wince, cry, and quite possibly faint. Can someone write an article about how weakling men can survive watching their beloved wives go through all sorts of agony? I really need to know by late June. This "pain is all in the mind" thing really needs knocking on the head. It is the most banal, ludicrous statement. Everything is "in the mind", our term "the mind" indicates the set of processes through which we interpret things in the material world and construct our reality. Friendship, love, loss, grief, the notion of civilisation itself are all "in the mind". Would it be acceptable to tell someone grieving for a spouse that their grief was "all in the mind"? Would you tell someone with a broken leg that their pain was "all in the mind" and they should therefore walk around on it? Faith healers sometimes do the latter and they cause immense physical and psychological damage. I can't help feeling that a lot of the variation in experience simply comes down to different pain thresholds; nothing moral or mystical about it at all. I took an ante-natal yoga class which gave very good advice on how to breath through pain. That and child-bearing hips helped me through 2 very good birthing experiences. During the first stage of labour I walked around or spent time on a birthing ball with a TENS machine stuck to my back. Went to bed only to be woken up by the urge to push (and waters breaking).