I am 39+2 and my second baby is due on Thursday. My first baby (she is 22 months old) had to be dragged out by forceps after a 17-hour labour and an epidural (and lots of screaming and gnashing of teeth and telling the midwife - who kept calling me Zoe, which is not my name - to 'fuck off and get me someone who's over eighteen!'). I also had an episiotomy and retained placenta. Nice.
I am determined to push this baby out of my vagina by myself. In order to do this I need to avoid the epidural which (I believe) led to my forceps delivery last time. In order to avoid this I have opted for a midwife-led-unit birth with birthing pool and unicorns and kumbaya on the MP3 (I draw the line at clitoral stimulation; that's what got me into this bastard mess).
Against my deepest, primal instincts I have been practising hypnobirthing, but I simply Do Not Believe It Works. Can you help me believe? Do I really have to swallow the gumf about visualising my perinium folding outwards like a rosebud when my baby is crowning? My hypno-natal CD tells me to imagine the nicest beach I've ever lounged on but that was a needle-strewn stretch of grit at Pontins in Southport circa 1982.
I get the stuff about the breathing. I think. I understand that deep intakes of oxygen are nourishing for the cervix and that baby will benefit from my spiritual gasps. BUT.. the colossal problem I have is that I simply don't believe in my ability to squeeze a baby out of my vagina all by myself. It really upsets me that, despite having birthed before, I don't know how it feels to shout: 'It's coming! It's coming! I feel like I need a shit! My baby is COMING!!' like all those toothless fishwives on One Born Every Minute. I don't know what it feels like to have that 'bearing down' sensation. I missed all of that thanks to the epidural.
Will the midwives + birthing pool + visualising Pontins really get me through? Do you have any tips for bearing the pain at home until I'm, like...8cm? How do I stop screaming with rage each time the Mongan Method tells me that even the final stage of birthing should not be painful, but glorious? Why do midwives shout, 'Push! Bleddy push!' when the Mongan Method says the baby should surge itself if I'm wearing the correctly-coloured hessian tankini? 
Please tell me I can do this. And how...