HEADLINES:
R/€ 
R/£ Why mothers should put up with it
July 14, 2009 Edition 1
Daniel Martin
MORE women should endure the pain of childbirth because anaesthetics undermine the mother's bond with her baby, according to an expert.
Dr Denis Walsh, an associate professor in midwifery at Nottingham University, said the agony of labour should be considered a "rite of passage" and a "purposeful, useful thing". The pain prepared women for the demands of motherhood.
Walsh criticised the "epidural epidemic" sweeping the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK, and said maternity units should abandon routine pain relief and embrace a "working with pain" approach.
But other experts criticised his comments, saying he was exaggerating the problems of epidurals and risked stigmatising women who needed pain relief.
In an article for Evidence-Based Midwifery, published by the Royal College of Midwives, Walsh said the NHS was too quick to give in to requests for painkilling injections. The proportion of mothers receiving an epidural injection or spinal anaesthetic has doubled in 20 years to about 37 percent.
"A large number of women want to avoid pain, but more should be prepared to withstand it. Pain in labour is a purposeful, useful thing which has a number of benefits, such as preparing a mother for the responsibility of nurturing a newborn baby."
Walsh said celebrity births and TV and film portrayals had contributed to a culture of pain relief as normal - though labour pain is natural, healthy and temporary. Risk-averse doctors were also increasingly providing epidurals.
"It has never been safer to have a baby, yet it appears women have never been more frightened."
Walsh warned that epidurals increased medical risks such as prolonged first and second stages of labour and the chance of the baby's head being in the wrong place. They also led to lower rates of breast-feeding.
"Emerging evidence shows that normal labour and birth prime the bonding areas of the mother's brain more than Caesarean or pain-free birth."
Walsh called on the NHS to abandon routine pain relief and encourage women to use yoga, hypnosis, massage, support from their partners, hydrotherapy and birthing pools as natural ways of alleviating pain. "There has been a loss of rites-of-passage meaning to childbirth, so pain and stress are viewed negatively."
Sally Russell of the Netmums website said he was talking rubbish. "What he is promoting suggests… that women who can't go through normal birth… find they are stigmatised and made to feel they have let themselves down."
Dr Justin Clark, senior obstetrician and gynaecologist at Birmingham Women's Hospital, said: "He's exaggerating the risks of epidurals… In the main they're a good thing and almost always necessary… It would be wrong to suggest that modern women are somehow less stoical."
But Mary Newburn, of the National Childbirth Trust, backed Walsh. She blamed the "epidural culture" on inadequate antenatal education, lack of midwife-run birth centres and the fact that 93 percent of births were in hospital. - Daily Mail
... and I dare you to say that to a woman in labour
London: It was a man who said it. A man who will never know the fury of a contraction, the hours of desperation or the waves of fear as a baby makes its painful way into the world.
Forgive me, Dr Denis Walsh, but I'm damn glad you weren't at my side when I was begging for a hammer to the head during labour.
Walsh says pain-relieving drugs and epidurals carry serious risks, diminish childbirth as a rite of passage and undermine the mother's bond with her child. Instead, the National Health Service should embrace yoga, hypnosis, massage, hydrotherapy and birthing pools as ways of alleviating the torment. I tried yoga - it did nothing. As for massage, I didn't want anyone near me, let alone the idiot (husband) who got me into this state.
I opted for pethidine, which failed to diminish the torment of every nauseating contraction but comforted me and controlled my breathing. The only thing that kept me sane was the epidural, which let me keep up my strength during the 22-hour ordeal. As for the spine injection harming the mother-baby bond, Walsh simplifies the complexities of motherhood, which can lead to post-natal depression.
It is insulting that Walsh labels women who choose pain relief as wimps. New moms have enough to contend with, without the guilt of thinking they have failed in some way by having an epidural. - Daily Mail
© 1999 - 2010 Star & Independent Online (Pty) Ltd. All rights reserved.