in the UK the NHS is funded by taxpayers, not nearly the amount of money goes from our wages into it each year as what goes into paying private insurance for maternity care in the US, there is a limit to the budget its not a case of us paying directly for the service so being able to hold the doctors to account over our treatment caus the system is different. there is a finite amount of resource to service a every expanding population and with the cuts the NHS is having at the moment then I personally see the " if i want it i should get it" attitude a bit shortsighted and selfish. would you rather have an epidural knowing that because you had one when you could have looked into equally valid alternatives that are much more affordable that a heart paitent is being denied care or a cancer paitent is denied medication or chemo ? your not ill your just having a baby its a perfectly natural process that women were doing for thousands of years before the invention of epidurals. yes there are some benifits to them but look at the risks too please
Like I said, If they aren't getting enough money to staff themselves properly without slacking on patient care- maybe it's time for a change.
And yes babies have been being born for years upon years - but we also live in a time where medical care is available to us whereas many moons ago your baby was delivered by a family member or if you were lucky the town midwife. The infant/child mortality rate was also significantly higher then hence the reason people had 13 children in hopes that a handful of them would survive to adulthood. Just because something was acceptable and done at that time does not mean it should be the standard of care in this day and age.
It was also widely believed that putting a knife under the labor bed or chair "cut the pain in two" - maybe we should all try that instead of epidurals or water births. Putting a knife under the bed is much cheaper than buying birthing pools/emptying/cleaning them.
I don't think anyone would expect to be given their epidural just for the pain over a patient about to go into surgery - nor do I think any doctor would put that priority into action under any circumstances so that's just not realistic.
But if a woman requests an epidural, and there is no emergency keeping the anesthesiologist from doing it, she should have it. If it's a matter of the cost and they don't feel they get enough money from taxpayers to do these things-then like I said, perhaps it's time for a change - but my medical care that I pay for out of my taxes should not suffer, nor should my choices for labor be made by anyone but me.
I'm curious just how tickled people would be if this thread were about a hospital refusing to let someone use a birthing pool because of the cost involved in draining it and cleaning it simply because they don't feel it's called for. Who are you to decide what's right for me?
And like I said before, telling someone they should be able to do this epi free because it's natural for our bodies and we've been doing it for ages is akin to telling a woman struggling to BF that she's a failure as a parent because it doesn't work out and she turns to FF. If your standpoint is that we should all be able to do this simply because we've been doing it for ages, would you want to have a c-section without an epi? Because they certainly used to give women c-sections with nothing but a " this is going to hurt"
xx
