For women who want a drug-free labor, this could be a big help.
There’s a new option on the table for women who want to deliver their babies without epidurals or other medications: virtual reality.
Lorna Massov, a Victoria University of Wellington PhD student from the School of Nursing, Midwifery, and Health Practice in New Zealand, is researching how virtual reality technology can help women in labor to manage their pain. "There are many other methods used to help with drug-free labor, and I thought virtual reality would fit in well with this suite of techniques as it has previously been used for pain management in other areas,” she said in anpublished by the Victoria University of Wellington. "Labor can be long, and you can get tired of using the same pain management techniques.
For her study, she recruited a group of pregnant women and had them use a VR headset to get comfortable with it. They then wore it during both the early and active stages of labor for 10-minute intervals. Massov had them assess their pain levels as well as measured their pulse and blood pressure, which are indicators of stress on the body.
The results? Many women reported that the VR experience helped them have a positive birth experience. While it didn’t reduce the actual pain, it was successful in distracting them from it, which ultimately helped them manage the pain. The most popular VR experiences were nature and underwater scenes, but the women said that most of the scenes that were available to them were too short, especially considering how long a labor can go.
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