"What can we do to help these women not need epidurals/pain medication for
normal labors?  But how can we convince them prior to labor & birth that
they
need to work with the labor and experience the ineffable joy that comes
after
successfully running the marathon that is labor?"

I don't have the answer to this question, though I think about it all the
time. I know that we've been here, at this point in the cycle, before; think
back, all of you whose kids are in their 20s or older, to the "old days"
when we gave birth. I bet most of us of that age here were called "Earth
Mothers", who held natural birthing of our babies as a sacred cause (NOT
that we were wrong, mind you - can't think of anything more sacred!) and who
may have been teased by our own mothers, even by our HCPs, for refusing the
standard drugs of the time. And *our* mothers, many of whom (unless they
were also "difficult" like my own Mom and would have nothing to do with it)
probably gave birth under the "twilight sleep" of scopalomine & morphine.

Think about Diane's "waves" analogy, and apply it not to birthing and baby
"professionals" like ourselves, but to the ways in which the general
population in & around the childbearing years views birth. It's cyclical,
right? We have the generation of us "natural childbirth" types (oh, what
crazy wild women we are, to embrace our involvement with bearing our own
children, in all its pain and glory!), and now we're having a generation who
want nothing to do with it and view having an epidural as an essential and
"normal" part of having a baby. Pretty soon we'll have a resurgence of the
"natural" way, and on & on it will go. I don't like it, I think we could do
way better, but as I look over the past I see that that's how it tends to
go, and I'm prepared to accept the cyclical nature of the whole thing.

But here's what puzzles me: it is the generation made up of our daughters &
sons that has so gladly embraced this concept of "pain relief with no
consequences" childbirth. Maybe not our *specific* sons & daughters, but
those of an age with them. Back then when we were having them, in & around
the '70s, we thought we'd gotten past the idea of medicated childbirth as
being desirable, at least in the vast majority of "normal" births, right?
And apparently, from what I see now, it turns out that they just didn't have
the drugs right yet back then. How did we as a generation manage to *not*
convey to our children that while childbirth may be painful (and, believe
me, I'd never claim that it isn't!), it is also an incredible and
life-enriching experience, and the pain is purposeful and short-lived and
productive? I'd hate to get to sounding like some old geezer, lecturing
about how "these young people of today seem to think they can have it all,
without giving up anything", but I do wonder what's going on.

But back to the "waves". Women have been trying to find a way to ease
childbearing for as long as we've been at it, whether by sophisticated
hi-tech methods or by aboriginal cultural practices, and I doubt if it's
going to change. So the "natural childbirth" wave comes in & goes out.We
think we've found The Answer, then we find out that The Answer is flawed, so
we go back to the "natural" way, and then some new Answer comes along with
*different* negative consequences, and on & on it goes...

Cathy Bargar, RN, IBCLC
Ithaca NY

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