For those who didn't tear - what position did you birth in?

[Glamourcide]

I didn't tear with DD (4-hr induced labour, VERY intense for a naive first-timer!) and I was sort of half-lying on my back, half-sitting, and using my arms to push my backside off the bed while I was pushing to make sure she was clear of the bed lol... I was worried that she would come out and I'd be sitting on her, kwim lol??

Umm, my biggest tip to prevent tearing would definitely be to take it slow and try to avoid drugs - I put my 'success' in not tearing down to those two things. I used gas at the start, and had pethidine (which did NOTHING to stop the pain, just made me really tired and no way am I going there again if I can help it) and I believe if I'd given in and had an epidural I would have torn because I couldn't feel that 'ring of fire' nad would have just pushed when told to by the midwives. It hurt like the bejeesus as DD was crowning but it let me know my limit, and to hold off until it had eased a little and I had stretched some more, so when I pushed again, there was room to move rather than just squeezing her through that awful burning feeling and tearing.
Don't let anybody rush you - I had one heinous midwife whispering in my ear threats of an episiotomy because I was 'taking too long' - I 'accidentally' kicked her to get her out of my face and went at my own pace. The thing that annoyed me was that I had laboured perfectly fine the whole time, and was only 'slowing down' to give myself that chance to stretch - the monitoring was showing that DD's heartrate was completely fine, she was not in any distress at all, I just needed to slow things down a little to NOT give myself some serious damage. Your body will let you know what's good for you - don't let a stranger tell you they know better.

I'm aiming for a more 'active' labour this time around, hoping to labour spontaneously so that I can move around rather than being confined to the bed hooked up to drips and monitors, and I'd like to try a more gravity-based position to birth in - probably on all fours as I find this quite comfortable when DTD and I imagine it would be a lot less draining on me physically to not be flat on my back or half-sitting, and holding myself up the way I did with DD. But yeah, I'm definitely going to avoid an epidural again so that I can 'feel' where I'm at and stop pushing before my perineum is ready, I'm convinced that was what did the job for me with DD - she had quite a big head for her size (and was 8lb 1oz born, so not tiny by any means).