What are the risks of using pain medications during childbirth?
Pain medications can be used during your labour experience. If you were to get an IV medication then there are a bunch of different IV medications that can be utilised; stadol, fentanyl, morphine, or demerol. Those medications go into the vein and travel through your circulatory system so it will go to all parts of your body giving you a general sense of relief; not overwhelming, but not complete either. Some of these pain medications act immediately and last short term; some take a little longer to act, but act for longer. These medications do get through the placenta and into the baby as well. So, if the pain medication is administered several hours before you're going to deliver, it will be flushed out of you and the baby by the time you deliver. If it's administered and you deliver shortly thereafter then most often your physician will call a paediatrician or a paediatric nurse to come and evaluate the baby because the baby will still have that medicine on board and may appear a little bit sleepy. Epidural or spinal anaesthesia is another medication that is used while in labour and those medications that are administered by a catheter in the spine usually don't have any effect on the baby. They may slow your labour down, but they should not increase the risk of C-section. Several studies I've read say that C-section rates do not increase by epidural administration. I often tell my patients, "If you could be in labour for two hours and have a lot of pain, or three hours and no pain, then sometimes an epidural is the way to go."
