Doctors stopped using nitrous oxide, or laughing gas, to ease labor pains in the 1950s, when the prevalence of epidurals — a stronger drug for pain management — during labor began to rise.
However, NPR News reports laughing gas has returned as an option for women going through childbirth — at least in Rhode Island.
Laughing gas gives women a feeling of euphoria, which can distract them from the pain without necessarily getting rid of the pain altogether. However, it can be much safer and make for faster and easier births.
When doctors use an epidural to control the level of pain a woman experiences during labor, it often makes it difficult for them to move from the waist down, which can elongate the labor process.
Not to be graphic, but if you can’t spread your legs to push a baby out, that baby is not coming out with any urgency.
Additionally, many women who receive epidurals do not originally want them. Often, as highlighted in Ricki Lake’s documentary “The Business of Being Born,” women experience pain during childbirth and are pressured by nurses and doctors to submit to epidurals.
This can cost a lot more than families originally plan to pay, can lead to a potential Caesarean section and goes against their wishes.
With nitrous oxide, women have way more control over their bodies, the dosage and thus the labor process in general.
In the Rhode Island hospital featured in the NPR piece, a nurse can simply roll over a laughing gas cart to the hospital bed, and a woman can take puffs of the gas whenever she feels she really needs to, as one new mother said, “take the edge off.”
It is, of course, natural to experience some pain during childbirth. However, the increased use of substances like epidurals and Pitocin—which is used to induce labor— can often muddy the process and create a cycle of pain and more drug injections, and that is not always what a mother wants.
Some women enter a hospital wanting a natural vaginal birth, but leave with a C-section scar and an immense medical bill.
Of course, this is not to say that C-sections are entirely unnecessary. The procedure can be life saving during complicated births.
By having laughing gas as an option for mothers in labor, they can better adhere to their original desires for their birthing process while still avoiding some of the pain.
It preserves the wishes of the mother while still providing for her comfort, which, for a woman in labor, is very empowering.
meickhof@indiana.edu
@maggie_eickhoff
