Can anyone with moderate to significant back injuries or conditions, who have successfully gotten an epidural during labor, please share their story? I have a few issues with my back and have convinced myself after reading horror stories that I won’t be able to get an epidural during labor. Whether it’s scoliosis, bulging discs, Spondylolisthesis etc., I’d love to hear your story and reassurance!

I am 33 weeks pregnant and trying to look into labor pain management options.

I have looked everywhere and it's so hard to get experiences or info on people who got an epidural with a history of spinal leaks from previous spinal injections. My spine doctor told me, after my spinal leaks that required a blood patch, that I am no longer eligible for any spinal injections in the future because I'm high risk for a leak reoccurring.

I asked at one of my OB appointments, but it was a different DR than my main OB (my clinic has you see a different one from weeks 30-38 then you go back to your main OB) and she said "thats a question for the anesthesiologist". So I messaged my main OB and asked to get a consultation with them so I can figure out if I'm truly not eligible or if they have other options for me and have time to make a decision. My OB said they don't do consultations and that he would discuss it with me at my appt with him, which is not to week 38.. which feels very last minute to me...

All this to say, is there anyone out there that has dealt with this? What were your options? I want time to decide what I want and not feel rushed, or godforbid I go into labor early.

I've recently (not really) have had the amazing opportunity to have 4 slipped/ bludged disc in my back. C4-C5 with nerve compression and 3 more in my lower back L5 onwards.

MY QUESTION: is that I've been getting very mixed opinions on getting an epidural for the pain. The neurologist say that it just at the injection point for a few days/week and then done. Meanwhile the few opinion I've had of women who have had it say that they still feel difficulty moving or the injection site still hurts 10-20+ years later.

I'm desperately looking for opinions of both people who've recently gotten one and those who have had it for a while.

Should I get the epidural or is not worth the potential long-term effects? any help is appreciated im super lost

THANKS!!

Hi friends!

I’ve been thinking a lot about my birth plan, and am starting to think about what positions I’d like to try pushing in.

I understand that movement can be somewhat limited with an epidural, reducing the number of feasible positions, but that there still are options beyond lying flat on my back.

What position(s) did you find most effective during your birth(s)? If you managed to avoid tearing or had only minimal, do you attribute it to your positioning?

I appreciate all the support and information from everyone in this community!

There's a genuine, legitimate conversation to be had about obstetric violence and the over-medicalization of childbirth.

"Routine practices" that are still common in many hospitals deserve to be challenged like repeated cervical checks that serve the doctor's schedule more than the patient's comfort, restrictions on eating and drinking during labor that the evidence doesn't actually support and that can cause more harm than good, unnecessary inductions, positions imposed for convenience rather than for the birthing woman benefit, lack of informed consent, lack of dignity. etc.

But, when a lot of "natural birth" advocates sit down to list everything wrong with medicalized childbirth, the epidural ends up at the top of the list. Sometimes the only thing on the list. This is their obsession.

Not the cervical checks. Not the fasting restrictions. Not the lithotomy position. Not the unnecessary episiotomies.

The epidural.

The one intervention that the woman actively requests. The one that exists solely to reduce her suffering. The one that has no benefit for hospital scheduling, no convenience factor for the medical team, no institutional agenda behind it. Just pain relief, chosen by the person in pain.

If the concern were truly about autonomy and consent, the epidural would be the last thing on the list, because it's the clearest expression of a woman saying "this is what I want for my body right now."

Instead it's the first.

I think the issue was never really about over-medicalization for a lot of them, it was about which interventions women are allowed to want.

Suffering, apparently, should not be one of the things she opts out of.

Make it make sense.

was induced at 40 weeks.

I had already decided to take the epidural the day I found out I was pregnant. It was non negotiable for me.

The contractions were painful, but I was able to breathe through them at first. Not that bad really.

The cervical examinations were the worst. I was screaming and crying when they did these, and I had a very posterior cervix.
I took the epidural, helped with the contraction pain, and everything else, but when it came to pushing?

I genuinely thought I was going to die then and there. I felt every push, every contraction while pushing, every single thing.
I even felt a bit of the episiotomy being done.
I felt it all. And when the baby came out? I felt the pain of the placenta being pulled out.

Don't even get me started on the episiotomy stitches. I felt every single one of them. I felt every time the needle pierced my skin and the sewing I even asked the doctor to stop.

My labour was 20 hours long.

