So to my actual labour.... I had been 4 days late with my first and so had expected to go late with my second. Initially I had thought my due date was early February not late January and so I wasn't getting too excited about my due date.

My midwife had been so supportive with our decision to have a home birth and all my birth preferences. She knew I didn't want a sweep and wanted to avoid an induction so there was never any suggestions or "do you want..." at my later midwife appointments. I saw her at 38+4 weeks and the baby wasn't engaged and although I was on maternity leave, I didn't feel ready. When I saw her the next week (at 39+5) this had changed, and I had been feeling tightening but just thought they were Braxton Hicks. My baby was engaged (about 3/5 she reckoned). All the other checks were fine, so we booked another appointment for a weeks’ time, and I headed off to pick up my son from nursery.

When we got home, I decided to finish putting up the positive birth affirmations around our living room. When my husband, James, got home from work (about 5pm) I was having more tightening’s, so I said I wasn't sure what was happening, but something had changed. By the time we were eating dinner at 6ish I said I wasn't sure if this was a false alarm or not and maybe we should give my parents a call to see what they wanted to do as they were lined up to take our son and our 3 dogs when everything kicked off. Mum and dad decided to take the dogs and my son - if nothing else it would be a trial run. So we finished off their packing and off they went. James decided to get the pool blown up just in case and we put the battery powered fairy lights in position and then we headed to bed to try and get some sleep. I didn't manage much as by now I had a pretty good feeling that I was in the first stage of labour. I told James to go to sleep as there was nothing much, he could do at this stage so he might as well get some sleep.

I used the Freya app (for Android! Yes!) to time my contractions. I managed on my own until about 3am when they were getting more and more intense, and I felt I needed some support, so I woke up James and basically ended up doing this weird side to side slow dance step with him during each contraction whilst doing my up breathing - I've no idea why... It just felt natural. In between contractions I listened to the MP3s. At about 4.45am, the app told me I was in established labour, but I decided to wait until about 5.15 so see it was a fluke or not (I think I was still in denial that I was actually in labour!!!) and they were still coming regularly. So we called the midwife unit at the hospital, explained we were a home birth and what was happening. They got the on call midwife to call us back and the first midwife arrived just after 6 with the second not long after. I agreed to be examined and was surprised when she said I had gotten to 6cm on my own! This was happening!