Pain relief during labor: what are the options?

Pain relief during childbirth in Belgium

• Acupuncture and acupressure
• Hypnosis: A hypnotherapist can teach you during a hypnobirthing course how to apply self-hypnosis during labor, so that your body can relax.
• Laughing gas. The Flemish Professional Organisation of Midwives advocates laughing gas as an interim solution to avoid an epidural, but there are also sceptics. If you feel pain and put on the face mask with laughing gas, the contraction is usually over by the time the laughing gas works. Laughing gas, however, has no effect on your baby.
• The spinal or epidural anesthesia is the usual form of pain relief for a vaginal birth in our country, as it is the safest option for both mother and child. Please note: an epidural cannot be administered for a home birth.
• Spinal anesthesia, where unlike an epidural anesthesia you have no feeling in your lower body at all. This method is used for caesarean sections.

In other countries there are other options for pain relief during labor:

• Injections of sterile water, which relieve the pain in your lower back for 1 to 2 hours.
• Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation (TENS): a device that sends small electrical impulses via electrodes when you press a button. The tingling or prickly sensation ensures that you focus less on the pain of the contractions.
• Injection with painkillers (pethidine or morphine), you may become drowsy from it. It also only helps for a short time (2 to 4 hours) and the chance of complications is slightly greater. Moreover, the medication also ends up in your child. In the United Kingdom, among other places, it is often used as a painkiller during childbirth, in our country mainly in emergencies or after a surgical procedure.
• A pain pump where you can take painkillers (remifentanil) yourself via an IV, although of course this is limited. You may also become a bit drowsy, which means you experience the birth less, and the medication also ends up with your baby. In the Netherlands, about half of the hospitals offer remifentanil as anesthesia for a vaginal birth.

Also read: Process, advantages and disadvantages of a water birth

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