I wanted to know because it was important to me to have an idea of how I was going because I wanted to know if I would need to step up the pain relief - eg. I was having gas, and was starting to think about other pain relief options, mw gave me an ie and I had progressed so I thought I could hang on with just the gas. If the news had been different maybe I would have asked for stronger pain relief. Also when I wanted to push obviously I needed to know where I was at so I knew whether to go for it or not. so yeah I think it can be useful but it is no doubt disheartening if you aren't as far along as you had hoped.