Why You Should Not Let Doctors Shove Giants Needles In Your Spine - Flashback Friday

Additions to the original post are in pink :)

So my last few blogs have really been pointless. I mean its my blog so I can write what I want, but considering I would like at least a few people to read it, maybe I shouldn't just always talk about myself and random crap that crosses my mind. Not that that is bad, I mean I like to read people's random thoughts, but most people are more interesting than me.  Actually I am setting this post up to republish like 5 weeks from now, so I have no idea how boring the topics I have been discussing are... 

So I am going to bore you all with a new topic!  Or maybe interest you in a new topic?

As most of you are aware if you have read my other posts, or ever had a conversation with me, I have been fruitlessly trying to have a baby for about 3 years now. Given all this time I have been wanting a baby and failing to get one, I have gotten ALOT of reading done on the subject. I am something of a self-proclaimed expert actually. I am VERY opinionated on this topic and therefore in general conversation its best that I avoid the topic entirely because I have the potential to piss people off. I don't think you have to do things my way, but I can't understand why you wouldn't at least try if you know everything I know!  Make that 5 years now.  I still avoid these sort of topics in "real life" because I just get annoyed at what I perceive as a lack of knowledge about something with the potential to be important.  Plus I get REALLY mad when people are like, well you will understand when you have kids.  Seriously, if you say this to me I might possibly imagine a shark eating you or something equally awful.  Super mad, in both the angry sense and the crazy sense.

Today's topic is mainly going to be epidurals, because I basically already have that written and its getting pretty late and I don't really want to go through my books for statistics and fact-checking.

• 3 percent of women experience no pain relief and 12 percent only get some pain relief. My mom had an epidural with one of her births, and it only worked on half (not like top and bottom, which is what its supposed to do, but left and right) of her body, which means that she didn't have pain relief or the ability to move around. That double sucks!
• 1 in 5 women that get an epidural develop a fever, which can lead them to believe you have an infection, and mean that they give your baby some tests that are not necessary but separate them from you for at least a small period of time.
• Epidurals are more likely to result in a c-section or forceps/vacuum delivery.
• Your baby is more likely to have breathing/breastfeeding problems.
• Its also VERY important to be able to move around while you are in labor, because it helps the baby's head to move into the proper position as well as making labor quite a bit faster. When you have an epidural you have to stay in the position that does not allow gravity to help with the birth at all. Thus you are more likely to suffer from "failure to progress" and given pitocin to speed things up. Pitocin makes your contractions REALLY strong and can make a c-section necessary because of fetal distress because the contractions are to strong for the baby, but because of the epidural you have no idea. When you have an epidural they do internal fetal monitering, which involves placing a needle UNDER your babies scalp until its born. OUCH!
• Sometimes the epidural causes your lungs to collapse. That is generally considered a bad thing.
• You can end up with a long-term headache from the epidural.
• In animal studies both maternal bonding and development of the baby are harmed by epidural medicine.

There are numerous other reasons to avoid this (or any) intervention, for a more complete study, I suggest the following books :) Someday I will do a post on alternatives to epidurals, since from what I have heard, pushing a baby out of your dirty bits is not the most comfortable experience ever!  Yeah I never did that post... Maybe someday.

If you still think an epidural sounds like a good idea, check out the size of the needle they stick in your back and leave there (was just informed that they don't leave them in there, they leave a catheter in the spine, but same basic idea)!  Okay, I totally kept this image that isn't mine, because I don't really have any other way to demonstrate the size of this HUGE FREAKING NEEDLE!

I understand that in some rare instances an epidural is a great thing (there are exceptions to almost any rule after all).  I have a friend that had intense labor for around 36 hours, but she couldn't dilate up to 10 cm.  So she was basically given the choice to either have an epidural and give her a chance to rest for a little while, or get a c-section.  She got the epidural and was able to give birth to her little boy vaginally.  Obviously, like most medical interventions, epidurals serve a purpose in rare cases, but are grossly overused.

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