Well, I had decided not to have pain medication during my induced labor(pitocin and mag sulfate due to toxemia) until after 6 hours, I couldn't take it any more. I begged for that anesthesiologist to come back and give me some relief! So an hour later (an eternity!) he showed up and made my husband leave while he did the procedure. I wasn't happy that hubby got kicked out, but it was policy at my hospital. I was out of it with the pain, but here is what I remember: He gave me a local anesthetic so that I wouldn't feel the epidural going in. I couldn't see anything he was doing because it was all happening to my back. He put some kind of template on my back and told me it was very important for me not to move so I concentrated on not moving while the pain of the contractions was horrendous. I felt some pushing in my back, it was in, the med flowed and I could relax again and began to feel a helluva lot better-you can lay on your back since only a flexible tube carrying the medicine comes out from your back. They put in a catheter, but you don't feel it either. Taking out the epidural was easy as well, since it only took a few seconds-I was surprised. After all the fear I had from reading about migraines and my giving myself a hard time about wimping out to get the medicine, I was sincerely glad that I did it. I had a miserable birthing experience (babies to the NICU, didn't see them for a couple of days because I kept fainting) and found the epidural, ironically, to be one of the few things that went right.

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