Epidurals – are babies adversely affected?
If you know someone contemplating an epidural to avoid the pain and trauma of childbirth, there are a few points of interest they may not have come across.In Lise Eliot’s book What's Going on in There?: How the Brain and Mind Develop in the First Five Years of Life
- Every drug used for epidural anesthesia can diffuse out of the epidural space and enter the baby’s circulation
- Using more sensitive indices of infant behaviour, some studies have found that newborns are:
- Less alert
- Less able to orientate toward stimuli and
- Less mature in their motor abilities than babies of unmedicated mothers
- Greater exposure makes babies jumpy and more irritable
- The effects are most pronounced on the first day after birth, but some have been found to persist up to six weeks of life
- The most common side-effect of epidural administration is…a reduction in the mother’s blood pressure. Maternal hypotension is at least partially responsible for the fact that the baby’s heart rate of slows down for a while shortly after an epidural anesthetic is injected
- If the mother’s blood pressure falls too low for too long it can seriously compromise the blood flow to the placenta, reducing the fetus’s supply of oxygen. These serious side effects are prevented by giving the woman fluids through an IV…If this countermeasure doesn’t work, another drug may be needed to prevent her blood pressure from falling too low and compromising the baby
- Studies have show that women receiving epidural have longer labours
- This is especially the case during the 2nd stage (pushing) of the labour
- These mothers are frequently diagnosed with dystocia, the failure of labour to progress
- Are four times more likely to require forceps
- Are two or three times more likely to end up having a C-section, than women receiving systemic or no pain relief
- Although most babies are not significantly affected, epidural anesthesia may compromise the health of babies already at risk due to illness, premature birth or a difficult delivery
- Encouraging women to have unmedicated deliveries would be best for babies, and for the mothers this would mean:
- Fewer side effects
- Shorter labours
- Easier breast feeding and bonding
