I'm not an LD nurse, midwife or doctor, but I share your concern about 
the effects of epidurals and other birth meds. As a person involved in 
research, though not medical research, my concern is that, as you 
suggest, hcps are so accustomed to seeing babies born with epidurals 
and narcotics in their systems that we don't even know what a normal 
baby looks like or how they act at birth. From a research perspective, 
this means that we don't know what questions to ask, what to look for 
in order to learn what effects the drugs are having on the babies. 
That's really scary.

That is complicated by the fact that there are a lot of deep pocketed 
companies that sponsor research on these topics who clearly have a 
vested interest in what research questions are asked since that will 
determine what the answers are and what looks best in a news article or 
press release or refereed journal publication. Recent articles on 
giving epidurals from 2 cm with no untoward effects are a good example. 
In all fairness, I haven't actually read the research articles yet, but 
I don't have great confidence that they are asking the relevant 
questions so they won't come up with relevant answers.


Naomi

--------------------------------
Naomi Bar-Yam Ph.D.
[log in to unmask]

Researcher, Writer, Educator
in Maternal and Child Health
--------------------------------

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