Fenella, good on you hon! Great stuff for wanting to birth your baby without drugs.

I strongly recommend you do some reading to help give you more confidence about your body's ability to birth normally, as stress and tension will only slow down labour and that drug free / intervention free birth you want can quickly go out the window in hospitals.

Active Birth by Janet Balaskas is awesome to read. If you can grab a copy, it's well worth the read and it will change the way you look at birth. There are some great things to know that we aren't told, for example, a squatting position in second stage (pushing) can give your pelvis 28% more space - being on the bed reclining / semi reclining is the worst position for pain and space!

There are some great articles on the main site here: https://www.bellybelly.com.au/birth - read a few of those ones:

Pain in Labour - Your Hormones Are Your Helpers

Mission: Natural Birth

These are great starters. Learning how amazing your body is to help you cope with labour is just awesome, as well as the hormones that do so much work. But once you become stressed, your body starts producing adrenalin, this is what slows the production of oxytocin (which you need for labour to progress) and endorphins (to help with the pain). This is actually a survival mechanism, having adrenalin do this in a time of stress, as once upon a time if a labouring woman was in danger, the adrenalin would stop the birth of the baby right then and there until she was able to find a safe place to birth.

Find some great support people, those who wont panic when you are having moments of crisis and encourage you to give baby the gift of a drug free birth. Have you thought about finding a professional support person?

Remember: You CAN do it And you'll find afterwards you'll feel like you can conquer Everest and it will all be worth it. Oh - and you'll forget the pain in five minutes with that babe in your arms