MY 9-MINUTE LABOUR!
Baby Jack could be UK’s fastest ever new arrival
‘Next thing I knew he was there’
A FIRST-TIME mother had the UK’s shortest recorded labour after she gave birth in nine minutes flat – having been pushing for just two.
Nicole Jamieson, 25, barely had time to get out of bed before her 6lb 3oz son Jack arrived on the bathroom floor.
The hotel receptionist had not even realised she was in labour and initially thought she only needed the toilet.
She and her partner Jack Fallon, 25, had been out all day as Miss Jamieson was still three weeks from her due date. Returning to their home in Wythenshawe, Manchester, they had chicken fajitas for tea before staying up late watching films.
But at 1.55am on May 8, Miss Jamieson’s waters broke – induced, she believes, by Mr Fallon singing Britney Spears’ songs just before bed. She said yesterday: ‘Jack is such a bad singer. He goes completely over the top. He makes his own songs up. He’d sung a bit of Britney Spears’s Hit Me Baby One More Time. I was crying with laughter so that must have been what set it off.’
As she was in bed, Miss Jamieson felt ‘this big pressure drop down’, explaining: ‘It was my waters, but I didn’t know it was my waters.’
She ran to the bathroom, then ran herself a bath but after seven minutes felt the need to push.
‘The next thing I knew he was there, on the bathroom floor,’ she said. ‘I looked at my phone just after and it was 2.04am.’
Frantic Mr Fallon, a labourer, almost missed the birth as he had run outside in his underwear to call for help due to poor phone signal in the flat. But he made it back just in time to grab his healthy newborn son, named after his father, as he arrived.
An ambulance came after half an hour to check the pair over, cut the cord and take them to hospital as a precaution.
Remarkably, Miss Jamieson, who gave birth without pain relief, only took two paracetamol afterwards – claiming her son’s sudden arrival ‘didn’t hurt’.
Such births are extremely rare, known as precipitate labours if they last less than two hours. Labour usually lasts between 12 and 18 hours.
The current UK record for fastest labour is held by Daisy Stewart, 20, from Dundee, who in 2016 gave birth to baby Poppy in just five minutes and three pushes. However, as Poppy had been induced in hospital, Miss Jamieson and Mr Fallon are considering approaching Guinness World Records to claim the title of fastest natural labour in the world.
Clare Livingstone, of the Royal College of Midwives, said quick labours are ‘generally not something to worry about’ but added that they can be a frightening experience requiring postnatal ‘debrief and discussion’.