Anyone who uses the argument "you should be prepared to loose your dignity" deserves a slap. A hard one. Its no more than justification for unacceptable behaviour.
Its actually HCP responsibility to do everything they can to maintain the dignity of their patients. Its a Human Right. One that seems to be forgotten in maternity. Yes, you might have certain bodily functions and parts that you might not wish to share with others, but the point of compassionate care is to make anyone in this situation not feel as if they have lost their dignity, by their manner and respectful treatment.
Being Treated with Respect is also enshrined into the NHS's duty of care.
"whereas I was told to keep the noise down and tret like I was being a nuisance" is categorically NOT treating someone with respect.
In terms of expectations, I actually have a lot of sympathy for women like the OP who have mothers and grandmothers who have straightforward births. I think this does make you much more likely to assume that your experience will be similar.
In fact, the converse is recognised as potentially being a problem. There are women who have family histories of bad births or were exposed to family members saying how bad birth was from an early age can be so scared of birth that they ask for ELCS and may well be given one as a result.
This is not because there is any heredity indication of how your birth will go, but because psychologically we identify and associate ourselves with our immediate family members experiences because they are 'more real' and more powerful influences than other sources of information. (Incidentally for anyone wondering, no research has ever been able to make a correlation between birth experiences of past and present generations. So if your mother had a bad experience, its no guarantee you will have one and vice versa).
I therefore think the OP not paying attention to people she suspected of 'scaremongering' as a very understandable and forgivable attitude. One that we should recognise as being important in understanding how one person's expectations might differ from another's.
I therefore think Summer's very critical attitude of the OP, is very wrong and very naive and lacks this understanding of contextual psychologically. It only smacks of the real lack of understanding of how women prepare themselves mentally for birth.
I also think her tones of 'suck it up' give licence for healthcare professionals to abdicate their responsibilities.
I also have read a great many of these threads, and the overwhelming conclusion I came to a long time ago, was never that pain was the main problem to women who found childbirth a traumatic experience. Over and over again, it came down to the attitude of staff, the lack of respect for women, not listening to women, belittling women, unsympathetic attitudes and lack of communication (especially when things were going wrong).
Women who felt cared for and well treated in 'bad situations' were much better equipped to deal with their experience and recovery, simply because they were not treated as a piece of meat, but a human with feelings that needed to be attended to at the time and after the event.
In cases where pain was an issue, it seemed to be as much about whether someone was actively denied access to pain relief and again the attitude of staff treating them when asking for pain relief that was as important as the lack of relief.
OP, give yourself time and take the wonderful advice of many of the wonderful posts on this thread. Your circumstances are sadly far more common than you think. There are ways to discuss future births BEFORE you get pregnant. It does depend on where you are in the country and sometimes the attitude of the people you come across when trying to access this support but it does exist. There are a range of different options.
There is no 'right answer' - a few people on this thread have suggested an ELCS, but many others find another VB a healing experience if they are treated with the support they were denied previously. More than anything though, identifying yourself as early as you can as someone who needs this support is the key to finding whats right for you.
Anxiety over child birth is a real issue and is only just beginning to get the recognition it merits. There are many who are still ignorant about it, but increasingly there are more and more people who are aware of it. Despite all the doom and gloom over the NHS at the moment, you are more likely to be taken seriously and get the support you need than even 5 or 6 years ago.
Good luck.