As a mom-to-be, have you always been afraid of the legendary prenatal pains, especially after TV and movies? In fact, current medical technology has ways to ease your pain and allow you to be a mom with grace. First, let’s start with the contraction pains that scare you. Different professions have different descriptions of contraction pain: about 50% of women in labor feel severe pain that is unbearable; 20% of them feel extremely severe pain, even to the point of “unbearable pain”; this percentage is even as high as 44% of first-time mothers; this kind of pain is of no benefit to the mother and the fetus, except that it helps obstetricians to judge the degree of progress of the labor process. And prenatal pain is not only a physical pain, but also easy to evoke a person’s inner major trauma, is also one of the causes of postpartum depression. Next, let’s talk about what are the options for painless labor. In fact, a more accurate term would be “labor analgesia”, which is the use of various methods to make the labor process less painful. There are many different methods, including whistling, guided labor, and underwater labor. In addition, anesthesia is used. Nowadays, the most commonly used method of “labor pain relief” is epidural block. This is a local anesthetic applied through the spinal canal that prevents the sensory nerves in the uterus from transmitting pain signals to the brain, thus reducing pain (statistically, it can reduce at least 70% of pain, with an analgesic effectiveness rate of 97%). This method can keep the mother awake all the time, it blocks only the local sensory nerves, does not affect the contraction, and does not affect the abdominal muscle strength, which allows the mother to continue to take the initiative to cooperate with the contraction of force when she is awake, and does not affect the time of labor. Moreover, since it is local anesthesia, the amount of anesthetic entering the blood is very small, and it will not affect the fetus. It is the most widely used, effective, safe and effective method. This method allows the mother to stay awake all the time and eat and drink at any time; it reduces the pain of contractions without affecting the contractions or the strength of the abdominal muscles. It can also reduce the oxygen consumption of the mother-to-be and reduce the incidence of intrauterine distress of the baby. The concentration of anesthetics in the umbilical cord blood after delivery is significantly lower than the toxic dose, which can be considered harmless to the baby. Of course, this method requires a professional anesthesiologist to operate. The specific operation is to wait until there is a regular contraction, when the mouth of the uterus opens 2-3 cm (domestic practice), in the lumbar spinal canal epidural cavity into a small catheter, the other end of the catheter and an analgesic pump is connected. The analgesic pump injects a low concentration of local anesthetic drugs and a small dose of analgesic drugs into the spinal canal through this catheter at a preset speed and measurement, and the pain caused by contractions will be relieved to some extent. At present, the safety and effectiveness of intrathecal labor analgesia has been confirmed, only in our country due to the shortage of doctor’s resources, want to have a painless delivery, it is best to plan ahead and make an appointment with an anesthesiologist. With labor analgesia, in fact, smooth labor is not so terrible. Of course, in addition to the above, the psychological preparation of the mother-to-be is even more important. Don’t be intimidated by the heart-breaking birth scenes in TV dramas or the thrilling descriptions of your best friends and girlfriends. Don’t think of labor as a “ghostly” journey, waiting with anxiety and trepidation. Think of it as a natural physiological process, a unique life experience, and welcome your baby with hope.