Other countries use nitrous oxide in the delivery room. Why don't we?by Libby Copeland
In the polarized landscape of parenting, it often seems there's no such thing as a middle ground. Parenting books and blogs portray parenthood as a minefield of divisive choices: Breast vs. bottle, cloth vs. disposable, sling vs. stroller. The first of many fraught decisions a mother faces—one she makes before she's even a mom—is the choice between "natural" (unmedicated) and pain-free (anesthetized) childbirth. As expectant women quickly learn, either choice comes with a caricature: You can forgo the drugs and be a smug, crunchy masochist, or you can accept them and be a selfish, epidural-dependent wimp.
But part of the reason the childbirth debate has become so polarized is the dearth of any middle ground between full-on epidural anesthesia and nothing at all. (Unless you count breathing exercises as a pain-control measure.) Lately, though, a number of midwives have been pushing for a third way. They are advocating that more delivery rooms offer nitrous oxide, the inhaled anesthetic more commonly known as laughing gas, familiar to many of us from dental procedures (and, perhaps, ill-advised experiments with Reddi-wip cans).Why are midwives—a group that in this country is usually associated with natural childbirth—leading the charge to bring a new drug to laboring women?
Nitrous oxide has a lot going for it. Unlike the epidural, which offers complete pain relief but renders a woman immobile from the waist down, nitrous oxide merely blunts pain. But it also lets a laboring woman walk, perch on a birthing ball, whatever. It's comparatively cheap, and it's fast-acting, offering relief in less than a minute. Perhaps most key from midwives' point of view, it is easily administered by the laboring woman herself. She grabs the mask when she knows a contraction is coming. She stops as the contraction ends. In other words, she is empowered to manage her own pain.
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