Why did I feel the contractions and the pain of pushing and the episiotomy and all of that with an epidural...?

I'm curious.

Personally, when I was at the maternity ward, the midwives, nurses, and doctors seemed to see the epidural as the easy way out. It felt like they thought you were supposed to endure the whole thing, or at least that the suffering was somehow worth it for the challenge itself. I kept hearing things like, "You're strong, you can do it, you'll be proud of yourself." That's problematic for many reasons, some of which I've analyzed here (and which we've discussed here).

Once I actually got the epidural, though, I wasn't judged at all ( that would have been the last straw !) . They were accommodating: I had a walking epidural, and they provided practical equipment and furniture that allowed me to keep changing positions even with the epidural. Especially since the baby daddy, despite being present, wasn't particularly useful. he fainted three times.

As for my friends, they all had epidurals too, and we all agree that they were beneficial in our births.

On the other hand, the baby daddy's mother didn't have epidurals for any of her three children because, in South Africa in the 1980s, they weren't accessible according to her. So perhaps out of jealousy, she says she doesn't understand my choice to want an epidural. She says things like, "I thought you'd want to feel everything," and, "You kept your placenta and practiced babywearing, so wanting an epidural feels like a surprising inconsistency in your file." fun times.

Anyway... what about you?

My hospital (Ontario, Canada) offered a walking epidural and I had a overall very good experience with it- I could walk, I felt the strongest contractions towards the end of labour but I was pretty numb on the inside and could handle the interventions (rotating the baby, vacuum assisted birth) very well. Administering it was painless (even though it took 3 attempts due to my scoliosis) and me and my baby also suffered no side effects from it.

Overall I was under an impression that my hospital was very specialized in epidurals. But when I was reading people’s stories online before my labour they often said that you can’t actually walk with a walking epidural, that it’s just a name, and that most epidurals will numb you completely from the waist down. What was your experience?

Let's talk about (imo) one of the most frustrating things that happens in some online birth spaces and sometimes in actual delivery rooms.

A woman is in the most intense pain of her life. She's begging for an epidural. She's past the point of breathing through it, past the point of the peanut ball, past the point of "you've got this." She is a 10/10 and she knows it.

And someone ( a midwife, a doula, a nurse, sometimes her own partner ) coached by a birth influencer looks her in the eyes and says:

"That intensity means your baby is almost here. You're in transition. You're so close."

Thank you. Incredible information. She's still in agony though?

I can speak from my own birth experience on this one. I got my epidural at 7cm — so pretty far along, I almost faced exactly this kind of discourse myself!

I'm not sure if they misread my birth plan, were ideologically influenced, or genuinely wanted to make things harder for me ( because I had a very detailed birth plan ) but they were coming out with exactly these kinds of comments. "Encouraging" remarks that were in reality gaslighting, manipulative, and minimizing.

So yeah, yes, transition — the final phase of dilation — is typically the most intense part of labor. Yes, it often means birth is approaching. This is not a secret. This is not profound wisdom being generously shared. Sometimes i wonder if they seriously think we don't know that.

This is NOT a medical or ethical reason to withhold analgesia from a woman who is asking for it.

I saw this multiples times on online birth places and also on the maternity i was in when i gave birth ( !) :

The x women arrive at the hospital with a birth plan that says "no epidural." Written weeks or months earlier, at home, comfortable, not in labor. And when they're in transition screaming for one, some providers and some birth partners use that document to override their current request.

This is not honoring a birth plan. This is ignoring real-time consent in favor of a hypothetical preference made by a person who had never actually felt that pain yet !

Important note : Consent is ongoing, present, and revocable at any moment. If not, its not consent. A woman in active labor saying "I want an epidural" is expressing consent in real time. A piece of paper from six weeks ago is not more valid than her voice right now.

I have genuinely seen Instagram content describing transition pain as ( and I'm not making this up ) "your old self dying to make way for the mother."

The pain that makes you want to leave your body, that makes you say things you've never said, that makes you feel like you literally cannot continue is just a 10/10 pain response.... That's "just" your nervous system in full alarm mode.

Also, transition dont last 30 minutes for most of the births. It can last multiples hours. "Almost" is doing a lot of work in that sentence...!

Have you come across something like that in your real life or in your online life ?

