I had an epi for Charlie's birth but didn't for my other three kids. I agreed to an epi this time because he was in distress and they wanted to turn the drip up as high as possible to get him out quick, were monitoring him constantly and I couldn't move around as a result. But the epi made my blood pressure drop and many times, I came close to passing out. It gave me the shakes (common side effect) and it wore off while I was going to the loo so had a few full-on contractions at transition stage, which made me shake like a leaf and made me feel out of control. I also was 10 cm dilated half an hour before I started to push simply because I couldn't feel the urge to push, and when it wore off, it wore off only on one side, so had excrutiating pain on the left but nothing on the right.

I was a nervous ex-LTer who had tried so long to have my baby that I agreed to constant monitoring out of sheer fear that something was going wrong, but in retrospect, I would have preferred to have been able to move around, manage my labour actively, and not have the epi at all. Hell, I can manage the pain - and have done before - but start to pass out or get the shakes uncontrollably was pretty awful.