It was the night of December 3. I was six days overdue. I was eating dinner with my sister out on her farm when I felt something quite unusual in my stomach. I thought it was just a Braxton Hicks contraction, and it didn't bother me.

My sister had planned to go out after dinner, so off she went and I was home all alone. These so-called Braxton Hicks contractions got worse and worse. I didn't want to ring my sister because she was having such a great night out with her work mates. I decided to go to bed and try and go to sleep, but that didn't happen because I realized that these Braxton Hicks contractions were real contractions. I couldn't sit or lie down.

I went for a walk to see if I could get things moving. This did not happen the way I wanted it to. I met my sister halfway up the driveway. She asked me if everything was OK, right when I was having a really intense contraction and I said, "I just can't sleep so I'm going for a walk." I found it really hard to concentrate on the contraction and talk to her at the same time.

I walked around for another hour or so. I was getting really tired at this stage so I went inside and made a hot chocolate to relax myself. This didn't work! I went to bed to try and get some sleep, because I knew I would have a big day ahead of me. I got some sleep.

The next day was my sister's day off. I woke up at 6:30 a.m. with a really bad contraction. I thought to myself Maybe I should tell her. So I called out to my sister and she came into the bedroom. I told her that I thought the baby was coming. She did what most sisters do – panicked her little heart out.

I told her that everything would be OK! I got out of bed with great difficulty and had some breakfast. I didn't know how many centimeters dilated I was. Once again it was too uncomfortable to sit or lie down, so I went for a walk around the paddocks with my sister. From this time on she followed me everywhere.

It was about 2 p.m. by the time we got back to the house. It felt like I had had 100 contractions while we were on our walk! I decided to sit on the floor because it was the most comfortable position. Whenever I had a contraction I would rock back and forth on my hands and knees. I did this for about five hours.

I decided to go and have a nice relaxing bath to maybe take away the pain of the contractions. For the first time something worked. I got out of the bath at 10 p.m. and went to bed – with my sister alongside me. We talked about anything under the sun to take my mind off the contractions (didn't help much).

My sister fell asleep about 3 a.m. and I was lying there talking to the baby, telling it to hurry up and come out because I was getting so tired of the contractions. This put me to sleep, thank God.

I woke up at 8 a.m. with the biggest contraction ever. I thought it was about time I started timing the contractions, so I got my phone and from the end of that contraction I timed it till the next. It was one minute. I timed the next and it was about 40 seconds. I couldn't handle this much longer.

I got out of bed with my sister's help, and went for another walk. We didn't go for very long this time. I couldn't handle it. When we got back, I decided to have a bath and hopefully relax. I was in the bath for like 10 minutes.

As I was getting out of the bath, my waters broke. I said to myself About bloody time. I crawled to the lounge room and told my sister that my waters had broken. I couldn't get up onto my feet, so I had to crawl everywhere.

At this point the contractions were only about 10 seconds apart. I rocked back and forth on my hands and knees to try and stop the contractions from hurting so much. I crawled into the bedroom and knelt up against the bed. As soon as I got there I had the urge to push. I only pushed a little bit at first but then I couldn't handle those little pushes anymore. My body was telling me to do what I thought was right. I had no idea, and my sister was telling me to wait for every second contraction. She had studied a little bit on childbirth. She told me that the contractions that I didn't push on would help the baby relax and move down itself.

The contractions were five seconds apart and lasting for about one to two minutes. Not happy Jan!

The next two hours went past and nothing had seemed to happen, except I got really bad back pain. At this point I would just scream and moan because I didn't know what to do. The urge to push had gone and I was just getting really bad contractions.

I told my sister that I wanted to move onto the bed, so she helped me up. As soon as I got onto the bed I had the urge to push again. I told my sister to have a look and see if she could see the baby's head. There was no sign. I told her to stay there while I pushed. I pushed every second contraction for as long and as hard as I could. I had been pushing for about seven hours now.

She saw the head after about 50 minutes of more pushing. She told me that I had to rest and not push with the contractions to see if the baby would move by itself with the intensity of the contractions. This didn't happen. I pushed on every contraction now. My sister could see the forehead of the baby. I was getting really tired and excited now.

The next 30 minutes was getting the head out. I was tired. I told my sister I couldn't do this anymore, and she said, "You have to." The next 30 minutes of pushing did nothing. The next contraction I had I pushed and I screamed and screamed for the next 30 minutes to get the shoulders out, which didn't happen.

With the head of a baby coming out of me and I needed to move into a different position. While my sister held the baby I rolled over onto my hands and knees. This felt a little better. With the next contraction I pushed and screamed and rocked backwards and forward to see if the shoulders would come out. They didn't after pushing for another 30 minutes. I rested for a little bit and with the next contraction I screamed and pushed again. The baby was out! I had a daughter, Olivia Grace, born December 6, 2006, 10:05 p.m.