Epidural or no epidural?

knottie6389cfd5c91848ed · July 2022

Can epidurals make labor longer since you can’t feel as much and listen to your body?
I’ve had some friends say they loved the epidural and some say that they didn’t want it and had a relatively fast and easy delivery. I’m on the fence. Anybody have stories with/without the epidural?

Wishilivedinflorida · July 2022

I required an epidural for both deliveries due to severe pelvic girdle pain with the baby trying to descend. The contractions for me were nothing compared to that pain. I labored unmedicated for hours with both kids and no progress with dilation only to cave, get an epidural, and become fully dilated and deliver within an hour. Obviously my body needs it. This time around I will be getting one much sooner and save myself the time and misery.

Obviously I’m not every woman, but I fully support women who choose these. I fully believe I would have had c sections for failure to progress if not for getting epidurals when I did.

carissa-5541w · August 2022

I was induced and could not take the pain of the oxytocin contractions. The epidural was painless for me (although I had two contractions while receiving it so that pain might have masked the epidural being placed). I was about 4cm dilated at that time. I also had concerns about the epidural making labour longer but I think it actually made mine faster. Within two hours I was at 9.5cm and almost ready to push. The nurse said it sometimes relaxes the muscles letting you dilate faster. That was my experience!

Wishilivedinflorida · August 2022

knottieaae78e9c2b19c1ef said:

I was induced and could not take the pain of the oxytocin contractions. The epidural was painless for me (although I had two contractions while receiving it so that pain might have masked the epidural being placed). I was about 4cm dilated at that time. I also had concerns about the epidural making labour longer but I think it actually made mine faster. Within two hours I was at 9.5cm and almost ready to push. The nurse said it sometimes relaxes the muscles letting you dilate faster. That was my experience!

Sounds like my experience. But I want to add that for anyone reading this, it’s largely a myth that induction contractions are “worse” than “natural” ones. It’s all the same hormone. I’ve experienced both and they both hurt equally. However, if you have an aggressive nurse/doc, ramping up the drip may make them come more quickly with little break in between, making it less bearable.

I came in with DD with ROM and strong contractions every two minutes. The impatient night shift doc wanted to start pitocin anyway and both myself and the nurse had to advocate that I was doing fine on my own. Pitocin is not there to ram the kid through as fast as possible but some use it as such and I think this leads to epidurals because women don’t get breaks to get their bearings.

carissa-5541w · August 2022

Wishilivedinflorida said:

knottieaae78e9c2b19c1ef said:

I was induced and could not take the pain of the oxytocin contractions. The epidural was painless for me (although I had two contractions while receiving it so that pain might have masked the epidural being placed). I was about 4cm dilated at that time. I also had concerns about the epidural making labour longer but I think it actually made mine faster. Within two hours I was at 9.5cm and almost ready to push. The nurse said it sometimes relaxes the muscles letting you dilate faster. That was my experience!

Sounds like my experience. But I want to add that for anyone reading this, it’s largely a myth that induction contractions are “worse” than “natural” ones. It’s all the same hormone. I’ve experienced both and they both hurt equally. However, if you have an aggressive nurse/doc, ramping up the drip may make them come more quickly with little break in between, making it less bearable.

I came in with DD with ROM and strong contractions every two minutes. The impatient night shift doc wanted to start pitocin anyway and both myself and the nurse had to advocate that I was doing fine on my own. Pitocin is not there to ram the kid through as fast as possible but some use it as such and I think this leads to epidurals because women don’t get breaks to get their bearings.

Totally! I was handling them okay when all the sudden I didn’t get any breaks between contractions. It was constant, that is when I decided on the epidural.

Wishilivedinflorida · August 2022

@knottieaae78e9c2b19c1ef How awful! I’m glad it turned out ok.

inthewoods23 · August 2022

YMMV - my epidural took away the contraction pain but I still had the ability to "feel" my contractions in the form of pressure towards my back/bottom. Around 5 seconds after I started feeling the pressure the nurse would tell me I was having a contraction from it showing up on the monitor. Since I knew when they were happening they took off the contraction monitor towards the end as I was pretty much pushing when the urge came on my own

knottie6389cfd5c91848ed · November 2022

Update
I had my baby and the epidural was awesome. I had to have it placed twice though since the first one failed. The first time it was placed hurt so badly that I began crying. I got sharp pain in my left side as the anesthesiologist was threading it in and I kept crying and telling her it hurt. I could tell she knew it shouldn’t hurt like that but instead she kept threading it in. She’d ask me where it hurt and I repeatedly kept saying the left but she didn’t retry the epidural to my knowledge but rather kept threading (I obviously can’t see back there so maybe she did retry). All that epidural did was numb my left foot and nothing else. So I felt the contractions still and went through a horrible and painful epidural. My nurse came in and said that
she was watching my monitor and I was tensing so badly from the pain of my contractions that I was stopping them which I didn’t even know was possible. She called in a different anesthesiologist to replace the epidural. I was so scared from the first time around that I strongly considered not trying again but the thought of no pain relief ultimately was scarier to me so I tried again. The second one went smoothly and was almost painless. There was a slight pinch at the beginning but no more painful than a standard blood draw. The only difference is it’s a little uncomfortable because I could still feel the epidural being threaded. That was uncomfortable and weird but not super painful. The pain relief on the second epidural was almost immediate and my birth was super easy and almost painless with it. I only had to push for about forty five minutes and I felt no pain during pushing except for when I began tearing. So even with the bad experience with the first epidural I’d still recommend it to someone who’s considering it. Just be aware that it might not work the first time but when it does it will make for a really calm almost painless delivery. You also may need to hit the boost button which delivers a little more pain meds through the epidural. The pain from my contractions started to come back but once I got the boost I felt no pain again.

artsymamma · December 2022

Along with others experiences, I've learned a lot following justtheinserts on Instagram and doing other research online.

She shares the potential side effects and warnings that are written by the manufacturers and FDA. For some reason, I don't know a single woman who's doctor explained these while she was trying to make a decision. Additionally the experiences of several of my friends matched the warnings, only they didn't know to connect the dots.

Things like:

- difficulty in breast feeding since the baby can be impacted by the epidural;

- fever after birth that required extended hospital stay;

- Low APGAR scores (this was either on the epidural or pitocin list)

- Hemoraging

And there are other much more serious possibilities as well.

Much of what I've read has led to the thoughtline that intervention often leads to more intervention.

Some are comfortable with this, but if you're not, you might want to do some more research on these.

lauraupdate · January 2023

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