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Studying for midterms is painful. Working out at Wooden is painful. Waking up for an 8 a.m. lecture is definitely painful. But we do not suffer in vain – we put up with these things for good reasons. We study and go to class for good grades. We work out to stay healthy. The ends justify the means.

Then there are those things that we suffer through for no good reason. Like a bad relationship. Or an episode of any show on the WB.

And then there’s one very painful but meaningless experience that I must gravely warn every woman to avoid: giving birth without pain medication.

In Genesis, God punishes Eve for her part in original sin by dooming her and her progeny to “bear children with intense pain and suffering.” But because of medical advancements, it doesn’t have to be that bad. The amount of pain – or “abject agony” as professor Traci Mann called it in her health psychology class last spring – has been alleviated by modern medicine. A popular and safe method of pain control during labor is the epidural, a local anesthetic that can numb from the waist down. I can’t imagine why anyone would choose to opt out of it, but there is a peculiar norm in our culture that actually encourages natural birth. Even though pain mitigation is entirely possible, it’s somehow not shocking when women choose to deny that right. While people are getting drugged up for cavity fillings, women of sound mind and body are choosing to rough it through labor without anesthesia. The legacy of Eve lives on.

Ina May Gaskin, former president of the Midwives Alliance of North America, said, “If you cancel out the awareness of the body in labor, you miss a lot of the ecstasy.” Ecstasy? Ever since watching “The Miracle of Life” in sex education and then hearing about my aunt’s thirty-hour delivery, the word “ecstasy” had never crossed my mind.

True, it’s magical when a tiny infant emerges into the world, but that part only happens at the very end and it doesn’t last very long. On the other hand, the many preceding hours can be so painful that they can ironically evoke a death wish, a fact that was pleasantly made evident to me by my mother. So if the process of childbirth is supposed to induce ecstasy, an epidural should only meet that goal while minimizing pain.

One fear of expectant parents is the possibility of pain medications harming their baby. And this should certainly receive attention if it were true. In reality, the medications do not even enter the fetus’ bloodstream. Epidurals are not administered into the mother’s circulatory system, thus its contents do not cross over into the placenta or the baby.

An odd form of sexism may also be involved in the push for natural birth. Several studies have shown that female patients receive significantly less pain medication than men, even when suffering from the same ailments. One study even found that nurses respond to suffering men by administering pain medication, but respond to suffering women by administering sedatives, which induce relaxation but are not an anodyne. Apparently, when women complain of pain, what they really need is a good tranquilizer. These studies reveal that there is a belief that women will whine about the smallest of discomforts while stoic men only speak up when they are truly in pain. When this stereotype carries over into childbirth, the implication is that labor isn’t really that bad. But most women I know who have had children would beg to differ. Many say that giving birth was the most painful experience of their lives.

It’s truly strange that women even have to make a decision between epidural or no epidural. If you had to get surgery, would you ever forgo anesthesia? Would the doctor ask, “So, do you want this to be pain-free or do you want to be completely conscious?”

For any other medical procedure, pain medication is unquestionably acceptable. But in terms of childbirth, all of a sudden it’s “au naturel” time – if a method is unnatural, it’s not ideal. Well, we now do many things that are “unnatural” but have improved the quality of our lives. Like vaccines – not something that occurs in nature, but definitely advantageous.

The idea that women should ever give birth without anesthesia is perplexing because methods are safe, epidurals are effective and ultimately, no one wants to feel pain.

It’s unreasonable to encourage women to suffer willingly through childbirth when it’s completely unnecessary.

I don’t think I’ll ever understand why natural birth is encouraged. But I do know that when it comes time for me to decide between epidural or no epidural, I’ll be saying, “Sign me up!”

If, like Tao, you are not a fan of pain, e-mail her at atao@media.ucla.edu.