Every Woman Should Have an Epidural
By Danell Swim
March 27, 2008
Anyone who has had a baby knows that childbirth as a competitive sport puts the Olympics in the shade. I’ll never forget the “post-match analysis” at my antenatal class, where intelligent, educated women offered grovelling apologies to our childbirth instructor for their “second rate” (i.e, anaesthetised) births. I couldn’t help feeling that two thirds of the class had forked out £150 to be made to feel like bad mothers before their babies had taken their first breath.
So it was a relief to come across the book, Enjoy your labor: A new approach to pain relief for childbirth, by Dr Gilbert Grant, director of obstetric anaesthesia at New York University Medical Center. He says that the biblical edict to women to “bring forth children in sorrow” is simply no longer applicable.
So which theory is right? I decided to ask experts on both sides to share their views on the “best” way to give birth.
Dr Grant believes that women should get an epidural, even before pain starts. According to him, much of the information that women receive is incomplete or inaccurate, and that the lucrative “natural childbirth industry” creates fear and guilt about epidurals. He believes that opposition to anaesthesia during childbirth is the result of a deep-seated misogyny: “There is no other situation in medicine in which pain relief is routinely withheld. No man would be asked to undergo an appendectomy, which lasts about 24 minutes, without pain relief, yet the pain of labour, which can last for more than 24 hours, is viewed as something women have to endure.
“Natural childbirth has become a multimillion-dollar industry. The fear of epidurals is promoted by those who discourage their use - and who have a vested interest in doing so.
How about medicalized birth being a multi-billion dollar industry? Doesn’t that count for something?
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5 Responses to “Every Woman Should Have an Epidural”
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I can’t stop laughing, he really thinks the “natural childbirth movement” is about making MONEY????? I have to ask “how much is an epidural, anyways?” Gawd.
Natural Childbirth is FREE! Epidural is NOT.
Your home is FREE! The hospital is NOT.
A midwife is often cheaper than an OB practice AND with a midwife at least you see her at every visit AND she’s there when you give birth and knows you wants and needs. The OB practice you get passed around from doctor to doctor or nurse to nurse and you never know what your going to get when you get to the hospital.
Sure if you want to you can buy natural childbirth books and birthing balls etc…to have natural childbirth…but they aren’t necessary. And you must remember that for every THING they sell for natural childbirth they are probably selling something similar for medicated mamas.
How can the “natural childbirth industry” be making money? What are they advocating that would cost money? Homebirth?Free. Drug free labor? Free. Hospital free birth? Free. help me out here!
“natural childbirth industry?” Is this man crazy? Take a good honest look at the cost of labor in a hospital compared to a home birth…either with a midwife or without. A “non-medicated labor” at the hospital I have delivered at is $10,000. Yep, that’s right. No drugs, no nothing. That is just for checking in and delivering there. So, $3,000 for all my pre and post natal care along with delivery and all the things needed to deliver the baby, or $10,000 just for the right to deliver at the hospital. Not to mention OB care for pre and post-natal care along with all those great things the doctor charges extra for, and lets see, oh all the little things you use at the hospital, and lets not forget the price of the drugs. Tylenol at my hospital…a whopping $100 a dose. Yep, that natural childbirth industry sure is raking in the money!
After my unmedicated birth my opinion was exactly the opposite — that the epidural is a symptom of our culture’s misogyny, encouraging women into a sense of “I can’t do this, I’m not strong enough,” not to mention effectively paralyzing women from the very movements that progress the process of labor and birth. No woman should be made to feel guilty for choosing medication, but the fervor with which some people declare unmedicated births “wrong” is appalling.