A lot of controversy surrounds “the epidural.” Natural health gurus are quick to warn pregnant women of all the potential dangers and side effects of the procedure, while medical science assures them that the actual risk associated with it is quite low.
When I got pregnant with Benjamin, it was a given that he would be birthed at home. Having a general distrust for modern medicine, there was no way I was going to give birth in a hospital. The more I read about the evils of hospital delivery procedures, and how they may cause more complications than a homebirth, the more determined I became.
The dangers of the epidural were particularly emphasized, especially in my natural childbirth class. For the mother, its side effects include a drop in blood pressure, nausea and/or vomiting, prolonged labor, and even death. The baby, on his part, may suffer a drop in heart rate, weak muscle tone for the first few hours outside the womb, and an inability to breastfeed.
Frightening stuff. I became all the more convinced that birthing my baby naturally was my only option.
Until I ended up flat on my back on a hospital bed, with two nurses yelling at me to push as hard as I could.
I’ll spare you the details of my never-ending, extremely painful labor that came after four nights of false labor and about 108 hours straight with little to no sleep. Let’s just say that if I could back and do it over again, I would do everything differently.
Maybe.
Then again, what if my midwife and realtor were right? That because my cervix was taking so long to dilate, my baby’s life had been in danger?
That's me under the sheets in the delivery room.
Regardless, there I was, in a hospital bed, thanking God for epidurals. I like to think that if I hadn’t been utterly exhausted, without a milligram of energy left in my body, I could have handled the pain. But I was, and I couldn’t. At that point, I couldn’t care less about the baby trying to make his way out. The only thing I could think was that I wanted the pain to be gone.
Shortly after my admittance to the hospital, an epidural technician came to insert a needle in my spine. Within minutes, I was smiling and joking for the first time in days. Numb from my naval to my hipbone, I reveled in the feeling. Or lack thereof.
Soon after, I would begin to question the wisdom of my choice. Even the delivery nurse on hand had encouraged me not to get an epidural, that I would be fully dilated soon and that I would be able to give birth faster without on. But I knew if I had one more contraction ripping my lower back apart for a full sixty seconds or more, I would rip the baby out with my bare hands just to stop the pain.
So instead of experiencing pain, I couldn’t push. I tried. And I did push–a little. A little is all a birthing woman can do when she can’t even tell that her belly and crotch exist. After two and a half hours of almost fruitless pushing, the Ob-Gyn was called in to cut me open and pull the baby out.
No, it wasn’t a C-section, praise the Lord. But I know that the episiotomy that took forever to heal would not have been necessary if I had been strong enough to push.
Nevertheless, when my baby came out in a gush of blood and the nurse announced, “It’s a boy!” (we hadn’t known the gender), my husband and I looked at each other and laughed. We’d done it. I’d done it. I’d given birth vaginally.
What about Benjamin? How was his health? I later got a copy of his APGAR score (how a baby’s health is rated shortly after birth) and found that he’d passed with flying colors. In fact, when they finally handed him to me after cleaning him up, his eyes were wide open and he looked as if he were trying to engage us in intelligent conversation. When he began nursing for the first time, he had no problems sucking.
I left the experience knowing two things:
- hospital procedures aren’t always as evil as the natural health world makes them out to be; and
- I would never judge another woman again for wanting to avoid natural childbirth.
Also, when I thought about it later, I realized that I know many women who have had epidurals and neither they nor their babies experienced any side effects.
Still, I don’t think epidurals are the answer to painful contractions. On principle I don’t usually allow drugs to enter my body, and consider them to be toxic waste marketed by corporations who care more about lining their pockets than helping sick people. I also believe that if acupuncturists and certified homeopaths were allowed to work together in hospital delivery rooms, many more women would be able to be relieved of labor pains without risking any side effects.
If I were to have another baby, I would go for a homebirth again. I would be smarter this time, and do whatever it took to get the rest and fuel my body needed for labor and childbirth. I wouldn’t spend my entire pregnancy with a suppressed fear of something going wrong (“as a pregnant and laboring woman thinks in her heart, so is she”).
But if–IF–my intuition told me that something was wrong, that I needed to go to the hospital, I would. And if the pain was horrible enough, I might even get another epidural.
And be happy that, if only once in a while, modern medicine does have some redeeming qualities after all.