Firstly, what is "safest at the time" may not be, at first glance, the most pain-free choice. I think safety is a better choice than pain avoidance, and that's why I'm a vaginal advocate in the majority of cases 
Interestingly, there have been recent reports on the safety of home births. In the UK, the
difficulty in home birthing is that there are not enough midwives for
it. It's much easier (for the medical profession that it) to herd the
labouring women into one place, and deal with them there, rather than
spreading themselves around their homes.
sillysally:I would like to say that if we have kids I'll go all natural, but I know myself too well. I have a very low pain threshold.
I may be reading this wrong, but pain avoidance is not a good reason to have a CS - firstly because there's no kind of guarantee that ANY birth will be completely pain-free. Also, look at it this way - the higher the level of interventions you have, the longer and more painful the recovery is likely to be. CS is pretty much the highest level of intervention you can get at a birth, so logically, pain avoidance is a good reason to avoid one! On the other hand, there are lots of ways of minimising/managing any pain with a vaginal delivery, so if ever you did want to have kids, that is worth thinking about.
It's also worth considering that labour pain is not LIKE "illness pain". At least it wasn't for me and it wasn't for other mums I have spoken to. I have pretty much the lowest pain threshold you can imagine - stub my toe and I cry, have a bad headache and I go to bed. I am hopeless. But labour pain is different.
The thing about pain is, how much labour/birth hurts is affected by a wide variety of factors, and some of them are in your control and some of them are not.
- How physically fit you are
- How prepared you are, mentally and physically
- How relaxed and confident you are
- The quality and continuity of care you receive (FWIW, I trusted my midwife, so you could say that's why she was my midwife, but she was on leave when I went into labour. Then the shift changed before William was born, so the midwife changed again.)
- Level of intervention (for example, "purple pushing" hurts a lot and so does an episiotomy.)
- Whether you are able to keep mobile during labour
- Whether you deliver prone (on your back is the worst birthing position in terms of hard work, pain and potential complications, but - here's the rub - is also the "best" position for the professionals to monitor your progress and detect if anything goes wrong.)
- Whether you receive proper perianal support
- Whether you have loved one(s) around you to support you
- WHERE you labour and deliver
The place of birth is enormously important. Generally, you will be more relaxed at home. I thought, surely I will be more relaxed knowing there are experienced, qualified staff on hand should I need them? But when you think about it, how many of us sleep better in our OWN bed than anywhere else? How many of us know that in your room is the best place for a baby (or even a puppy) to sleep, because the room is a sleepy place"? It's full of the pheremones we give off when we sleep. It is a very relaxing place, a familiar place, a place which feels safe in our bones. This is precisely the kind of place which almost all female mammals gravitate to when they know they are going to give birth.
My sister has a young female dog which she got from a breeder. Part of the contract was that this dog may be used in the breeder's breeding programme, to continue the line. As the breeder is experienced in whelping puppies, Shady is likely to go back to her to have the puppies. But would she be moved mid-labour? And if she was, would anyone be surprised if labour slowed down, or complications developed? Much more likely that she will be given time to settle in so that she labours in a place where she feels relaxed, comfortable and safe. A frightened, anxious, unsettled female is more likely to experience problems.
When a female labours, she is vulnerable. Therefore, if she is in in
an unfamiliar place and around unfamiliar animals, her labour will slow
down - almost like it is being put on hold in case she needs to run or
fight at any moment. It doesn't matter if she tells herself "this is
the best place for me!" Generations and generations of evolution have
equipped us with this survival trait, and you can't control this bodily
response. The usual response to this is for hospitals to inject stuff into you to speed things up again, or break your waters for you.... despite evidence which suggests this is not in the best interests of the mother and baby in a lot of cases.
/off soap box now.
"Give a man a fire and he is warm for a day, but set fire to him and he is warm for the rest of his life." - Pratchett, "Jingo"