My friend had the glorious home births which she has described as 'joyful' and now wants to be a doula. I had what was basically almost everything I didn't want to happen - induced two weeks over, reacted badly to induction, not in established labour enough to be moved to labour ward but in unmanageable pain, then 'cascade of intervention' leading to ventouse delivery, episiotomy and third degree tear. But, actually, despite it sounding horrific on paper, aside from the start of it when I felt totally ignored, it ws a really positive experience.
My honest opinion is people's birth experience correlates more closely to whether they felt informed, listened to and (somewhat!) in control rather than what actually happened.
Once I got to the labour ward (and, to be fair, had an epidural, which was glorious) every medical professional listened to me and explained why things might need to be done and asked for consent and input into interventions. I had done a lot of research and I found this really helpful - at one point they said they wanted to use forceps and why (babies heart rate was dropping) I said I didn't want to take any risks but would it be possible to try with ventouse first, and they said no reason not to, though we might have to switch, so we tried and it worked. I read a lot of the natural birth books, and have a bit of a love/hate relationship with them - my view is, the media skews our perception so we think that a medicalised and pain-filled birth is the only way. I know from lots of friends that this isn't true, and I think the 'natural birth' books can be helpful at providing examples and getting into our subconscious the idea that our bodies are able to do this.
But - they can go too far the other way. Some people have difficulties, and at the moment, the medical care we receive takes the view that our. threshold for risk that might lead to the death of the mother or child is v v v low, so we intervene earlier. I am totally ok with that risk assessment, but it means that often there are things in place that can mean the 'natural' birth doesn't work out, and it can be difficult for people to deal with change from what they planned.
Different things work for different people - I didn't so much have a birth plan but a list of ranked preferences. I found it really helpful to have thought some of that through in advance when we didn't have much time to think about things. So, I knew I'd rather try ventouse before forceps, which they were able to accommodate in the end, but if they hadn't at least I would have known it was for a reason rather than because I hadn't thought to ask. For me, thinking through all the possible outcomes was really helpful because thats how my brain works, for others they find coming in with the attitude of seeing what happens is best. From my view: birth partner who has your back, knows what you want in case you can't communicate, and a medical team who respect you are the winning combination.