When I got pregnant for the third time, I swiftly found myself in front of a consultant as she briskly ran through my birthing plan. They would get me in at 34 weeks, she said, scan me and then book a caesarean section. What if I wanted a natural birth, I said. Not recommended, she replied. I was considered high risk – I was 41, had had two previous (unwanted, traumatic) emergency c-sections. There was a risk of rupture.

I was disappointed. This was going to be yet another birth in which the first few weeks were spent hunched and shuffling about in pain. The baby was due right in the middle of the summer holidays so I'd also have two boisterous boys to look after. I don't mean to moan because I know how lucky I am to have them, but as my pregnancy was progressing normally, it just seemed a little barbaric. Why cut my baby out of me because it happened to be the hospital's preference? I did a little research and discovered that the risk of rupture is just a little over 1%. I was far more afraid of surgery.

I talked to a friend who had had a natural birth following a c-section (VBAC, which stands for vaginal birth after caesarean) and she said I needed to get someone on my side – a midwife, consultant or someone willing to fight my corner. I phoned my GP, but he was dismissive. I thought about getting an independent midwife but discovered they cost thousands of pounds and I looked into getting a doula.

It was while I was on the phone for the umpteenth time to one who casually and irresponsibly told me she thought I should have a home birth, that it slowly dawned that the answer might be closer to home. Why didn't I just ask my mum? Why shell out for a stranger when there is no one else who has my interests more at heart than my own mother?

What's more, she is uniquely well qualified. She was a midwife in the early 1960s and has borne six children of her own. She worked on the district in Preston in Lancashire. She used a trumpet to listen to the baby's heartbeat and her hands to locate the position of the baby's head, just like something from an episode of the BBC period drama Call the Midwife. "Are you sure?" she said when I asked her. "I think my knowledge might be a little out of date."

She was also concerned that she might have been stepping on Jez, my partner's toes. I told her not to worry. Any potential joy that childbirth had to offer him was stripped away long ago. He witnessed my first birth in which, due to complications following the c-section, my blood pressure shot up and I suffered a pulmonary oedema and a near heart attack. They shut him out of intensive care as they tried to stabilise me and he was left outside not knowing if I was dead or alive. Then, 30 weeks into my second pregnancy, he woke to find two litres of blood in our bed. He welcomed all the help he could get.

In my mum's day, childbirth was a lot less intrusive. It was an era when babies were born at home. She would see all her mothers right through pregnancy and birth, and got to know each one so intimately that when it came to labour she would often hop into bed with them. "During night labours we'd both have a little snooze as things were progressing rather than me go home and come back again," she says. "Most of my mothers didn't have landlines in those days so it was easier than getting to the phone box at the end of the street."

She would be on call for five days out of seven. When she went for an outing to the cinema, she devised a system with the projectionist that if one of her mothers needed her, a message would flash up on screen telling her to go. Once, on one night alone, she singlehandedly delivered three babies. "There weren't many emergencies in those days," she says. "Because the mothers were at home they were more relaxed so the labours tended to be pretty quick and usually drug-free." C-sections were really rare, she says, and when they did occur, the baby would be "cot nursed" for 48 hours. That is left lying, undisturbed, to allow them time to recover quietly from the trauma of their sudden entrance into the world.

In the weeks leading up to my due date, I switched hospitals to the Chelsea and Westminster, in London, where a brilliant young VBAC midwife, Emily Boenke, had agreed to take me on. We made a deal. She would let me try a natural birth on the condition that the pregnancy didn't go past my due date and that I agreed to be monitored (tied to a machine that checks the baby's heart) throughout. My baby was due on 12 July and the consultant had already booked me in for a c-section the day after – which was Friday the 13th. As the date approached with little sign of the baby coming, my mum suggested we tell the hospital that I was superstitious and didn't want to have surgery on Friday 13th. It was lucky she did. Labour began the very next day.

At first, as my mum took her seat on the plastic hospital chair at the foot of my bed, I felt worried I'd made the wrong decision. Mum is 74 – what if it all went horribly wrong? What if it went on for days?

In the event, I needn't have worried. I don't think I could have done it without her. Mum may be a little out of date on the specifics, but the fundamentals of childbirth haven't changed. I heard the other midwives and followed their instructions, but it was my mum's voice that I was really listening to. Somehow she knew when my contractions were coming before I did. She gave me gas and air exactly when I needed it and rubbed my back endlessly when the pain was too much. She didn't leave my side for almost 24 hours.

In my eagerness to deliver naturally, I had become obsessed with the notion of active birth – a technique that rejects the idea of being a passive patient giving birth lying down. Tethered to a monitor, I paced the same small patch of hospital floor all through the night, hoping this – and gravity – would help the baby out. Mum looked on, worried that I was wearing myself out. "It's called labour because it's just that – very hard work," she said. Not wanting to interfere too much, she tried to coax me to lie down and relax. At first I would have none of it, but as dawn approached, she finally succeeded. That was when things started progressing.

It turned out the baby was posterior – his spine was back to back with mine. I'm glad I didn't know this as I'm not sure if I'd have had the courage to go through with a natural birth. It took nearly four hours to push him out. Ridiculously, I spent the whole thing screaming for a c-section but my mum breathed every breath with me and carried me through every contraction.

"I can't do it," I screamed.

"You are doing it," she said.

It was all I needed to hear. When eventually I did give birth, I did it the old-fashioned way – lying flat on my back with my legs in the air. Her presence had also given Jez the confidence to believe that it wasn't all going to go horribly wrong too, and he rose to the occasion brilliantly. Finally, he got to cut an umbilical cord.

I'm a firm believer that birth isn't about the mother – it's all about getting the baby out safely. But now, having given birth naturally, I realise that the difference is great. This time we went home and had champagne and were elated. I never felt this after my c-sections. I guess it's something to do with hormones, but at last I understood what people mean when they describe childbirth as one of the happiest moments of their life.

My mum says it was one of the most nerve-racking deliveries she had ever attended. Not because of my medical history or my age – just because I am her own flesh and blood. "I never dreamed you would have asked me to be at his birth," she told me later on.

"But I hated the thought of you going into hospital and me sitting by the phone waiting to hear. I was just so glad to be there and see you were OK."