I actually feel quite strongly that women are misled into thinking that not having an epidural will lead to a natural peaceful birth.
^this
Hey OP, anaesthetist here, hoping to maybe give you another perspective. First of all, well done for raising this, despite feeling so awful about it - it is hard to do and I applaud you for this. Secondly, your update about requesting notes and going through them with an appropriate health professional is a very good idea to start your healing process. Please make sure it is part of a long term counselling/ptsd treatment program, so that you have good support over a significant period of time. You will know when you get where you need to be, in terms of understanding and acceptance, but you will need help, so please don't give up in seeking it.
Lastly, I apologise upfront, this will be long, but this is too complex for a short explanation and I will try to be as clear as possible, so will be a bit wordy, sorry!
Re: specifically about epidurals. Unfortunately there is a lot of misinformation out there regarding epidurals in labour. Even the most well meaning professional advisory groups have been known for cherry picking the evidence and not consulting with anaesthetists when they write their recommendations regarding pain relief in labour. I am not entirely sure why, but I am guessing that it's part of human confirmation bias: seeking to fit things into your belief system, rather than objectively evaluating evidence for both content and quality. I don't think it's a case of "them" vs "us" or any other general inter-professional tension as such, although I have come across individual resentment.
This lack of consultation might surprise people, given that we are the specialist doctors in this specific domain, not obstetricians or midwives (of course they have training on pain relief, but it's usually a module/component of the training program, whereas for us it's our profession). Sadly, we have just had exactly that sort of non-consulted advice released where I work. To be sure, we always try to raise concerns, but once the advice is published, especially online, there is not a lot we can do. As a result, the negatives are overstated and the positives are downplayed or disregarded.
I have personally witnessed women being actively dissuaded out of considering (!) an epidural because of the misunderstanding of the evidence and the ever-present dogma that "natural is best" (whatever that means?!) This includes the antenatal classes, which I attended as a participant!
When pregnant, we are so wired to think of what's in our baby's best interest, that we are vulnerable to the message of "no or minimal pain relief in labour is ideal" - even if we struggle with period pain without paracetamol and Ibuprofen normally. Contractions can feel like anything between 1x and 1000x your worst period pain - and it will be an entirely individual experience. And this is prolonged and before the pain of vaginal tearing/ episiotomy, which are a lottery too. Hence pain relief choices should always be individual and AT the time, not ruled out upfront when you cannot possibly know what 1000x period pain will feel like for YOU until you have it.
OP, one part of your original post sticks out for me in that your second labour progressed much faster than you thought and 'if only you held out a bit longer, you might have avoided the epidural' - please don't be harsh with yourself, you could not have known that. Also, it might have actually been the epidural that allowed everything to relax so things sped up - this is not unheard of. Obviously, I don't have enough info in your post to claim this outright, but it is a possibility.
To others reading this: in many obstetric services around the developed world, the labour epidural anaesthetist (if in fact the hospital provides labour epidurals as a service - some do not) also covers emergency caesarean theatre. So, if there is a patient in theatre, we can't come out of theatre to place an epidural, which may mean a delay from the time you ask for one. On weekends/evenings/nights there is often only one anaesthetist on site for the obstetric service, with backup at least 20-30min away, depending on the resourcing of the hospital. Generally speaking, hospital management is a bit dim in terms of what anaesthetists do and how much time our specific procedures require, probably deliberately, because to resource us better means extra cost. Lastly, in the public setting, we don't get paid any more whether we do no epidurals per day vs 20 or whatever. So, if anything, if women choose not to have them, my day is less busy, although not necessarily less stressful because looking after a woman who needs an urgent (and just about always unexpected) intervention in theatre and who has a working epidural is often safer than the next anaesthetic option(s) and certainly faster to get the actual surgical procedure started.
If you take away nothing else from my lengthy post, let it be this: pain is a subjective experience, it must be respected in its own right and managed appropriately to avoid problems later.
OP, I wish you all the best as you go on your recovery journey. Take care and look after yourself :)