After keeping us in suspense for 12 days past his due date, with not so much as a twinge, baby Toby eventually decided enough was enough and did his best to make up for lost time.
Just after 5 am on Wednesday morning I woke up with backache, and despite changing postions, getting up and wandering round, stretching, rubbing it, etc it didn't improve, and if anything was getting worse. By 5.30 I told ds that I thought this wasn't just backache, but more likely an early sign that labour wasn?t too far away. With the benefit of hindsight I was right about the first part, but couldn't have been more wrong about the "early sign" bit!
At that point I went off to run a bath hoping that the warmth might help. Well to cut a long story short I never actually got as far as getting into the bath, because just as I turned the taps off I was suddenly hit by a massive contraction and found myself hanging on to the washbasin to support myself through it. I remember having this mental conversation with myself thinking "Ahh I want some pain relief ? NOW!" and telling myself "Don't be such a wimp - this is only the first contraction". Next thing I knew I was desperately calling to DH for help. It wasn't quite "Houston, we have a problem" (I wasn't in any state to attempt humour at the time) - but he had a bit of a shock when I had to tell him that I could feel the head crowning!
So DH dashed off downstairs to call 999, and was told by the operators that I had to try to hold the baby in! Somehow managed to do this while DH dashed about getting DS dressed and over to our neighbours, and the doors left wide open ready for the ambulance crew. Meanwhile I was still in the bathroom hanging on to the washbasin with one hand and holding baby in with the other trying to breathe through what by then was fairly constant pressure (you still couldn't call it contractions in the plural because it never went away).
It felt ages, but probably wan't more than about 10 minutes or so, before two ambulance crews arrived and decided that we needed to get our bed covered in towels and me moved onto it. Then one push and his head popped out, and a second one and it was all over bar the shouting by 6.10 am. Ah yes - the shouting? There wasn't any. So they decided to whisk ds2 off the hospital to get checked out (as the ambulance crew said he was probably fine, but they don't exactly do many deliveries, and certainly not when you only live 5 or 6 minues away from the hospital as we do!). As it turns out he woke up once he got outside and was yelling before they even got him into the ambulance, but by then the decision was made.
So by the time a midwife arrived there was no baby, just me and a placenta which decided it wasn't interested in joining in with the rapid exit game. So I ended up heading off to hospital in the second ambulance - and of course by now all the neighbours had noticed the drama.
Anyway we're both ok and home again now. Toby wasn't quite as big as had been predicted at 9lbs (but I'd still have said "No Way" if anyone had suggested beforehand that I could deliver a 9lb-er with no pain relief), and he's doing really well - feeding like a trooper (he's already been nicknamed "The Klingon" because he seems to be permanently attached to me) and even sleeping for 3 and a half hours in one stretch on only his 2nd night.
I'm a bit sore as you'd expect since he did rather force his way out and did a bit of damage in the process, and a still a bit shocked that it turned out the way it did - it's the kind of story you read about, but don?t think that it could ever actually happen to you. With DS1 the first thing that happened was that my waters broke and he didn't actually make his appearance for another 53 hours after a lot of 'encouragemnt'. This one couldn't have been more of a total contrast as quite apart from the speed of it all, his waters didn't actually get broken until after he was out.