Alternative Medication for Pain in Labor - Health Channel

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Alternative Medication for Pain in Labor, Health Channel

Doula (a non-medical assistant in childbirth), water birth and IV narcotics are alternatives for managing labor pain, describes Dr. Alberto Sirven, Medical Director of the West Kendall OB/GYN Program and Women and Infant Credentials Committee Chairman with West Kendall Baptist Hospital.

He also says communication between the doctor and the patient is important for taking the best decision when the delivery comes.

Transcript

Alternative Medication for Pain in Labor, Health Channel

What are other medications doctor that maybe can be given to relieve pain during labor and delivery. >Well there’s definitely medications that you could do as far as … narcotics that are giving intravenous. Now you have to understand that those narcotics are basically what they do is, they put them on to sleep. Therefore the same time they put the baby to sleep. Anything that you give intravenous it’s gonna affect the baby, as opposed to an epidural per se that does not give anything intravenous but it’s in the epidural place and unless you have a drop in blood pressure your baby will not know that you have any type of medication on you. For any type of IV medication will cause you don’t have a decrease in the fetal heart rate, also there is a non… you know… no… What we call natural ways to manage pain for instance some people pick the doula. I do like the person that helps you with your respiration, your pain management, and all those things. Is like a trainer type of person, that helps us some patients do well with this, especially people who do home deliveries, they tend to have a doula who manage their pains. There is also some you know water birth which is something that is really not something that we offer here in South Florida more but there might be other places in the country that they do. Has been shown that women during water birth they somehow are able to relax more and able to control the pain better. There is risk to this of course because of possibility of infection contamination all those things so a lot of the hospital sellers have taken away the water birth as a possibility.

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