I don' wan' a new one. You like a old one.

[ailbhe]

The plumber is here dismantling the bathroom. He's being very industrious. Today the tiles are all coming down and the bath is being replaced, then tomorrow the sink and loo, I think. Emer thinks it's interesting but would prefer everything to stay unchanged, possibly everywhere, for ever. Linnea is less interested.

This morning there was a but on BBC Radio 4 about the ever-increasing use of epidurals and the presenter tried to change it from two people who basically agreed with each other to an argument about a man telling women the pain is necessary and they shouldn't be allowed etc. I ended up crying so now have an SF movies soundtrack playing instead, which is much less stressful.

Epidurals: women wouldn't choose them nearly as much if they were getting adequate midwifery care, and anyone trying to reduce access to epidurals without first fixing the actual problem needs to be poked firmly in the snoot. Both experts on the radio today agreed with me, in spite of the presenter trying to get them to argue.

You must, as Doctor Latchford says, expect some discomfort after childbirth. However, as Mister Smith The Antipodean Gynaecologist says, If it hurts that much we must fix it. That goes for during childbirth too.

Comments

[kateaw]

I heard that too. It was nice to hear the participants refusing to argue despite the presenter.

I am very glad that I had good midwifery care. There were a team of them rather than just one, and I think that worked well for me. It meant that I has plenty of opinions to choose from, rather than one person's slant on it.

I did not have an epidural.

[hfnuala.livejournal.com]

I missed the radio this morning which is a shame as I've been wanting to hear Dr Latchford in his own words as the 'rite of passage' stuff he's been quoted as saying winds me up.

Also, I think it's meaningless to discuss epidurals without discussing the increase in the use of induced labour - I know several people who have experienced both and say there is no comparison and induction is far more painful (possibly because induction is only replicating some of the natural/normal[1] process that brings labour on and may be missing the bits that make the process seem manageable.)

Of course, I've only had one labour, and that atypical in this country, so I must be careful not to generalise.

[1]I don't like either word here as they seem loaded but I'm not sure what else to use.

[ailbhe]

Wrong name - Latchford is the genius who dismissed me after Linnea's birth.

The guy on the radio this morning sounded fairly reasonable and wouldn't be drawn on the rites of passage thing that the interviewer wanted him to say. He did say that the things that happen in normal labour include things which make the pain manageable, and he point blank refused to say that women should be prevented from having epidurals - it was more that the over-use of them leads to more intervention and the complications aren't negligible.

I actually like "normal" labour - it's loaded but I like it that way. Admittedly I had a distinctly abnormal labour so I'm biased against active management, as they say, and all the rest.

And personally, the post-syntocinon "pain" was nastier and less manageable than pre-induction, for me. I had an epidural but could still feel a lot of what was going on, and it was different in quality to what went before, and felt less productive, though that's almost certianly because I was lying down so the head was tipped off the cervix.

[hfnuala.livejournal.com]

Ooops, sorry. Services me right for not looking up - the midwife is Dr Denis Walsh.

[kiya]

From what I understand from my current state of research, epidurals do slow down labour, which is why the loop is frequently epidural-pitocin to speed things back up-panic.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I agree about induced labor. With my firstborn, I had a natural labor for several hours that they had to stop, because the baby's heart rate was dipping alarmingly. So it took induction to start it up again after she'd been stabilized. I didn't need an epidural before the "break." I did afterwards when they restarted labor forcibly.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

Had epidurals with both my kids. Didn't intend to, was aware of the reasons not to if one could reasonably avoid it -- I just had specific situations which meant that it turned out I couldn't reasonably avoid it. While I regret that that's the way it turned out, I don't regret the choices I made; I felt I went into childbirth well-informed about other pain relief tactics, and I honestly tried what else I could try first.