Lamaze - Part 3

Our third night of Lamaze was all about pain relief options, and I felt miserable about all of them. Essentially, there are two main categories of pain relievers. Approximately 30% of women go with an injection of some sort of narcotic (like Demerol) to help "take the edge off". It apparently doesn't do a whole lot for the pain itself, but it makes you less aware of the pain. In other words, you're out of it. But the downside is that you're less aware of what is going on in general, which makes some women feel totally out of control. On top of that, the narcotics can make baby drowsy and less able/willing to breastfeed in the short window during which they are alert after birth. Then, of course, there is the ever-popular epidural, which about 65% of women go with. So, lets start with my loathing of needles... And this is the mother of all needles. They actually inject a catheter between two vertebrae in your back so that you get a steady stream of medicine directly to your spine, which blocks pain below the chest. That already terrifies me. And the bonus is that when you get an epidural, you automatically get all of the following prizes:

• bound to bed for the rest of labor b/c you have so little strength in or control over your legs.
• an IV for the rest of labor b/c an extremely common side effect of the epidural is a massive drop in blood pressure (for mom & baby), so they have to keep you very well hydrated.
• an internal fetal monitor for the rest of labor, which is essentially a "screw" attached to the baby's scalp to monitor baby's heart rate and a separate catheter into the uterus to monitor contractions more accurately.
• a urinary catheter for the rest of delivery b/c you can't walk to the bathroom anymore and probably can't tell if you need to go either.

This all sounds miserable to me. Not to say that labor itself doesn't sound miserable, but I think I would go crazy with all those tubes and the fact that I'd have to lay flat on my back for however many hours... Ugh.

Why don't we have better options for this stuff yet??