Getting High for Childbirth: Why are Painkillers Used During Labour?

This next topic is going to be touchy. A man writing about the pain management of childbirth. What could go wrong?
When I first found out that I was going to be a dad, the thought of a baby coming out of my wife’s vagina was inconceivable and scared the hell out of me. It made me think of what I would do if I was the one to give birth. The choice is simple: cesarean, drugs, or natural?
What I have found out is that there is no right answer — unless you have a medical reason to perform a surgery or use medication. The decision is personal, and the pain is subjective.
Would you rather go through a painless surgery, and then deal with the six week recovery from that later? Then why not schedule a cesarean.
If you want to do the all natural birth without any drugs, or if you have already decided to take painkillers, or if you want to keep that option open, then all those choices are fine, too.
This post isn’t about judging what’s best, it’s about questioning why some of these choices are made.
No drug use during pregnancy, but high doses during childbirth
Throughout this whole pregnancy my wife hasn’t touched any medications. All we heard was how drugs can negatively affect the baby’s development. However, when her back pain was killing her, her doctor prescribed some paracetamol. They say it’s fine, but she didn’t take it anyway. She has been avoiding all pills, and like many women she will be drug free leading into labour.
And we plan to keep it that way and have a natural birth.
After going through months of struggle and perseverance in dealing with a wide variety of pain, illness and discomfort during pregnancy, why is that when it’s time for childbirth many women are pumped full of painkillers to help them manage the pain of childbirth?
This is not to compare the pain felt during pregnancy with the pain of labour. Rather, I wonder why it is seen as super dangerous and risky to have painkillers during pregnancy, but then during labour, if the woman chooses, she can effectively paralyze the bottom half of her body with drugs dripping in from a catheter in her spine.

Months of effort to stay clean, and then a major relapse induced by doctors at the finish line. (And here’s a little known fact: epidurals don’t guarantee pain relief.)
Imagine how high these women must get are after being completely sober for nine months.
The baby gets a hit for their last moments inside the womb, and the mother, well there are other consequences (such as completely losing control of the labour) and side effects (such as difficulty breastfeeding afterwards).
But at least the labour is over, the pain has stopped, and the baby is out.
What’s influencing painkiller use during labour?
Now maybe I’m just cynical or I’ve watched too many anti-capitalist documentaries, but I prefer to think that I have a healthy dose of distrust for big pharmaceutical companies. These companies make billions off of selling drugs to treat pain, and with their dirty little capitalist self-interested fingers smudging everything they can touch, I question how strong their influence is on having their drugs used during childbirth.
As I wrote in part one of the labour industry, when a pregnant woman enters a hospital and are treated like a patient, then money becomes a variable in the treatment they receive. Hospital treatments usually include some kind of painkiller that most patients welcome and will easily endure any negative side effects.
So let me say it simple and clear: labouring women aren’t hospital patients.
Some women don’t ask medication but end up taking it anyway. But of course, some other women actually demand to take painkillers or drugs to induce labour. Have they reached the threshold of pain that they’re willing to endure? Are they asking to be treated like a patient?
I wonder if there’s not a perfect storm of instant gratification, being ill informed, and fear. All you hear about is how painful and scary labour is, or as a friend wrote to me recently: “The pain is incredible and your vagina is torn into pieces.” Yeah, that sounds pretty terrifying.
Being ill-informed and not learning about all the different options and alternatives to the default of enter-the-hospital-and-let-the-doctors-take-care-of-it will limit your choices. Mix fear in with not being properly educated, and these influences can certainly lead to taking a bystander role during the childbirth.
Being part of the instant gratification generation has us expecting everything effortlessly on demand. So if it hurts now then make it stop — right now. Yes, childbirth will be painful and difficult, but does that mean women should immediately default to drugs to manage their pain?
The trouble of instant gratification is that it delays the pain to a later time after labour. When the bottom half of a woman’s body is numb, can she still feel her cervix dilating? Is it easier to push when the full intensity of the contractions are desensitized? Then when the cervix isn’t expanding quick enough, and the doctor suggests to cut the vagina open to eliminate “risk”, she probably won’t feel that either. That is, until after the childbirth.
It seems to me that fear and pain dominates the childbirth discussion. My best friend’s first child was a traumatic experience in a way he had never imagined. For their second child, they made sure to be better prepared, and build a stronger mindset. With confidence going in, they were able to have a positive experience.
But we don’t hear much about the positive stories. How many of you have heard stories of women feeling pleasure from labour? Or how women can give birth by kneeling or squatting? How about reducing pain by controlling the environment — from lighting to scents to sounds to tastes to the people allowed to enter the space?
Impatient doctors, big pharma or any other fear factors won’t be a deciding influence on whether or not my wife takes drugs during labour. When the time comes, we will remain flexibile, but she’s going to try to go without.
Preparation empowers the mother and reduces fear
This painkiller topic also brings up two other questions. Is pain a means your body uses to communicate something, and do painkillers disconnect the line? Were women of previous generations more resilient to pain, and women today are more, what, sensitive?
The question reminds me of this passage I read from Ina May Gaskin’s Guide to Childbirth:
“For a variety of reasons, a lot of women have also come to believe that nature made a serious mistake with their bodies. This belief has become so strong in many that they give in to pharmaceutical or surgical treatments when patience and recognition of the normality and harmlessness of the situation would make for better health for them and their babies and less surgery and technological intervention in birth. Most women need encouragement and companionship more than they need drugs.”
It seems to me that fear plays a smothering role in deciding whether to use drugs during childbirth. Many people think the choice is down to two extremes: drugs, numb and Buddha smiles, or natural, pain, and scream until you die.
So when it comes to that perfect storm, we think preparation can avoid some of these issues. We’ve heard plenty of horror stories about doctors and hospitals persuading a cesarean and other surgeries like episiotomies (cutting open the vagina, sometimes both sides) that that’s what we’re afraid of.
We’ve been reading great books (the aforementioned Guide to Childbirth, and Janet Balaskas’s Active Birth) and watching countless YouTube videos of different experiences and advice. We have learned about a variety of childbirth options that empower the mother. As for instant gratification, that’ll probably be the most trying to overcome.
Many complications can occur, but we won’t be bullied, tricked or otherwise persuaded into making a fear based, ill-informed decision against our birth plan.
