IK - yes, that was true for my AN class (at a birth centre). Women have such mixed emotions - they are in a birth centre because they FEEL that natural birth will be the way to go, it's an instinctive feeling that that would be the best thing....yet they still have the fear, and so there is such conflicting emotions happening, they're confused about what they want, because they don't have the knowledge to feel empowered....they don't trust themselves as much as the back-ups that will be available.

angelfish - I agree with what you said about the pain of childbirth. Childbirth education needs to include (and go into great depth about) education on the pain of childbirth, the normalcy of it, the goodness of it, the fact that it has many different purposes, from physically letting one know how close they are to delivery, through to the empowerment one experiences after winning what seems like a life-and-death battle. It is huge, it is a right-of-passage, not something to fight. If women understood pain in childbirth as a positive thing, something to work with, then they would find the strength they need to go beyond their 'limits', their hormonal interplay will lead to them having LESS pain, and they will have shorter, safer births in general.