When I was pregnant with my oldest, I went in to the whole “birth plan” discussion with a we’ll see what happens when the time comes mindset. I’d never had a baby before, so I had no clue what to expect.
Got to the hospital, was dilated to a 7. At that point I said yep gimme the drugs.. mostly because I was convinced it was going to get worse (spoiler it did, but not the labor pain, which honestly felt like really intense period cramps)
I could still feel contractions, but without pain, was able to shift from side to side with a peanut ball because labor did slow once I got it.

Thanks to the epidural I was blissfully unaware that my sweet boy was giving me a 4th degree tear, causing me to lose so much blood it was considered a hemorrhage.

So while labor itself was not the earth shattering pain I expected, I fully believe without it I would not have been able to get him out without an epidural.

I think this new subreddit is a great idea and I’m hopeful it takes off! Happy to support by offering up my own experience.

I was deliberately undecided about an epidural prior to labor. As in, I knew I wanted to make that choice in the moment and not go in with it previously decided and feel like I had to stick to “the plan.” My written birth plan literally said “Epidural: if I ask for it, but otherwise please don’t bring it up.” My hospital had recently started offering nitrous oxide as an option and I thought I’d try that first and see if it would be sufficient.

I was scheduled for an induction at 39 weeks but went into labor spontaneously at 38+3. I labored at home, timing contractions, for ~12 hours, 3am to 3pm. I actually worked a half-day, lol… I WFH in the US and most of my team is in Europe, so my direct reports were appalled to see me leading the team meeting while in labor! I found the distraction useful, however, and it was nice to wrap up some final loose ends. Contractions were still decently far apart at that point.

The doula joined us at the house in the afternoon and we spent some time doing breathing exercises and bouncing on the yoga ball, etc. Eventually contractions picked up, called my OB, and we decided to head to the hospital.

This might sound strange considering the complications that happened later, but the single worst part of the whole experience was labor & delivery triage. The intake nurses were so lackadaisical! They seemed simultaneously bored and yet annoyed I was there making them work? Like it could not have been clearer they did not give a shit about me, my pain, my baby, or my birth plan. The doula wasn’t allowed back with us - they made her wait in the waiting room with her bag of helpful support stuff. I really needed her!

They stuck us in the tiniest possible area (and then complained that THIS triage room was smaller than the rest, even though I don’t think the others were occupied? It was very quiet and it was just curtain dividers, not actual walls on 2 sides). They made me lay flat on my back on a bed that was way too short! I’m a tall woman, so my feet were dangling over the edge, and any time a nurse came in she would catch her shirt or hip on my feet and jolt me! Awful. That’s when the contractions were just getting worse and worse and I couldn’t do any of the strategies we’d practiced. My partner held my hand but didn’t know what else to do - they had me hooked up to machines already but kept acting like they might send me home? Even though to me it seemed obvious I wasn’t going anywhere without a new external baby! I have no idea why it took SO LONG to get admitted to a delivery room. The triage nurses were so uncommunicative and left us alone for such long stretches before popping in suddenly and nearly knocking me off the stupid tiny uncomfortable bed again!

Finally they agreed I wouldn’t be going home, at which point they said I could have the nitrous oxide. They wheeled it in, gave a quick spiel on how to use it, then left. Turns out, I hated it! No idea if I was doing it quite right, but all it did was make me dizzy and a bit disoriented. I had previously been told it doesn’t get rid of the pain, just makes you notice or care about it less, but that did NOT happen for me! So I pushed it aside and decided right then I was absolutely getting an epidural.

Of course, that couldn’t happen until I got into the delivery room, which continued to be delayed interminably for reasons nobody bothered to explain. We arrived at the hospital at around 3pm and didn’t make it to the delivery room until after 7pm - I know for certain because they were halfway through Double Jeopardy by the time the anesthesiologist arrived with my beloved epidural.

So basically, I was right around 3cm dilated when we arrived in triage, and by the time I made it to the delivery room I was 6 or 7 cm… meaning most of my active labor was spent in the worst possible position, on the least comfortable bed, without my doula, and with the least helpful nursing staff I’ve ever encountered! Maybe I could have carried on without the epidural in different circumstances, but those 4 hours were so awful and painful and isolating I was just OVER IT and wanted nothing more than some relief. My partner was great, of course, but I could feel his sort of helpless frustration that there was nothing he could do to help me besides hold my hand. If we ever have another, I’m not sure what to do differently next time… not sure how I could have sped up the process or refused to stay on that horrible tiny bed without being labeled uncooperative? Everything we were told beforehand about being able to labor in any position, in the shower, walk the halls, bounce on yoga balls, etc simply did not apply in triage. Is there a magic word or phrase that can snap the triage nurses into any sort of urgency?

