When I gave birth to my baby girl three weeks ago I did it drug free. Well, except for gas, but I don’t count that as a drug because it doesn’t dull the pain one single bit. It just calms you down enough to not want to stab yourself in the eye to make it all end and gives you something to do with your hands rather than strangle your husband.
No, I’m referring to the good stuff, pethidine or epidural, both of which I did without. However, the reason for this was not because I am particularly strong in either my pain threshold or my convictions. It was purely because my baby came too quickly for it to be an option. But, had I been given the choice to take every drug known to man during my fast but furious labour would I have taken it? Hell yes. However, just to be contrary, am I glad I had a drug free birth? Absolutely.
When I wrote about birth plans a few weeks ago I was interested to read some of your opinions on hospital births and how many of you felt that your caregivers ‘pressured’ you into taking pain relief when you hadn’t wanted it. I have to admit, I find this line of thinking a little strange, so I wanted to investigate it further. Because, to me, a medical caregiver offering you pain relief when you are in agonising pain just means they are doing their job. They don’t receive a financial kick back for every person that accepts their offer, they are just trying to help you deliver your baby as safely and with the least amount of stress possible.
Yet, many of you are writing birth plans instructing them not to offer you drugs under any circumstances, or asking your partners to ‘just say no’ for you, if you are too weak to do so yourself.
Funnily, my husband and I had a conversation the day before my delivery, which proves why I am sceptical about birth plans in general. While not actually writing a specific plan I did discuss a few things with Phil and one of them was that I didn’t want pethidine. Not because I am anti drugs, but because I have heard many stories of it causing nausea and vomiting and I am most definitely anti nausea and vomiting.
So Phil was understandably perplexed when, 30 minutes after we got to the hospital and my contractions were on top of each other, I asked the midwife if she could please get me some pethidine. Because nausea and vomiting would have been a sweet gift if that pain was dulled just a fraction. As it was it was too late, but it proves, for me, why a decision made before labour is not always the one you want to make during it.
Yet there are plenty of you who expressed that you would want your partner to overrule you, to help you be strong in a moment of weakness. But it is this I don’t understand. Why do we feel the need to be that strong? There is no other medical procedure that painful that we would expect to do drug free, so why we feel pressure to be martyrs during childbirth? Can you imagine any man doing the same? Hell, they would all request to be knocked out for the birth and the week following week it!
For reasons I’m interested to learn, many women insist of going through long labours with no pain relief at all. So I did a little googling and researched drug-free births, to find out the risks and benefits. And it was during this net surfing that I came across the term ‘free birthing,’ Free birthing is a practice which encourages birthing at home, on your own, and suggests that the only reason childbirth is painful is because women are in a state of fear. And if they can let go of that fear birth will become a pain-free, even sensual experience. Now, during my recent labour, I have to say that I was calm, in control and mostly without fear. Yet it still hurt like a (insert your preferred expletive here).
It seems though, that I was doing it all wrong, with one free birthing advocate, Laura Shanley, helpfully suggesting that I should have been having sex during labour. As she explained on her site, “Birth is a sexual act, and often having sex in labor helps facilitate the process. When a woman is sexually stimulated, oxytocin flows through her system causing her uterus to contract, either in the form of orgasms or labor contractions. In fact, some women are actually able to experience labor contractions as pleasurable.”
Let’s just ponder that for a moment shall we. After doing so I would suggest that Ms Shanley needs some serious drugs herself and not the pain-killing kind.
But, on the less crazy scale, there are plenty of reasons why giving birth drug-free is the optimal situation. You can move about more, so labour is often quicker. Both you and your baby are more alert afterwards, so bonding and immediate breastfeeding is enhanced. And you experience more of the pushing sensation (read: vaginal chinese burn) so you have more of an incentive to push and therefore require less intervention.
However, all of those reasons are fine for a labour like mine, which was fast. But for those labours that go on for the whole day and/or night I just can’t imagine being strong enough to do it on my own. And these days, where they can turn the epidural down during the pushing stage, most of those negatives aren’t applicable anyway.
I asked a friend who had laboured once without an epidural and once with one for her opinion and she had some interesting observations. She felt that the epidural allowed her to relax and enjoy her second labour more, however she was a little out of it afterwards and wasn’t as ‘present’ in the those first moments with her baby. But she found no difference in either child’s subsequent breastfeeding success or alertness, in fact the baby who was an epidural birth is the most alert child I’ve ever seen!
But, here is the thing, the final point that will kind of contradict every other point I have made. Both my friend and I found that after we gave birth drug free we felt an enormous sense of accomplishment and pride within ourselves, which more than compensated for the temporary pain. I remember, particularly the first time, in the moment when I realised I wouldn’t get any pain relief and that nobody could do this but me I felt such a powerful inner strength come over me, a strength that has stayed with me ever since.
Would I have had that if the pain hadn’t been as bad, if I had brought my child into this world with the aide of an epidural? I don’t know. Probably. But, as much as I would have taken those drugs if I had the chance, once the moment had passed I was glad I didn’t and proud of the strength I had shown.
So am I a hero or a martyr? I am neither and none of us are. We all just do the best we can at the time. And as I write this, with my beautiful baby sleeping peacefully next to me, I am acutely aware that it is not the process that brought her here that really matters. It’s just that she is here.
Did you give birth drug free of with pain relief? What were your experiences, why did you choose that path and how did you feel about it afterwards? Comment on Amity's blog.
There is no other medical procedure that painful that we would expect to do drug free, so why we feel pressure to be martyrs during childbirth?