So what equipment was the rest of the world using? Not suggesting there is anything inaccurate in the information in your pos,t just throwing it into the USA is weird bin. Our (outside world) N2O/O2 systems probably don’t qualify for some strange reason.
This is a lot of the midwifery point of view, which is that given the right circumstances, a lot of women can birth without drugs, or with minimal drugs, but that the constant interruptions at the hospital, bright lights, and super gravity fighting backlying position all help the nurses and doctors do their jobs but make it a lot harder for the birthing mom to do her job.
When I was part of the midwifery advocacy group, we had several midwives as part of the group. We heard that one delivery nurse liked to wear a button with PAIN and the NO symbol through it. Wonder what her position on the drug thing is.
Another very disturbing thing that I found when I researched the issue of drugs during delivery is that one of the reasons (I found this on a presentation given to a group of Ob/Gyns by another doctor) to administer epidurals is “makes the patient more compliant.” Maybe sometimes this is a real benefit to the mom and baby, but I’m guess THIS benefit is mostly for the doctor.
HOWEVER, C-sections are quite safe, and babies almost never die from them, and mothers have more complications than from vaginal births but very rarely die either from C-sections, which is not the line I was told by my midwives. So - it’s a good idea to listen to both sides of this debate with an open mind.
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Yeah my wife did the last two without drugs, and interestingly used the same position. We had to fight for it, they can’t get the monitor belt to give a good continuous reading in that position, and it’s ALL about a good continuous reading from the monitor belt.
She doesn’t advocate drug free though, she’d have had an epidural on both deliveries, they just went too quick.
It is an almost pathological compulsion to chime in on it, and I completely get how ridiculous it seems. But for all the divide between the experience of birth and the experience of partnering someone giving birth, it still remains one of the most affecting events of my life. It is very hard to just zip it up and say nothing about it when the topic arises. And the topic has arisen.
I wouldn’t offer any advice to expectant mothers (beyond “don’t suck down whippets”), partly because I don’t have the plumbing, but largely because they are already getting more advice than they can possibly assimilate and much of it is conflicting. They’ll need to settle on a few sources of information they can trust to guide them, and if one of them turns out to be Robulus on Boing Boing they are in deep shit.
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Don’t know if that is directed at my comment about toughness above, but I hope not. If it is I fucked up. I’ll amend it to better reflect what I meant.
I passed your question along to Mike Civitello at Porter Instruments (makers of N2O equipment) and he replied
Many other countries use a premixed gas with demand valve. One cylinder has both N2O and O2. This is not FDA approved. The safety concern is that at varying temperatures the two gases will separate - and you have no way to verify what percentage mixture the patient is receiving. That leaves us with connecting each gas to a device that will mix/blend them at a 50/50 ratio - and can be administered through a demand valve. This type of device was not available until January of this year. Similar devices existed years ago but had gone out of production with the development of other systems that are more commonly used for nitrous oxide and oxygen.
Although N2O and O2 have been widely used in the US in dental offices and other hospital departments - they use a different type of system that is not appropriate for labor applications. This was one of the main obstacles of why N2O for labor was not more readily available than it is now. This is not an obstacle anymore - but it will take some time for facilities to make it available.
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I’m seeing husbands relaying their wives’ experiences. Where do you see a man giving advice from his own POV?
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The new one opening in Mission Bay next February might be better. It’s specifically a women’s/children’s hospital. I think it’s going to have an oncology wing too.
I often hear about the ‘awful paralysis’ and restrictive nature of epidurals and, for what it’s worth, it wasn’t my own experience at all. I guess that, just like every labour experience can vary a lot from one another, people’s responses to drugs and procedures can also vary quite a bit (for instance, nitrous oxide did absolutely nothing for me).
I started having a home birth but after 14 hours of gut-wrenching nausea on top of the pain and total exhaustion (my labour had begun at 11pm the night before, so I hadn’t gotten any sleep since 12 hours before that), I sensed there was a good risk I would not be able to properly push once the time would come.
The epidural is what gave me some sense of control back. It gave me exactly what I desperately wanted at that moment: An opportunity to gather myself and my strengths for the last step. I didn’t have problems sensing the contractions and pushing at all. I couldn’t sense the pain of the contractions but I could feel the pressure and motion of each. I don’t even remember any issues with paralysis afterwards either. I was back on my feet pretty quickly for a shower and the midwife had the authority to let us leave the hospital early. Not saying this is to be expected for everyone, obviously, but that’s what it comes down to: Your own labour and how it plays itself out is completely your own and so are every decisions you make about it. It should not be a competition and a woman ought to have every single option available, from the most spartan home birth to the most state-of-the art medical tools, that she may need.
I am lucky that I am Canadian. We had a couple of great midwives following us throughout the pregnancy and labour, even though we also had a room at the hospital available at any moment if we chose/needed. The midwives worked alongside the doctors once at the hospital and their counseling and authority still remained. This kind of service is what any mother ought to be getting, in any country that cares about its families. The only ‘right’ outcome is a healthy baby with a healthy mother.
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Weirdly, I’m just watching the episode of “Call the Midwife” where they demonstrate use of the excitingly newfangled “gas and air” system. “Top-hole pain relief!” Chummy calls it.
Maybe not where you are, but seems common in the NE (where I am) and the midlands (where I have family). Our ante-natal class was in a local community centre, and the midwife taking the class brought a couple of small bottles of Entonox.
Hospital thefts up here seem to almost exclusively involve opiates liberated by hospital staff, at least judging by media reports.
Thank you for asking.
Yes, it was to eat whatever was at hand, but whatever was at hand was stuff that nature provided, not humans, who thought they knew better. “Natural” as in “doing things harmonious to how this universe has developed.” The obesity epidemic stems from the opposite of that- people who are not eating the way nature worked it out for humans. You’re confusing “natural” for “ignorant”. If people ate right, they wouldn’t have to count carbs.
Not in like 100 other ways! “Tough” is a relative word, I agree, but when people think of the tough woman stereotype, that is so not my wife. But that’s my point- if you focus and want something, what other people deem overwhelming and impossible is totally doable- IF you want it. Otherwise, don’t bother.
In retrospect, I probably wouldn’t have gone there. Shaky ground. I take your point.
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