an anti sickness jag at the same time. At my hospital you controlled it yourself.

I had it twice and love it! 3 DCs. I didn't want an epidural. Had it for the last two. It was sadly removed from me at pushing stage (quite rightly!) and I had two unassisted deliveries leaning over the head of the bed so it doesn't affect moving about etc

@gobbolino did the hospital happily offer it at your request? I'm liking everything I've read about it but just worry that may be the only issue in having it.

@strangerthingshere that's great to know thank you. I think I have to be on labour suite anyway so that's no problem. Interesting about the anti sickness.

I had remifentanil when I gave birth recently. I went with that option because I didn’t like the thought of pethidine which I’ve been told doesn’t really stop the pain it just makes you feel really out of it, and apparently diamorpine goes into the baby’s system and can make them quite drowsy to begin with, which I didn’t like the thought of. Personally I didn’t want an epidural as I did want to experience the feeling of giving birth (and I can confirm, it feels bad, ha!).

With remifentanil you control it yourself by pushing a button, but you can’t overdose on it because the button locks out. The theory is that you press the button at the peak of a contraction and you get the benefit immediately, it works straight away and then stops working straight after, if that makes sense. It doesn’t hang around in your system and because of that it doesn’t affect the baby.

For me it was helpful, but my labour was so fast (seven contractions every ten minutes and they had to give drugs to slow it down because my baby was becoming unwell) that I didn’t really experience the peaks and rest in between contractions that people talk about so I spent a lot of time just pressing the button and getting no pain relief because it was locked out! I do think it would have been much more effective if my labour had been slower.

I felt incredibly nauseous after the birth and was sick quite a bit during. Can’t tell you whether that was the medication or the speed of my labour, or just labour in general! But feeling very sick is one of my lasting memories. I believe they gave some anti sickness drugs afterwards which worked really well and the sickness just went away. I hope this is helpful!

I had it and it was amazing. My hospital is one of the few where they actively promote it. You control it yourself via a sort of button. It totally made the difference to me between the pain being bearable and unbearable (which is was for dc1). The only thing was I was eventually aware that I couldn’t focus enough with it to actually push him out so I had to wean myself off it at the end but it was so short lasting that this was easy to do

They didn’t have it in my local hospital but I would have tried it if they had.