The Use of Morphine and Scopolamine to Induce Twilight Sleep
In 1907, researchers Bernhardt Kronig and Carl Gauss combined the drugs morphine and scopolamine to induce twilight sleep in women during childbirth. Physicians in the early twentieth century in Germany used twilight sleep,
Dammerschlaf, to cause women to enter a state of consciousness in which they felt no pain and did not remember giving birth. Twilight sleep was associated with increased use of forceps during delivery, prolonged labor, and increased risk of infant suffocation. Because of those disadvantages, physicians stopped using morphine and scopolamine to prevent pain during childbirth. Morphine and scopolamine were among the first anesthetics to be used during childbirth, and after physicians stopped using them, researchers searched for safer alternatives.
40 Weeks (2014)
In 2014, Big Belli, a media and social networking brand, released a documentary called
40 Weeks online. The documentary, directed by Christopher Henze, follows multiple women during their pregnancies. The film predominantly features three women, though it includes the stories of many. Throughout the film, women detail their accounts of physical and emotional changes that occurred during their pregnancies.
40 Weeks provides viewers with information about different aspects of
pregnancy including the importance of nutrition and hydration, knowledge about safe medications, and the possible complications that can affect a pregnant woman and her
fetus.
Twilight
Sleep
Twilight Sleep (
Dammerschlaf) was a form of
childbirth first used in the early twentieth century in Germany in
which drugs caused women in labor to enter a state of sleep prior to
giving birth and awake from childbirth with no recollection of the
procedure. Prior to the early twentieth century, childbirth was
performed at home and women did not have anesthetics to alleviate
the pain of childbirth. In 1906, obstetricians Bernhardt Kronig and
Karl Gauss developed the twilight sleep method to relieve
the pain of childbirth using a combination of the drugs scopolamine
and morphine. Twilight sleep contributed to changing childbirth from
an at home process to a hospital procedure and increased the use of
anesthetics in obstetrics.
