Tea, toast and an epidural helped Charlotte Coleman Smith through a long and painful backache labour

Frantic activity

Three days past my due date, and I spent the evening hanging pictures - a task I'd put off for months. Then I cleaned the kitchen floor.

The contractions began at bedtime. I tried to sleep, but the pains were getting steadily stronger and more frequent. Although unconvinced that 'this was it', I found myself strapping on the Tens machine and ordering my husband James to rub my lower back.

We phoned the hospital for advice around 1am. We were told to sit tight until the contractions were three minutes apart and very regular. At that stage they were lurching between 12 and eight minutes, so didn't qualify.

The trouble with water

As I was desperately keen to have a water birth, I thought having a bath would be the best way to relax. Wrong. I felt strangely stranded and out of control when the contractions came.

At 5.30am they were four minutes apart. This was close enough for me, so we decided to make a run for it. I squeezed into the back seat alongside a comical amount of kit - little of which we used - and we sped through the autumn dawn to London's Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.

Good and bad news

As we reached the car park, I realised that the contractions had stopped. I felt like a fraud who was about to take up valuable bed space. As we sat in the neon-lit underground cavern, wondering whether to go home again, on they came. We staggered into the hospital and I tried to look more in pain than I actually was.

We were shown to a delivery room and a tired-looking blonde midwife at the end of her shift examined me and proclaimed me 5cm dilated. This was excellent news, as it seemed that I had done most of the work at home.

The bad news was that the baby was back-to-back with me, so I was probably in for a painful labour.

Its head was still very high up and the journey down could be a long one. I stripped down to my old T-shirt and draped myself over the birthing ball. Between contractions, we chatted to the midwife and a student who asked me, as at a cocktail party, what I did for a living. I faked a contraction to avoid answering.

Considering pain relief

At about 8am I realised that I hadn't even thought about pain relief. I had breezed through more than two hours with nothing, but I wasn't smug for long. I had assumed drugs would be doled out automatically.

The contractions were increasing in intensity. It felt as if someone was twisting a huge fist inside me - uncomfortable pressure, as well as a kind of dull pain. If this was going on much longer I needed to ask for drugs.

Then the midwife found that I was only 4cm dilated. We were getting no closer, but the pain was worse. Finally the anaesthetist arrived. For some reason I came over all Hyacinth Bucket and demanded that he introduce himself.

Not funny

I still had the Tens machine on, and barked at James to switch it off. The poor love grabbed the controls and, instead of turning it off, yanked it up to the highest pulse, sending me shooting into the air in agony. Funny - if it hadn't been so painful.

There followed a great deal of prodding and poking, while I was given a local anaesthetic and plugged into a drip.

'I can't feel it working yet!? I howled. 'He hasn't put any in yet!' said the student. Finally, I felt the cool rush of something entering my bloodstream. After about 20 minutes, the contractions started to dull.

Tea and toast

By 10am, I was sitting up on the bed, eating toast and drinking tea, chatting away, and worshipping at the shrine of whoever invented the epidural.

But there was little progress, so the midwife decided to break my waters to bring the head down. When the waters came gushing out, she noticed that the baby had 'done a poo'. This meant that the meconium in the baby's lower intestine had been released into the amniotic fluid - a sign of stress. The baby would have to be carefully monitored when it was born in case it had swallowed or inhaled any.

At around 2.30pm, I found that I could feel the pain of the contractions through the epidural, and that I could now feel pressure on the nerves in my spine. This meant that the baby was moving downwards, but it also meant agony for me.

The big push

I had not given the pushing stage much thought and when it came it felt utterly bizarre. I was persuaded not to have an epidural top-up so that I could feel the contractions and know when to push. This was a scary decision, but in fact made the whole thing much easier.

Suddenly, the midwife started rushing around, preparing the space behind me to receive the baby, and sending out the student to fetch the paediatrician. I felt the urgency and knew that the big moment was about to happen.

I gave one last push, and our beautiful baby slid out onto the bed - grey-blue in colour, but utterly perfect. And so big.

It's a boy

I looked behind me and saw immediately that it was a boy. 'I told you it was a boy,' were my first words. 'He's not breathing - is he OK?' were James's, one-upmanship far from his mind.

Joseph was rushed away by the paediatrician while I reeled with shock, relief, delight, and a strange numbness all at once.

When he was given back to me to hold, he looked up at me with ink-blue eyes. It was as if someone had told him, 'This is your Mum. See what you think. If you like what you see, you can keep her.'

He's still checking me out with those eyes, every time I hold him - but I think I'm passing the test. He's the most wonderful thing ever to happen to us, and I would definitely do it all again.