I gave birth on Christmas Day – and still managed to make it to the festive family dinner at my mother’s house

There’s always one family member who cuts it close to the designated dinner time on Christmas Day.

But one woman had the perfect excuse as she managed to not only give birth to her baby on December 25, but also still make it back home for a festive feast.

Angel Musgrove, 20, welcomed her daughter in the early morning of the Yuletide, and was 19 hours later tucking into a roast.

Little Elsie was born at West Suffolk Hospital in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, at 3.07am and weighed a healthy 7lb 15oz. Her mother was discharged that evening.

Angel – whose own birthday falls less than ten days before her daughter’s on December 16 – admitted it was the best Christmas dinner she’s ever eaten; and the first proper meal she or her partner had gotten in three days.

The tasty treat was a happy relief after hours spent at the hospital. 

‘I was induced at about midday on Monday and I went into labour more than 24 hours later,’ she recounted.

‘I was in labour all throughout Christmas Eve and Elsie was born in the early hours of Christmas morning. It’s been quite amazing, to be honest.’

Angel revealed that it was ‘a really weird sensation to go through the chaos of labour and then suddenly you bring her home and it’s silent and peaceful’.

‘Her due date was Christmas Eve,’ she explained. ‘I kind of hoped she would come a bit before her due date so I could be home for Christmas, but that’s not what happened.

‘Elsie is my first baby and she is absolutely the best Christmas present I could have wished for.’

After her daughter was born, Angel managed to make it to her mother’s home, where a Christmas dinner was waiting for her and her partner, Zach Shawcross, 23.

The new parents named Elsie after her father’s grandmother, whose initials are L.C.  

But delicious as the dinner was, it was quite a late one, as the pair didn’t get to eat until after 10pm. 

‘We didn’t leave the hospital until about quarter to ten,’ she said. ‘Mum saved us a dinner – it was ready and heated when we got to hers.

‘We were eating at between ten and half ten. We were desperate for our Christmas dinner by that point.

‘Over the three days before Elsie was born I don’t think me or her dad slept more than four hours a night.

‘It was the first proper meal we had eaten since I was induced.

‘It was 100 per cent my best Christmas dinner ever.’

Both the baby and mother are now home at Woodbridge in Suffolk and are doing well – and Angel says that she would compensate for her daughter’s birthday being around the festive period by getting her presents in the summer as well.