Who could know that when Freddie was born we only had another 6 months all together

Freddie was born in April to Louise and I. Labour took 44 hours. It started on the Sunday night. When Louise elbowed me in bed and said, 'it's game time'. She was right, and by midday on Monday we were in the back of an Uber to the hospital in London. The staff were excellent, but after a few hours they told us to go back home and guestimate that we still had another 30 hours or so to go.

My principal job was refraining us from going back into the hospital too early. I held out till the next afternoon when we were back in the Uber. They said, 'you're just there, 4cm dilated (at 10cm you're about to pop). Go upstairs to your room'.

And from then it went into fast forward. Louise got comfortable in the bed. I looked out at the setting sun. The midwife took a look at Louise and asked her not to push, but Louise kept saying thats all my body's telling me to do. She rechecked, called over to me, 'Husband, press that red button on the wall... We're having this baby NOW!'

Within a minute we had 5 people in the room, a wheely table with scalpels and other metal tools. She had moved from 4cm to 10 in about 20 minutes and now it really was game time. About 8 minutes later Freddie was pulled out all covered in blood and looking like a drowned rabbit, laid on Louises chest and wrapped in blankets.

I was so proud of her. I can't imagine a generation before when the father often wasn't there, its such a powerful experience and the admiration for the mum is off the scale. The emotion hit me after a few seconds when I saw him and tears rolled off my chin. The nurses and midwives loved that! We had grown the family that we'd always wanted.