After having labored several hours with term PROM (prelabor rupture of membranes), Cathy (not her real name) was tired. She wanted to hear that she was close to done. She wanted to be able to push. But more than that, she wanted to eat. She hadn’t had anything in 16 hours! Not since an hour before coming into the hospital, 10 hours after her water broke, but hospital staff was doggedly insisting that eating was bad. But why? Who told them this? Where did this information come from?
It turns out this information is old. Very old. Nearly 80 years old. Back in the 1946 there was a study done by Curtis Lester Mendelson on cesarean births and anesthesia, and he purported that birthers were aspirating into their lungs during cesarean surgery because they were eating prior to. This was when they were knocking people out with Ether. The methods have drastically changed. General anesthesia in cesarean births occurs in roughly 6% of cesarean births in the US, and none receive Ether. More recently there were a collection of studies done in the UK and the US. In the UK aspiration has occurred in 9 births and 1 death out of 1.5 million pregnancies. The US study of 45 million pregnancies showed that between 1979 and 1990 there were 33 birthers who had died when aspiration occurred during a cesarean with general anesthesia.
In a Cochrane Review article about eating and drinking in labor, the author’s conclusion to the evidence found was stated plainly: …there is no justification for the restriction of fluids and food in labour for women at low risk of complications. No studies looked specifically at women at increased risk of complications, hence there is no evidence to support restrictions in this group of women.
What are your thoughts on eating and drinking as you see fit while laboring?
(Side note: Cathy went on to eat a protein bar while the nurses weren’t around, sucked on some honey sticks, and even had peanut butter with graham crackers. She delivered her beautiful 8lb 14oz baby girl an hour later, both full of energy and life.)
DoulaWise 