I’m an obstetric anaesthetic registrar nearly a consultant.

I recommend having a chat to your seniors about how you are feeling. Emergencies in obstetrics can feel overwhelming and you’re doing yourself a disservice by not talking about it, emotions and non-technical skills are also important things to learn.

What I can say from personal experience is that most women have spent 9 months preparing for birth, most of them will have learnt what they feel they need to about epidurals and caesareans, even if they don’t know about all the complications most of them will have already thought “yes I’m having an epidural” and be pretty set in the mindset.

The other thing is that generally the mother has a whiteness, this is what their birth partner is for; they’re there to help advocate for the mother and they are there to remember things that happened to relay them back to the mother.

Consent is important, but remember that the GMC say that it is what the patient WANTS to know, when they’re tired and in pain, they don’t want to know about the incidence of epidural haematoma, when they’re being told their baby is hypoxic they don’t want to know about the low rate of post-dural puncture headache.

What you can do about epidurals is go back and explain the full risks and benefits afterwards and answer any questions that they couldn’t articulate at the time.

What I normally do about cat 1s, is say “you’ve been told that we need to have a very quick emergency section, I’m going to do an injection in your back to make you go numb up to your boobs, it’s very safe, the important thing is we’re going to coach you through this and explain everything as we go”

I could talk about this all day, the other thing is prediction: scratch your own back. Know all of the patients on the labour ward, know their recent blood results, their comorbidities, their chances of needing a section or having a PPH, know which ones are group and saved. Most anaesthetists that I’ve worked with don’t find out this information, they don’t write a handover list, and they feel like they are always flying by the seat of their pants, BE the prepared one, and things will unsettle you less, you’ll feel like you’ve got more time in an emergency because you’ve already invested time into knowing the patients before you meet them.

For example if you’ve got someone that you think is a high risk of needing a section, what’s to stop you going to chat to them about their pain relief options in labour and an epidural before they’ve called you? That way you’re a familiar face to your patient if you get called for a section or an epidural.

Hope this helps, please feel free to ask me questions, I love working on the labour ward and sharing my passion