Studying for midterms is painful. Working out at Wooden is
painful. Waking up for an 8 a.m. lecture is definitely painful. But
we do not suffer in vain ““ we put up with these things for
good reasons. We study and go to class for good grades. We work out
to stay healthy. The ends justify the means.
Then there are those things that we suffer through for no good
reason. Like a bad relationship. Or an episode of any show on the
WB.
And then there’s one very painful but meaningless
experience that I must gravely warn every woman to avoid: giving
birth without pain medication.
In Genesis, God punishes Eve for her part in original sin by
dooming her and her progeny to “bear children with intense
pain and suffering.” But because of medical advancements, it
doesn’t have to be that bad. The amount of pain ““ or
“abject agony” as professor Traci Mann called it in her
health psychology class last spring ““ has been alleviated by
modern medicine. A popular and safe method of pain control during
labor is the epidural, a local anesthetic that can numb from the
waist down. I can’t imagine why anyone would choose to opt
out of it, but there is a peculiar norm in our culture that
actually encourages natural birth. Even though pain mitigation is
entirely possible, it’s somehow not shocking when women
choose to deny that right. While people are getting drugged up for
cavity fillings, women of sound mind and body are choosing to rough
it through labor without anesthesia. The legacy of Eve lives
on.
Ina May Gaskin, former president of the Midwives Alliance of
North America, said, “If you cancel out the awareness of the
body in labor, you miss a lot of the ecstasy.” Ecstasy? Ever
since watching “The Miracle of Life” in sex education
and then hearing about my aunt’s thirty-hour delivery, the
word “ecstasy” had never crossed my mind.
True, it’s magical when a tiny infant emerges into the
world, but that part only happens at the very end and it
doesn’t last very long. On the other hand, the many preceding
hours can be so painful that they can ironically evoke a death
wish, a fact that was pleasantly made evident to me by my mother.
So if the process of childbirth is supposed to induce ecstasy, an
epidural should only meet that goal while minimizing pain.
One fear of expectant parents is the possibility of pain
medications harming their baby. And this should certainly receive
attention if it were true. In reality, the medications do not even
enter the fetus’ bloodstream. Epidurals are not administered
into the mother’s circulatory system, thus its contents do
not cross over into the placenta or the baby.
An odd form of sexism may also be involved in the push for
natural birth. Several studies have shown that female patients
receive significantly less pain medication than men, even when
suffering from the same ailments. One study even found that nurses
respond to suffering men by administering pain medication, but
respond to suffering women by administering sedatives, which induce
relaxation but are not an anodyne. Apparently, when women complain
of pain, what they really need is a good tranquilizer. These
studies reveal that there is a belief that women will whine about
the smallest of discomforts while stoic men only speak up when they
are truly in pain. When this stereotype carries over into
childbirth, the implication is that labor isn’t really that
bad. But most women I know who have had children would beg to
differ. Many say that giving birth was the most painful experience
of their lives.
It’s truly strange that women even have to make a decision
between epidural or no epidural. If you had to get surgery, would
you ever forgo anesthesia? Would the doctor ask, “So, do you
want this to be pain-free or do you want to be completely
conscious?”
For any other medical procedure, pain medication is
unquestionably acceptable. But in terms of childbirth, all of a
sudden it’s “au naturel” time ““ if a method
is unnatural, it’s not ideal. Well, we now do many things
that are “unnatural” but have improved the quality of
our lives. Like vaccines ““ not something that occurs in
nature, but definitely advantageous.
The idea that women should ever give birth without anesthesia is
perplexing because methods are safe, epidurals are effective and
ultimately, no one wants to feel pain.
It’s unreasonable to encourage women to suffer willingly
through childbirth when it’s completely unnecessary.
I don’t think I’ll ever understand why natural birth
is encouraged. But I do know that when it comes time for me to
decide between epidural or no epidural, I’ll be saying,
“Sign me up!”
If, like Tao, you are not a fan of pain, e-mail her at
atao@media.ucla.edu.