My labour and birth experience wasn't what I had planned but I went into the experience not wanting to have too many expectations and take it as it came just like the rest of my pregnancy.

Elena was such a sweetheart, already cooperating and listening to my wishes when I asked her to hold off on coming out during the weekday and waiting till the weekend so Ramon wouldn't be at work and stress out about getting to the hospital.

My waters broke (started trickling down my leg) at around 5am on Saturday and 12 hours later she was in my arms!  Prior to that, I had an acupuncture session on Thursday and a long walk on Friday which all helped her come 'on time' on Saturday!

Ramon was more than I had hoped for and stepped into the role as my support person with ease and I couldn't have done it without him. I don't know why I had any doubts!! He reminded me to breathe and spoke to me about the images we discussed to bring me to my happy place; I reminded myself about the excitement that I would soon meet my tiny human and that each contraction brought me closer and closer to meeting my baby.

I was on gas the whole time and it definitely took the edge off but the contractions were not that painful at all and I was at 9cm without much fuss. The only difficult part was not being allowed to push when my body was telling me to as Elena was stuck and couldn't turn the corner; her heart rate then dropped and it became more serious. She also had the cord wrapped twice around her neck so that didn't help either. I had to have syntocin, an episiotomy, and she had to have some help via the vacuum, and then she popped out the minute I was given the all clear to push!

When we were told we had a girl we both were so surprised as we were expecting to have a boy – we even kept calling her by a boy's name while I was pregnant! We asked the midwife a few times to check and she was definitely female!  Regardless we were both very happy that our tiny human (2.6kg) had arrived!

The pregnancy and birth was never a concern for me, it's the part where we are responsible for shaping the life of a human being that is the hard part!  But so far so good and we couldn't be happier!