“I was pregnant with my first child, so didn’t really know what to expect from labour or birth other than what I’d learned from my antenatal classes,” Katy explains. “I knew it might be a long process, and that some women come into hospital only to be sent home again. So I’d got it into my head that it would take ages,” she adds.

Labour pains

So when I woke up at 4.30am with backache, I had no idea I was in labour, even though it was a day after my due date. My waters didn’t break and I’d had no show, so there had been no clues, but By 6.30 I woke my husband saying ‘something isn’t right.’

We phoned the central delivery suite, and I was advised to have a bath and take some paracetamol, which was all as I’d expected. I was getting pains every few minutes, and I know it sounds odd, but I didn’t realise they were contractions, and even though it did hurt, I wouldn’t describe it as agony.

Three pushes later

During the bath, I felt an overwhelming urge to push, and began to realise I might just be further along than I thought. We phoned back, and all they could do was talk me through the last stages,” she remembers, adding “The funny thing was knowing I wasn’t the only one, and that they had someone else on the line that day!”

Then, at 7.35 with just a midwife on the phone Jacob James was born on the bathroom floor – just three pushes later and there he was, weighing in at 6 pounds, 11 ounces.

There was a tense moment, when we couldn’t see the umbilical cord which had snapped as he came out, but a couple of minutes later the paramedic came in, and the midwife followed shortly afterwards.

Everything was fine - I didn’t need to go to hospital at all, which was amazing because I hadn’t even considered a home birth – in fact I’d really wanted to go to hospital because of the long drive to our nearest one, and I wanted to have doctors around me if anything went wrong.

Mind you, after this I might have to reconsider next time, as everyone tells me it might be even quicker next time”, she laughs.