Bethany Patricia finally arrived this morning at 11.01am weighing 9lb. I got my water birth and we're home now. Photo etc to be added later. Congrats berticles and hope this was it for you enceinte!

Yes! We welcomed our daughter (as yet nameless) this morning at 8.21am. I had a bit of a traumatic birth with a 30 hour labour. However we are both still here. More detail and hopefully a name to follow tomorrow?

So how many of us are still waiting for LO to make an appearance?

My little man was born at 430am today weighing 8lbs 15 oz 20 in long. He's healthy and such a quiet baby! My daughter is in love

Great news ayh! I am glad it worked out the way you wanted.

30 hours, wow! Sorry to hear that it was rough, but congratulations on your daughter.

Yay! Maybe that castor oil worked! So glad you could avoid induction and things happened on their own.

Here goes the full story - Carina Rose was eventually born at 8.21am on Monday 4th Feb Started labouring at 2am Saturday night/Sunday morning. Had a homebirth planned so just chilled with hubby had an aromatherapy bath and some toast. Contractions moved from 15 minutes apart and mild to about 5 minutes apart and strong but bearable by 3pm. Midwife had popped in and out but at 3 did an internal and I was 3-4cm dilated, so in established labour. Contractions got gradually stronger and more frequent which I coped with using hypnobirthing techniques and gas and air. Because i wasnt dilating any further the MW broke my waters at about 9pm. I didnt find it painful, but the contractions got MUCH more intense. By 11pm I had been in labour for 21 hours. Was managing contractions but every third one would be really painful to the point I was literally screaming in agony and gas and air wasn't even taking the edge off it!! I still hadn't dilated any further so we decided to transfer to hospital as I was quickly becoming exhausted.

Got to hospital and I was literally screaming, the poor staff!! They gave me a morphine jag (which did NOTHING for the pain) and organised an epidural. This had been something I really didn't want but honestly, it was so bad I would have let them cut me in half and remove baby!! By about 1am the epi was in, along with a syntocin drip to help me dilate. Hubby and I were given a few hours to rest in a private delivery suite whilst all this took effect. At 6.30 I was fully dilated and started to 'push', however after 26 hours of labour and the epidural the pushing was just not effective so they decided to transfer me to theatre for either a forceps delivery or a c-section.

I prayed not to have the section. Carina Rose was born with help of forceps at 8.21. Didn't go according to plan but I'm glad I tried for a homebirth although it didn't work out for us. The baby is beautiful and I am loving being a mum much more than I expected to!

Sounds like congratulations for most of us now!
patch2006uk - how are you doing? Are you still waiting?

I've finally got round to writing Bethany's birth story - there's a link on my signature for those who are interested.

I'm still hanging on in here. 42 weeks tomorrow. Got another consultant app to see where we go from here - my instinct is to leave everything alone as long as me and bubs are doing ok (which thankfully so far we are) and hopefully things will kick into action over the weekend. Fortunately my doula totally understood how likely I was to go miles over, so she's still on call for me until 43 weeks, rather than the usual 42

LO's wiggles are really quite uncomfortable now, but physically and mentally I'm doing fine. My husband is finally off work now, too, so I've got some help with DS from tomorrow.

Just uber jealous of all the 37/38 weekers starting to post birth stories. There's a queue ladies!