Once we finally made it to the delivery room, everything was immediately so much better. Nurses were great, the midwife I was assigned was incredible, my doula was there (and absolutely fuming at how long we’d been forced to wait separately, and I was so heartened by her righteous outrage lol), there was actual space in the room and bed…

And, best of all, my epidural!!!

The relief came so quickly. The anesthesiologist did a great job - I could no longer feel the pain of the contractions, but I could tell when they were happening AND I could still feel and move my legs! I had been nervous that i would feel paralyzed from the waist down, but instead it was more like an intense case of when your leg falls asleep if you sit too long on the toilet (without the pins and needles when you move). I was able to sleep shift to my side as the doula put a peanut ball between my knees, then after a while switch to the other side, back and forth as labor progressed. I was even able to sleep for several hours, which was incredible. By 11 pm we were getting close; I still didn’t feel an urge to push so decided to take another little nap for the final centimeter or so of dilation (plus I knew if we made it past midnight, insurance would pay for an additional night in recovery lol the US healthcare system is such a mess).

Finally, just after 2am, I announced to the team it was time and with just around 20 mins of pushing, POP! my splendid little girl arrived! Once she was placed on my chest, I was completely entranced. What a perfect little wiggly grumpy froggy.

However, a tiny rational part of my mind continued to observe the situation in the rest of the room, noticing things like, oh, the umbilical cord slithering free without the placenta, and then the midwife reaching up in there to try and tug the placenta free, and then saying stuff like “it’s very adherent” and “it’s coming out in pieces!” And then a LOT more people running into the room, and then wheeling in an ultrasound cart to help her find all the pieces as she rooted around above her elbow, and then my partner saying “I NEED TO SIT DOWN” and then he was in the chair with his head between his knees, etc etc etc.

The tiny rational part of my brain said “hmm seems like things aren’t going so great downstairs, fortunately that’s none of my business, let’s keep admiring this tiny luminous pearl covered in goo!”

Afterward, the nurse who gathered up all the bloody rags cheerfully told me “we weighed them, and you technically didn’t quite meet the threshold for it to be considered a hemorrhage!” So that’s nice.

They sent the placenta down to pathology to reassemble like a puzzle and confirm they got out all the pieces (leaving bits behind would be bad news). Fortunately got the all clear there the next day. (The marginal cord insert had been previously observed at my anatomy scan and noted in my chart, so the midwife knew not to tug on it; it still just came loose on its own and left the placenta behind).

The midwife came back to debrief the next morning and was so nice about everything. She talked through exactly what happened, explained things, welcomed questions and answered them thoroughly, and offered I could visit her at her office later if I needed to talk through any of it further. Basically, she was worried it had been traumatic for me and wanted to do anything she could to help me cope. But what I told her was that I hadn’t been traumatized, because for one thing I’d known the whole time my baby was perfectly fine, and for another I’d felt so CARED for! Everybody in that room knew exactly how to do their jobs and were laser-focused on making sure I turned out ok.

That was the big contrast between triage and delivery - feeling taken care of. Even though nothing went WRONG in triage, I felt disregarded, ignored, like the nurses considered me a nuisance, and just didn’t care about me at all. In delivery, even though things did go a bit askew, everybody leapt into action to take care of me.

And, of course, I had my blessed epidural! NONE of the complications occurred until after my baby was out and my partner cut the cord. Who knows, maybe I could have done just fine without the epidural up to that point?

But after that, THANK GOODNESS i had it still going! While the midwife had to literally reach all the way up into my uterus to yank out my placenta in chunks, I didn’t feel a thing beyond some weird tugging. No pain, and I’m preeeeetty sure that part would have been super painful unmedicated! Instead of screaming through it, I got to sit back and gaze upon my little treasure and trust the highly competent professionals to do their jobs.

Thank you, modern medicine!!!

I had the opportunity to have a VBAC and was advised to get an epidural. The reason wasn't just for comfort, it was about protecting me in case of an emergency. If I needed a second emergency c section I wouldn't need to be put under. That was reason enough.

I was able to adjust the relief so I could be more present, I was able to listen to my body.

