rants and ramblings of utter randomness

Oh, I agree that birth isn't painless for everyone. I do think, though, that the way pain is experienced and processed is entirely different when in a supportive environment with caring people around, and when a woman knows she can trust her body to do what women have been doing for hundreds of thousands of years. Also, labour contractions are purposeful, and the mind can subvert the paradigm that all pain is Bad, which most of us are taught from a young age. If we're prepared, pain can be something to work with, instead of rail against. Also, there are non-phamacological methods of pain relief (labouring in water, massage, positioning in labour) that are beneficial to mom and baby, instead of detrimental . And also, I don't want to come across saying that sometimes interventions (pain meds and other medical stuff) aren't ever necessary. I just feel that in normal birth, if a woman knows she can trust that three-million-year-old mother (a phrase from an old birth book that I adore) inside her, most, if not all of them, won't be needed.