healthy pregnancy
Pain Relief in Labor By Paris Maloof-Bury, MSN, CNM, RNC-OB, IBCLC
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iving birth is a powerful, joyful, and yes, painful experience. Happily, birthing people have lots of choices to help cope with pain relief during labor, particularly pain medications. Pain during labor is normal, and the goal of pain medication during labor is to help you cope, not completely remove the pain of labor. Sometimes you just need to “labor down” and get some rest—others, you just need to “take the edge off” so that the pain isn’t quite so intense.
Therapeutic Rest In an ideal world, childbirth would be quick and efficient. But most women experience labor first as contractions coming in starts and stops without a rhythm or pattern that can go on for 2-3 days before active labor kicks in.
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This process is known as “prodromal” labor, or the earliest labor, and during this phase you should rest as much as possible. As your pregnancy care providers, we hear you when you say it’s quite difficult to sleep with all those contractions! That’s where therapeutic rest comes in as medication helps you sleep through some of those early contractions so that you have the energy to cope in the busiest and most challenging part of labor for some women—active labor. You may find that a sleep aid is enough to help you ignore the contractions and rest. Two common options are hydroxyzine (an antihistamine) and zolpidem (a sedative). Both are given in pill form. Still, sometimes the pain of contractions in prodromal labor is too
strong to sleep through. In these cases, a long-acting opioid, like morphine (given as an injection by your nurse) can relieve the pain and provide a bit of sedation. An opioid for therapeutic rest can also be used well in advance of baby’s impending birth so that baby isn’t sedated when they’re born. It’s important to remember that there is no single right way to give birth. You will know what is right for you in the moment. your instincts and trust Follow yourself as you give birth. Happy pushing!
Pain Relief During Labor: “something to take the edge off” If you want to be upright and active in birth, you may still want something to “take the edge off” so that labor pain isn’t quite as intense while avoiding an epidural. Other times, you may be planning to use epidural for labor pain but aren’t quite ready for that yet. In either case, you have options. An up-and-coming favorite is nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, which doesn’t require an IV to use. You inhale the medication through a face mask, which you hold in place yourself, and as soon as you take the mask off and stop breathing it in, it stops working. Nitrous oxide is relatively new in the U.S., so it may not be available in your birthing facility. It has been in use for many decades in the United Kingdom and other parts of Europe, so you can be rest assured there have been plenty of studies on its safety. Research shows that very little (if any) of the medication crosses the placenta, so this is one of the least risky options for the baby in providing pain relief
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20/07/2022 10:52