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| Tip of 16G Portex Tuohy needle and epidural catheter tip (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
How many times do you hear the sales
pitch for the epidural? “Why be in pain if you don't have to?”
“Don't be a hero.”
I'm totally not into pain. I've been
known to try to hide under the covers from menstrual cramps and
headaches. When I was in elementary school, spanking was still
common, and I assure you the fear the paddle inspired was enough to
keep me from being purposefully disobedient. No piercings or tattoos
for me. By all accounts, I should have been the first one in line for
drugs when it came to childbirth. If birth were only physical, I
would totally agree that pain medication should be standard, but the
reality is that birth is also emotional and even spiritual (or at
least a deeply meaningful life event).
Nobody around me cared in the least how
my babies were born so long as they were healthy. Still, I just had
this sense that childbirth was sacred. My mother, and billions of
mothers since humanity began, experienced childbirth without pain
medication. My assumption was that unless labor was very long and/or
complicated I wouldn't need medication to control the pain. Had I
been encouraged to rest in the middle of labor instead of given labor
augmenting drugs, I would have almost certainly had three drug-free
births even with long labors and two babies in a posterior position.
It is possible for most women to
actually enjoy the experience of labor. It's nearly shameful to admit
that anything other than actually holding your baby was enjoyable.
I'm not ashamed. I enjoyed natural labor (not medically augmented
labor) so much more than the numbing epidural. The epidural made me
so numb that I couldn't feel my legs for several hours after or even
take a deep breath. Granted, when I requested not to be numb with my
last child they were able to do that, but it was still bad for me. It
calmed both the physical and emotional pain I was experiencing, but
it took all positive physical and emotional feeling away too.
Birth is emotional. If you take nothing
else away from my musings here, remember that. A woman in labor is
often not pleasant to deal with. Doctors and nurses tend to
appreciate the epidural because it makes a laboring woman much easier
to examine and preform routine procedures on.
If we really care so much about
“unnecessary pain” why should needles be standard in childbirth?
During my third labor, I complained about the huge needle they stuck
in my arm for IV antibiotics. The nurse couldn't believe I was
worried about a needle rather than labor. The epidural needle (which
I regretfully had twice because of unnatural drug induced pain) was
like an electrical shock to my spine.
Hospital birth doctors and midwives are
almost always way too quick to recommend induction or augmentation of
labor, but don't talk about the pain it will cause because they can
always call for an epidural to alleviate the pain, then more pitocin
because the epidural slows down labor.
Pain and pleasure are separated by a
very fine line. It is a delicate balance. (If this makes no sense to
you, ask someone experienced in the kink community, but please don't
read 50 Shades of Grey.)
Very very few moms who had a drug-free
birth regret the experience, even it wasn't planned that way. A whole
lot of moms who experienced medicated births do regret it, even some
who planned it that way.
