I've really enjoyed reading this thread.

I was very young when I had my first two girls and quite uninformed. I had less than stellar birth experiences (although they were quite straightforward, really) and I was determined to do things differently six years later when I had my third.

I read every Sheila Kitsinger book I could lay my hands on and her approach, the psychosexual approach, really gelled with me. I really grooved into the whole experience and paid much, much more attention to what my body was actually doing. I learned how to welcome the sensations of contractions and listen to them as sensations, rather than calling them "pain" and feeling them as such.

Of course it gets harder to enjoy contractions the closer you are to delivery, but constantly changing positions and having strong visualisations and vocalisations designed to welcome contractions really helped. As a result, I've had three pain-relief free deliveries since then, even with my last nearly 10lb daughter, and I'm confident I can have another.