As a veteran of four crunchy births, I say if you feel uncomfortable say no. Sounds like you have plenty of support.
This next bit is just personal story about how feelings change from birth to birth.
With my first birth I was very protective and was even kind of rude to a friend who wanted to be there. I really did not want a big audience.
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I almost punched my own mother during transistion. Right before the pushing stage things can get pretty dicey for sure. My doctor said it is normal to get hostile as your body is secreting hormones to get ready for the pushing stage.
My daughter-in-law gave birth in a hospital with a midwife and a doula. No Ob/gyn, although one was on call. It is worth quoting her explanation. “I don’t trust obstetricians. I would choose a family doctor who does deliveries, but there are only two or three in all of Manhattan and I am one and my close colleague is another.” After a normal, but slow, vaginal delivery, she said that an obstetrician would have almost certainly done a cesarean. She currently delivers a few dozen babies a year. But if, in her opinion, a cesarean is called for, she will not hesitate to call for one (by an obstetrician, to be sure). She thinks people who choose home delivery are playing Russian roulette. Most of the time, it works out fine. But if it doesn’t…
It is the far outlying case where a baby is too big to deliver vaginally. Midwives, who don’t auto default to c-section know how and do deliver “large” babies all the time.
Congrats on the baby and the ultimately positive outcome, which is likely all that matters to you at this point, but others who are reading this shouldn’t rule out that the invasive hospital procedures may have contributed to the problem in the first place.
The other advantage of having a doula that’s not a family member is that they can also be the videographer, thus ensuring that true family members are in all the shots. Make sure and ask if they know how to post the completed videos to the web.
Our first son was born in a hospital with a midwife in attendance instead of a doc. My wife’s labor went on for…ev…er. As in, 29 hours. It was natural and it sucked. If I’d been in a normal state of mind, I would have said, “Get us a doctor, and get this over with, now” at about the 18-hour mark.