I totally agree with you Rachael. With my daughter my birth was awful. I was confined to the bed for monitoring, my labour slowed (I wonder why!) so I was put on a drip, baby didn't come very well, I had a huge episotomy and suction. When daugter was finally born, the registrar banged her head on the lamp causing her to have a burn, she was then rused off to be checked over. My BP was shockingly high and they told my mum they expected me to have a stroke!!! I had pethadine and felt so out of it, it was awful and because of all the problems, breast feeding was never really established which made me truly sad.
My daughter was then in SCBU for 4 weeks adding to the upset. As you can see, not very nice.

As for my son, I was active the whole way through. I didn't have any pain relief until I was pushing and then it was gas and air. He was born beautifully with dad cutting cord, lots of skin to skin and breastfeeding. I did have retained placenta and I bled, LOTS. But, the way it was dealt with was so diofferent it didn't seem to matter.