Research shows opioid painkillers are unlikely to harm breastfed babies – but history shows how often women have had to sacrifice their own health, says historian Agnes Arnold-Foster
Research shows opioid painkillers are unlikely to harm breastfed babies – but history shows how often women have been expected to sacrifice their own healthhas found that women should not be denied opioid painkillers after childbirth as the drugs are unlikely to harm breastfed babies. This is a welcome step for new parents who are all too often left to deal with painful recovery from childbirth without adequate relief.
But it also highlights a much larger problem. As an historian of women’s health, and someone who is currently pregnant and dealing with severe back pain, it is clear that pain during pregnancy,At 12 weeks pregnant, just when I was supposed to be transitioning from the sickness of the first trimester into the relative calm of the second, I woke up one morning with excruciating back pain.
From discussions with other women, it is clear that my experiences are neither unique nor extreme. I’ve heard countless stories of pregnant people housebound for weeks with debilitating pain, offered little more than group or 30-minute online physiotherapy sessions. Much of this is likely down to an overstretched health service, but there is also a pervasive attitude that pain in pregnancy and childbirth is “natural” or “normal”.
The routine diminishing of pain in pregnancy and childbirth has a long history. For centuries, reproduction was seen as woman’s divine and natural purpose. As the theologian Martin Luther said in the 16th century: “If women become tired, even die, it does not matter. Let them die in childbirth. That’s what they are there for.” In the 1910s and 20s, thehinged on the radical notion that women should be given the right to give birth without pain.
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