Hi Noni e,

I well-remember the negative naysayers of my pregnancy! We homebirthed and faced everything from "you don't know what you're letting yourself in for" to "people like you are sick, you shouldn't be allowed to have babies, they should MAKE you go to hospital" and, my personal favourite, "well, if being new age matters so much to you that you're willing to kill your baby then....". Nice. Needless to say, they got short shrift from me!

I had gas and air right at the end, my labour went from not-much-action to birth in about 2 hours, which was a bit rocky, but still totally doable.

If you believe you can do it, you can do it. Aye, labour hurts, but it's like a wobbly milk-tooth, you kind of like it, you know? Or at least, you know you're not being injured.

I only felt i could cope with one more contraction at the end, and that was a great way, for me, of dealing with it. Everytime i felt one come on i'd tell myself "just one more". You only ever have to do one at a time anyway.

Read up so you know all about the stages of labour. Read others birth stories - anything by Ina May Gaskin is great. It's a bit hippyish, but the birth stories are beautiful and show just how incredibly possible it is to give birth without painrelief.

Your body will not labour faster than you can deal with, have faith. Believe in your arse as my midwife friend would say. Your pelvis knows what it's doing and i am living proof that even if you don't PUSH your baby gets born.

I'm not going to wish you luck with birth because you don't need it. You and i know you can do that no worries, but good good luck with putting up with others attitudes. It's not for too long. I actually CHERISH my pregnancy, despite it being littered with rubbish comments...

A word of warning though. I have found that my birth story is not enjoyed by most older/non-pregnant folks. They want to hear about agony and pain and struggle and torment and a good horror story to pass on to unsuspecting pregnant girls. Me saying "yeah, it was great, really lovely" has them glazing over faster than you can say "epidural".

Hana