# epidural/fever/waters breaking?



## seaweed eater

Hi ladies. Just wondering what experiences people have had with getting a fever after an epidural.

I will be preparing to birth without interventions in any case, but from what I have read it will be especially important not to have an epidural if my waters have broken. The main reason I want to prepare for a natural birth is to avoid a C-section. I have read that epidurals can sometimes give you a fever, and if your waters break they are worried about infection, so there can be a situation where your waters have broken AND you have an epidural and it's unclear whether the fever is caused by the epi or an infection so to be safe they need to get the baby out.

How common is this situation really? I remember reading that something like a third of labors (?) start with waters breaking, and epidurals are super common here in the US. Surely for most women they don't end in a section?

How common is it to get a fever from an epidural (whether or not your waters broke)?


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## Elski

Epidurals don't cause fevers, infection causes fevers. People who have epidurals may develop a fever but it would be unrelated and they would have developed one regardless of having an epidural or not :thumbup:


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## seaweed eater

Elski said:


> Epidurals don't cause fevers, infection causes fevers. People who have epidurals may develop a fever but it would be unrelated and they would have developed one regardless of having an epidural or not :thumbup:

Nope, there is some evidence that the epidural actually CAUSES fever. See https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20861420 -- "even randomized trials have confirmed a higher incidence of fever in epidural-exposed women, suggesting a causal relationship." Also, "Obstetricians are more likely to intervene surgically in laboring women with fever."

Also more info here: https://anesthesiologyinfo.com/articles/10202002.php

Just wondering how common this is based on people's experiences.


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## socitycourty

My waters broke on the Friday night, I have a fever by Saturday afternoon and didn't get the epidural till late Saturday night, my baby would not descend and since I had a fever and my waters had been broken for a long time I had an emergeny section on Sunday morning. So my fever came before the epidural


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## seaweed eater

No one had a fever after an epidural? :shrug: Well that's reassuring I suppose!


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## socitycourty

the epidural was bliss after the back to back contractions started :)


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## lisanicole

It happened to me. I had my water broken at 2:00 pm.. Epi at 2:20 p.m. and was only about 4 cm at 12:00 a.m. when I broke into a fever of 101. I was given half hour to see if the fever went down. It did! Then I started feeling pain again around 2 a.m. so I topped off on the Epi and about half hour later fever came back... emergency c section. Fever was gone by the time my son was delivered. No infection. I have known a few people this has also happened to. Doctors tend to blame it more on exhaustion rather than epidural but I am not convinced. It was so coincidental that the fever came back shortly after I topped off with the epi.


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