http://www.birthpsychology.com/healing/historical.html Please read this article that I found while doing some research for a paper for school. It is appalling to think that for years, these poor fresh little humans withstood all of this trauma and pain, and only because the medical profession was too ignorant to accept what any parent could tell you: infants do feel pain! most of it made me cry, just thinking of those tiny little humans being poked at and operated on without anesthesia. (i hope this link came through) --sweetpeace
Jill Lawson reported that her premature baby, Jeffrey, had holes cut in both sides of his neck, another in his right chest, an incision from his breastbone around to his backbone, his ribs pried apart, and an extra artery near his heart tied off. Another hole was cut in his left side for a chest tube--all of this while awake, paralyzed, and feeling intense pain and terror! The anesthesiologist who assisted explained, "It has never been shown that premature babies have pain" The operation Mrs. Lawson was describing is the most common surgery done on premature babies, thoracotomy for ligation of patent ductus arteriosus (PDA). That's terrible. Awful, I cannot believe they would do that. The entire page upset me, this is a fucking person, not some inanimate piece of cardboard.
Okay, I'm about crying right now. This is so horrible. What is the matter with some people?! Poor sweet little babies! Much peace.
I was one of those kids and had a lot of stuff done right around my first year without anesthesia. I had a college roommate with the same kind of medical history. One night he fell asleep on the couch. He woke up freaked out from a dream. When he described the dreams he described the exact same dream I had had off and on for my entire life. I can rememeber waking up at five or six or so with it, rarely have it now though. Its really disjointed and hard to grasp but there are faces in green masks over me, funny lights, a feeling like I know something is going to hurt me but I am frozen and can't move or speak or even scream, and this really powerfully overwhelming sense of fear. I used to wake up crying from them. My parents I think knew what they were but sort of 'its just a dream"ed them. My roomie and I talked about them though, and between the two of us we figured out where they had come from. It was a freaky evening. Brought up a lot of stuff our minds had sort of blocked. Part of the rationale behind surgery on premies unanesthetised was that the medical establishment didn't know what was safe for an infant of questionable medical status. Medical science has done barbaric stuff since it was invented. But it also saves lives (They did lots of experimental procedures on those babies too, figuring they were going to die anyhow so lets learn something) It was wrong but maybe it did save some lives later on. Luckily they don't do that kind of thing anymore. There was an article in Time magazine a while ago about some other effects of unanestitized surgery on infants and studies done on those babies. They tend to have an uncommon sense of hot and cold (I love scalding showers), almost unsafe levels of pain tolerance (I bump myself a lot and don't notice, labor was a piece of cake.) I consider my pain tolerance one of the good side effects of earlier stuff. Can't blame the docs too much though, if I had been norn 100 years ago I wouldn't be here. Anesthesia or not the saved my life and I'm just fine today. H
A female in one of my classes STILL thinks that newborns don't feel pain...she said it was a "scientific fact". She uses that "fact" to justify her son being circumcized with no anethesia.
Let me tell you, when they put my two year old's elbow back in place the other night, he felt pain. From his screams, lots and lots of pain. They gave him motrin. I don't think they would do that to an adult without anything stronger. Kathi
It is weird that many of these "babies don't feel pain" advocates are also antichoice. I knew a few years ago. Never failed. What sense does that make?
