No time for epidural?

[timewilltel]

So I'm 34 weeks pregnant with my second baby and had an appointment with my midwife today, she asked about if I'd decided on my birthing plan. So for my first, I opted for a water birth as I was told it would be amazing and not painful but the only thing is I wouldn't be able to have any pain relief, well maybe it's coz it was my first pregnancy and so I had nothing to compare it to but let's just say it wasn't pain free at all and even tho it was only about 4-5 hours long it felt like forever! Anyway I swore that for my next pregnancy I would opt for epidural no question, so when I told her this today she went on to say "well just to let you know before you make any kind of decisions that second pregnancies are always much quicker than first and so you might not even have time for epidural at all"
Anyway long story short, has anyone else been told this or even had any experience with this??

I wouldn't call 4-5 hours in labour 'not very long' unless you mean from the first twinge.

A water birth eases things a bit but you still feel it.

You can have an epidural if you want one.

It’s strange that you were told or thought that giving birth in a bath would result in no pain. As far as I know, water has no anaesthetic properties. In terms of epidural, I had one at 7cm with my first and at 6cm with my second - I didn’t give birth in the UK though where they routinely use the fact that a woman is ‘too far along’ as an excuse for refusing pain relief.

Second birth was 2 hours from when I got to hospital.

Well if it indeed happen to be fast labour you shouldnt worry i giess about epidural cause it wont last long- the pain... and if u can stand the pain without having one its probably better... my back still hurts if someone leans on that part of my spine almost 4 years later now

I went from zero centimeters to 8cm in about 50 mins. I was in hospital for observation and it all started. I was whipped straight down to a birthing room, was 10 cm by the time I got there.

6 minutes later he was born. Not a chance was there time for an epidural.

A birth plan is just that. A plan. Plans change depending on what happens. You can say you want something, but there couple be things that happen that make it not the right choice