To epidural or not to epidural?

I woke up this morning at 5am after a very bad night of sleep and I thought it was Saturday. I was just starting to look forward to my chocolate croissant and mid-morning nap when I realized, wait, it’s only Friday. Darn it!

This week my co-worker is back, but that doesn’t alleviate the workload quite yet. We have a lot of work to make up for. So it’s been long days again this week. Good news is that my boss is pulling a girl from another project into ours, she will be my replacement while I’m on maternity leave but I think she will stay on my project even after I’m back. Bad news is that now I need to do all my work AND train her too. She’s super nice though and pretty good too, so I’m really happy to get her on board.

Labor school was pleasant again this week. We had oatmeal raisin cookies. Ugh, I mean, we learned about medical options and interventions. My plan was to do it as drug-free as possible. Part of it is because I feel drugs are a gateway to c-sections, if you start messing with the process you’re just introducing yourself to problems… sort of like “if it ain’t broken don’t fix it”.

Part of it is wanting to be fully aware and I always get nervous when part of me is numb or drugged. I remember hating some of the stuff I had in the emergency room while I had pneumonia.

Part of it is from hearing all the women in my family (all nurses) nag about how epidurals are the devil. I feel that if I admit I want an epidural I will get 5 crazed women trying to beat the idea into me that epidural-evil-this and epidural-evil-that and that I could loose mobility in my legs forever and they don’t really work and they’re bad for the baby and once they give it to you the worse is already over anyway so they’re useless.

But the nurse last night explained epidurals and epidurals have come a LONG way in the past 20 years. The nurse addressed all my points of concerned (a.k.a. all the horror stories I heard my grandma say about a friend of a friend of a friend). Let me tell you, epidurals are starting to sound pretty darn good to me right now. I keep hearing this voice in my head repeating what I once heard a woman say “No one would ever ever ask the dentist to pull out a tooth with no anesthesia, why should giving birth be any different?!” And seriously, she has a point!

I don’t know. I was soooo anti-drug before, but last night really changed my mind. I can’t believe it, I mean I was REALLY anti-drug before last night. I guess I still “plan” on going drug-free, but I think I’ll just wing it once I’m there.