Yay, Kim! Along with others, I am sure that epidural affects
early bfing. Epidural use is growing in my hospital (in Beer
Sheva, Israel), but the all-time favorite is good old meperidine.
In my time, it used to be injected IM, but now it is routine to
hook EVERYONE up to an IV, so meperidine is routinely started IV,
earlier and continued almost right up to delivery. Yes, IN SPITE
OF it being very well-known and documented as a respiratory
depressant. I have a friend who is an OB nurse and she gets quite
annoyed at the poor shape that some of these newborns are in,
drugged-out and completely uninterested in nursing. Some are
obviously in out-and-out resp distress. But the gynes keep up the
meperidine. What gets a midwife friend of mine passionate is the
lack of education or rather the miseducation among women.
Informed consent, where are you? I think that it's a big problem
for people like us to consider, this variation of what comes
first, the chicken or the egg, the gyne/midwife or the laboring
woman. The way I see it, BOTH. Women must be educated, informed
about the dangers of meperidine, epidural etc. and the medical
staff has to stop closing its eyes to their analgesic-treatment
outcomes and stop going along with patient demands if it's not
in their patients' best interests. Seems to me to be part of
their jobs, hmmmmm? Sorry, I get really steamed about this. If
I stepped on anyone's toes, I apologize, but I've seen some
really sad-bad stuff going on here, I get up on the famous
soapbox, and it all goes red before my eyes. It's a mighty hard
row that my poor hands have hoed..... Judy Knopf