Many mothers-to-be don’t know much about anesthesia during labor, especially those who know in advance that they need to have a cesarean section, because they are apprehensive about it because they know that anesthesia must be administered before the operation, so they are eager to know something about anesthesia during labor. Cesarean delivery is the process of delivering the baby and its appendages by cutting open the mother’s abdominal wall and the uterine wall with a knife. In recent years, advances in anesthesiology, blood and fluid transfusions, knowledge of hydropower balance, as well as improvements in surgical methods, surgical suture materials and infection control measures have made this surgically assisted delivery shorter and shorter, safer and less painful, and the stab marks more and more invisible. During a cesarean section, the mother can greatly reduce the pain when she is injected with anesthesia, which is a good thing for her. However, this is not necessarily true for the baby, and in severe cases, it can even endanger the baby’s life. Anesthesia is a human being’s thirst to find a solution to pain caused by various injuries and surgeries. The meaning of anesthesia is that the doctor uses drugs or other methods to make the patient temporarily lose sensation overall or locally for the purpose of pain-free surgical treatment. Therefore, it is not possible to reduce pain during cesarean delivery without the help of anesthesia, and cesarean delivery and anesthesia are closely linked. Cesarean delivery cannot be performed without anesthesia, and good anesthesia cannot be performed without the cooperation of the mother-to-be. Many mothers-to-be have little knowledge of the requirements of cesarean surgery and anesthesia, and often fail to cooperate well with the doctor before, during and after the surgery, thus causing many problems that should not occur and affecting the mother and baby in some way. The resulting surgical complications also increase accordingly. Therefore, the mother-to-be should be well informed about cesarean delivery and anesthesia before the surgery and actively cooperate with the doctor so that the doctor can make the surgery perfect. Effects of anesthesia on the fetal baby Almost all anesthetics and analgesics have inhibitory effects on the central system and are more likely to pass through the placental barrier and enter the fetus. An important role of the placenta is to act as the lungs of the fetus, which carries out the exchange of gases. However, the actual gas exchange is only 1/150th as efficient as that of the lungs. oxygen delivered by maternal blood has to pass through the intervillous space of the placenta into the fetal circulation, and carbon dioxide from fetal blood has to enter the maternal circulation by diffusion. Anesthetic drugs can affect the fetus in two ways: directly by suppressing the fetal respiratory and circulatory centers, or indirectly by suppressing the maternal respiratory circulation. An overdose of anesthetic drugs or hypoxemia due to respiratory depression in the mother during surgery can affect the baby’s oxygen supply and metabolic waste elimination, which directly threatens the baby’s life. Therefore, when choosing anesthesia for cesarean delivery, doctors must carefully consider the type, dosage, timing and method of medication to prevent direct or indirect adverse effects on the fetus. Why anesthesia can make the mother feel no pain The surgery produces pain, which will not only bring great pain to the mother-to-be, but also cause adverse effects on the central nervous, circulatory, respiratory, endocrine, digestive and autonomic systems, directly threatening the safety of the mother and baby. Therefore, stopping the pain is the key to ensuring the success of the procedure. Why does anesthesia make it possible for a mother undergoing surgery to feel no pain? This is because the signal to perceive pain needs to rely on nerve fibers to transmit the news of trauma to certain areas to the brain before the mother-to-be can perceive the pain. Therefore, the anesthesiologist only needs to numb the peripheral sensory and transmission nerve fibers in the area ready to undergo surgery with anesthetics so that it temporarily loses its role in transmitting pain signals, so that the mother-to-be will not feel pain when the surgery is performed in a certain area, and this is the basic principle of anesthesia. Differences between anesthesia for cesarean delivery and other surgical procedures In many surgeries, the requirements for the type of anesthesia are not high, as long as the patient does not feel any pain. However, the requirements for anesthesia for a cesarean section are particularly demanding, which is determined by the physiology of the mother-to-be’s pregnancy. As we all know, the baby in the womb does not breathe by itself, and all the oxygen needed by the fetal baby is inhaled by the mother herself and passed through the placenta before being used by the baby, and any inappropriate anesthesia or overdose of anesthetic drugs may affect this process and endanger the life of the baby. Therefore, the requirements of anesthesia for cesarean section are: 1. perfect analgesia and satisfactory muscle relaxation during surgery; 2. ensure the safety of the mother; 3. minimal inhibition of the baby; 4. cautious use of drugs that affect uterine contraction.