DS was born on 20th of June, and I am finally dropping by to say a big, belated 'thank you' to everyone who contributed to the 2 threads below. I was definitely getting first-timer's fear, and the kindness and common-sense shown here really helped me a lot.
www.mumsnet.com/Talk?topicid=1365&threadid=548413#11197963
www.mumsnet.com/Talk?topicid=1365&threadid=550614#11243284
Re: the birth. I narrowly avoided induction in the end, as my waters broke at 41+1 and labour started naturally the following day. All the advice here about relaxing, resting between contractions and dealing with them one at a time was really useful.
I was lucky in that my waters broke around 1900 and contractions started at 0400 next morning, so I had plenty of time to shower, shave my legs and tidy up, as well as having a check-up at hospital. I then went back home and stayed in bed for as long as possible, sleeping between contractions (I hardly believed it myself!). By the time I went back into hospital around 1400, I was fully dilated.
For some reason, I found the pain really manageable, although my threshold is usually pretty low - in fact, to my surprise, I found that I didn't need any pain relief for labour, just local anasthetic for episiotomy I had a very 'interior' kind of labour, where I withdrew into myself a lot, and felt pretty focused and peaceful.
The downside to all this was that I eventually ran out of energy for pushing, and delivery ended with ventouse and episiotomy. Although I had hoped to avoid any intervention, I didn't feel that it spoiled the experience in any way - as advised here, I did what I could, kept an open mind about the help available, and I was ultimately grateful for help to complete the job!
Anyway, sorry to ramble, just wanted to report back that all went well and all staff at the hospital (Birmingham Women's Hospital) were absolutely brilliant. Hope this reassures someone out there!