Questions & Answers

This is my first pregnancy and I am planning a natural birth as well. I think it has a lot to do with how much planning you do ahead of time, I want to take a class in natural childbirth where through various techniques they teach you to manage the pain. But I am just shy of 6 weeks so who knows what could happen in between now and then but that is what I have always wanted to do since hearing my mom talking about giving birth to my brother (with epidural) versus me (natural) and how she felt so much better with me and was up and walking right away and breastfeeding was easier.

You cannot 'plan' labour, until you truly understand how painful it is. Yes you should educate yourself beforehand as much as possible and be aware that women's bodies are designed to give birth and capable of being really strong.
But, problems arise when you have set expectations of a 'natural' labour and things that will or won't happen because you can put too much pressure on yourself to be perfect, and feel like a failure when it goes 'wrong'. I know from my first labour I was taken by huge surprise by just how different it was to how I'd imagined, and ended up having an epidural, gas, episiotomy and an assisted delivery, after 27 hours of labour. Not what I planned and I felt such a failure I had to have counselling after.