All births are a triumph in some measure. My first birth was a classic "failure to progress" yet when I awoke from general anaesthetic to find my daughter, Emma, at my breast I felt a sense of awed wonder at the creature my body had produced. In the days, weeks, months that followed I started to wonder, to regret, to blame myself for the “failure” I felt myself to be for needing a caesarean.

You might be offered induction for

...being overdue

...rupture of the membranes

...big baby

...a small baby

... medical reasons

Listen to any group of women telling their birth stories and it is very easy to see why it can be so difficult to accurately describe labour to a first time mother.  Even second time mothers are surprised by how different labours can be. Yet there is often an urgent desire in pregnancy to know how it might be. The birth stories on this website are here to support, inspire and inform you but your own birth story will be just that, your own story with its own beginning and ending and its very own unique pattern. First of all though it might help to understand how the process should work.