On Tues 20th May I had an appointment with the midwife at midday, and she did a stretch and sweep. She said my cervix was nice and soft and I was 1cm dilated. Went home and almost straight away began getting the regular back pains again, only this time they were more frequent, coming every 5 minutes, and were gradually getting stronger. I sat on my birth ball and breathed through them for a while, and then had a bath at about 7pm. The contractions continued through the bath so I knew by then that it was for real. Put on my TENS machine at 8pm and phoned the delivery ward to let them know I was in labour. They said a midwife would phone me in a while. I started timing the contractions on contraction master – they were coming every 5 minutes and lasting around 45 seconds – so I thought I must be quite far along already…little did I know!

The midwife called at 9pm and said she would come to our house at about 10-10.30pm. Just before she arrived, my waters broke and I noticed they were tinged green. Uh-oh. I told the MW when she arrived and she said that I would need to go to hospital to be monitored as the green waters meant baby had passed meconium and could be distressed. She then left and we ran around packing all the stuff I’d need but hadn’t got round to packing into my hospital bag, and then drove the 10 minutes to the hospital. We got there just before midnight and I was put straight into a delivery room to be monitored.