Zatera Ul

I’ve been reading too many doctor blogs lately, and more than once I’ve come across this little line:

“You’d want anesthesia for your appendectomy, why wouldn’t you want it in childbirth?”

They must teach it in med school or something. Now a variation of it appears in this article. Argh. Well, might as well begin my rant:

Why forgo the epidural and try for a “natural childbirth”? BECAUSE GIVING BIRTH WITHOUT DRUGS DOESN’T FEEL ANYTHING LIKE GETTING AN APPENDECTOMY WITHOUT ANESTHESIA!!!

How about, “You like pepper on your steak, why don’t you want some on your breakfast cereal?”

Also, no one cares what effects anesthesia will have on their diseased appendix. It’s a different matter when there’s a baby involved.

I am not a natural childbirth Nazi like the article portrays. There are many circumstances where anesthesia and pain relief are necessary and welcomed. But I do take offence at the notion that labor and birth are ALWAYS excruciatingly painful, and that drugs are ALWAYS needed. I’ve read many birth stories from women who have done just fine without them, and now I’ve gone and done it myself. The Bible says somewhere that once the baby is born, the mother’s pain is eclipsed by her joy and forgotten–so true. I’m not sure that you can really take away the pain without taking away some of the joy as well.

If I was from the far left rather than the far right, I would say that there’s a medical conspiracy afoot: seed the “childbirth hurts as much as surgery” thought in women’s heads, then when their times come, they’ll be good little patients and take their epidurals and C-sections without any of that natural childbirth nonsense.