Women’s pain relief to boost the NHS environmental credentials

[crumpet]

What are men being asked to contribute in terms of their pain relief I wonder?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12605737/Women-childbirth-urged-swap-gas-air-water-injections-save-PLANET.html

And clearly the solution is to make trusts put in proper scavenging systems in maternity wards to reduce background levels to the recommended safe level if they don't already have them, not tellmwomen in labour to us EA comb instead FFS.

What sample size do you think you are going to get? It's a pointless question that tells you nothing about the true risk - just gets you anecdata.

And maybe do some research on the risks to midwives before just dismissing them? It's not as simple as just treating any B12 deficiency. Irreversible neurological damage may have occurred: you can get subacute combined degeneration of the spinal cord, blindness and permanent brain damage. Giving B12 can sometimes reverse this, but not always.

We need to keep midwives safe, as well as labouring women. There are ways to do this but they are not prioritised because it's easier and cheaper to deny women analgesia.

Holding a comb instead of proper analgesia? God and all the saints, please help all women giving birth…

While that might seem blasphemous it is actually more to the point than one might think.

I watched a documentary (Lucy Worsley?) and she talked about how, in medieval England, midwives would bring a little bag of tricks with them to provide at least some psychological support to labouring women. There would be a little scroll, with prayers to the patron saint of labouring women, perhaps illustrations and a little bottle of holy water. Belief was obviously very strong back then so these items probably did help a little.

Not for long though, because male priests didn’t like the idea that female midwives were stepping on their religious territory and preventing women suffering properly in childbirth, as of course they should because of that tempting minx Eve. So midwives were threatened with excommunication, most of those items were destroyed and women had to suffer agonising labour pains without so much as a tiny prayer scroll to look at…

How about the NHS provides midwives with what they need to do their job (proper ventilation) and we don’t scuttle back seven centuries?

The evidence shows the risk to midwives is very real if scavenging units aren’t used. So increase in stillbirth and miscarriage. But this is reduced by ventilation

Weirdly, there is some evidence that holding a comb helps - it may be purely a placebo effect, though some people think it's to do with activating accupressure points. So there is no harm in using a comb as well as proper pain relief. But the idea of using it instead of is unbelievable and pure misogyny. Are we giving any men a comb instead of gas-and-air when they need analgesia?

It's a discussion forum and I can ask any questions I like. Don't tell me what to do or think. I am quite capable of doing my own research and am also interested in the anecdata of midwives and women on MN, that doesn't make it irrelevant to ask. Clearly, this is an NHS infrastructure issue that has come to light because they've measured background levels and found them to be too high in SOME trust's maternity wards. So midwives who have worked there are rightly concerned about their occupational health. But how you can try and use that to justify immediately stopping gas and air for all labouring women in those trusts, without offering any alternatives other than 'hold a comb' is beyond me. And I dont believe many midwives would support that either. I work with the NHS and theres plenty of budget for expensive IT projects and cyber initiatives, believe me, so they need to prioritise some of that funding to fix this issue in the trusts where the levels have been found to be too high, such that some staff might be adversely affected, rather than throw all women under the bus. And I note that at the trust I have direct experience of, the narrative has changed now anyway to be about reducing the environmental impact of greenhouse gases, not the possible occupational health issues on midwives (and this is the comb trust).

Has anyone done a risk assessment for use of a comb I wonder?

I'm thinking of shattered shards embedded and requiring services if a hand surgeon to remove, possible damage to impaled tendons, infection.

As regards improving ventilation this is needed throughout ward and other areas - infection control for respiratory infections such as flu and covid are non existent. Current policy is come in to work even if you are testing positive unless you are too unwell to work.

And will somebody think of the poor expectant fathers? Having your partner's nails dug into your palm as you hold them through another excruciating contraction today is bad enough, imagine how bad it will be when the mother doesn't even have a gas and air mouthpiece to hold onto an sis holding a pointy comb instead!