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Janet St. James reports.

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Should women in labor be allowed to eat?

A new study might change the rules of labor.

Eight hours into labor, Ramonya Anderson is fighting through more than childbirth pain.

"I'm starving. I want a strawberry popsicle so bad."

But she can't have a snack, until after she has the baby.

That's a common practice at Texas Health Dallas, and other hospitals, for a reason.

"There's a chance that that food or acid could come back up the esophagus and be inhaled in her lungs. If that were to happen, she could get a pneumonia which could be a very dangerous situation for her," said Dr. Hampton Richards.

But a new study in the British Medical Journal finds allowing women to eat during labor doesn't make much difference.

The length of the labor and emergency C-section rates are about the same.

"I don't know at this point it would push me to encourage patients to start eating cheeseburgers in labor. But I think that's a conversation we could have individually with patients," said Richards.

And, as Anderson points out, that being deprived of a strawberry popsicle probably isn't the last sacrifice she'll make for her child.

"There will be plenty more to come, so I'm glad to do it," she said.