Why is childbirth painful for humans

If they are given intravenously through an IV into a vein or through a shot into a muscle, they can affect the whole body. These medicines can cause side effects in the mother, including drowsiness and nausea. They also can have effects on the baby. Regional anesthesia. This is what most women think of when they consider pain medicine during labor. By blocking the feeling from specific regions of the body, these methods can be used for pain relief in both vaginal and cesarean section deliveries.

Epidurals , a form of local anesthesia, relieve most of the pain from the entire body below the belly button, including the vaginal walls, during labor and delivery. An epidural involves medicine given by an anesthesiologist through a thin, tube-like catheter that's inserted in the woman's lower back. The amount of medicine can be increased or decreased according to a woman's needs.

Very little medicine reaches the baby, so usually there are no effects on the baby from this method of pain relief. Epidurals do have some drawbacks — they can cause a woman's blood pressure to drop and can make it difficult to pee. They can also cause itching, nausea, and headaches in the mother. The risks to the baby are minimal, but include problems caused by low blood pressure in the mother.

These drugs don't relieve pain, but they may help to calm and relax women who are very anxious. Sometimes they are used along with analgesics. These drugs can have effects on both the mother and baby, and are not often used.

Music can lower stress and blood pressure. It can also improve your mood! But can it really help with pain during labor? Yes — a large meta-analysis found that music interventions helped alleviate pain and anxiety during labor.

Guided imagery, hypnotic tracks , and other visuals can all help relax a mother in labor and relieve pain. Walking, rocking on a birthing ball , or even slow dancing with your partner can help labor progress and relieve some of the discomforts you may be feeling.

Experimenting with different positions, including sitting, standing, or squatting, may also help reduce pain. One study found squatting offered the most pain reduction, but you can experiment with what feels best for you.

Research shows that having a doula present at your birth can lead to a better birth outcome. Not sure where to find a doula? Start here. Many people have found some pain relief during labor by stimulating their lower back with a transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation TENS unit.

Some hospitals even have TENS devices that you can borrow during labor! Intravenous IV narcotics offer some of the pain relief of an epidural for a more limited time. As in the case of an epidural, nausea, headaches, drowsiness, and the transmission of medication to the baby are potential risks.

For a woman seeking a brief reprieve from the intensity of birth, an IV narcotic can be a very appealing pain relief option. While you may have seen it during dental visits, in the United States nitrous oxide is less commonly used as a pain relief option during childbirth. Nitrous oxide has been used for over a century and is generally considered safe for the mother and baby.

The most common pain medication for birthing mothers in the United States, an epidural can relieve the pain a mother is feeling within 10 to 20 minutes.

Most hospitals provide epidural analgesia, and if your pain is beyond a manageble level, you can request one. The vast majority of women who receive an epidural feel pressure and not pain from that point on in their labor. Many women can even sleep while laboring once the epidural has been placed. Still, many women find that the pain relief an epidural offers outweighs these risks. News May 07, Worried about the pain of labor and delivery? They wonder: Will my baby be OK?

What will labor and delivery be like? How painful will it be, and can I handle it? Moms who have been there offer the low-down on labor and delivery and their message is comforting. Yes, childbirth is painful. The survey findings suggest that being proactive in managing pain with your physician anesthesiologist is important, whether laboring moms demand an epidural right away, choose other medical pain management methods, use complementary techniques only or opt for a combination.

Nine out of 10 women said pain management was effective, no matter what method they chose. They should talk to their physicians to find out who will administer their anesthesia if they decide to have pain medication during labor. Grant, M. Moms 18 to 39 were more likely to say post-delivery pain was the most painful aspect than those 40 and older. The most common description of the level of pain experienced was extreme menstrual cramps 45 percent , while 16 percent said it was like bad back pain and 15 percent compared it to a broken bone.

As the baby grows in both brain and body in the womb, its demand for energy accelerates exponentially. Even following birth, the big-brained, big-bodied newborn needs a loving mother who will continue to feed and care for it while its brain continues to grow at a fetal rate. In the womb, the fetus is basically part of the mother. Once born, the baby is effectively at a higher trophic level than its mother, like a parasite feeding on her, which increases the metabolic demands on her.

The obstetrical hypothesis is not defunct; it is simply under question. But merely convincing those who were raised intellectually within this paradigm to consider an alternative hypothesis can be challenging. When she gives a talk about the energetics hypothesis, Dunsworth summarizes a conversation that illustrates this challenge:.

Pelvic size may be limited by something not yet taken into account in locomotor studies, such as speed, balance, or risk of injury. Or, perhaps simple economy keeps pelvic size close to neonatal brain size.

The third alternative is that human childbirth was not always difficult and has only become so as improvements in diet have increased newborn body size. The obstetrical hypothesis and the energetics hypothesis are not mutually exclusive.

Perhaps the real problem is making one. Skip to main content. Login Register. Page DOI: Illustration by Tom Dunne. Witness over seven billion humans on the planet.

Bibliography Albers, L. The duration of labor in healthy women. Journal of Perinatology — Dunsworth, H. Warrener, T. Deacon, P.