What actually decides how you look back on it
Four things, named in 2002, and the same four restated by ACOG in a document reaffirmed in 2025.
In 2002 a researcher pulled together 137 reports on what shapes a woman's evaluation of her own birth: descriptive studies, randomised trials, and systematic reviews of things done in labor. Her summary of what came out of it:
Four factors - personal expectations, the amount of support from caregivers, the quality of the caregiver-patient relationship, and involvement in decision making - appear to be so important that they override the influences of age, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, childbirth preparation, the physical birth environment, pain, immobility, medical interventions, and continuity of care, when women evaluate their childbirth experiences.
And her conclusion: The influences of pain, pain relief, and intrapartum medical interventions on subsequent satisfaction are neither as obvious, as direct, nor as powerful as the influences of the attitudes and behaviors of the caregivers.
This is not just one researcher's opinion. ACOG's main document on labor management restates the same four factors in its own conclusion: Satisfaction with one's birth experience also is related to personal expectations, support from caregivers, quality of the patient-caregiver relationship, and the patient's involvement in decision making.
That document was published in 2019 and its web page carries "Reaffirmed 2025." A US professional body has adopted the finding as its own position.
"When something changes, will you tell me what is happening and why, before you do it?"
"Who will be with me the whole time, and who changes at shift handover?"