Bed rest and thoughts about pain relief

So…this bed rest thing is going great..I had no idea how hard it is to do nothing. Mostly I´d been a really good girl staying in bed. I might of help a few people ride my horse, given a few horsemanship lessons, went for a few short walks, baked a little bit, done some laundry and cleaning…but mostly I stayed in bed. I can´t remember that I ever spent this much time in bed. I try to read and do some knitting. Time goes pretty slowly.

I don´t want to complain, I much rather spent this time at home than on the hospital. I have contractions every 5-7min and had it since Monday night; sometimes they are every 4min, right now every 6min. They are getting a little bit stronger all the time but not strong enough that I want to go to the hospital. When I had my son seven years ago I had these kind of contractions for 2-3 days before the awfully painful begun. After my water broke the last time (the painful contractions already begun before that) it took 76 hours before he finally arrived. I´d much rather spend as much time as possible at home. I don´t really like hospitals.

The only reason why I choose to give birth there and not at home is that it´s possible to be released from your pain if you feel that you need too. With my son I had Nitrous Oxide from hour 50-70. I found it very effective. I didn´t have to wear the mask all the time. I walked around and when I needed a little break from the pain I just breathed in the mask a few times, release was instant and I could keep moving around.  I would love to have that again but it´s not an option here, unfortunately. There is no space to move around in the room either. The rooms are tiny here. I asked if I was going to be allowed to walk outside the room and they said sometimes that´s OK!

http://www.pregnancy.com.au/resources/topics-of-interest/labour-and-birth/nitrous-oxide-for-pain-relief-in-labour.shtml

I´m pretty sure that I could have gone through the whole labor/delivery with only Nitrous Oxide the last time if it only been a little shorter. I was so tired after being awake for 3 days and 3 nights in the end. After 70 hours I asked for epidural, I was SO tired. I can´t imagine having a labor that long without eating, luckily this was in Sweden and you´re allowed to eat and drink. Here I´m not, so I´m just hoping for a shorter time at the hospital, that´s partly why I didn´t wanted to stay on Monday when I was there. I mean they can´t let you be without food for that long, which means that they have to speed up labor. Sometimes that might be necessary but if not I´d rather avoid all the extra fetal monitoring that would be necessary doing that. I read several studies showing that frequent fetal monitoring can stress the baby and more often leads to C-sections or mechanical (the use of forceps or vacuum) assisted birth. If my baby´s in stress or not feeling good I would agree to anything but otherwise I prefer to have as little interference as possible.

http://pregnancy.about.com/cs/laborbasics/a/eatinginlabor.htm