I tell you, so much of this ride is the professionals putting fear into you and situations – I get that its a risk management thing but even so.

It was definitely really great how well they took my call and how they dealt with us when we showed up. I’m much more likely to be ok calling them again, should I need to whereas Chris has told me on more than one occasion to call with an issue I’ve had and I’ve not wanted to bother them.

Chris probably appreciates the chance to do a dry run

We’re only 20 mins from our hospital and it still freaked me out to be that far away (they tell you everything takes super long to happen but I have a friend for whom this was never true), to the point that after half a day ‘quiet’ labour we ended up going in just because I didn’t want us to be doing that drive as 4am mercy dash when Finchy was super tired.

No one is more sympathetic than midwives about calming your nerves – because stress really does make the baby thing harder, and that makes their job harder. Calming your nerves is basically a massive part of their job, because they have seen so many more births than any of their patients.

I extra appreciated when I checked out that the nurses at my hospital made it clear they were happy to take calls if ANYTHING weird (or even slightly odd) happened and I needed an ‘is this normal’ check – and they never once made me feel bad for asking a question.

You also made me realise how quiet the birthing suite was when I was there – I was in it for the induction and for the labour and never saw or heard anyone else . . .