Janie - I reckon there is a lot of truth to what you said about circumstances being different. Strangely though, the opposite happened with my mum and I! My mum was 20 when she had her first bub (my bro) 38 years ago. She went to hospital at night and they put her on a bed, shut her in a room by herself with some gas and turned the lights off! She was absolutely terrified. She still managed to have my brother in a total of 4 hours labour. I had my first DS in the same hospital as mum had hers, but I had mum and DH as support and only used gas. My whole labour was still 37 hours! It's sooo not fair LOL!