Afraid of labour pain during first childbirth? Well, glucose can definitely help you

Researchers have found that giving glucose supplements to women during childbirth, especially during first childbirth, can help a lot by decreasing the labour time.

A prolonged labour, or a difficulty to progress, is a labour in which it takes more than 20 hours for the first-time mothers to deliver the baby and 14 hours for mothers who have given birth before.

A prolonged labour is not only called by the name just because of its duration, but also when a cervical dilation takes place at less than one centimetre per hour. Well a prolonged labour is harmful both to maternal and foetal health.

According to the study, as it is known that glucose supplementation improves muscle performance, adding glucose to intravenous hydration solution that is given to women during childbirth, could actually accelerate labour.

“Glucose supplementation significantly reduces the total length of labour without increasing the rate of complication. This is great news for women experiencing induced labour,” said Josianne Pare from the University of Sherbrooke in Quebec, Canada.

For the study, 200 pregnant women were randomly assigned to receive either a standard hydration solution containing salt and water or a solution containing glucose, salt and water.

The median duration of labour was found to be 76 minutes shorter in the results in group of women who recieved glucose.

However, “there was no difference in the mode of delivery -- caesarean section, forceps, etc. -- or the neonatal well-being measures,” Pare said.

Thus, being a low-cost and safe intervention, glucose should be the solute of choice during labour, the researchers recommended.

The findings will be presented at the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine’s annual meeting, in Quebec.