Natural Childbirth : When Medication Works Against You

Queen Victoria requested that she be chloroformed rather than endure natural child birth. But centuries later, as we have found out by looking at the British Royal Family, there might be something to be said about giving birth with the use of medicine and local anaesthesia after all.

Safety Comes First

Labour pains are always going to be a concern whether drugs are administered or not, but in the bigger picture, having a safe childbirth comes first. Comparative studies on naturally born babies and their surgical counterparts report that the latter are more passive and make less eye-contact with their parents. They also seem to resist breastfeeding more.

The mother herself actually recuperates a lot faster if she wasn’t administered any medication in the process. Since no incisions are made in natural child birth, there are far less risks of being infected with the myriad of pathogens that are abundantly found in hospitals and maternity wards.

Weighing Matters

Curiously, women who have given birth naturally also report less weight gain compared to Caesarean recipients, presumably because they are in the position to be more active without having to tend to a large incision wound.

All these benefits of natural child birth require that the mother stay in relatively good shape during the course of pregnancy.

Regular exercises are recommended to build up the physical stamina for labour. As for a balanced diet, that goes without saying.

The fact remains that medical intervention is just that – a procedure designed to intervene in the natural workings of life in order to prevent future harm. There are many cases where Caesarean operations serve as life-saving procedures, and equally as many where it is an unnecessary elective operation that leads to a string of side-effects.

Of course, it seems a frightfully foolish idea to do away with anaesthesia altogether. Talk to someone who has experienced a natural childbirth before you make up your mind.