Okay, I've looked at several examples, blah, blah, blah, but I'm having problems adding c3po to my hibernate.cfg.xml.

This is the exception:
java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError: com/mchange/v2/c3p0/DataSources
at org.hibernate.connection.C3P0ConnectionProvider.configure(C3P0ConnectionProvider.java:154)
at org.hibernate.connection.ConnectionProviderFactory.newConnectionProvider(ConnectionProviderFactory.java:124)
at org.hibernate.connection.ConnectionProviderFactory.newConnectionProvider(ConnectionProviderFactory.java:56)
.
.
.

I've added the c3po jar to my class path but when I look in com/mchange there is only a bundle.properties file. By the way I'm using netbeans ide, if that helps.

If anyone could help with an example, hints, anything, I would appreciate it.

Are you sure you have added c3p0-0.9.1.jar JAR file at your CLASSPATH?
This file (c3p0-0.9.1.jar) is in lib directory of Hibernate Core distribution.

Regards,
Adam Wozniak

(rate if this helps)