Mum makes history by using greener gas and air during childbirth

Kaja Gersinska and her daughter Rosie Martha O’Sullivan (Picture: PA)

A new mother has become the first person in the UK to use climate-friendly pain relief while giving birth.

Entonox — a mixture of nitrous oxide and oxygen and better known as gas and air — has been used to provide pain relief during labour for more than a century.

But nitrous oxide is a powerful greenhouse gas, almost 300 times more potent than carbon dioxide, and escapes into the atmosphere after being exhaled.

Now, Kaja Gersinska has used a new device, known as a Mobile Destruction Unit (MDU), which ‘cracks’ exhaled nitrous oxide into harmless nitrogen and oxygen.

She used the MDU while giving birth to Rosie Martha O’Sullivan, weighing 6llb 6oz, at the Newcastle Birthing Centre on September 9.

Afterwards, Ms Gersinska said: ‘I didn’t expect this when I came here today — I just came to have my baby — but I started on the traditional machine and then swapped over.

‘It was quieter and much more comfortable to hold — it’s nice to make a little bit of history.’

Kaja became the first mother in the country to use a greener form of pain relief during labour (Picture: PA)

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As well as being greener, the technology — which was developed by research and development company Medclair — benefits staff by reducing the amount of nitrous oxide they are exposed to while they work.

Chris Allen, sustainable anaesthesia fellow at Newcastle Hospitals, said: ‘Rolling this technology out across our maternity unit can help us to continue to support women to use gas and air during labour, whilst making it as environmentally friendly as possible.’

Rosie, who was delivered by midwife Lindsay Craney, is Ms Gersinska and Craig O’Sullivan’s second child. They already have a two-year-old daughter, Cassie.

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