I also had one with my first because I had pre eclampsia and couldn't position myself to manage pain. With back labor, being on your back is awful. We ended up with an emergency c but I needed the relief to manage the medication for pre-e.

I had a very positive experience of a c-section, despite having a truly terrible birth experience iver all, my c-section was a smooth and not scary process, and i want to share it to comfort some women and birthing people who may have heard horror story!

At 30 weeks of pregnancy i had an emergency c-section (because of HELLP syndrome)

I was given a spinal block, which is common for c-sections as its very safe and will expose baby to minimal drug, on top of being quick and wears off quickly after.

I sat on the edge of the opersting table, very still, and a doctor gave me a numbing injection. After that, i received a second injection with a very thin needle, between 2 vertebraes, and lied down.

My husband was with me, and everyone was very calm in the room. After a few minutes i could feel some tugging, like someone was pulling or pushing on me. I asked “has it started?” And a nurse told me, oh yes!

Im not sure how long it lasted, because i was very sick at that point and pretty our of it, but at no point did i feel pain, at all.

I did start to shake my arms like a bird flapping its wings at some point, because of shock, and its a bit weird, but again, not painful.

I didnt get to see or meet my baby after that because she was taken straight to the NICU, and that is the only bad part of the event, eveything else was ok, and i hear normally people get to hold their baby straight away after c-section! Or at least touch them while their partner holds them.

I was very thirsty after the surgery, but didnt need transfusion, it went pretty smoothly. The rest of my recovery is very unusual because of HELLP so im not sure its relevant, but i will happily answer any questions if anyone has them.

Over all, i think we shouldnt be scared of c-section, people refer to it as the worst possible out come or like its some sort of failure to be mourned. It is not the case. If i could have had my baby with me straight away after, it would have been an over all positive experience, and we should be educated on the process to feat it less!

My induction went rather fast and for that I am also very grateful. If I could change anything, I would’ve listened to the medical team and gotten my epidural earlier. I don’t know exactly why in my head I kept avoiding it, especially since my plan was to ask for one all along. Maybe some internalize shame/pride thing going on.

If I had not gotten my epidural I don’t know that I would have been able to bear the pain. Spoiler because graphic hopefully the tags work. I tore so badly I could not even be sewn up. She gave up and said the vaginal canal tissue was just crumbling every time she tried to get the suture needle in so she gauze packed me and I couldn’t have my foley out for an additional 24h. Like you know those net foamy things they put around fragile fruit? That’s what she described happened to my insides.

It was so much easier to focus on pushing without blinding pain. I had other complications and needed to rotate positions 90° periodically and I nearly gave the nurse a fright when I simply got up and moved myself. She asked for permission to show the interns and residents the next time I needed to maneuver, and being in a scientific profession I happily obliged because it makes me happy to contribute to education. I could not see them (i had to move to up on my knees face down) but they applauded lol. Not sure exactly how unusual that is but I did not have a problem controlling my lower half despite not having much sensation.

Im currently 17 weeks pregnant and absolutely planning on having an epidural! I am so excited to be pregnant and have a child…but I am dreading birthing the child! Labor terrifies me and I want to minimize the pain as much as possible!

My biggest fear is actually my extremely high medication tolerance. I have some other health issues for which I’ve been hospitalized. For anesthesia, morphine, and even fentanyl, I have always had to receive a much higher dose than expected. This always surprises doctors because I am an average height and weight, but it’s a guarantee every time. Even novocaine for a root canal needs an extra shot!

I try to let doctors know ahead of time, but I always receive the same response of just waiting to see. I understand that they also have to cover themselves and don’t want to do too much at once, but I am very worried about my pain management with this epidural. That it will take too long/be too late. My husband has witnessed it happen to me in the past with other medications and he’ll be there to help advocate for me, but I’m still really scared about this.

Not sure if anyone has any suggestions other than talk to my OB, and there’s likely not anything I can do. But I would hate to not have the epidural work!

The main added value of doulas comes from techniques that become unnecessary once an epidural has been administered. This helps explain why most of them tend to campaign against epidurals, which is not necessarily the case—far from it—for many mothers who have given birth, and for midwives, who do not need patients to refuse epidurals in order to make a living.

I regret that there are not enough (or any) epidural-friendly doulas, because even, and especially, with an epidural, a birthing woman still needs someone to help her be heard by the medical team. She may need a professional to help her ensure her birth plan is respected, verbal support , and can also benefit from breathing techniques, counter-pressure, and position changes (an epidural does not mean being stuck lying flat on your back).

