Prenatal Horror Theatre

Lately I've been having some feelings of apprehension regarding my appending delivery. Okay, okay, more like terror. Some things that have contributed to my fears:

• Being that I have lead a very sheltered life, I haven't really experienced any real pain. I don't even have cramps when I get my period, so I can't even fathom what labour will be like.
• Our most recent prenatal class talked all about labour and delivery. We watched videos in which women gave birth. Even though they did all the breathing and pain management BS that people talk about, it still looked like a horror show. Was this supposed to make me feel better about going through labour? It didn't.
• I'm of the philosophy that no pain is better than pain, so I plan to have an epidural. But then I saw this episode of Bringing Home Baby where the mom had super big headaches from her epidural, when she stood up or sat up. They were so bad that she couldn't even get up to go to the washroom and her husband had to bedpan her! This seemed to defeat the whole purpose of an epidural. A browse of the internet told me this was rare, and that it happens when the needle goes too deep and some spinal fluid leaks out. It can also cause double vision and hearing problems, because basically your brain doesn't have enough fluid to float in. They can try to patch the hole by sucking blood our of your arm and injecting it in your spine, but then you might get meningitus. I hate needles enough without having to read all this!

The Dream

So last night I had this dream that I was in the hospital. I hadn't even had any contractions yet but for some reason I knew that I was about to go into labour (I don't think I was being induced, I just knew somehow). I thought that I would wait until I was farther along in labour before they would give me an epidural. That's usually how they do things in real life.

Instead, they came in right away, a nurse and a black guy in OR scrubs that I knew was the anesthesiologist. They didn't even ask if I wanted an epidural, they just said it was time, and that was that. I leaned over while sitting on the bed to receive the needle. The anesthesiologist was about to put the needle in, but the bed was so bouncy that I couldn't sit still enough. I remember asking him if he'd had any patients who'd had an epidural headache. He said he hadn't done that many, but I didn't know if he meant that he hadn't given that many epidurals, or if not that many of his patients had had the headache. I was scared that the bouncy bed would make him slip and make the needle go too deep. Eventually we just had to take the mattress off the bed so I had a flat place to sit.

The epidural seemed to work okay after that. So maybe it'll be okay.