Motherhood Archives - WOMENS SPECIALISTS OF NEW MEXICO

Birth of a Midwife

Birth of a Midwife As a nurse, I was brand new to labor and delivery--and I was on my third night shift in a row. Walking back from a quick break, I was called over by the charge nurse. "You have the next admit from triage," she told me. "She's a live one--and so is her family. They're carnies." "What's that?" I asked, bewildered. "You know, the people who do the circus and carnival circuit--gypsies," she said, innocently using a term that is now considered derogatory, but was then often applied to the nomadic ethnic group known as Roma. "She's going natural." I felt a quiver of anxiety. When it came to giving labor support, I'd created a high bar for myself. I hadn't yet gone through childbirth myself, but for my patients' sake, I assumed that I needed to exude a certain confidence. The real test came when a woman in the throes of a contraction would ask, "Well…do you have any kids yourself?" This challenge felt as great to me as any clinical ordeal I'd ever faced. Okay, I can do this, I told myself, taking a deep breath. This was a busy Saturday night. It was a State Fair weekend, late summer of '89, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Plenty of pregnant women were arriving in triage, dehydrated from their day in the sun. The night had been a string of false labors. The protocol was simple: Hydrate, rest and reassess, then out the door. [...]

Nitrous Oxide for Labor Analgesia

Ask the Midwife - Nitrous Oxide for Labor Analgesia If you are like most pregnant women, you have been putting some thought into labor and what will happen during that process. Pain management is something that many women consider ahead of time. It is very common to have concerns about it: how much will labor hurt? Will I be able to manage it? What are my options for pain relief if the pain is too much for me? Will the options really help enough? Most women are a little nervous when thinking of these questions. Many women have heard of pain relief options such as the epidural or IV pain medication. There is a new option being offered for pain relief in labor at Lovelace Women’s Hospital; one that in fact has been in use for over a hundred years but is becoming more popular currently in the United States. This option is nitrous oxide, a pain reliever in the form of gas that is inhaled by the laboring woman. Nitrous oxide has been used for many years in Europe for pain relief in labor, and in fact has been used in some U.S. hospitals for as long as 20 years. More recently, the use of nitrous in labor units in the U.S. has become more common, including in NM. You may be familiar with nitrous oxide, or “laughing gas” from the dentist office. The form given for labor is a bit different from the dentist office. It [...]