The birth story

Africa was born at home as planned, although much quicker than expected. After the long haul I had with Stella I tried to ignore the fact that I was in labour for quite a while. On Sunday, in spite of regular contractions we managed to go to church at St Etheldreda's, where Tim and I were married, lunch at Carluccios, walk about four miles to the Stoke Newington festival and back and then cook dinner! I went to bed, and finally decided that I could ignore things no longer at 1.20am. We called the midwives out at 1.50am and fortunately they only live around the corner because Africa was born 40 minutes later. Unfortunately, Tim had to abandon pumping up the birth pool so he could massage my back, but in retrospect I'm happy it was over so quickly, even without the pool!