I had an epidural. I am 33 weeks now with my second pregnancy and I want to avoid the epidural again. DS was posterior and the midwife told me it would be a much "kinder labour" this way. It really was heaven being relieved from the pain.

However.

I was confined to the bed because my legs were numb and I couldn't walk, and also DS was being monitored. I had an anterior lip on my cervix so when I finally got to 10cms I was still waiting for the lip to pull back which took another couple of hours I think. When it was finally time to push, I couldn't feel how hard to push so after 2 hours of pushing DS was yanked out by forceps (I say yanked because they had to pull him all the way out, he was "stuck").

I had a second degree tear and DS has a slight scoliosis in his neck from the birth (not serious but I need to take him to an osteopath fairly regularly to make sure it's all okay). When I tried to get up to have a shower afterwards I passed out before I even sat up properly, so was given a sponge bath on the bed in the delivery room and wheelchaired down to the maternity ward.

DS had to go to the nursery because I wasn't allowed out of bed in case I passed out again so couldn't tend to him if he needed me. I had to call the midwives if I needed to go the toilet in case I passed out again. It was quite a surreal feeling being all by myself in a room, knowing I had just given birth but my baby was down the hall. It just didn't feel real. They brought him in a few hours later and it was so strange, I'd kind of forgotten exactly what he looked like because I'd only seen him for a couple of hours before we had to be separated. (This was late at night, he was born at 10.30pm so I didn't get down to maternity till after 1.00am...so no visitors afterwards and DH had to go home because I had to be put in a proper hospital bed rather than in a private room double bed because I wasn't mobile).

The recovery from the forceps and tearing was awful, I couldn't sit comfortably for a couple of weeks, going to the toilet was incredibly traumatic, and I got constipated, which made it even worse.

The pain would have to be really bad for me to think that it was worth risking going through all that again. I hated being separated from my baby more than anything else.