As a woman nears the end of her second trimester, she starts to have mixed feelings about labor. Most women fear the pain associated with child delivery. Indeed, it is extremely painful while giving birth to a child. The alternative is a C-section which will leave your body with a permanent scar. As your due date gets closer, you start having a lot of questions. How you’ll deal with labor pain is likely one of the biggest questions, especially if this is your first child. You may have looked into getting an epidural, a spinal block, or Demerol. You may also be thinking about giving birth without any drugs. While doing your research, you might have also heard about laughing gas, a new alternative pain relief option that sounds funny.
Nowadays, more and more women are opting to use laughing gas as an effective pain killer while going into labor. Here’s the logic behind their decisions-
By the seventh month of pregnancy, many women are exhausted after being sick, bearing cramps, headaches, nausea, and more. They just want to be done with being pregnant and giving birth already. At the same time, the fact that their due date is getting closer makes them happy. Most people may have already set up the baby’s room and bought everything they will need for the hospital and the first few days at home.
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Let’s not forget about the women who have back pain now that they are in the third trimester because their bellies are so big. They just need to lose this big belly so they can really hold their baby. No matter what, most women can’t wait for the day they give birth. As long as their baby isn’t born too early, they would be happy to go into labor at any time.
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Still, many of them are afraid of the pain of labor. In the last few decades, an epidural has been the most common way for women in labor to deal with pain. However, it seems that young women now prefer less invasive options these days. While things like hypnosis and meditation are still options, many women choose nitrous oxide, also known as laughing gas.
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Nitrous oxide has been used as an analgesic in dentist offices for a long time, and it works. So, people thought, why not use it to help women in labor? Laughing gas is a popular analgesic used during labor in northern Europe, New Zealand, and Australia. It is also becoming more common in the US, where hospitals in more and more states are starting to offer it as an alternative to the epidural.
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Laughing gas is an inexpensive pain relief option, and it doesn’t pose any risks or adverse side effects to the baby either. The main advantage is that it can be used continuously. Women can even walk around while in labor, thanks to its potent analgesic effects. Also, laughing gas is less painful than an epidural. If you choose a different way to deal with pain, you can stop using nitrous oxide anytime.
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Laughing gas will not completely numb body parts like an epidural will. It won’t help with pain as much as narcotics do. Most of the time, laughing gas is seen as a temporary way to forget about pain: You might still hurt, but it won’t bother you or worry you as much.
There aren’t any preparations required for laughing gas. You can eat and drink as normal up until labor. You won’t have to wait for an anesthesiologist to set you up as you do with an epidural. Instead, a trained nurse can show you how to breathe through the mask. Since you’ll be holding the mask to breathe when you need to, plus, it’s up to you when and how much of the drug you take.
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Practitioners say that when nitrous oxide is used a lot in labor and delivery wards, it helps women feel less pain and less anxious. Laughing gas can help you relax and stay still while a doctor puts a small tube into your spinal column to set up an epidural. This can be uncomfortable or scary because it involves putting a tube into your spinal column.
It eases your needle phobia if you don’t like the idea of getting an IV. Offer a small amount of pain relief during the most painful parts of labor and pushing if you aren’t using other painkiller medications (practitioners often recommend taking a breath of the gas about 30 seconds before a contraction starts to get the maximum effectiveness). It helps you relax and focus on your new baby while your doctor checks your perineum or stitches up tears after labor.
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Mothers who had used it before talked about how they felt when they did. Stephanie Knapp, a mother from Delaware, explained that using nitrous oxide during labor instead of drugs helped her feel calmer and stronger.
Laura, a 41-year-old mother from NY, stated- “You’re cognitively aware of everything that’s going on. If you don’t want its effects, you can simply stop using it. You’re not confined. With the epidural, there’s a lot of movement restriction.”
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There are some worries about using laughing gas during labor, even though it hasn’t been shown to harm the mother or the baby. Experts warn, “Some animal studies have shown effects on animal babies, and it is unknown if in the future there may be proven negative effect on human babies.”
Some women feel sick or dizzy while breathing the gas and for a few minutes afterwards. But these side effects are like those of narcotics- they only last a short time. Even though research is still going on, studies done in the past have shown that the amount of nitrous oxide currently used during labor has no effect on a baby’s health at birth or on a newborn’s ability to be awake and feed. Still, there are some questions about how it will affect people in the long run and whether it poses risks when it crosses the placenta. Since there hasn’t been much research on the gas, some doctors are hesitant to use it, especially when there already are other well-studied options to relieve pain.
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At the end of the day, it’s good to have choices, and pregnant women can learn about their options, listen to what their doctors say, and choose the best painkiller for them. In the video below, a mother talks about how laughing gas helped her during labor.