Help me have a natural pregnancy!

[DimpleHands]

I had an epidural with DS1. Am pregnant again and determined this time to have a natural birth! To those of you who have done it - do you have any tips? What helped you do it? Doula? Hypnobirthing? Tens machine? Anything else?

It isn't ignorant at all and you are talking about somehting entirely different. PTSD? Please, as a real diagnosis that is real but rare. We're talking about women who don't get things the way they want them and then get all upset about it. The idea that you can control what kind of birth you have is laughable and should stop being pushed at women who buy into it.

But surely, even though you might not be able to control your birth absolutely, there's no harm in preparing, practicing being calm and therefore feeling more in control generally? From friends I have known who've given birth those that have done that have had a much much better time.

I thought more than half of births are intervention-less (so 'natural'). If I'm right on this, why wouldn't you prepare for the birth you are most likely to have?
That was my rationale for doing hypnobirthing and I had a lovely MLU birth because I'm one of the boring majority. People get so hung up on the possibility of things going wrong and I don't get it. When I get into my car I don't think I should be terrified because today might be the day I'm one of those innocent drivers hurt in a car crash. I just drive, try to be safe and the best driver I can be, focusing on the things I can control not the unlikely things that might go wrong.

According to NCT, normal birth rate is 42% in England, and 34% for first time mothers. So while it's great to prepare, it also makes sense to take into account the chances that you won't have it all exactly as you imagined.

mad you are also ignorant over the scale of the problem. about 10,000 woman a year will suffer full PTSD with up to 100,000 suffering partial symptoms.

That is not my definition of "rare" and many of the women you and hazel have written off as whingy about not getting the birth they want may actually be in serious psychological distress.

I am pretty sure I have never said that women with PTSD are just whingy

10,000 per year is still less than 2% of all births in the UK.

Of course PTSD is a very real reaction to a traumatic situation.

But I do think that trying to remove expectations of a really good point. I felt like a failure simply because I had found my relatively normal labour and birth (albeit very long and painful) so difficult because of the kind of birth I thought I wanted. It wasn't what anyone would call traumatic on paper but I did feel traumatised and struggled to deal with those feelings for a long time.

There are plenty of things you can't control in childbirth. None of the traumatic things which happen can be changed through feeling or behaving differently.

But expectations and assumptions are something which can be managed and in a 'normal' birth situation, this is worth considering.

You overstate it. And seem to be proving my point. You're encouraging women to think that "serious psychological distress" is an uncommon and expected outcome of birth. You're not helping, you're harming.

is NOT an uncommon. dyac.

When I was pregnant with my first I was adamant to take anything offered but when it came to it I found breathing properly and gas and air did the job. It didn't stop the pain but I was determined to get dd out as quick as possible!