| Pain Medications Available |
| Tranquilizers, sedatives, and barbiturates: These medications have no specific pain relieving properties. They calm you down and make it easier to manage the pain One good thing about them is during early labor it helps you to rest to get your much needed strength. They may also relieve nausea. A down side to them is you may not remember details from the birth. |
| Narcotics: Narcotics offer reasonable pain relief and do not interfere with your pushing ability. However, they are a sedative and may cause nausea, vomiting, dizziness, itching, and repritory problems. Narcotics are not given towards the end of labor because it may slow the baby's repperations (breathing) at birth. If the narcotics do cause the baby problems, there are medications that can be given to counteract the affect of the narcotics. |
| Local Anesthesia: This is often given before an episiotomy is made or a tear is repaired It is like the medicine dentists use before drilling. Used in this way, there should be no affects Paracervical Block: this is where they take the needle and inject in the the tissues around the cervix Due to epidural, this is commonly not used any more. |
| Regional Anesthesia: Regional anesthetics are injected into the space around the spinal nerves. Two forms of this is Spinal Blocks and Epidurals. Due to the large amount of information, I created a page of their own. You can get to it by going to the table of contents. |
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