I didn't have any pain relief with DS. I was determined not to as I have a theory that intervention leads to more intervention. I know its obviously not ALWAYS the case, but all the people i know irl that have had a lot of interventions (inductions, epidurals etc) have ended up having either c-sections or more interventions than they wanted. And i guess those situations scared me away a bit from the pain relief options.

I found i was able to manage the pain. Afterall, it is a natural pain. But i was also lucky to go into labour on my own and have a fairly short labour.

I do believe that epidurals have a place in child birth, but i also think they are sometimes over-used. JMO. There is a book i really want to read called gentle birth gentle mothering by sarah J Buckley. I saw her give a presentation at our branch ABA conference last year and thought she was wonderful. A lot of what she said made a lot of sense to me.