In the same way that you can select where and with whom you’ll deliver your baby, you can also choose the type of delivery you prefer (barring a special medical circumstance or emergency). While preparing your birth plan, consider the options of a natural vaginal birth, a medicated vaginal birth, or a vaginal birth after cesarean if appropriate.
Natural Childbirth
A natural delivery is one that is nonmedicated. It is green in its reduction of medical intervention and medical waste and in the way it protects the unborn child from the effects of pain medications.
Women who choose natural childbirth prepare for their labor and delivery in advance so that they have a clear understanding of the birth process—regardless of where they plan to deliver. They take childbirth classes that explain the physical function of contractions and how the body reacts to those contractions. They learn coping strategies to deal with the pain, including such techniques as deep breathing, visualization, muscle relaxation, self-hypnosis, and massage.
Learn more about the different types of natural childbirth for your delivery.
Medicated Vaginal Childbirth
Some may assume that the only green delivery is a natural vaginal birth, but that is not necessarily so. A medicated delivery is not automatically a nongreen one. The goal of a green delivery is to minimize the level of medical intervention and the negative impact of a toxic environment on the mother, the child, and the planet, while making the childbirth experience a comfortable and pleasurable one for the mother. You choose how to achieve that goal.
If you have chosen a physician or a certified nurse-midwife to deliver your baby, you can also choose a medicated birth. (Note: not all midwives are licensed to administer pain medications, so if you have chosen a midwife to handle your baby’s delivery, be sure to ask exactly what pain medications she can and cannot offer.)
Common pain medications for labor and delivery are analgesics, anesthetics, or a mix of the two types. Narcotic analgesics can transfer across the placenta and also drug the unborn child. In contrast, the effects of the anesthetics commonly used during childbirth (typically an epidural or spinal block) don’t directly affect the baby.
Types of Nerve Blocks
Drugs that cause a loss of sensation are called anesthetics. They interrupt the pathway of nerves that carry sensations of pain to the brain, block-ing the pain message. (For this reason, they are commonly called nerve blocks.) The effect during childbirth leaves the expectant mom fully awake and aware.
There are various types of blocks you should talk about with your health care provider if this is an option you would like to explore.
• The pudendal block is administered through a needle inserted in the vaginal area. The numbness is localized and reduces pain only in that area, so it does not ease the pain of contractions.
• The spinal block is administered by inserting a long, fine needle into a space between the vertebra of the lower back. The block affects both sensory and motor nerves, numbing the body from the waist down and causing loss of voluntary leg movement and the ability to use abdominal muscles (thus most often used for cesarean deliveries).
• The epidural block is also administered by inserting a long, fine needle into a space between the vertebra of the lower back. It blocks only the sensory nerves to numb a person from the waist down, leaving full muscle movement. This is becoming the most widely used type of nerve block for relief of labor pain.
Weigh the options of medicated vs. ....read more
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