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The childbirth classes have armed me with a lots of information but also a lot of questions. Our midwife will be bombarded tonight! Strangely enough the descriptions of and information on the normal natural birth made it sound far, far preferable to the drugged birth, caeserean birth, or complicated birth. So of course I'm keen to do whatever I can to help avoid those things or, not get too stressed\scared about them if it happens that way - I'm not sure that these two things aren't incompatible.
One of the things I was surprised about what how anti the 'hard stuff', being epidural and pethidine, the hospital midwife who ran the course was. I was never keen on the drug options but after that chapter of the course I am even less keen and even quite worried about them and their side effects in case they might become necessary for me. I had heard lots of stories about hospitals encouraging you to take the hard stuff so I guess I was expecting the course to, if anything, be more pro than anti. In the end her real point was that too many people take the drugs without being aware of or thinking about the side effects - which can be quite significant, so she wasn't against their use per se, since they are often needed, but against their use without thought. It all makes sense to me and I'm glad to have some of my pre-conceived ideas about hospital staff be wrong and see that they are keen on the process being as natural as possible, although I still suspect many of the other staff, especially the doctors (as opposed to midwives) might not have the same approach.