Abstract: Labor pain, a complicated physiological and psychological activity during childbirth, contributes negative impact to labor, as its severe pain and long duration. This problem can be solved by several methods of labor analgesia, including pharmacological analgesia and non-pharmacological analgesia, which is going to reduce the pain during childbirth or even make it disappeared. Mostly, pharmacological analgesia is depended on using anaesthetic, analgesic and sedative, while non-pharmacological analgesia, the research hotspots of labor analgesia, relieves pains by psychological support, physical therapy and so forth. The ideal labor analgesia should effectively relieve the pains of the maternal and ensure the safety of maternal and infant. This paper summarizes the mechanism of labor pain and its impact on labor, the usual methods of labor analgesia and their features, so that we can grasp the characteristics of labor analgesia and then explore the method that not only effective but also easily accepted.

Key words: Parturition, Pain, Mechanism, Analgesia