Day 1 birth – Tuesday 22

Well, where to begin, innocently padding to the loo in what felt like the middle of the night is where it started for me, but it turns out my partner had been up since 2am when contractions started and had been making sandwiches and having a nice bath.

So it's quarter to five thirty and I suddenly feel wide awake and out of my depth!

Okay, “get a hold of yourself and look at this logically” I say to myself. I attached CK to the TENS machine, then using the infamous “watch with second hand” I start timing the contractions, realised they were steady, phoned the hospital and then we're off!

Well to say I was a movie cliché wouldn't be an exaggeration, driving the other motorists mad with my “not hurting mummy super-smooth pot-hole avoiding technique”, bumbling into the hospital with more baggage than an emigrant and generally looking like a worried dad in a bad comedy.

Anyway, into see the midwife we went, fully expecting to be sent home, only to find we're not going anywhere, it's go-go-go time!

After CK went for a swim the other week she fancied the weight relief  of spending some of the time in the pool and as luck would have it, the only room with a fixed pool was available, not only that we got two midwifes as ours had an experienced trainee with her.

We had to wait two hours for a doctor to come and give CK an anti-biotic drip for a “group b strep” infection she was diagnosed and treated for some weeks before and then it was off with the TENS and into the pool.

It's a weird thing for the partner to go through, for a while now I have felt very protective but now I am in the situation that my loved one is in a lot of pain and there is not a darn thing I can do about it.

The midwifes I must say are brilliant, they say all the right things and apart from checking the baby's heart-rate with an ultrasound device that makes sweeking and  swarking sounds likes a freeform jazz enthusiast tuning a transistor radio, they don't touch her at all and at 9:40 little AG swims into the world.

Wow, I feel on a high, bedraggled and flushed she maybe but in my eyes my partner has never looked more beautiful and the little wrinkly bundle of flesh that is already looking for milk, well what can I say, love at first sight!

For the rest of the day there is the inevitable flow of tests, feeding, visitors and texts and finally at 10pm I head home completely and totally knackered.