About five hours into labor, I went for the epidural. It really helped me, up until I was 8 centimeters dilated. Then it stopped working. They even upped the dose a bit, but there was no relief. Just something to think about. If this is scaring any pregnant ladies out there, I do have positive news along with this. I think since the epidural stopped working, I actually worked harder when it came time to push. Took me about 15 minutes (and she was at 8lbs, 15oz).

i am really scared to have an epidural after seeing a story on the news about a woman who had one and it caused a brain tumor..it traveled up her spine and the woman ended up dying..... i wasn't scared at all until i seen that... now i don't know what i want to do and my due date is getting closer would it hurt just to wait until i see what the pain is like or should i make up my mind now about weither i want it or not???????

I dont think it happen to everyone thou. I dont think you should be worry as much.

Things like that are very scary and you just don't know what will happen since we can't read the future, but in a large percentage of the time everything is just fine and when you are in that much pain all you can think about is getting rid of the pain.

I don't know what I would have done w/out the epidural. It was a god-send for me, although it did make my heart race and I was put on oxygen, but I only had to use the oxygen if I felt I needed it. Other than that, I felt great, even w/pitocin induced contractions. I'm definitely having another one when I go into labor w/my son.

I did the epidural with my first only because the staff misled me after hours of pressuring me to take it. Never again. With the next baby, I told the hospital staff in no uncertain terms that they were not to so much as mention pain meds in my room.

Taia

I had an epidural with my first. I had a funny reaction to it. I had a button on my IV line that the nurse said I should push to give myself another dose when I felt the first one wearing off. She said if I was still in pain after 15 minutes, to push the button again. I felt pain, so I did. But really it was more like pressure to push rather than pain, so I kinda overdosed myself.

The result of this was that I couldn't walk by myself until the next day (baby was born at 5:37 pm) and I had trouble moving my right leg for a week afterward.

My hospital also has a policy that no one is in the room when the epidural is being administered. This is to prevent infection. No big deal, I'm sure my dh didn't want to see them sticking a foot long needle in my back either. It was pretty horrible when they put the needle in, because I was having a contraction at the same time and it was very difficult to keep still. But after it was over, I was so relieved at not hurting. I really enjoyed the labor after that and the anticipation of the coming birth. It was a lot better than being so much pain.

I was sitting waiting for the nurse to coMe and let me know what time to go to the birth room she asked me if I wanted epidural I said no b-cuz ma contractions were every 8 minutes wen we went to da birthroom da nurse came to break my water da contractions were every 1 minute I had 2 ask 4 an epidural