"More and more women are planning on getting epidurals, and I don't blame them," said Dr. Jerry Konialian, a fertility specialist at Northridge Hospital Medical Center, who has delivered thousands of babies since 1985."They were not common 20 years ago, but now they are demanding it. You don't even have to suggest it. It's wonderful, and it's safe. I tell my patients who do question it, `You wouldn't have a tooth pulled with no local, so why would you want this huge baby pulled out of you with no anesthetic?"'
A discomfiting point of view at a time when having a baby is riskier than ever, despite women living in a time when technology and medical advances are at their peak. No one is disputing that birth hurts. Women should be able to choose an epidural if they want one. However, I find it really appalling that obstetricians might be encouraging women to have epidurals under the assumption that a woman's body is incapable of birthing a baby without intervention. Moreover, the assertion that women are just giving up on natural birth in favour of anesthesia is ridiculous. Birth is very complicated in a hospital and women's 'choices' are often circumscribed by the context; if a doctor says she needs to have an intervention, many women are reluctant to dispute an expert opinion. Moreover, a number of women are so scared to give birth (tokophobia) they decide during the pregnancy that they do not want to feel any pain.
As I discussed a few posts ago, epidurals can slow labour right down and are just a link in the chain of interventions that often lead women down the path to an unwanted caesar. Having an epidural is no joke. It is essentially a spinal block and there are a number of risks:
*forceps or vacuum extractor are required more often (20-75%)
*may slow labor, requiring Pitocin (synthetic oxytocin)
*increases the chances of a cesarean delivery by two or three times
I don't think any woman takes this decision very lightly.
