A recent findings by the researchers in Sidney have postulated that women who go in for epidurals to avoid labor pain, develop a greater chance of problems in the first week after birth and may be more likely to stop breastfeeding earlier than usual.
They also discovered that chemicals like bupivacaine and fentanyl, which are present in the epidurals, might reach the unborn via bloodstreams into the placenta and can affect the unborn infants’ brains and make them over sleepy and less disposed towards breast-feeding.
93% of the women who were studied breastfed their babies in the first week but 75% of those who had no analgesia was still breast-feeding at six months whereas only 53% of those who had received epidurals were.
