Our study offers new insights into women’s psychological experience of physiologic childbirth as a meta-synthesis on this topic has not been previously reported. We created a model of the emerging psychological pattern of this journey that is designated in terms of emotions and behaviours. Women described birth as a challenging but predominantly positive experience that they were able to overcome with their own coping resources and the help of others. For them, this resulted in feelings of strength to face a new episode in their life with their family. Our findings confirm our main hypothesis: there is a common psychological experience of physiological labour. As far as we are aware, this has not previously been reported using women’s accounts as primary data. Our findings suggest that birth is just as much a psychological journey as a physical one.