For those of you who tore, do you think you can do anything to avoid that next time?
I think you can certainly try, but in my experience I found it was fairly unavoidable.

Second time around I had a water birth, I was in an upright, natural squat, I had a long, slow pushing stage and relaxed and breathed while my son's head crowned through 3 contractions. All great things to prevent tearing... then his shoulder was stuck and he wasn't budging with my pushes so my MW asked me to push really hard with the next contraction (in her head we were doing fancy moves if that didn't work and I'm glad it didn't come to that) and I tore as his shoulder came out. It could be that I tore due to weakened skin from the previous tear, from being coached to push hard or due to the size/position of my son's shoulder. The hard push is the only thing I could have changed but I feel it had its purpose and I'm glad we avoiding me having to move or get out of the pool. Perhaps tearing was just on the cards for me.

I actually found tearing to be a good thing for me, because allowing my body to heal itself was an emotionally healing experience after the trauma I endured from the doctor stitching me first time around. The knowledge of my MWs, the mandatory rest for 3 weeks and discovering the lost art of my body's inner wisdom was a huge plus to my whole experience. I wish I had known and never, ever had stitches the first time around.