I researched it myself, before going into labor, and by god, no one was coming anywhere near me with that needle!

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When I was expecting my first baby, I wanted to go all natural. For all the reasons pro-natural people have expressed here, too - less complications, better for the baby, pain is normal, how bad can it be?, yadda yadda. Also, I'm good at dealing with pain. I've given myself a piercing. Suffered silently with a crushed elbow for hours. When my husband accidentally slammed the car door shut with my flattened thumb between it, I just very quietly asked him if he could open it and set me free, please. I was a badass.

About 24 hours after my water had broken and 19 hours of active labour - with no progress at all for the last 6 of them - my midwives *asked* me to take the epidural. I was so out of it with pain, so exhausted, so at the end of my line that I had even forgotten it was possible - there were simply no thoughts left in my mind. (It took another hour of excruciating agony for the anesthesiologist to get there.)

After the epidural hit me, I immediately fell asleep. When I woke up the pain hadn't returned, and I started to weep thinking it would come back. The good thing about the epidural was that it relaxed my body so that the cervix finally opened - yes, it can sometimes speed things up like that. And it wore out just in time for the pushing part. And you know what? *That* was the worst pain of my life. Exactly how you'd expect to feel if your vagina was slowly ripped in two for about 20 minutes. No, I haven't forgotten.

I had a beautiful little girl. And an utter, devastating feeling of failure.

I'm long over it now, but it still stings to read the pro-natural comments. And in a primitive setting, I would've probably become one of those women who die of exhaustion during days and nights of childbirth, with the baby still in their belly.

Second time around, I was in a country where they give you an epidural, no questions asked (which was the only reason I even dared to try). They hand you a remote control and you can adjust the amount yourself. I maxed out.

Good thing too, because my baby got stuck. My pelvic bones were too narrow (and she wasn't even big). She needed resuscitation after the doctors finally somehow wriggled her out of there (the emergency cesarean team had been assembling already), and I was told that next time around, unless the baby is really tiny, I should get a scheduled C-section.

She's 4 now, and these days I can say it aloud without shame (albeit with a twinge of sadness): I'm bad at giving birth. Full stop. And in a Third World country I'd probably be a maternal mortality figure.

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And the thing is I did read everything. I researched thoroughly. I was pretty keen on a natural birth but didn't rule out epidural if I changed my mind. I went to the classes and I had a doctor who was pro vaginal birth in the hospital in Manhattan with the lowest c-section rate in the five boroughs. And I still ended up with a 32 hour labour, concerns that my daughter was going into distress and ultimately an emergency c-section.

And to be honest i don't regret that because the moment i held my daughter which was no more than 30 minutes after the whole thing was still wonderful and still made me cry and laugh and everything that had gone before didn't matter.

There isn't one way to give, there's simply the way you give birth and the sooner people stop thinking that their way trumps everyone else's the better in my personal opinion.

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You move on.

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That said, I didn't attend any Lamaze or hypnobirthing courses. I just managed to not be afraid of the whole process, embraced the fact that it would be painful, and took solace in the idea that I could choose the drugs at any time. I don't think any reasonable woman planning a natural birth thinks there is any chance it will be pain-free. And the study's results don't surprise me. Some labors and contractions are much worse than others, and the women who have it bad are usually going to choose drugs, no matter what kind of classes they took beforehand.

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But sometimes it can't be avoided, and I don't think using or not using drugs makes you a bad/good mom. Just as long as you get a safe and healthy baby, do what you have to do.

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Is our Dutch poster back from her banning? I wrote a paper awhile ago about pre and post natal care in different countries and I think epidurals are pretty much unheard of in the Netherlands. Most mothers give birth in birthing centers and are home in a couple of hours, but I didn't get the impression that this was something Dutch women had a problem with.

And for the Brits, isn't their a standard pre-birth class. The NCT women says prental ed is limited, which isn't what I remember from the aforementioned paper.

A lot of how we view childbirth is cultural. Even in the developed world, how it is handled varies a lot.

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