Anyone manage a hospital birth without water or epidural in last year?

[Jane7]

I must confess a motive here. I'm writing an article about 'what labour really feels like' and I'm looking to chat to someone (for five mins) who managed to have a natural birth in hospital, perhaps even induced, without epidural or water. Pethidine/gas and air is fine. Surprisingly hard to find. Seems that most people either go down medicalised route, having epidural and the works, or they rely on water to fend off need for epidural. Would love to hear from anyone who managed a normal hospital birth in the last year and wouldn't mind telling me about it for five mins.

I had DC3 in August. Took less than an hour and I loved the Gas n Air (which I had for all 3 labours).

Why pethidine is ok and water is not? Why a water birth wouldn't count as 'natural'?

Hiya, in 2004 with dd1 I had the works, In 2005 with dd2 I had totally natural labour, no pain relief. In 2007 with ds1 no pain relief, 2009 ds2 1 shot of pethidene used as a delaying tactic - it worked

I had dd 7 mths ago with no pain relief of any kind. 4 hour labour.

Thank you so much for all these responses.
I now have my case-study so don't need anyone else, but thanks all the same to the people who emailed me and sorry I couldn't use you all.

Gaelic - I don't even take paracetamol for a headache...never mind labour.
How they keep a straight face when offering you that, I don't know...

Yes Suburbanite - if there is one thing guaranteed to make a labouring woman completely freak and lose the plot (as I did quite soon after this incident) it's the suggestion that the most agonising pain of their whole life should be manageable with paracetamol. I thought it was going to get a hundred times worse even than that. It didn't. It was very very bad, it stayed very very bad (DS was OP), but the pain didn't actually get worse from the point I was 2 cm dilated. I wonder if any MW's actually read these threads and think about how they practice?

It should be part of a MW's training to speak to women about their birth experiences/read things like this.

Although I arrived at hospital fully dilated & quite zoned out from most things, I did find my first MW's bed side manner somewhat ...lacking. Funnily enough, DH said the same thing when we talked about it a couple of days later - and he doesn't usually pick up on things like that. Her open-mouthed gum chewing did make me want to cave her head in at some points.

Oh well, all over now - and not to be repeated

My contractions started at approx 1am, got to the hospital at 5am with them 10 secs apart. The staff didn't think I had time to get to the labour ward so they took me into a wing of A&E and the midwife came down to me. Just had 5 mins of gas and air as I was fully dilated and had to push. DS was born 5.55am.