Re: Is anyone considering a natural birth with no meds?

Posted by luvnlife

I went in the first time saying I would try without it for as long as I could. But it depends on your labor. I thought I could labor at home for a while, but since my water broke my doctor wanted me to go to the hospital immediately and I was hooked up to an IV right away. I think if I had been able to move around and labor differently my experience would have been different.

The other thing that was not "typical" about my labor was my contractions from the beginning were 2 min apart. That means about 15-30 seconds recovery in between so I barely had time to breath. I took lamaze and they stressed how you always had more recovery time than contraction time but the nurses just said that's average, but not everyone. All I could do was gulp for air and then a new contraction hit. It was tough. After a few hours my body was shaking so hard and I couldn't make it stop. Its a lot of stress on your system, like working out for hours.

I labored like that for about 5 hours and then got the EPI and started pushing about 3 hours after that and had DS after 1 1/2 hours of pushing. For me the EPI was wonderful. It gave me a chance to relax and catch my breath and get ready to push when the time came. I've already been warned that next time things might go much faster for me so I don't know what I will do with But in my case the EPI was definitely a positive experience.

Re: Is anyone considering a natural birth with no meds?

I didn't even consider it. Thank God, because I had back labor and I don't know how I would have gotten through it without the epi. It was a God send! My only side effects was a headache the next day. My only advice is just have an open mind to it. If you haven't been through it, you don't know what the pain will be like for you.