When I was 33 weeks pregnant with our second child, my husband, Craig, and I decided to have a relaxing, four-day weekend at Dolphin Bay, a couple of hours’ drive from our home in South Australia. I spent the first few sunny days reading, relaxing and watching our three-year-old, Jaxon, play.

When a bit of pain woke me up early on the Monday morning, I assumed it was the Braxton Hicks I’d been having on and off since I was 20 weeks along. A half-hour later, I got up and saw I’d been bleeding. I woke Craig and we timed the contractions. They were all over the place.

An hour later, I was still contracting. We figured something was happening, so started to pack. The plan was to drive to the nearest hospital when we were done. But not long after we started throwing our stuff together, I felt a bit of pressure. I told Craig we had to leave everything and go.

We drove into town and asked a local for directions to the hospital. It was an hour away at Yorketown! Craig rang for an ambulance and a first response team arrived within minutes. They told us an ambulance was on its way. I told them I felt like I needed to push, so one of the ladies jumped in the back of our car and we sped off to meet the ambulance.

We flagged it down about halfway to Yorketown. The ambos decided not to move me, so I stayed in the car and we followed the ambulance to the hospital. When we arrived, I was taken to what used to be their labour room. The hospital didn’t deliver babies anymore! The nurses wanted to fly me to the Women’s and Children’s Hospital in Adelaide, but I told them I really needed to push. It was pretty obvious my baby was intent on making an early appearance, so one of them ran to get a doctor.

The doctor who came in just so happened to be an obstetrician from Adelaide! He examined me and said I was 10cm dilated. He broke my waters and I started to push. A couple of pushes and an episiotomy later, our 1.9kg, 43cm daughter, Mikayla Maryjane, appeared.

Because Mikayla was so early, she needed special infant care, so a few hours later a helicopter arrived to take her to Adelaide. The next morning I was taken by plane to be with her. Mikayla spent three weeks in the special care unit and really thrived. Even with all the drama it was an amazing birth experience, which I think was due to the wonderful obstetrician and supportive nurses.

• Poles apart - dramatically different birth stories
• Being induced due to gestational diabetes
• Managing a difficult posterior birth
• Happy birth stories
• A premature birth story