INCREASING numbers of Scottish mothers-to-be are choosing to have an epidural when giving birth – despite NHS efforts to encourage women to have natural labours.
Epidurals – an anaesthetic injection into the spine – cost the NHS around £200 a time and for many women the prospect of giving birth without one is unthinkable.
Celebrity mothers Katie Holmes, Kate Winslet and Helen Bonham-Carter all opted for the medical procedure, which leaves the mother numb from the waist down. But as well as being expensive, health experts warn an epidural can slow down a mother's recovery after labour, cause problems with breastfeeding and lead to further medical complications.
Advice, drawn up by the Scottish Government in 2009, urged midwives to encourage women to have natural labours with as little medical help as possible.
But despite health chiefs' calls, official figures from Scotland's four biggest health boards, including Glasgow and Lothian, showed rates of epidurals have actually increased.
NHS Lothian was only able to give figures from 2009 to 2011. The number of women who had an epidural rose from 22% to 26% in just over two years. NHS Glasgow figures show a rise from 44% in 2002 to 48% in 2012.
However, another major Scottish health board, NHS Fife, which heavily promotes natural childbirth, actually bucked the trend, with figures falling from 31% in 2004 to 13% in 2011.
Dr Vicki Clark, consultant anaesthetist at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, warned that epidurals, like all medical procedures, carried risks.
"With an epidural there is a risk that the woman's blood pressure may fall, there is an increased risk of forceps delivery and one in every 10,000 to 20,000 woman will have temporary nerve damage," she said.
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