I was feeling greaat and planned to take a long walk on the beach in the twilight with my daughter and her friend, but the heavens opened so we got some videos and headed homeward. I cooked up a huge pot of thick minestrone soup and chose a good bottle of red wine to have with it and lit some candles. The mild contractions were now coming every five minutes or so lasting up to a minute. We rang the midwife to put her on standby that we might need her as she lives one hour s drive from us, started filling the pool and then settled down to watch a movie. I assumed I was in for the long haul, but only five minutes into the film I got the first big contraction, swiftly followed by another.
Pools are great, but the average domestic water heating system takes two hours to fill one.
To make matters more complicated our stove and the pool were a flight of stairs apart, so there was a lot of toing and froing with steaming cauldrons. He somehow managed to be in two places at once. I was worried the baby might be posterior. These labours tend to be long and grim. The contractions were by now thick and fast and painful, so although the pool was only half full I got in and went on all fours to try to relieve the pressure on my back.