If you need urgent support, call 999 or go to your nearest A&E. To contact our Crisis Messenger (open 24/7) text THEMIX to 85258.
Read the community guidelines before posting ✨
Options
Essential support for under 25s
Essential support for under 25s
Take a look around and enjoy reading the discussions. If you'd like to join in, it's really easy to register and then you'll be able to post. If you'd like to learn what this place is all about, head here.
Comments
This reminds me of the "it's natural" arguement, to which I respond- it's natural to fall ill, break bones get cancer etc... should we deny patients pain relief because pain is natural? No. Any person in pain on any ward other than maternity is offered pain relief as part of thier medical service. We expect the NHS to make a person as confortable as modern medicine allows, and not to unnecesarily extend someone's suffering. Childbirth is and should be no different with regard to this basic medical provision of care. Therefore, when it comes to an epidural being neccessary and provided for free, I believe it should be free for any woman who cannot bear their pain and the anaesthesiologist agrees that the procedure will be safe.
What a bollocks argument. We are a part of nature, not seperate, therefore everything we do is "natural", including taking painkillers.
I think thats a very personal argument, and if you consider it, its not all the applicable to the real life case. Paying tax doesn't garuntee you every medical treatment you could ever think of, just essential things like the NHS. And some doctors / politicians / economics decide which medicines are essential and which arent. When they're low on money, rather than run into debt and miss their targets, its convenient how some treatments become less important suddenly. Though I dont want to quote without a source, there was a case recently of lots of heart condition patients having their surgery cancelled because the NHS had 'shifted its priorities' towards more urgent patients. - Convenient then, that by cancelling 100 or so people off their waiting list they met two targets, one being they're not allowed to have waiting lists so long and another being the money aspect.
But I digress from the main argument. Maybe there is a case that some women don't need the epidural -> but I think as with any pain, how can a doctor say 'you dont need painkillers, it doesn't hurt that much'? If the patient requests, the patient should be given, if its clear they're in pain. And shoving a baby out of your vagina cant be exactly painless.
But then again, we have the scarce resources argument. If you're on a desert island with 10 painkillers, do you give them to everyone? Or just the people who really really need them? I think it might be something along the lines of that, what the NHS is thinking. Although, I think there should be enough for everyone, nobody should have to suffer.
In America they say 'anaesthesiologist'. Here we call them anaesthetists, and they aren't available in midwifery-led maternity units, as I have already said.
No form of pain relief is without its risks in childbirth, that is the bottom line.
Would this have happened if it were men giving birth?
It was just a comment from the RCM to publicise their view, presumably. Charging for epidurals would reduce demand for them, that's what they want.
this could lead to an ethics discussion of when is something human. The risks with an epidural are more for the baby right? But, in my humble opinion, the mother is more important.
Sorry, but this isn't something being proposed by the NHS or it's "legion of bean counters", this was a suggestion by a Royal College and there is no suggestion that it would actually happen - in part for the reasons you suggest.
Not directly, but it will impact on me. Will be interesting to see how things happen because they can't do the basics right IMHO, so how they think that they will manage this is beyond me.
I could go into many specifics but I would start getting really unprofessional. God help the people of east kent, is all I can say.
Does this question matter without first ascertaining whether a 'baby' has any rights? lol
Until the collection of cells can't live without the mother, they are part of the mother, once they can live without the mother, they are a seperate organism.
Most sensible argument is about when that moment occurs, thank fuck.
Not that passing a law ever makes anything but criminals, especially in this instance.
No worries, eh?
Don't discourage him, for once Klintock has said something which makes sense. We can get him posting in the correct threads later...
Yep. Best not to rush me all at once. Best way, no quibbles admitted.
I'm pretty certain myself, but I can't speak for Kentish.
You only have to look at the different ways in which male and female cancers are treated/advertised etc