Must Stop Reading Articles on BBC News Online
Yes, I really should because they are getting closer and closer to home…
Today’s was about women being unprepared for the pain of childbirth. Jon and I have now been to 2 of our 3 ante-natal classes and the one we went to on Wednesday covered pain relief in childbirth. Although the midwife did point out that pain relief is somethign of a mis-nomer as not everything is going to make the pain go away completely, and from what I understand you in fact do need the sensations of the contractions to know when to and just as importantly when not to push.
The article does make the point that women shouldn’t feel that they have failed because they have had to run the whole or any of the gamut of pain relief options, and this was a key message that we got during our class on Wednesday. Mainly the concern from the other women was not that they had the pain relief but that they might be too zoned out from it to make further decisions about the birth’s progression. Also interestingly enough it was pointed out that originally epidurals weren’t used in childbirth for the purpose of the pain relief, but to help keep blood pressure levels in check for women with high blood pressure, and that the secondary effect of the “block” has taken over.
All a long I’ve been pretty adamant regarding one method of pain relief - I do not want to have an epidural. Having had a none too pleasant experience a number of years ago with a lumbar puncture which left me with lingering back problems for a number of years, I don’t want people near my spine again with a needle. Also my history of back problems may in fact mean that I’m not an ideal candidate for an epidural…
Ideally, like most women I’d like to get through the whole process of giving birth with as little pain relief of the non-watery/massage/gas and air variety. But I am prepared that I may end up needing something to help things along.
I’d like to hope that I might be like my mother who popped me out 3 hours after her waters were broken, (she was fully dialated at the time so it wasn’t broken for induction purposes) innocently asking when the pain was supposed to start. She claims (and you’d not expect this from your own mother who you would think would want to be able to hold a 36 hour labour over you) that nothing was ever worse than a bad cramp. Now, in our family that’s a pretty damn bad cramp, but since I’ve had to have a morphine shot in the past for them, and believe that the trapped nerve leg cramps that I got earlier in the pregnancy are far far far worse than any cramp I’ve ever had I’m hoping that I can manage it without screaming for all the drugs under the sun.
Of course what happens at the time is all up in the air. Having seen a video of a water birth I’m even more certain that I’d like to try for one and I think/hope that staying calm and relaxed and not trying to imagine what hideous agonies could be in store will help make things go far more smoothly.
Tags: childbirth