Ella arrived 3 days early on 9th December!
Damm that clary sage - Friday night got into a bath at 8.30pm and thought I would pop in a few drops to see what happened...by 9.30pm my contractions were every 10 minutes and stayed that way until around 2am. Had managed to stay in bed until then but when I got up they suddenly increased to every 5 minutes, so at 5am we drove to the hospital...
...only to be told only 1cm dilated and cervix not doing anything at all so back home by 8am!
Long long day at home with regular 5 min contractions, taking baths, bouncing on ball, zapping myself with TENS machine etc, until 5pm when I really couldn't manage any more and back we went to the hospital!
Thankfully by then I was 4cm dilated, lots more cervix action, so it was straight in the pool by 6pm! Held out for a couple of hours, then onto the gas and air, until midnight (lonnnnng evening, well it felt like it to me!) when the midwife suggested giving up on the G&A as it might be making my pushing less effective (had been pushing for about half an hour at that point, waters having broken quite late on).
So a nasty hour pushing with no G&A until 1.01am when out popped baby Ella, eyes wide open looking calm as can be! Amazing!
Good luck to all those waiting, and congrats to all those here already!