Ginny Tarelli tells her birth story: 'I laboured at a midwife-led birth unit on tens machine and then gas and air in the pool. I had a very 'full on' labour with contractions starting only two minutes apart and continuing like that for the duration of the labour.
I was full dilated and pushing in the pool for two and a half hours when it became apparant that the baby was presenting itself facing sideways as opposed to facing my back passage. Pushing him out naturally was difficult.
On this basis, it is the policy of the birth unit to call an ambulance to take patients to hospital in case of complications. There was a good possibility of still pushing the baby out so when my midwife accompanied me in the ambulance, she advised me to keep pushing with every contraction.
Whilst the ambulance was travelling on blue lights and sirens, it crashed.
Cutting a long story short, another ambulance was called to take me to hospital.
Because of the trauma of the crash and lots of people around me shouting (particularly the driver of the car who was hit) my pain went through the roof and I was unable to control my contractions as well as I had been doing.
I was then stretchered into the main road, where all I could see were car lights and lots of people and I was put on another stretcher and into a second ambulance.
Once I arrived at hospital I was in a bit of a state, sweating profusley and my eyes were rolling due to the pain. My husband told me later that all he heard was me screaming when they were wheeling me down the corridor.
There was a lot of commotion where my midwife, husband and mother were all shouting at staff to give me pain relief because I could not labour naturally any more due to the trauma of the crash.
I recall being in extreme pain and thought I was going to die because I simply could not handle one more contraction.
I eventually ended up having a spinal tap, ventouse attempt and then an emergency C-Section.
My son, George was born at 8.38pm on New Year's day weighing 8lb 7oz. He was very healthy and still is. '