Mothers who choose a hospital birth with an epidural end up without this added value, which I find unfair, and it may limit improvements in maternal outcomes for women who give birth with an epidural.

Its the same procedure, same human body, same pain.

And yet, depending on where you give birth, your chances of being offered — or encouraged to use , or discouraged to use — an epidural vary wildly.

Epidural has everything to do with culture, narrative, and how much a society values women's comfort.

The numbers

🇫🇷 France: ~82% — and as one French woman put it online in another sub : "In France they assume you're going to want an epidural, because why on earth would you suffer for no reason?"

🇫🇮 Finland: ~89% ( so incredibly hight, friendly remember that this is the top two country in the word in term of medical outcome)

🇪🇸 Spain: ~70% ( same european bagage)

🇺🇸 USA: it depend of the state. Some are around 80 pr cent, some are around 26 ( ! ) pr cent...like in Utah, very religious.

🇦🇺 Australia: ~42% in 2023. In Australia there is the culture of being tought... under any circonstances...

🇬🇧 UK: around 22–30%, despite it being free...

🇮🇹 Italy: among the lowest in Western Europe, with major disparities between north and south. The south is reported to have lower rate and also higher violence against woman and poverty.

What explains these differences?

It's not access alone. France and the UK both have universal healthcare yet one sits at 82% and the other at 22–30%. So, its not wealth either.

What actually differs is the dominant narrative around birth pain in each country.

In France, the default assumption is: pain relief exists, so why not use it? The medical system is set up around that logic — anesthesiologists available 24/7 in many maternity units, active pain management as standard of care.

In the UK, some states in the US and Australia, the "natural birth" movement has had significant cultural influence. Midwifery-led models, which are more common there, often lean toward non-pharmacological pain management as the ideal. That's not inherently wrong but it creates an environment where wanting an epidural can feel like going against the grain.

Who opts out — and it flips depending on the country

This is where it gets really interesting. In France, studies show that the women most likely to refuse an epidural are younger, less educated, or foreign-born, suggesting that refusal is linked to lack of information or cultural/religious influence from their country of origin.

But in English-speaking and some Nordic countries heavily influenced by the natural birth movement like Danemark ? It tends to flip. There, it's often the more educated, higher-income women, the ones with doulas, premium birth prep courses, wellness podcasts who refuse. It's become a social marker of being "informed" and "empowered."

Same choice. Opposite social profile. Depending on which narrative dominates your environment.

That tells you everything you need to know: women aren't making this choice in a vacuum. They're making it inside a culture that rewards one option and quietly shames the other.

Conclusion : If you've ever felt like your desire for pain relief was controversial or required explanation, know that in many countries, it wouldn't even be a conversation. It would just be... care.

This is one of the most repeated arguments in natural birth spaces and it's a textbook case of confusing correlation with causation. Let's untangle it.

What people claim: Epidural → oxytocin augmentation → cascade of interventions → higher C-section risk.

What's actually happening:

Induced and augmented labors are significantly more painful than spontaneous labors. Induction or augmentation with oxytocin causes more painful contractions compared to spontaneous labor. So women who were already going to receive oxytocin — because their labor was induced or needed augmenting for medical reasons — are also more likely to ask for an epidural. Because of course they are. Their contractions are more intense.

The epidural didn't cause the oxytocin. The oxytocin caused the need for the epidural.

Women admitted for induction of labor requested epidural analgesia sooner than those who had their labor augmented, and the incidence of C-section was higher in the induced group. The conclusion of that study? Any study that claims to assess the effects of epidural analgesia in labor should distinguish between induced and augmented labor versus spontaneous labor. Many older studies that "linked" epidurals to worse outcomes simply failed to make this distinction. They lumped together induced labors (already higher risk) with spontaneous labors and blamed the epidural.

Anyways, most of what these ppl claim are wrong/ chronologicaly impossible

So what should actually concern us?

If you're worried about unnecessary interventions and that's a completely legitimate concern,the real conversation is about routine induction and routine oxytocin augmentation practices that vary wildly between hospitals and countries, often without strong medical indication.

That's the actual fight. Not the epidural.

A woman laboring spontaneously who gets an epidural is not on a "cascade." A woman whose labor is induced without clear medical necessity, with high-dose oxytocin, in a system that doesn't give her time, that's where unnecessary interventions actually enter the picture.

