At 01:00 we went to bed. When I got into bed, I was immediately uncomfortable. Naar, then just walk! And the feeling went away again. After 10 minutes, it came back again. Bah! Walking again. Could this still be those pre contractions or is this serious? My friend would regularly wake up and ask if it was time after all. ‘No ya, are you crazy. This is going to take a long time. Go on sleeping.’ Where he grabbed sleep, he became more and more elusive to me. I knew I wasn’t going to sleep again that night. So the night went by pretty quickly. It didn’t get worse, nor did it get less. At 04:30, things suddenly changed. I had another contraction and wanted to walk my lap. In the hallway, a puddle suddenly fell: my membranes had broken. But at that point we weren’t sure if it was amniotic fluid. We looked at it, smelled it and took a picture. After that, we were pretty sure it was amniotic fluid :-). At the time, we were still laughing about it together a lot! That laughter soon wore off because pretty soon the contractions were really seriously intense. Walking was no longer very nice and I had difficulty finding a fine position. At 05:30 I was fortunately able to call the midwife because I had contractions immediately every 3/4 minutes. Nicolette was supposed to be there at 6:30 a.m. She indicated that I could jump in the shower, but I did not like this. I was out soon. When Nicolette arrived, things had gotten progressively heavier. I had back and stomach contractions so really no position was fine to accommodate them. I had made a very nice birthing plan based on a book I had read. For example, I didn’t want to know how many cm of dilation I had so as not to discourage myself. Surely I was far too curious for that! So after touching, I quickly returned to this self-made appointment and wanted to know. 2 centimeters. Poe, that was a bit disappointing. I didn’t really know what to do with it. I tried to catch some more contractions, but because I was very nauseated during the rest period and also lost a lot of energy to this, this was increasingly difficult. “What are you thinking about? Nicolette asked. ‘Still thinking about that epidural, which I really wanted to avoid. I really didn’t want an epidural. If an epidural was a standard part of childbirth, I would be terrified for the epidural, not for the delivery. Still, I thought about it. In my plan, I had indicated that I needed to bring it up 3 times before any steps were taken. So Nicolette left it at that point. Later she asked again, “What are you thinking about? Really that epidural. Surely I want that epidural. Nicolette went to call. Unfortunately I had the misfortune that Ter Gooi was full and I really did not want to wait 1.5 hours for a place that might not be there. Fortunately there was room at the AMC!