 Hi, I am Professor Madhusudan Upadhyaya, a professor of anesthesiology, Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore. We all know that the women folk who deliver are doing one of the noblest jobs in life, procreation. And we also believe in anesthesia that every mother has to have a painless labor because she deserves the best. When she is procreating for the society, she also deserves the best. We have devised a lot of techniques to make the birth of a baby comfortable for the mother and pain-free for the mother. That is when we have devised a lot of techniques. We have drugs to be used and we have nerve blocks to be used and the gold standard today is the epidural analgesia. Everybody must be wondering what is this epidural analgesia? It's nothing but we push in a small tube into the back, into the epidural space which is just outside where the nerve roots are. And we push in local anesthetics or some narcotics, some additives to make the limbs and the abdomen or the tummy numb and the mother goes pain-free. The entire process of labor however long it is can be made pain-free by just keeping on pushing local anesthetics into the epidural space. You might ask me whether it has complications? It has but the complications are so rare when the mother is given the best of the facilities to enjoy the childbirth, the complications don't affect much. And each of the complications can be handled by a professional to a large extent without causing any harm to the mother or the baby who is going to see the earth. Therefore the advice basically is maybe the mythology myth says it's a myth basically saying that the mother has to suffer from pain. But mind you the pain the lady has to go through is akin to cutting a finger off someone. That pain is so severe and the childbirth is not so comfortable. Therefore we make it absolutely comfortable and the happy ending would be when you have a child on the mother's chest and the mother is pain-free and happy and contented.