Women are shown frightening birth videos in hospitals - one of my newer clients said to me she walked out thinking seriously about a c/s and didnt want a VB.
Seriously common Kelly - i think part of the problem is that they show a video of a vaginal birth BEFORE they explain what the different phases are and so on. Imagine if you went to sex ed and the FIRST thing they showed you was some heavy pornography!? YUK - i'm sure i was sometimes noisy, sometimes quite, and even though it might have LOOKED like i was not coping, i WAS, and my midwives could tell i was too. People who have never seen birth need to be shown the process gently, not confronted with it. One of the most striking things one of the women i met at toddler group said to me (i skipped my "classes" as their entire homebirth education was the sentence "some women choose to have their baby at home" and that was it, and i didn't see the point of hanging around for 8 weeks to hear about all the interventions and drugs i couldn't have) was "the c-section video was really nice - everyone was so quiet and peaceful and then you just heard the baby, with the vaginal there was so much yelling "push" and the woman yelling!" - NO WONDER women THINK c-sections are a better way!

Bx