Giving Birth: My Personal Experience with Epidural Anesthetic

When sitting in the hospital bed and feeling horrible shooting pains called contractions all some women can only think about is having an epidural. I myself am one of those women. Two years ago I had a beautiful baby girl, she was my first baby so I was a bit nervous about going to the hospital. I had been experiencing Braxton Hicks Contractions and felt I knew what contractions were like and that I would be fine through the entire birthing process.

Boy was I wrong, I felt the real contractions for about two hours and begged for an epidural. When the person who does the insertion of the needle came I was quite nervous. I am terrified of needles and knowing you will have one inserted in your spinal cord is even more terrifying.
When she inserted it I felt it and it wasn't good, I felt a lot of pain and was concerned because I was told that you shouldn't feel any pain.

After I got the injection I felt no pain at all, I was overjoyed. Ten hours later I had my daughter.

Now comes the second pregnancy, during the half of my pregnancy I had horrible back pain, so bad I went to the hospital about three times because of how painful it was. I had to cope with it and also work while I experienced shooting pains in my back. The big day came and I was sent to the hospital to get induced. I wanted to get the epidural right away because I knew how painful the contractions would be. They made me wait till I had contractions to give me the epidural.

Finally the doctor that does the insertion of the epidural shows up. I was terrified as usual and was shivering so much that the doctor was getting a little annoyed and kept telling me to relax. I tried my best to relax but it was really hard for me. It wasn't this bad when I got the shot, but... yes there is a but, I still felt contractions even though my legs were numb. How could this be? I was crying because the contractions seemed to have gotten worse after I got the epidural.

The doctor came back after an hour and injected a larger dose of the anesthetic in me, about 20 minutes later I felt nothing. I had my daughter about an hour later and thought to myself, "why did I even get the epidural? ".