Epidural side effects, including the one that affects your baby
Fever, and the newborn tests that follow it.
Expect low blood pressure, heavy legs, itching, shivering, difficulty emptying your bladder, a longer second stage, and more use of oxytocin. Compared with intravenous opioids, an epidural causes less nausea and less breathing depression in the baby.
The one that surprises people is fever. In a study of 1,657 first-time mothers who had no fever on admission, fever above 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit occurred in 14.5% of women with an epidural and 1.0% without. The longer the labor the higher the rate: 7% for labors under 6 hours, 36% for labors over 18 hours.
The consequence falls on the newborn. Sepsis evaluation was performed in 34.0% of babies in the epidural group against 9.8% without, and antibiotics were given to 15.4% against 3.8%.