Pregnancy & Baby 

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Seeing things: Pethidine hallucinations

Pethidine is the only narcotic that midwives are licensed to prescribe. Up to 42 per cent of women are given the drug for pain relief during labour, and report dizziness, loss of control and disorientation as side effects. The Birth Stories community shared another effect that no one was warned about: hallucinations

Elliesparkle: Funny - I've never spoken to anyone else who mentioned Pethidine hallucinations. I hallucinated very badly on Pethidine during my first labour seven years ago.

I was given two full doses (not measured against body weight) which, as I was only nine stone, seemed a little excessive. It didn't help the pain, it just made me forget I was in labour (in fact at one point I thought I was eight years old again on a campsite) and therefore I couldn't understand why I was in such awful pain.

I got quite aggressive, and punched an ambulance man! Worst of all were the flashbacks - I had to change round the whole room I'd been in at the time and couldn't sleep properly for days (not good when you are breastfeeding as well).

The flashbacks were like mini panic attacks. Suffice to say, for my second labour, I refused any drugs in my house and said a rude word to the doctor when he called me in to suggest I got some 'just in case'. That birth was wonderful - and drug free.

Louiserovai: I had a shot of Pethidine and had a hallucination that the ward sister was jumping from bed to bed singing George Michael's 'Let's go outside', which was on the television at the time. I was adamant that this was happening and shouted at her when she came to examine me, asking, to her puzzlement, if she could keep the noise down.

My sister also hallucinated that Noel Edmonds was sitting on the end of her bed, and that the milkman kept coming in to see her. Are we the only ones? Pethidine doesn't seem to do anything for pain relief; I think they only give you it so they can have a laugh at what you come out with.

My mum also says that when she was having me she thought the clock kept coming down off the wall and telling her to hurry up.

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