When it comes to giving birth, we all know it's a beautiful and natural experience - but we've also all heard horror stories of women being in labour for hours or even days on end.
Someone who knew this all too well is Corinne Card, who spent 10 hours in labour for both of her eldest children - Zoe and Harry.
But when it came to welcoming her third child, a beautiful little boy called Freddie, it was a very, very different story. In fact, he arrived into the world with such little fuss he just "slipped out" into the bath.
Corinne was a week past her due date in October 2020 when she started feeling pain as she picked Zoe up from school.
The 41-year-old, from Brighton, assumed was just Braxton-Hicks contractions, which are contractions that prepare the body for labour but aren't necessarily a sign that labour has begun.
Her pain gradually got worse as she got home, so she called a midwife who told her not to worry and advised taking painkillers and having a bath to relieve it.
Get the news you want straight to your inbox. Sign up for a Mirror newsletter here.
"My husband Jon and I run a media consultancy and I was meant to be on Zoom calls and I said I can't, I'm gonna get in the bath.
"And it seemed like as soon as I was in the bath, it just got much more intense and yet not that frequent. We knew from previous births that contractions have to be a certain frequency.
"We called the midwife a few more times, but they said contractions weren't close enough together and to wait a bit longer before going to the hospital, but at this point, I was shouting so much in pain that a neighbour came to the window and asked what was going on as they thought it was domestic abuse.
"My waters hadn't broken, so the midwife still didn't think the baby was coming, but then I felt like I could touch the head and that's when I realised they're wrong and the baby was coming."
Corinne called out to her husband, who was in the kitchen talking to the midwife on the phone. She told him what happened and they all agreed it was time to call the paramedics.
But the baby was born before the paramedics could arrive.
"I remembered from things like Call the Midwife and One Born Every Minute that you're not supposed to have a baby in the birth canal for very long because it puts pressure on them from what I understand, so I thought maybe I need to deal with this myself.
"Jon was on the phone with the paramedics, but I had no idea how long it would take. I thought 'I have to do this', so I thought the safest thing would be if I tried to push a little bit and there's a contraction, maybe it will give the baby a chance to come out if it's ready.
"So I went on all fours, did a tiny little push and I could see the head.
"I shouted to Jon that the head's here and he was literally on the phone with the paramedics, but he didn't come in the room as he was waiting for them, so I did one more tiny push and the whole baby just sort of slid out."
In total Corinne had spent about an hour and a half in the bath by the time baby Freddie was born at 5pm.
She quickly made sure the baby was out of the water and held him close, wrapping him in towels to keep him warm.
When Jon finished up his call he was gobsmacked to walk in to find his wife holding their newborn son in her arms.
Corrine stayed in the bath until the paramedics arrived as she still had the umbilical cord attached and was wary of damaging anything as it felt like a "high risk" situation.
"A paramedic helped me and the baby out of the bath and we went to sit down on the bed with lots of different towels and sheets to stop everything getting disgusting. And they cut the cord and it was all fine," the mum recalls.
In fact, she was so fine afterwards that she didn't need to be admitted to hospital and instead stayed home and enjoyed a chicken dinner with her family and watched a film.
And four days later she was back doing work for their company, Full Story Media, responding to emails and taking calls with clients.
Looking back, Corinne describes the birth as "easy" but she knows her husband doesn't feel the same way about it. She's also aware that she's lucky nothing went wrong while she was on her own.
She said: "My perspective is not Jon's perspective. I think he found it stressful and he probably felt like he had too much responsibility because there wasn't a professional there with me, but I found it easier because I really did not like being in the hospital.
"I know that everyone's doing their best but I didn't like being in hospital the previous two times because I felt like there's so many things that you have to do and prove. You don't have your family, they have visiting times but I felt lonely having me and the baby sitting in hospital and I felt like I couldn't sleep properly because there's all the beeping noises through the night and the other mothers on the ward.
"This one was just easy because it was quick. And nothing actually went wrong. I'm not saying it's the right choice at all. I wouldn't have chosen for it to have happened this way because I know how risky it was, but it did happen to be straightforward and easy for me."
Freddie is now 21 months old and his birth story is one of many parenting experiences Corinne shares in her new book, Parenting Tips Your Mother Didn't Tell You - An A-Z of Parenting in the Digital Age.
Available to buy in paperback on Amazon for £7.99 or on Kindle for £4.99, the book is intended to help parents deal with the surprising situations and modern dilemmas they're facing in the digital age.
Speaking about the book, Corinne added: "Parenting has changed radically in the decades since us parents were kids. I wanted to delve into the strategies and opportunities available that weren't around when our mums and dads were caring for us as little ones.
"I looked at the latest parenting advice from people including economics professor Emily Oster and social psychologist Adam Galinsky, as well as the latest tech we can use to make our lives as parents easier, to provide an A-Z of snippets of advice for new parents."
Do you have a parenting story to share? We want to hear all about it. Email courtney.pochin@mirror.co.uk
