Florence made her grand appearence on 6/11/2018 at 38+6 weighing 7lb3oz.

Contractions started at 00.20 morning of 6th and became quite real what felt like quite quickly. By 1pm i was already in the bath at home and they were roughly every 3-5 minutes and stayed like this until i made my way to the birthing centre at 18.00.

One lesson i have learnt is listen to your body. I called multiple times to triage who told me to wait it out at home as jt was my first baby and i was very low risk, until the contractions were all 3 minutes apart....lasting atleast a minute and for an hour. However mine had been 3-5 minutes apart lasting over a minute each for about 6 hours!! I felt stupid going in and not listening to them...boy was i wrong.

When we arrived i was examined and was only 2-3cm dilated. So i carried on sitting on my ball...pacing the room and swaying side to side. By this point id only had to paracetamol which didnt touch the sides. Every 15 minutes babies HR was checked and this time it had gone from the healthy 140-150 to 84. I was lay down quickly and examined again. Babies head was there....i was fully dilated after only around an hour. She had crashed through my pelvis so fast this had caused her HR to dip dramatically and wasn't rising. I started the entenox...FINALLY! and was transfered to hospital.

We arrived at hospital at around 9pm. They had me push only 3 more times, babies head was becoming more and more visible. However due to her HR still being low i couldnt be left to push any longer. I therefor ended up with an episiotomy and ventouse. Prior to labour i was mortified of anything like this but in that moment i did not care. I wanted baby out safely more than anything so slice and dice it was.

Our beautiful Florence was delivered at 21.20 and is just perfect. I cannot thank the midwives, ambulance men and doctors enough for making them decisions to transfer me and to intervene for our safe arrival of baby. I would do it a million times over.

But i have been warned next time to not wait at home so long 😂