I think having a positive state of mind is great but I also think comparisons are facile and futile.

It is just as ignorant for a woman with a short labour to say, "oh, I just breathed through it and it was fine," as it is for a woman with a long labour to say, "oh, there is no way that anyone could/should get through labour without drugs."

It is not a matter of who has the higher pain threshold, the better state of mind - it is also about how long the labour is and how the baby is positioned. And no-one can tell you beforehand what effects that will have on the pain levels, the length of the labour etc.

If labour was some sort of mathematical equation we'd all go into it knowing how it was going to turn out. The reality is we don't.