Hi, anyone went through natural delivery without taking epidural? I am not taking epidural but open to laughing gas and injection in thigh as the 2 options for pain relief. Mind to share how the contractions feel like? This is my first pregnancy and I can take mentration pain but not needle pain.

I would suggest keeping an open mind to pain relief! I learned that every woman's body respond differently to pain and we can have different nerve receptors. Some feel more pain and some feel less. It also depends on how your labour progresses. I did express my preference to my gynae on deciding on epidural use later. I had the intention of not taking any form of pain relief for my natural birth. However, my labour took so long I knew I was too fatigued (I had zero sleep for 20 hours when the epidural was given) and the pain became too intense at the end for me to push effectively. The contractions were so painful the needle injection wasn't significant. I was given laughing gas whilst waiting for the anesthetist and it only provided very brief relief. As for the epidural side effects, I only had shivering. I didn't have any nausea or vomiting and I walked about an hour or two after delivering. I do have a pretty high pain threshold. I was walking around the ward despite the contractions having gone on for 18 hours. Even after the epidural it took another 3-4 hours before I delivered my baby, and I still didn't sleep at all but epidural allowed me to at least shut my eyes and rest. You can consider hypnobirthing, which I find helped me for most parts of my long labour (but I think it's not so helpful when the labour went as long as mine). Trust yourself to know when to make the decision for yourself and your baby :)