An exploration of the benefits and drawbacks of intrapartum pain management strategies

‘Labour pain is not associated with pathology but with the most basic and fundamental of life's experiences’ (Lowe, 2002: 16).

An integral part of the labour process, pain poses challenges to both women and midwives despite the position of normality it holds in the maternity context. Pain is most commonly defined as ‘an unpleasant sensory and/or emotional experience associated with perceived or actual tissue damage’ (International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP), 2014). Because of the subjectivity, perception variations and phenomenological nature of labour pain, it may be useful to employ McCaffery's consideration that within the context of nursing sciences pain is ‘whatever the experiencing person says it is, existing whenever he or she says it does’ (1979: 11). Labour is arguably one of the only contexts in which pain is a normal, physiological process, rather than pathological in nature; nevertheless it challenges women emotionally, psychologically and physiologically. It is the midwife's role to support and enable women to make their individual choice for passage through the terrain of pain management options. The exploration of advantages and disadvantages of pain management strategies in labour is often perceived from the pharmacological perspective. However, in order to facilitate womancentred care, midwives must work in a holistic rather than institutionalised manner, appreciating the diversity of the women in their care. This demands a wider perception and contemplation of the benefits and drawbacks of pain management; considering each woman's psychospiritual and physiological clinical picture, birth location and environment, and the impact that each strategy can have on the individual experience.