rice and knot it then microwave for 30 secs or so to warm it up. Maybe more of a distraction than anything else but it was great at the time!) The midwife commented on how well my husband and I worked together during the labour, which helped a lot in terms of keeping me calm. This is a big part of the battle I think. You can to some extent distance yourself from the pain but if you start panicking then things will not go smoothly. The worst thing about it for me was not the pain but the feeling of being totally out of control & the support from my husband was invaluable in helping me manage my reaction to that. The TENS machine did me fine until we actually arrived at the labour ward shortly after my waters had broken. At this point, not to go into too much detail, the nature of the waters gave us reason to suspect that the baby was in distress, and it was foetal monitoring time. Anyone else considering using TENS, remember to remove it BEFORE the midwives try to sort you out with a foetal monitor, because the last thing you need in this situation is for your husband to have to spend ten minutes unpicking the resulting knitting (it has about five separate cables). The good news is that I then got on fine with gas and air, all the way through the labour, the episiotomy, the forceps delivery and