I've got two precipitous labours under my belt, one was induction due to due to IUGR, but it was fast, particularly for a first timer at 37 weeks, 1hr 45mins. Second labour was supposed to be a homebirth, but I had some complications and went into labour in the bath on the antenatal ward, having been not dilated or effaced at all during a check prior to getting in the bath, was 6cm when they checked me about 10mins later, baby was OP and stayed that way, so it was about 4hrs total, plenty of time to get to a place of birth, but it was transition from the first contraction, my "travelling" took less time than it would take to get from the car park to the labour ward and I was already vomitting, but I also didn't believe it was labour, had it not been for the long 2nd stage I don't think a midwife would have made it in time had we been at home.
So I was pretty anxious about number 3, we were with midwives and their birth centre was 2mins from our house, we never did settle on whether we would go there to use the pool, or rent a pool for home, I got depressed during the pregnancy and in the end it became a source of extreme anxiety, so we went to see an OB to talk about induction. After we went through my medical history, she consulted with colleagues and ended up advising an early c-section, for different reasons to ones we'd expected, which solved anxiety issues about precipitous labour, just replaced them with anxiety about surgery, worrying about precipitous labour may well be preferable to the intense fear I had about dieing in surgery! It was all a bit of a moot point in the end anyway as my BP shot up, so even if we'd stayed with midwives I don't think we'd have managed to stick it out systolics of 110 from a baseline of seventy something are not good! Moral of the story, I spent a lot of time worrying about something (preciptous labour) that turned out not to be an issue, for reasons we didn't expect.
Best of luck to you!!
