Kitchens up and down the country have been the scene of hundreds of hair-raising dramas this Christmas, as once-a-year cooks struggle to deliver a turkey safely from cooker to the dining room table.
But these surely pale into insignificance when compared with the once-in-a-lifetime challenge faced by Gillingham dad Craig Pollard this Christmas.
He found himself unexpectedly responsible for delivering daughter Amy when partner Nicky Ponsford realised she was about to give birth at home in First Avenue, Gillingham, in the early hours of Christmas Eve – after nurses at Medway Maritime Hospital had advised them to go home the previous day.
“They said 'you’re not ready,’” said Mr Pollard, 41. “We got home at 12.40am and the labour started really quickly. I didn’t know what to do.”
While Nicky, 36, who works as a nurse, steeled herself for giving birth in the kitchen, dad saved himself from looking a bit of a turkey by phoning for help.
“It was surreal,” he said. “Someone was telling me what to do. I was doing what they were telling me but I can’t remember what they said.
“At the end they said 'we need to hear her cry – is she breathing?’ She was still in the sac – the membrane. I could see her mouth opening but she couldn’t breathe.”

He described hearing his daughter cry for the first time as an emotional “tearful” moment, but said he was still worried for Nicky.
Forty minutes later the midwife arrived and the family was able to relax.
Two-year-old son Oliver watched proceedings quietly from the settee while six-year-old daughter Tilly (pictured above with Amy) was said to be “over the moon” to have a new sister.
After a few hours’ sleep the family got their celebrations under way with a Christmas Eve trip to see Father Christmas at Bluewater.