I started having contractions at 6am on my due date. All day before that was having period like cramps and woke up to more painful ones.

I thought it must be false labour as they were irregular 15 - 25 mins apart. They would get as close as 5 min apart during the day but then space out again and definitely more and more painful, but not overly. I haven't lost my plug at that point so I was just waiting for that to happen but it didn't. I tried walking and taking a shower and was getting quite desperate.

We made our way to the hospital at 10pm that day as I was getting contractionstions every 3-6 mins and they were starting to hurt. They checked my cervix & said I was only 2cm so I got sent me back home with some painkillers. I tried to sleep between 12-2am but contractions really started to hurt. Between 2-4am they had me in tears but I tried to wait it out as they were no closer than 6min apart and I didn't want to get sent back home again. Made our way to the hospital at 6am and found out I was 4cm! Progress! Got admitted and taken to the birthing suit. The only thing that helped me throught contractions until this point was supporting myself with my hands and rocking my hips side to side while taking calm deep breaths, I tried staying reasonable in my suite as a midwife was there and I've never met her before and husband left to park the car but I ended up pretty much crawling towards the shower on all fours in agony, took my clothes off and made myself at home in the shower corner. My hubby was great and sat with me in the shower, I had a metal chair and endless hot water and frozen fruit from home and was quite happy, hot shower helped with the contractions so much. Eventually my midwife suggested a birthing ball so I could rock my hips, at first it felt nice but very soon it started to give me more intense contractions so I just wanted the bloody ball gone, it felt like I had to poop real bad so I kept trying to go, which meant I had to get out of the shower and whenever I got out I could feel just how intense my contractions were. Could not go to the toilet, tried several times but ended up losing my plug with lots of blood. Contractions were so painful at this point I asked for gas so I could try and go to the toilet. Everything kinda got cloudy at that point and I ended up abandoning my original plan to aim for a water birth ( we were waiting for a room with a pool to come up, but at that point I couldn't imagine leaving my shower anymore) so I asked for an epidural which was my plan b. I got wrapped up in warm blankets and walked over to the bed while clinging onto the gas machine. The gas really took the pain away if I was breathing it in really deep but I didn't enjoy breathing it in and I could still feel just how intense my contractions were which made me take shallow breaths and gas not work so well. Got my epidural at 10am which was a bit scary after anesthetesist told my of all the worst case scenarios, but within 10 mins I could really feel it work, an hour later my waters broke. After that I was just laying down sleeping and being flipped from one side to another every now and then, I ended up having a nice sleep but my contractions seemed to be slowing down with the epidural. At 3pm found out my waters didn't break completely after all and I was 10cm diallated! Midwifes started preparing everything for my baby's being born and stopped my epidural drip. The rest of my waters were broken and they got me on a drip for something to make my contractions stronger to help me push. So I was laying there all ready with towels all around it my legs apart (pardon) and suddenly my baby's heart rate just drops and I can't hear the machine making any noise at all, midwife looks at me and tells me to take a deep breath right now and push as hard as I can for as long as I can, between pushes I notice that at least 10 people have rushed into the room, doctors and nurses, everyone standing around my bed with doctor telling me that she will have to vacuum  the baby out or something but my baby's heart started beating normally again so everyone left, while I tried to rest in between pushes & breathe. I ended up pushing for an hour with little to no progress, so the doctor with her vacuume was back, she also said she would have to give me a small cut. I really liked pushing with her more because I could feel my contractions again and she told me to push then while midwife was mostly relying on the machine to show her. So with the vacuum I think I pushed twice and I heard the scissors snip 3 times, felt baby's head, then shoulders and suddenly my tiny little human was laying on my chest while crying so loudly and I heard my husband say it was a boy. All I could do was hold him and cry. I didn't see my husband cut the cord or doctors and nurses leave the room. Baby was really warm and so smooth and soon stopped crying and I was just holding him. I got stitched up & didn't feel any of it. Got pushed on my belly which didn't hurt as much as everyone said it would. Breastfed my baby for the first time, which again didn't seem too hard or overly painful. Overall I'm so happy I got an epidural & managed to give birth as I was really thinking my body couldn't do that and csection was my thing.