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My only birth plan was to get an epidural..and I didn't bother prepping or learning any coping techniques cause I was GOING to get the epidural. well..LOL, said life.

I got to the hospital and triage took their sweet time, I didn't get into a LDR room until I was already bearing down, 10 cm dilated, +3 station. They gave me the epi then, but yeah..I only had a medicated delivery, not labor (sad face).

Best part, was I was stuck on a gurney in triage for the entire labor. No moving around for me!

ETA - Honestly, I was used to searing, gripping pain from stomach issues, and I felt like it was like that, just worse. So I wasn't out of control during contractions. I told DH I was going to die a couple times, but yeah.

I took Bradley method classes. I ended up getting induced but with no epidural.

We took a one day prepared medfree childbirth with a midwife class and hired a doula who was a huge source of info and support. I had to be induced with a very small dose of pitocin but had no pain meds.

I prepared by taking the hospital-offered Natural Childbirth class. It was 2 hours, once a week for 5 weeks. I feel like the class prepared me very well for what to expect and I was able to deliver with no interventions and no pain medication.

My instructor (even though this was to a room full of us intending on a med-free birth) definitely made the point that epidurals fail, and that you want to wait to get one until you're sufficiently dilated so having the coping strategies to labor until the point that you are medicated is a good idea. I wonder if the standard childbirth class the hospital offers made that point...

A med-free/intervention-free birth was really important to me, so I prepared! I took a hypnobirthing class and hired a doula.
As runsyellowlites said, I also prepared by thinking about birth and thinking about the fact that my body had been designed to do this, that women have been doing this without medicine/intervention for years, etc. I think that having such supreme confidence in my body and its abilities (and toughness!) was also pretty crucial.

I planned for an unmedicated at home birth--took Bradley classes, did lots of reading, hired a doula and had 2 midwives. All went well and I'm glad I prepped for it cause it was definitely a lot of hard & painful work!