A British midwife reckons women should go through childbirth without pain relief because it helps them bond with their babies.
In an article for a medical journal, Professor Denis Walsh describes childbirth as being a rite of passage and is calling for maternity units to stop giving out pain relief and let expectant mothers “work with the pain”.
He says normal labour and birth prime the bonding areas of the mother’s brain more than caesareans or pain free birth.
Passing quickly over the observation that he’s a bloke and therefore won’t experience labour pains we get a woman’s point of view:
However Wellington obstetrician and mother, Anju Basu, disagrees.
“I don’t think that you have to experience immense pain to just be able to be a good mother,” she says.
On claims that epidurals can threaten the mother-child bond, Ms Basu questions how a father can bond with his child if that were the case.
Had it not been for an emergency casesarean my daughter and I would probably have died. My other two babies were also born by casearean and I find the idea that I loved them any more slowly or less because of that offensive.
Being dead would definitely interfere with the bonding process. Suffering intense, unrelieved pain might be more likely to interfere with your ability to bond at least as much if not more than pain relief too.
We can be thankful that maternity services have moved on from the days when women were told to lie back with their feet in stirrups, do what the doctor told them and drugged to the eyebalss while doing it.
But suggesting we go back to no pain relief at all is several steps too far.
Every birth is different, every woman has a different ability to manage pain, not all the pains of motherhood come before the birth.
Good ante-natal education and preparation can help women manage labour pains better but telling women they shouldn’t have pain relief at all and making them feel guilty for doing so is taking us back at least a century.
A TV3 news item on the issue is here. It’s worth watching for the expression on the announcer’s face as she points out the expert is a man.
First births are generally the most painful. Successive births get easier. Or so I am led to believe. So a mother’s tendency to bond well with her newborn is diminished with each birth? Or those rare, very lucky types who pop out babies quickly and with relative ease don’t bond well?
I doubt whether this patronising “expert” has ever experienced real pain.
They say men suffering from renal colic from passing kidney stones is an opportunity to give men some insight into the pain of labour.
So I bonded better with the child from the 12 hour labour than the one from the 2 hour labour? Umm don’t think so… What absolute twaddle some of these researchers come up with.
I have tried the gas and air combination they give to UK birthing mothers, and I can heartily recommend it.
Who knows, the state of euphoria it induced may well have helped me bond with my child, but, then again, the 2 day labour – with pain relief at the end – did not endear me to the little fellow.
If pain relief helps the mother, then it helps the father. Could that mean dad bonds better with pain relief!
Lindsay, they say the same thing don’t they about a certain form of sex!
Only a man could come up with something so stupid. Drugs are all good. Having seen one childbirth that was more than enough for me to conclude drugs should be compulsory (and free) for these poor women having to pop the sprog.