Experience: I gave birth at Glastonbury festival

In June 2013, I was nearly nine months pregnant, and I took my hospital bag with me to the festival – but only because everybody told me I should. The baby was due in July, and my other children had all been two weeks late, so I was adamant that it would be fine.

I’ve always loved the music and the atmosphere at Glastonbury; I used to be a bit of a hippy and liked to party. I’d been a few times before I had my first child in 2000. Tragically, Megan died at nine days old from sudden infant death syndrome (Sids). While I was grieving, I met Tracy Harrison, who worked for Glastonbury and invited me to be part of her team, setting up the site and doing jobs such as cleaning the toilets, in return for a free ticket. After that, I went every year; the festival became my escape from reality, my happy place.

I arrived five days before the festival started. My job was to sit in the office, helping out – nothing strenuous. Glastonbury is infamous for being muddy, but that year was warm and dry. I was huge and struggling to walk, but I had a bed in a caravan and access to a small motorised buggy. By the weekend, the festival was packed. The Rolling Stones were headlining on the Saturday, and a few of us watched from a viewing point, sitting on a trailer. I could feel the baby happily kicking along to the music.

Later, after midnight, we walked back to the camp to sit around the fire. It was then that I started to feel twinges. Before long, I was experiencing full-blown contractions. I was in shock. My then partner, Sean, had gone to listen to some music with friends. We had to ring him and say, “You need to come back now.”

A friend called the on-site ambulance. Of course, it was almost impossible for them to find us in the middle of a field. When it turned up, it was much smaller than a normal ambulance – I practically had to crawl inside. The paramedics gave me gas and air and told me that the baby wasn’t going to arrive. I said: “I’m telling you now, this is my fourth baby – she is coming!” They drove me to the on-site Ivy Mead medical centre, which meant going through dozens of gates. Security stopped us at each one. I’d say, “Let me through, I’m having a baby!”

It took 40 minutes to reach the hospital tent. The contractions were getting stronger. It was about 2am and there was someone in the tent next to us who had done a little too much of something, and was screaming that he was going to die. I was freaking out. My friend Tracy came running in dressed as a panda – it was Glastonbury. But she was calm and said, “Shall we get this baby out then, darlin’?”

They managed to find a paediatrician, who didn’t look very impressed. Luckily, the birth was quick and not too painful, except that I was on a little trolley about half the size of a bed and they ran out of gas and air. I suppose they don’t plan for anybody giving birth.

Our baby was born at 3.10am on 30 June, weighing 6lb 6oz. She was perfect. Sean and Tracy cut the umbilical cord. Tracy was crying her eyes out, covered in blood, still dressed as a panda.

Soon a real ambulance came to take us to an off-site birth centre, and check that the baby was OK. As we left, the security staff and other patients were clapping. At the hospital, our baby was weighed and cleaned, then we had a bath. I didn’t fancy the four-hour drive home to Leicester in the morning, so we went back to the festival with the baby.

My friends had scrubbed the caravan clean, put fresh bedsheets on, and hung a sign on the door that read: “Mama and baby are fine, please leave alone to rest.” We called the baby Emelia, but everybody in the festival family calls her Arcadia. She didn’t sleep for years and we joke that it’s because she spent her first hours listening to the rave duo RatPack. It’s even on her birth certificate: born at Worthy Farm in Glastonbury.

I wouldn’t recommend giving birth at a festival. It was surreal. But the worst part wasn’t the labour and birth – it was having to use the long-drop toilet afterwards.

As told to Sophie Haydock

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