If you feel your antenatal midwife is dismissive or not giving you a fair weigh-in, you can talk to the hospital about seeing someone else. PALS can be helpful in this. Medical professionals should give you the benefits and risks properly and I think 100% that the supportiveness of professionals involved has far more an effect on whether you'll be content with what happens over whether it ends up a vaginal or surgical birth.
Reading the NICE guidelines may give you some information to discuss with them. I find it helpful to talk to medical professionals with those in hand/sent beforehand if it's something serious.
If you're concerned about recovery, look into a women's physiotherapist. This is normal in some places, but not in the UK yet, and they can help with many post-birth issues.
The issue with the options is that everything has risks and even for someone who has given birth before, it's hard to know what's going to happen. Like the rest of life, it's somewhat a roll of the dice and sometimes all the options are rough. There just isn't a pain-free, low risk way of dealing with this major of a process. Epidurals can be a great option with many benefits, but anything that much of a benefit has significant risks and - not to add to the terror - there are people whose epidurals fuck up, they feel things they shouldn't and/or they end up with chronic issues afterwards.
While the idea of a pain-free labour that you're just knocked out for and wake up with baby is many women's dream, the reality is that coming out of general isn't fun. Having done that after a manual placental extraction after a vaginal birth (I'm too high risk for an epidural) - yeah, I didn't feel the removal, but I woke up really disoriented, I had tubes the back of both hands that I had no idea about as they were put in during the procedure (and even later struggled to find details on), everything hurt that hadn't going so between that pain and the tubes I couldn't reach the cot that was right next to my bed or pick my newborn up or put her back in it once she was handed to me. Like already said by a pp, the issues is that the recovery period is kinda negated with needing to care for an infant. Being on a high dependency ward because I'd had a general was awful and if anything it seemed like the afterpains were worse, even compared to my next child.
Genuine question, I am always amazed that women go on to have a second or even third child after a horrible birth experience ... is the desire to have a baby so strong that you are willing to take the risk again?
I think it is for some. For me, I had one more after the terrible experience I described above. What caused the need for a manual placental extraction was a medical fuck-up (midwife yanked on the cord, and a chunk tore off), and because I had that 'excuse' for why things went wrong, I kinda went in with a 'that's not going to happen again' mindset. And it didn't, but the strain on my body that might have been contributing factor to why that fuck-up ended up getting worse than it might likely have been for someone else was something I underestimated and it wasn't until late in my next (last) pregnancy that I recognized that. I have had no desire for another after that point. It was a balance of the risks and benefits that worked out, but it was riskier than I'd really considered so full recovery from all the damage from my previous births took a lot longer than I thought. No regrets, but not really a recommendable course of action...