The advantage of an epidural is excellent pain relief that does not make you sleepy. Labor pain is not constant, it comes and goes, and an amount of IV medicine that is strong enough to relieve your pain during contractions is going to oversedate you in between contractions.

The major side effects are immediate low blood pressure which can affect the blood flow to the uterus (and baby), failure to work, and about a 1/2 to 1% chance of a spinal headache if the needle goes in too far and punctures the dura, allowing leakage of spinal fluid.

Nobody can tell you what you should do in this regard, because everybody has a different pain threshhold.

Be very careful of those who will tell you that they had multiple deliveries and it was not so bad, and that they did not need epidurals. They are not you! I have actually had women crying because they felt like "failures" when they got their epidural, because someone told them that they should not get one and that they didn't need one.