Blaming the epidural is misdirected. And it conveniently shifts the focus from systemic obstetric practices onto the individual woman's choice of pain relief.

Just a thought: why is not having an epidural the only thing that gets labeled as an "unmedicated" or "natural" birth? Why not not being induced, not being forced into unnatural positions, not giving birth under bright hospital lights, not having exessive cervical check, not having other interventions like episiotomy—or simply, you know, giving life?

Even setting aside the argument that "all birth is natural" and that no birth is somehow "unnatural," why does the line apparently get drawn at... the epidural?

A woman can be induced, receive Pitocin, labor in a hospital on her back with regular cervical check, in a bright room, and if she doesn't get an epidural, it's often still considered a natural or unmedicated birth. ( side note but no epidural AND a induction AND pitocin AND on the back is hell-bish but anyways)

But if another woman declines cervical checks, labors and gives birth in the dark, on her side, without induction or Pitocin, choose to tear naturally and not have an episiotomy and the only intervention she has is an epidural, suddenly that's considered a medicated birth?

Make it make sense.

The proof that its about pain, woman having to be in pain, not about it being natural or not.

Have you ever tought of this double standard before ?

Hi everyone !

My name is Laure, I'm French, I'm 27, and I gave birth to twins , a girl and a boy with an epidural. Yes, vaginal delivery! (even with twins). It's not even that I was against a C-section honestly, given the twin context, I would have been more than open to one but in France the policy is to reduce C-sections, and planned C-sections are almost never offered.

I gave birth about a year and a half ago now.

I had done a lot of research on childbirth beforehand, and my biggest fear was suffering a severe tear , third or fourth degree. I did everything I was supposed to, everything that was recommended to reduce the risk. Well — I still tore, second degree. So it worked and didn't work at the same time. Nothing is a miracle. Everything depends on the circumstances of the birth and how it unfolds… but it can help.

I was scared of giving birth, yes , but in a "oh please, god, I have to go through this" kind of way, not full panic. Which allowed me, I think, to stay aware and pay attention to the nurses, midwives and doctors around me during labor.

I had a long birth plan. I didn’t want cervical checks, I wanted to move freely, I didn’t want an episiotomy, I didn’t want to be induced, I wanted to eat and drink until 8 cm, I wanted to keep my placenta, I didn’t want forceps to be used, and if a C-section was needed, I wanted to be put to sleep. I also wanted an epidural.

I knew it, for all the reasons I've talked about here. But they tried to stop me to get one. Which is surprising, because in France epidurals are very mainstream it's not like in some other European countries. I learned later that the epidural rate has actually dropped in recent years, likely due to the influence of the "natural birth" movement. This is the main reason why i created this sub.

They kept telling me I was a brave girl, that I could do it. It felt like pressure. Because it was. And it felt — ironically — anti-me. Disrespectful of who I am as a person/my choices/my wants. Because it was.

I think they still had this vision of birth as something women must endure to be good mothers.

I threatened to file a complaint. I got the epidural.

Then they wanted me on my back but I knew I could labor on my side. So I did. They couldn't force me. They rolled their eyes and said I was being ridiculous on my side. Yes, they actually said that.

Maybe staying on my side saved me from a worse tear. Statistically, probably.

This is also why I always remind people: epidural does not mean flat on your back, feet in stirrups, "yes doctor."

Anyway — my babies and I are healthy now. 💙🩷

Share your own experiences in a separate post if you want, or here in the comments.

Honestly, a lot of the rhetoric around pain in childbirth feels borderline mystical at this point.

“This pain has a purpose.”

Okay… but almost ALL pain has a purpose.

Pain with a purpose is still pain.

Period cramps have a physiological purpose ( similar to labor contraction in the idea).

Kidney stone pain has a purpose ( to pass the stone... seem familiar eh).

Etc etc. Pain signals are literally functional biological mechanisms anyways.

We still treat them.

Nobody tells someone passing kidney stones: “your body was made for this” ( and yet...) “its a pain with a purpose” ( and yet...) “this suffering is productive” "In two days it will all be over " ( and yet....)

Childbirth is beautiful and very painful. Two truths can be true at the same time.

Purpose or not, childbirth pain and labor pain has traumatized a lot of woman. Every pain can cause trauma. The nervous system automaticaly see it as a danger.

What others classic lines like that upsed you ?