I understand asking for positive stories but here’s the thing and it’s SO important:
The majority of stories are “positive” and we’ll never hear them. There are more and more papers that think the internet and specifically boards like MN play a big role in developing tokophobia (fear of pregnancy and childbirth) because women are often sharing horror stories, BUT it’s while they’re reaching for support (something these papers don’t seem to take into account - it’s not sharing horror stories for fun). These women desperately NEED a place to go when things don’t work out perfectly, or go wrong, or go REALLY wrong, and they need the support of other women. And MN is great for that. But it doesn’t mean they represent the majority of births. Statistics just don’t bear that out.
If your birth is “textbook,” and by that I mean, vaginal, use of just what we consider normal pain relief (gas and air, pethidine, maybe even an epidural), a graze or a first degree tear which heals naturally without stitches, which means less stitches than a c-section… women don’t usually come on here to talk about it at length.
Maybe you’ve been scared because you read something that said 85% of women experience a tear during first childbirth in the UK. But like I said, the statistics say most will be first degree tears that heal naturally. About 33% of women may need stitches and 3 in 100 will have a more severe tear. But you’re bound to hear more about when things go wrong, like with anything.
As other posters said, yes, there is a HUGE amount of luck involved in the kind of birth you get, so whatever happens, the best birth is one in which you don’t pressure yourself and you don’t feel like a failure no matter what happens. As long as the baby is born without the help of 10 little green men from Mars, it’s a natural birth, even if it’s a C-section.