Oh wait, you know what hurts worse? Giving birth.
Sure, there are breathing techniques, mental focusing tricks, and good old-fashioned yelling to try to cope with the pain, but those don't work for everyone. And in those cases, pain relief drugs aren't merely useful; they are the business.
Now, obviously, whatever drug you use can't pose any threat to the baby's health. And the mother needs to stay lucid and responsive to ensure labor proceeds normally. Those two conditions rule out a whole bunch of drugs, including just about anything served in a tumbler with ice. There are more advanced procedures, like epidurals, but those require highly specialized doctors to insert a needle into the spine while their patient thrashes about and screams a hole through time itself.
BruceBlaus/Wiki Commons"AHHH, KEEP GOING! I NEED TO YELL A WARNING TO PAST ME ABOUT REFILLING HER BIRTH CONTROL!"
So basically, epidurals aren't an option in developing countries. And that's where ketamine comes in. That's right, ketamine! Good ol' Special K, the '90s club drug famously sourced from horse tranquilizers. Ketamine was in fact meant to be human surgical anesthesia all along -- it was used extensively during the Vietnam War for anesthetizing wounded soldiers. It was effective, safe, and relatively easy to use, which also makes it super useful during labor in developing countries. Studies have shown that ketamine provides significant, measurable pain relief to women in labor, with no adverse effects to the baby or mother.
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