The midwife actually told this to me during a prenatal visit, so it was in my birth plan!
And they did convince me to take an epidural at 4 centimeters, although when the anesthesiologist came in 15 minutes later, I felt like pushing. They still wanted to put it in (they didn’t believe me when I said I was ready – I was drugged) but my normally quiet mother said, “Don’t touch her until you check her!” Thank goodness she did because I was “a smidge before ten” and the whole room went into panic mode because they weren’t ready for a birth!
Drugs also make for a quieter mother – I couldn’t talk much and couldn’t tell the docs to get their fingers out of me – I lost count how many times I was checked.
Switched to a home birth midwife and had a planned home birth-turned hospital birth because she was early. Next two were at home.

But she was informed.. “It’s just like Tylenol.” Didn’t you read? O_o

Btw, if Nubian is just like Tylenol, how come I can’t find it at Walgreens or Rite Aid without a script?

It took out my sarcasm end tag. Woe. ^insert sarcasm there

I am assuming since the hospital staff were the ones saying it was the nubain, that they had reason to believe the nubain caused the problems with the baby.

Angel, this strikes me as odd — I know that blood rapidly circulates through the system, which includes the uterus and placenta. Also, the PDR says, “The placental transfer of nalbuphine is high, rapid, and variable with a maternal to fetal ratio ranging from 1:0.37 to 1:6. Fetal and neonatal adverse effects that have been reported following the administration of nalbuphine to the mother during labor include fetal bradycardia, respiratory depression at birth, apnea, cyanosis, and hypotonia. Some of these events have been life-threatening” [emphasis mine].

Can you direct me to a source that says that it takes an hour from the time of injection for a fetus to be negatively affected and/or the newborn to have breathing difficulties? Because I’m confused. “High, rapid” placental transfer sounds like it would be fast, and the closer to injection time, the more the baby would be affected. And as the mother metabolizes the drug (being bigger and with a more efficient liver) as time passes, the less likelihood of the baby being born drugged. Thanks!

Yep. With my first the nurses were okay with my going without the hep-lock but the doctor was not. She was very pushy about it. I signed an AMA to not get it. I didn’t want this doc to have an open port.

Finally she did something to scare me and got me to consent to one two pushes before my baby was born. Totally unneccesary.

Having said that, pethidine does have its uses. For example, in the early stages, or when the woman is having a loooooong latent phase with an OP baby, it can give a bit of relaxation and allow her to sleep, letting her body regroup for active labour. If she can relax, and reduce the catecholamine levels so her oxtocin can build, along with her endorphines, then it just might let her body get on with its job and establish in labour.

Nubain is not controlled in the US; from what I read, when it was originally released in the early 70s, it was a C-II (same as Demerol and Morphine/pethidine), but is now not a controlled substance. Prescription-only, for sure; but not “controlled.” It’s certainly a step up from Tylenol/acetaminophen/paracetamol, but not as strong (addictive) as morphine, or else it would be controlled. It may be similar to morphine, but it’s not as strong.

I’m autistic (Asperger’s), my husband is autistic (high-functioning autism; despite the changes that were made in the DSM recently, there ARE clinical differences between Asperger’s and high functioning autism, notably in the amount of verbal inclination, bodily coordination, and vestibular system. Basically, aspies like me are a LOT more verbal, maybe even to the point of being savants, which would certainly explain a few things about Percy Shelley, Emily Dickinson, Algernon Charles Swinburne, and Alfred, Lord Tennyson; we’re NOT well coordinated and can make falling up a flight of stairs look like an art; and we get wicked motion sickness and unlike a lot of other autists, we do NOT like spinning, or watching things that spin, for this reason.) Our three daughters are on the spectrum, and the girl we’re expecting in a couple of months will no doubt inherit our genes too.

Anyway, I began to suspect that being autistic affects how medications, and chemical substances in general, are processed when my husband told me that he can drink fifty shots without getting even buzzed. My husband rarely drinks. (We prefer to spend our money on things like the mortgage and food. Just one of those things.) So his tolerance does not come from heavy drinking – it’s natural. It made me think of my bizarre opiate tolerance. Frankly, I wish I had his alcohol tolerance, it would be a lot more handy. On the other hand, I don’t think I’ll ever have to worry about narcotic addiction, because it doesn’t seem to hit the pleasure centres of my brain.

We are hypersensitive to other things, vaccines included. When I had a DTP booster in first grade, it gave me a fever and – get this – paralyzed my left arm for a month. Scary. The rubella shot and smallpox vax I received, meanwhile, apparently didn’t “take,” so let’s hope there are no epidemics of smallpox or German measles any time soon. My husband is utterly flattened by flu shots, but he’s had all his other usual childhood shots at the usual time, without incident, and in the case of measles and mumps, without effectiveness either, because he caught both measles and mumps as a child despite being immunized.

Won’t even go into our allergies. Or the time we lived in a slum dwelling near a coke refinery because it was all we could afford at the time, and the various coal byproducts belched out made the entire family so sick that we eventually broke our lease just to save our lives.

It is our theory, based on observing ourselves and our children (so far, we’ve noticed that Sophie, our eldest, is violently hypersensitive to red dyes, and, like me, relatively unaffected by opiates given after an ER visit) that being autistic makes our reactions to chemicals HIGHLY unpredictable. Some things we overreact to, other things we underreact to.

And it’s anybody’s guess which substance will trigger any one of us, because we all have different tolerances and triggers.

Modern medicine, therefore, is almost a matter of Russian Roulette for us, as is herbal medicine, as is homeopathy… There’s no such thing as life without risk, but jeez.

This is one reason why I prefer to birth drug-free and out of the hospital, now. Also why I prefer to avoid vaccination unless there is an obvious urgent necessity (tetanus shots make sense, but how likely are we to be exposed to diptheria?) We prefer to avoid introducing anything new unless it’s something we can ease into and watch for weird reactions, if at all possible. In fact, I think the claims of parents who accuse Big Pharma of “making their children autistic” with vaccines may be putting the cart before the horse – the children were probably already autistic, and autism predisposed them to weird adverse reactions like brain damage when neurotypical children would be less at risk for something like that.

Sorry for being so windy. I do natter on.