Powerful, Primal, not Instutional

I've had long hard labors and I've had short furious labors. The shortest one was the hardest in some ways because there was not much breathing time between contractions. The long labor was hard just because it was 72hours of 5minute apart contractions. I am the pain weenie of the western world. I get nitrous gas just to have my teeth cleaned, okay? I take four advil at the mere idea of a headache. I have labored over a total of 100 hours to birth 4 children who averaged 9+lbs each. I am no super woman, and every single woman thinks that her labor was the most painful thing that ever happened to any human being and that no one could ever understand how painful it was, and in a way, she is right, because no one is in her body or feels things the way she is feeling. In a way, though, she is wrong. Women have been birthing babies without drugs for...well up until about sixty years ago. What changed? Nothing in our bodies and everything in our brains. Our confidence is undermined by the media and by our communities. We have no sisters and mothers who have done it before supporting us. We birth in places that are more like prisons than joyful welcoming grounds strapped by monitors into uncomfortable cots. No wonder we believe we need drugs to get through. The reality is that we don't. We just need appropriate coping techniques, places where we can be cared for rather than tended to and people around us who have a clue! We are powerful beings have a powerful experience that is primal, not institutional.