I've been trying to think how I can answer Moo's birth was 22 hours and I've always said I would've been happy with the last 5 hours knocked off it!

Up until my waters broke it was slow and steady. I started having very regular contractions at 7pm and managed to stay home for about 10 hours quite happily. When I got to hospital I was 8cms at 5am, still very comfortable with the building up of contractions. Yes it was painful but it really was a gradual thing at that point, still talking and joking between contractions.

My waters broke at 10am and that's when it became thick and slow ITMS After this my contractions were one on top of the other until I had Moo 7 hours later at 5pm, I had no urge to push either so the last 2 hours were all pushing. That whole time I couldn't speak. So while I could've handled a couple of hours like that, it went on far too long and I was absolutely exhausted and shocked by the time he came into the world!

So I'm hoping this time around it's a little bit quicker!