INSTA GLAM
ROSIE HUNTINGTON-WHITELEY
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die and there were moments when I wanted to. I asked three times for an epidural, but each time the midwife fobbed me off.
‘She said things like: “Are you sure? Why don’t we just give it some more time? here, have some more gas and air.” I felt helpless. Winnie was born 30 hours after my labour began and I was left with second-degree tears.’
Sam acknowledges that it’s possible she didn’t receive her epidural because ‘the labour ward was at capacity — so maybe they were too busy. But there’s also a part of me that feels my pain wasn’t taken seriously’.
She says she was taken aback by the impact the birth had on her mental health.
‘It’s still so raw. I suffer from severe postnatal depression and flashbacks. Although I love Winnie more than anything in the world, my labour was so traumatic I never want another child. I just cannot go through that again.’
MY heART goes out to Sam. Because, as I know only too well, deciding whether to have an epidural is not a question of weighing things up. You either don’t need an epidural and don’t think about it, or you absolutely need one and you will kill someone to get it. To suggest that it’s a choice is dangerously misleading.
Kim Thomas, CeO of the Birth Trauma Association, agrees, saying: ‘We shouldn’t treat labour pain any differently than any other sort of pain.
‘Being left in severe pain for a long period of time contributes to women being diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after birth.
‘Around 4 per cent of women who give birth — around 30,000 — develop PTSD. These women suffer intense flashbacks, heightened anxiety and insomnia. A lot develop postnatal depression.’
I try to lessen the pressure on the pregnant women I instruct. epidural or not — who cares? It’s the baby, and the quality of your future life together, that matters.
So it baffles me that so many ‘birth advocates’ perpetuate the lie that women who give birth ‘naturally’ have triumphed over their compatriots.
I’m certainly not saying every woman should have an epidural. Many don’t need them.
Indeed, whether or not you need an epidural depends on the shape of your pelvis internally, the size and position of your baby and the length of your labour. It has nothing to do with your parental ability.
That said, even mothers who have sailed through several births can need pain relief for subsequent deliveries — and can be shaken if they don’t receive it.
Louise Burgess, 31, has a fiveyear-old son. She describes her first labour ‘as near to perfect as can be’, with just gas and air for pain relief. Yet the birth of her second baby, Ivy, just 17 weeks ago, was very different.
Louise says midwives refused to give her an epidural, despite her asking for one. After being induced, she says her pain went ‘from nothing to extreme in minutes’.
‘The midwife said not to worry, I could have a lavender bath or bounce on the birthing ball. But I was starting to panic. The pain was nothing like I had ever experienced,’ says Louise, a petsitter who lives in Milton Keynes with her husband, Rick, 30.
‘It was so extreme I vomited all over the bed. I was beside myself in tears, begging for an epidural.
‘The midwife simply replied: “Just do your breathing, you can do this by yourself, the baby will be here before they get the epidural in.”’
Yet four hours were to pass before Ivy was born, with just gas and air granted for pain relief.
‘I feel deeply traumatised,’ Louise says. ‘Those four hours were the worst of my life, even more than the agony we went through when my son, emmett, had heart surgery after he was born. I never want to be pregnant again. It’s affected how I feel about Ivy. I just wish I had been listened to.’
It’s hard to understand why Louise’s pleas weren’t listened to. After all, should you choose an epidural, you’re not being reckless. This is a procedure that has now been around for a century.
A 2018 review of more than 50 studies showed epidurals cause no increased risk of a caesarean section, postnatal back pain or to a mother’s ability to breastfeed.
And a decade-long population study in the Netherlands concluded that epidurals did not increase the risk of assisted delivery.
But this is not the message that is being shared. A few years ago I heard a talk from a doula (a trained birthing companion who is not a healthcare professional) and listened in horror as she warned of the risks of paralysis after an epidural. had her ‘expertise’ included a basic understanding of spinal anatomy, she would have realised that this was impossible; epidurals are administered well away from the spinal cord.
Marita Moore, 39, from Stockport, certainly didn’t plan to have an epidural when giving birth to her first son, harley, 15 weeks ago.
A fitness and wellbeing instructor, she wanted to forgo pain relief, and had decided hypnobirthing would help her achieve this.
In peak physical fitness, Marita felt positive her labour would go according to plan. Yet when she had to be induced, her pain quickly became unmanageable.
‘All my plans for a natural birth went out of the window. I was crying out for an epidural. The diamorphine injection and gas and air just didn’t do anything.
‘Then a doctor said: “An epidural might not be the best course of action for you.” I didn’t understand and, to be honest, I could hardly hear him over my screams.’
WITh severe tearing and terrible flashbacks of the birth, Marita is still traumatised. ‘My partner, John, said he’d never heard noises like the screams I made.
‘I had been told I may never have children as I have endometriosis, so I felt guilty for not bonding with harley immediately.’
The fact I’ve avoided these feelings of guilt over my own epidural must be in part linked to my supportive midwife agreeing it was the best course of action for me and my unborn baby.
Yet my birth story didn’t end at the epidural. After two days, I was told that my ‘failure to progress’ in labour was making Ludo distressed. I was urged to have a caesarean, which I did.
As I sent that happy, exhausted picture of my baby and me to friends and family, it was clear not everyone felt the same delight I did. ‘What a shame,’ texted one friend. ‘You had a caesarean.’
‘Yes I did,’ I wanted to scream at her, ‘and that’s why he’s alive.’
But her disappointment weighed on me. I wanted to give my son the best. had I already failed?
These sentiments were swiftly brushed aside as Ludo was rushed to special care. his breathing was rapid and the team diagnosed a punctured lung.
As I looked at my tiny son in an incubator, I felt nothing but gratitude for medical innovation and a wretched sense of injustice that anything that’s not ‘natural’ is so systematically demonised.
After all, the idea that it’s right that women should suffer in childbirth is rooted in the Bible — the punishment meted out by God to a sinning eve. Yet, 2,000 years later, in the age of reason and of evidence-based medicine, it seems nothing short of cruel that anyone should be denied relief from a pain so profound it makes them feel like they are dying.