One of the things that I learnt before I endured being induced, thirty-six hours of labour, a tens machine, gas and air, pethidene, thirteen epidural top-up’s (and that’s not including what they gave me for my emergency c-section), plus morphine, and God only knows what else, is that when it comes to babies, expect the unexpected.

We planned to be in our new house two months before she was born, but we exchanged on my due date and moved on the day that I was being induced. I remember driving back to our new home after dropping off the keys to our old place and noting that I had to be at the hospital in four hours. The adrenaline that I had operated on had suddenly been replaced with the terrifying fear of pushing something the size of a melon out of something the size of a lemon and I sat there shaking with my legs clamped shut.

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