The wildest experience!

On Friday evening I feel the first faint contractions while I’m putting my (now) middle daughter, 3½ years old, to bed. I’m 39+5, and with both my previous births I went past my due date, so I can hardly believe it might already be happening now.

I go upstairs and tell my husband, Jannick, that something funky is definitely going on in my body, but we decide to wait and see a bit, since we’ve also heard that these third-time births can be a bit unpredictable. Third-time births can be a bit tricky, but we still prepare ourselves for a possible birth, so around 9 p.m. I send my eldest to bed and Jannick drives to Netto to get crisps, juice and dextrose tablets. At this point the contractions are 20–30 seconds long and 6–8 minutes apart.

I take a long, hot shower and around 11:30 p.m. we contact my parents, who are going to come and look after the girls. They drove to the summer house on Fur in the afternoon, so they have a short ferry ride and a two-hour drive ahead of them. They catch the ferry at midnight and are on their way.

My contractions start to really bite, but I can manage them – I count my breaths, and that way I can keep track of when the contraction peaks and eases off again. Jannick takes a nap on the sofa and I even manage to doze between contractions. I work through them on my own for a couple of hours; at this point they last about 45 seconds with 5–6 minutes in between. I alternate between sitting on the exercise ball and kneeling over the chaise longue of the sofa.

Around 2 o'clock my parents arrive, and go straight downstairs and sleep with the girls. I go under the shower again for half an hour, and now it really seems that the contractions are pulling teeth, but I have very good control over my breathing, so I can still be in them. Meen I also think that now it must be time to call the midwife.

It fits that Jannick wakes up when I get upstairs, and at 02.56 we call the midwife. The phone is answered by the midwife with whom I have had almost all my consultations, and I am simply so happy that she is the one with whom I will give birth. The contractions now last about 45 seconds and are 5-6 minutes apart, and we talk a bit about whether she should go to the maternity ward and get laughing gas. I don't remember what we come up with, but she orders a taxi anyway, and will get there as soon as she can. While we wait, Jannick gets ready to inflate the birthing vessel and fill it.

In the meantime my mum wakes up and comes into the living room with us. I’m sitting on the chaise longue part of the sofa while Jannick is inflating the birth pool, and I breathe through a few contractions there while my mum presses hard on my lower back.

It feels really good, but suddenly the contractions come a little faster than they did just before. I get down on my knees in front of the chaise longue again, and between contractions tell Jannick that I can't reach that tub. Little sister is coming soon. At first he doesn't quite understand why I say that, and tries to convince me that we can easily get it filled, but he quickly changes his mind when, in the next second, he hears me gasp my way through the first press sieve. At 03.28 I call the midwife again and say she must come NOW, but fortunately she is right on the stairs!

Jannick sits down in front of me on the sofa, and I put a cold cloth on my forehead while I gasp through a few squeezes. I am somehow completely clear in my head, and fortunately have some nice breaks in between contractions. I BATTLE SWEAT. It's so hard to gasp during contractions, instead of pushing along. My mother wakes up my father, who is a senior obstetrician, IF my little sister were to arrive before the midwife.

At 3:40 a.m. the midwife walks through the door. I shout to her that I have the urge to push, and she tells me to just go with it. When I push with the first contraction, my waters break in a huge gush. It’s so fucking liberating. It takes me 2 or 3 more pushes, and at 3:48 a.m. I catch little Freya myself.

I get up and lie down on the sofa, where the placenta is delivered. I’m examined (the first and only internal examination), and there are no tears. Around 5–5:30 a.m., my big girls are woken up and come in to say hello to their new little sister, and Freya is measured and weighed. 3,900 g and 50 cm of pure love.

I couldn’t have wished for a better birth, and even though there was a brief moment of doubt about whether the midwife would make it in time, I never once felt unsafe or anything like that. The most incredible experience of my life!