Thanks very much for all the advice ladies.

I was a bit concerned about the whole tearing/epi thing (which is strange when you think about the pain of labour as a whole) but hopefully if it does happen it won't be too bad, and like Linzy said, i'll have other things on my mind to distract me

On a related note, can anyone extol the virtues of Perineum massage coming up to labour? I guess the theory is sound as far as preparing the area, but considering the vagina etc are so stretchy in the first place, wouldn't any massage just bounce back IYKWIM? Has anyone done it and noticed a benefit, or is it a bit of a myth?