When I went in to have my daughter, I had decided that I did not want pain medication if I could avoid it. I studied about what to expect, and how to have a good labor. Many of the techniques that I used for reducing and dealing with labor pain were in literature or vidoes provided by the hospital. They were simple things, like keep your eyes open and focus on something outside yourself. Visualize your cervix expanding, not tensing muscles but rather focus on relaxing any muscle you have control over. When I went in, the first nurse tried to make me wear the hospital gown instead of my own gown and laughed when I said I did not want an epidural. I had her removed from the room and banned her from the room. None of the other nurses were combative, and were more gentle in their skepticism, but they clearly believed that I would be calling for the epidural before long. My doctor was not so skeptical, but he clearly was not used to dealing with women not on an epidural. He instructed me to push as hard as I could on my third push, and my daughter flew from me as I ripped open. He was quite surprised and obviously used to women who could not push that effectively.
I think more women don’t opt to go without an epidural because it is expected they will have one by medical professionals. Also, information about the realities of labor is buried in an avalanche of mis-information. And, the option not to use pain medication is billed as “the natural way” and hyped in a way that has very little to do with pragmatic reasons and everything to do with mysticism and looniness. There is no room in that camp for women who make decisions like, “I won’t use an epidural unless I have back labor.” It is an all or nothing, and rational thought is not encouraged.
