Hello all! You were right, it wasn't like me not to post for over 40 hours, I have indeed had my baby! Baby Elise was born at 5.19pm on 13th Sept, and was 3.64kgs (8lbs). This might be a slightly long post, so I apologise now! Elise is sleeping, so I'm making the most of it!
Basically on Monday night I got no sleep at all after posting on here, the pains were coming stronger and more regular (altho I was surprised that 'regular' meant they were 8 mins apart, then 11 mins, then 9 mins etc etc...). I tried to take andif's advice of having paracetamol and going back to bed, but it didn't touch the sides! Put TENS machine on (which REALLY helped in the early stages) and sat on ball for hours listening to Enigma! Rang labour ward when contractions were every 10 mins to be told to ring back when they were every 3-4 mins .
When they were every 3-4 mins, had a slightly uncomfortable car journey in the rush hour to the hospital (had about 4 contractions in the car!)... got to the hospital and TENS was no longer as effective, so moved on to gas + air. Was told I was 8cms dilated (yay!). From arriving on labour ward at 9am, to get to the pushing stage took until 3pm, and amazed myself by doing it just with the gas + air (ouch!). After 1.5hrs pushing, I was exhausted and the baby wasn;t coming out, so ended up having an epidural (after I'd done all that hard work as well!) and a Ventouse delivery, but the epidural didn't cover 'down below' (only the contractions), so I could still push the baby out myself.
All in all it was a very traumatic and stressful day for me and DH, but we got there in the end!! The end result was definitely worth it, she's gorgeous Anyway... enough babbling from me (it's sleep deprivation, I'm sure!). I'm still thinking of all of you who have yet to do it... hang in there!