Interesting article from The Mail Online about a new 10-year study of more than 435,000 British women and their children.
Having an epidural during childbirth does not harm children’s development, the study has found.
Almost a third of women who give birth in the UK opt for an epidural, which makes labour less painful by stopping pain signals travelling from the spine to the brain.
Some experts have suggested using a local anaesthetic to do this may have an effect on the developing brain of a baby.
The ten-year study, which was carried out in Scotland, found that babies whose mothers who took the injection of anaesthetic spent no extra days in hospital and had no more operations than other children in the following two years.