What Are the Risks of Pitocin and Epidurals During Labor? | Legal FAQ

Heidi Wickstrom:
Many of you have probably heard the term epidural. If you've had a baby, perhaps you had an epidural. An epidural is what can be provided to mom to actually... It's a nerve block so that when mom is going through the delivery process, she's more comfortable. It effectively helps to numb from basically the waist down a little bit so that you're not feeling as much of the stress and pain that goes along with labor. Epidurals are very common. However, obviously, with any sort of medication like that, there can be side effects or there can be potential for conditions that arise due to improper placement of an epidural or other issues with improperly using an epidural, such as there's always the most extreme example with an epidural could be paralysis, nerve damage. There could also be an issue with a potential infection due to epidurals. Another common medication that's used is what's called Pitocin. It's actually oxytocin. So the body, mom's body, actually creates oxytocin as does baby. This is an agent that's used to actually help progress labor. So, move mom along, move baby along through the labor process. Pitocin is commonly used in many deliveries, but it needs to be used safely.

So it requires proper modification, proper observation to ensure that when giving mom Pitocin, you haven't given her too much at one time. She's not progressing too where her contractions are increasing too much and putting stress on the baby. So, Pitocin needs to be monitored very carefully.