In today's podcast, we're going to talk about the effects of epidurals on breastfeeding.

Welcome to the Evidence-Based Birth Podcast.

Join us each week as I tackle the evidence on another. evidence

on another hot topic about childbirth.

As a reminder, this information is not medical advice.

See Eviebirth.

com slash disclaimer for more details.

Hi everyone, my name's

Rebecca Decker and I'm a nurse with my PhD and the founder of

evidence-based birth. Welcome to today's podcast where we're going to talk about

whether or not epidurals have an effect on breastfeeding. We've already done an overview of pain management during labor and an

overview of the pros and cons of breastfeeding. But I wanted to go a little bit

deeper into two topics that have been really hot recently about epidurals and that is the effects

of epidurals on breastfeeding and also the effects on the second stage of labor.

So we're going to focus on breastfeeding this week and then in a future episode we'll talk about

epidurals in the second stage. A lot of people have reached out to me and told

me that they have concerns about recommending the use of epidurals or

spinals or combined spinal

epiderals during labor because they're worried that perhaps the

medications in the epidural might affect their breastfeeding relationship

with the newborn. It is true that the medications in the epidural can cross the

placenta and get into the newborn circulation. These medications have

...