No one is looking at the use of Fentanyl in epidural at birth for over thirty-five years.
Research in obstetrics using Fentanyl in epidural to anesthetize mother and baby has been going on for over 30 years! And is now seen as normal, despite the handwringing about the epidemic of overdoses of fentanyl.
US citizens have been birthed “under the influence of drugs” from the beginning of medicine’s involvement.
Obstetric researchers began researching on dosage of Fentanyl to use in early 80’s. It was never shown to be safe, without consequence, for the baby or the mother BEFORE using. This is true of every drug and intervention used in obstetrics.
The Soul Portrait here was done listening to a Kojo Nnamdi show on www.wamu.org, NPR DC station, about fentanyl and the opioid epidemic.
“If we understand the physiology of birth and the neurodevelopmental period of the baby and of the baby’s biologic imperative - process - of securing attachment to the mother at birth, we must look at the impact of medicalized birth using fentanyl at birth. We must look at the impact to the mother and to the baby at birth, on their critical task of reconnecting outside the womb, and on therefore, on their lifetime.”
From the article: "According to preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2017 was the worst year for drug overdose deaths in US history. That year, more than 72,000 people died of overdoses — or nearly 200 people a day. That’s more overdose deaths in a single year than ever before, and at least two-thirds of those deaths were linked to opioids.
Put another way, more Americans died of overdoses in 2017 than were ever killed by guns, car crashes, or HIV/AIDS in a single year in the US. As with 2016, the 2017 death toll is higher than all US military casualties in the Vietnam and Iraq wars combined.
If you look at the death toll going back to the beginning of the opioid epidemic in the late 1990s, more than 700,000 Americans have died of drug overdoses in that time span. More people have died from drug overdoses during this epidemic than live in big US cities like Denver and Washington, DC."
Ironic or coincidental that the opioid problem started in 90s.... and looks to have increased at same rate as number of people born under the influence of opioids in epidural.
Disassociation is part of the epidural imprint. Has there ever been a generation who so desperately needs to disassociate out of their body? As the current generation ... teen to 30?
In 2010 at a hospital birth in Columbia, MO at the premiere birthing center, the nurse told me that 90% of the births were with epidural, or as I call it, “Under the influence of opioids.”
In Missouri, rural hospitals have been closing over the past decade. This means that women in Missouri have to typically travel more than one hour and up to 2+ hours to go to a hospital to give birth. This means that they are often induced prior to their due date to prevent births en route.
Columbia, being a blue island in the red of Missouri, two to 2.5 hours from either shore in Kansas City and St Louis, will serve women for hours in a all directions. The osteopathic medical school and hospital in Kirksville, MO serves the northern region, but people still choose Columbia as well.
This is a typical scenerio in many states. The medical system has convinced women and men that out-of-hospital birth is dangerous, and the states, via medical establishments - AMA, ACOG - control midwifery legislation. Women are left without options.