My birth plan was to try and have a natural birth, natural labour unless I had any complications, and I'd known during my pregnancy that the baby was back to back, and that might make the contractions much more uncomfortable and less effective. And so if the baby hadn't turned, then I made, then I said that I was quite open to any sort of pain relief. I was hoping that he'd turn round and that I could try and have a, use a water bath as a form of pain relief and stay in a birthing suite rather than - in a midwife-run suite rather than in the delivery, doctor-orientated one. 

But because I had to go in to be induced, even though I wasn't induced in the end, but I was monitored right from the beginning of my contractions starting, from the beginning of labour and so I couldn't go anywhere near water because I had all the things on. And because the baby's heart rate dropped a couple of times with the contractions so they wanted to keep monitoring me. And because the contractions were really ineffective, I did decide to have pain relief, so my birth plan was to be open to everything, and in the end I was really relieved that I hadn't been really firm about not having an epidural because it was brilliant and it made the whole thing so much better. 

But during, during the labour I remember vaguely wanting to carry on not having an epidural, and my partner talked me into having an epidural because, because I wanted to carry on trying to do it naturally and I was getting exhausted, and so I did have to be talked into it, but I knew that I wasn't, I knew that that was my original plan, so it wasn't like I was compromising myself, because I'd decided that if it was complicated in any way then I would be open to having an epidural. And it was complicated, so I felt that I, it was due to me to have the pain relief so, yeah.