What are bee sting injections?
Sterile water injections have been in the news again lately. A doctor has written to the BMJ and poo poo’d the evidence surrounding them. Dr Sara Wickham has recently written a blog post and if this is something that interests you then I’d encourage you to give it a read. There is a link at the bottom of the page.
I thought I’d tell you my experience of them. So I first read about them in a book called ‘The Labor Progress Handbook’ by Penny Simpkin and Ruth Ancheta (p281). I was fascinated. I was a student midwife and remember thinking, what an amazingly simple technique that potentially prevents a woman needing an epidural. I was naive! I remember asking about them and being told ‘We don’t do that here!’ That was me told!
Photo of Simkin & Ancheta - Sterile Water Injections.
Forward to 2009, I was a qualified Midwife and had now started working at a new trust. I asked again and was told - They are not in the NICE guidelines - We don’t do them here. So poo poo’d again. A few years later by then the early 2010’s Sterile Water Injections were put into the NICE guidelines and we were all trained to do them as part of our annual update. They were used fairly regularly in the birth centre and I can only assume that they are still practised today. Mostly towards the end of the first stage of labour when a woman is doubting her ability to get through and asking for an epidural. They are another tool in the toolbox that can be suggested to prevent opioid use, or occasionally they were used on delivery suite when an epidural has been requested but the anaesthetist was not going to be available for some time to come. They are a stop gap - some women love them other report that the bee sting pain is distracting.
During the training I had volunteered to try them. I had sciatica at the time and can say that they do in fact sting like crazy (think bee stings) but they work. The pain I was experiencing in my leg disappeared for quite a few hours!
So I do recommend them, although I have no idea whether they are used in trusts local to where I teach hypnobirthing. It is something to ask your midwife and if the answer is no - then you need to be asking why not! The more who ask for these the more likely they are to be incorporated into practice.
Finally, I would encourage you to have a read of Dr Sara Wickham’s Blog post on this topic, she explains so well why there is little evidence and why it actually doesn’t matter. So much of what we do as midwives is passed down the generations. If something works, and costs barely anything, it's quite understandable that there is no written research. The funding to perform the research costs thousands of pounds, no drug company is going to gain benefit from a 50p intervention when a £1000 epidural can be given instead. (figures plucked from the air to give you an idea of the difference)
Simpkin & Ancheta (2005) ‘The Labor Progress Handbook’ 2nd Edition:Blackwell Publishing (Newer version available)
https://www.sarawickham.com/articles-2/sterile-water-injections/
