I would love to comment more later, but I am at work at the moment, so I'll dash off a quick reply.

Both of our babies were born at home.

It is important to put the "horror stories" you get from your friends into perspective. Stories like "she had a quick labour and then had a baby with no problems" aren't anywhere near as juicy a source of gossip, so you tend not to hear them as often. Also, many of the problems related by your friends may very well have been significantly worsened as a result of them being in hospital. Women who labour and birth in hospital are often left with no choice but to interrupt their labour - they are labouring well at home, then they have to get themselves into the car, drice to the hospital, get out, make their way into the birthing unit - and during this time, the body reacts by desperately trying to slow the labour, because it knows that this is not a safe place to give birth - you are out of your "nest", so to speak.

Once in hospital, your movements are often restricted, you feel out of your depth, and unfortunately, you are expected to conform to some basic "rules" that determine how long you should labour for, and these rules don't necessarily fit all women. If your labour appears to be going longer, the obstetric system requires that it be "enhanced" with methods of induction, such as syntocinon or artificial rupture of membranes. As a result, your labour is artifically stimulated. More stress is placed upon the bodies of the mother and the baby. Some of the pain relieving drugs that you require to cope with this artificially induced labour affect you and the baby as well, making it more difficult to labour. Eventually, both you and the baby get tired, and more itnerventions result. Forecps, episiotomy, and eventually a caeserean section, which delivers a poor exhausted babe.

This is a sad sequence of events but it is unfortunately one that is all too common in the hospital setting. Mother and baby both survive, but they walk away from the experience feeling doubt - doubt in their own bodies and their ability to give birth. And the sad shame of it is, had they stayed at home and had love and support from a partner, or their family, and a trusted midwife, that this "cascade of interventions" would never have taken place; their labour would never have been interrupted, and they would have given birth to a beautiful healthy baby who had not been pummelled with an artifically induced labour, and affected by pain-relieving drugs.

Nature is pretty good at doing the right thing. The vast majority of women can birth their babies perfectly well within the home. Of course, there are no guarantees. Sometimes, in nature, babies are unwell, or there are complications, and hospitals are good for those times. Caesereans save the lives of mothers and babies. Our modern lifestyle, with poor diet and inadequate exercise, also plays a role in causing difficulties during childbirth (like it does with any body function!) But when mother and baby are healthy and the pregnancy is normal, birth really does not belong in the hospital, and traditionally never has.

Iguess what I am saying is, take the "horror stories" with a grain of salt. Ask yourself - if that woman had been labouring at home, with love and support and a trusted midwife, in her own environment, allowed to take whatever position she wanted, allowed to take whatever time she wanted, with a minimum of interference - would that birth really have turned out so badly?