I gave birth to an 11lb baby, so a bit more support would have been nice

It became something of a litany. Wherever I went the same words followed me as reliably as my shadow. "Is it twins? … You must be dying to just get it over with … Are you sure you're not diabetic?"

Like more than 1,000 women in 2013, I was expecting a very large baby: over 11lb. For several weeks, my midwife kept producing a measuring tape and gently tutted at the result. I had been a big baby, as had my partner. Worried, I measured the size of our heads and attempted to avoid relatives' gleeful tales of other gargantuan family births.

In the end, the birth itself was as far from my happy, natural, medication-free birth plan as possible. There was no additional consideration or advice given because of his size – it was as if this would mean no extra complications. Despite constant reassurances that big babies do not automatically mean caesareans, I could sense I might be pushed into it. At 12 days late, I was booked in for an induction. He may have been a big baby, but he was certainly comfortable where he was. Typically, on induction day, contractions started. They still wanted to go ahead with the induction, so it was goodbye waterbirth. By the next morning I was having strong, painful contractions, and no amount of wobbling around on a yoga ball helped. Neither did the gas and air – mostly because nobody had told me how to use it correctly, so I wasn't actually getting a hit of that gloriously numbing gas into my bloodstream.

Finally, the morning shift arrived, and a midwife proclaimed I was 4cm dilated – time to transfer to the birthing suite. Huffing away to myself I was wheeled off, hoping that today would be the day. I'd been having painful constant contractions for almost 48 hours and I was very ready to give birth.

The next several hours are hard to remember clearly. I was a very stubborn mother-to-be, and was still denying pain relief, even when the pain and pressure from each contraction made me scream in a rather undignified manner. Several hours passed, I'm reliably informed, though for me it all rolls into one long contraction. At some point my waters were broken for me; and after that, the yoga ball got a good soaking. Dignity quickly became a thing of the past; and various consultants came and left while I was rolling back and forth, not wearing a lot of clothing, incoherent from the pain.