[carolina yorkie]

OK, I have to express my opinion here, the good and the bad. I am a high-risk labor and delivery nurse and we do epidurals like handing out Motrin. There is a small risk doing anything invasive...infection, spinal headache, decreased ability to breathe (VERY RARE and due to the epidural going too high) however, the benefits I have seen from epidurals FAR outweight the risks. One minute you have a woman in the throws of labor screaming her head off, vomiting up her toenails from the pain and threatening to kill everything with a pulse and shortly after the angel of anesthesia arrives, they are laughing and watching TV, or better yet taking a much needed nap. Labor is exhausting and anything that can help you to better cope and ENJOY the birth, the better. My colleagues all agree and I cannot think of a single person I work with that has gone natural. You want to be able to enjoy and remember the birth experience as a pleasant one, not at something miserable. You will still feel pressure and an urge to push, but not the intense contractions that accompany labor. Furthermore, God forbid, but if something should go wrong and the physicians need to use a vacuum extractor or forceps for the delivery, or if you have a tear that needs repairs, you don't feel it!! My vote, epidural all the way!!

Good luck to you.