I went into labor naturally at around 4 p.m. on Tuesday, May 29, 2007, and was very excited that things had commenced. It started out with a show and mild contractions increasing to an uncomfortable level by 10 p.m. that night. I tried to sleep but was up around midnight. Then by 2 a.m. I was moaning loudly with each contraction in our lounge room. I was a little early at 39 weeks.

By 4 a.m. the contractions seemed to be coming more frequently and I woke up my partner, refusing to do this anymore by myself. By 6 a.m. I had had enough and my partner rang the hospital, who said to come in as contractions were fairly regular at about three to five minutes apart and were very, very painful.

We got to the hospital and the nurse midwife was wonderful and did an internal, which nearly sent me climbing over the back of the hospital bed. But I was horrified to hear that I hadn't dilated at all, despite about 15 hours of labor. Then I started vomiting and pain increased.

I was put on a monitor for contractions and Baby's heartbeat for a while. Then after another few hours I asked for an epidural as I had no progress and couldn't put up with the pain anymore. The epidural was wonderful and my doctor came to break my waters around lunchtime on Wednesday and put me on Syntocin to speed up the process.

By 4 p.m. and 24 hours of labor I had only dilated 3 centimeters. Things went downhill from then on. I needed the epidural topped up as the pain got worse, was vomiting a lot and ran a fever. Baby's heartbeat was erratic and I started to lose interest in talking or anything. I must say, the midwife was wonderful and so empathetic; she really helped.

It ended up with a doctor coming in at 9 p.m. and organizing an emergency Cesarean section. I did not want to do this earlier, but by this stage I was very glad. I had never had an operation before or been in the hospital, but it was a great experience. Everyone was wonderfully comforting and nice, which made it a really good experience for me. They said they'd never seen anyone smile so much in the operating theater.

Our beautiful baby boy, Callum James, was born at 10:03 p.m. and weighed 8 pounds, 7 ounces. He was on the larger side and thus why he maybe didn't want to come out the expected way. The C-section was a great thing in the end and I would tell anyone not to be afraid of it. Recovery was also fine, which I put down to being healthy in pregnancy and reasonably fit (as you can be when you are huge).