Epidural during childbirth is a hot-button topic. Family First set out to find out why

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he notion of painless childbirth was a distant dream once, imagined through history by the bold and scientific — or even, as in ancient Egypt — the magic-inclined. But we’re past the era when scientists believed that the heart was the seat of the mind, and we understand how to dull pain receptors and temporarily numb bodies before surgeries. Everyone uses local anesthesia when having their wisdom tooth removed or an ingrown toenail treated. There’s enough pain in life, says one gastroenterologist who performs many a colonoscopy, that we don’t need to suffer needlessly.

Why, then, is there still such hesitance when it comes to using pain relief during childbirth?

How the Pendulum Swings

Euphame MacCalzean was a Scottish woman who lived during the 1500s, a time when women prepared their wills when they discovered they were pregnant. A mother of at least five, she was accused of witchcraft by a local maid for various reasons. One of the significant charges was that she had used her skills to relieve women’s pain during childbirth. She was burned at the stake in 1591 for her crimes.

In the mid-19th century, Queen Victoria of England was cautioned against pain relief during the birth of her children. Doctors warned her that it would slow the progress of the labor and that it went against her religious beliefs. But by the time the queen had gone into labor with her eighth child, chloroform was all the rage in anesthetics. For 53 minutes, the queen inhaled chloroform from a handkerchief. She described the experience as “delightful beyond measure.”

From then on, it seems that there were fewer objections to pain relief in labor and delivery. Women advocated for themselves and each other. There was strong pushback from doctors, some of whom insisted that women suffer during childbirth as some guarantee of the safety of the baby.

From there, the pendulum swung, and we reached a new extreme in the early 1900s. Women were given a potent dose of morphine and scopolamine in what was called twilight sleep. The morphine dulled the pain and the scopolamine produced memory loss. Women might scream in agony — the morphine ultimately did very little — but they remembered none of it after and reported pain-free experiences.

By the mid-1900s, twilight sleep became less popular — after one of its strongest advocates died in childbirth! — but hospitals still heavily medicated women. Many were even unconscious during delivery. It was the height of the postwar baby boom, and it might have just been a tactic of convenience, getting women in and out of the delivery room as quickly as possible.

And then, of course, the pendulum swung back. Suddenly, women began to advocate against medicated childbirth, shifting toward Lamaze and acupuncture and other natural pain relief. A new push began: this one speaking of the pain of childbirth as a vehicle of actualization, of an experience that women should strive to attain. The idea of an all-natural birth became a cause, a breathless dream shared by and spread to countless women.