Choosing homebirth after pregnancy loss of MCMA twins + traumatic induction, pregnancy anxiety, ECV for breech || Alice's birth of Vinny at home (Queensland)

Episode 63 is shared by the amazing Alice. 

Alice is the creator of Halo Mumma, which is a free website resource to support those on their pregnancy after loss journey. 

Alice herself today shares the loss of her twins Ayla and Millie, and the trauma which this created, not just from the pregnancy, but the induction of labour, post partum, and including a delayed PPH. 

During the pregnancy of her rainbow baby, Vinny, she ended up switching to homebirth in order to foster a more positive experience. 

We talk about multiple different quite difficult topics in this ep that may be triggering for some - so please take care of yourself when listening. 

Ultimately, Alice’s story demonstrates that you can homebirth after loss and that no one should be forced to birth in a place where they have experienced so much trauma. 

Resources: 

• Halo Mumma 
• Twins - Great Birth Rebellion Episode with Dr Stu 
• The Fifth Vital Sign (book) 
• Calm Birth (Education) 
• PANDA Pregnancy After Loss 
• Chemical Pregnancy 

Chapters

• 2:49 Alice's Journey Through Loss
• 8:59 Pregnancy After Loss: The Road to Vinny
• 15:09 The Birth of Ayla and Millie
• 23:48 Choosing Home Birth: A New Beginning
• 29:52 Reflections on Trauma and Healing
• 39:00 Navigating High-Risk Pregnancies
• 44:52 The Journey of Labor and Delivery
• 58:32 The Emotional Impact of Birth

Transcript

0:02

Welcome to Birthing at Home, a podcast. I'm Elsie, host. I'm a home birth mom of two little boys, a doula in Melbourne supporting birth at home. I'm a mental health nurse and the co-creator of Home Birth Victoria. If you want to learn more about me, the podcast, or my work, check out www.birthingathome.com.au. Before we begin, I would like to acknowledge the Wurundjeri people who are the traditional custodians of the land I'm recording on in Ngaam, Melbourne, Australia. I would also like to acknowledge the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have been birthing at home on country for tens of thousands of years prior to the British invasion and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. This is episode 63 and it's shared today by the amazing Alice. Alice is the creator of Halo Mama, which is a free website resource to support those on their pregnancy after loss journey. Alice herself today shares the loss of her twins, Ayla and Millie, and the trauma which this created, not just from the pregnancy, but the induction of labor and the postpartum, and including a delayed postpartum hemorrhage. During the pregnancy of her rainbow baby, Vinnie, she ended up switching to home birth in order to foster a more positive experience. We talk about multiple different, quite difficult topics in this app that may be triggering for some, so please take care of yourself when listening. Ultimately, Alice's story demonstrates that you can home birth after loss and that no one should be forced to birth in a place where they have experienced so much trauma. Enjoy. Welcome Alice to Birthing at Home, a podcast. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for joining me. I'm so glad that you figured out that we were in different states. And so the time that we had chosen would be different. yeah, thank you for joining me and I got you out of bedtime duty. did, did. Dad's on bedtime duties now. You might hear them reading in the background. Yeah, that's brilliant. Do you want to give a bit of background to who you are, where you're located, that type of thing? So I am 32, had to think about that. I live on Gubbi Gubbi country up on the Sunshine Coast in Yamundi with my husband Darren. We have two angel babies, Ayla and Millie, who were born and passed in 2021. And I have a rainbow baby, Vinnie, who's almost 18 months old. Yeah amazing and did you say that you're currently pregnant? Yeah, I'm 34 weeks now as well. Yeah. That one. When you have a toddler, it's not the same. life is busy. Life is so busy. And so you're going to share with us in this episode, ultimately how you came to find and choose home birth with Vinny. But so if so the listeners have a bit of context, you reached out to me because you've started Halo Mama. Is that correct? Yeah, Halo Mama. So it's a website and an online social media account, basically for pregnancy after loss. And the whole point of it is to be like hope inspiring, more of an optimistic positive spin, but still recognizing grief and trauma and practical evidence based techniques and also lots of support and advice on there as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah, beautiful. I suppose so you had a home birth with Vinnie. When was that? Which year was that? Sorry. That was July, 2023. 2023, July. Yeah, amazing. And so maybe going back to your maiden self and before you were like pregnant, did you know about home birth? Like, do you remember what your thoughts about birth or your knowledge about birth were? I did know about home birth and I knew it was a thing but I don't think I ever gave it too much thought. sort of, to give a bit more context, I've worked in hospitals as an occupational therapist for the last 10 years. So a hospital for me has always been a safe space and I always imagined that I would give birth in a hospital. Almost like kind of like a rite of passage, you know how you get the photo of taking the baby out the door. and those sorts of things. So I just always imagined that that would be me and I never gave anything else really much thought. Yeah, yeah. And so when do I guess do you want to start us off by walking through your sort of conception pregnancy journey with the twins? sure. So at the end of 2020, I'd been on the pill for about 14 years because I had really bad acne as a teenager and that was just the band-aid that they did back then, I think they still do. So I'd been on the pill for a really long time and I read this book called The Fifth Vital Sign that taught me for the first time as a 28 year old about my cycle. And I just found it fascinating. I was like, my gosh, this is so cool. I did not know any of this. And I decided to go off the pill at the end of 2020 with the thought that we might start trying for a baby in another 12 to 18 months. But I just wanted like to see what my cycle did for a year, at least before we started trying. And then it took me eight months to get my cycle back. And there was lots of GP visits. Yeah, a long time, just nothing. So lots of GP visits, I didn't have a regular GP. So I tried out a couple of different ones and I guess that experience, I felt quite gaslit sometimes, I suppose. I was sort of told like, it's nothing like it'll come back. you're just anxious. If you really wanted to have kids, you just do IVF. I was asking for hormone testing and I was getting refused. Um, yeah, wasn't a nice experience. Um, so I went and saw naturopaths instead. Um, I stopped over-exercising. I increased the carbs in my diet. Um, and through that I finally got. cycle back. I had a period and obviously knew that I was like now that I'd had my cycle back that I could possibly get pregnant but after eight months of no cycle I wasn't being super careful also had no idea when my fertile period would be after that and four weeks later I found out I was pregnant. Wow, yep. A massive shock because we definitely weren't trying and after eight months of nothing, yeah, it was a huge shock. But we were very happy. It wasn't like we didn't want it. It was just earlier than we were planning. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was super exciting. Went to my six week dating scan and the sonographer showed us a picture of one baby and said, yep, there's a heartbeat. Everything looks great measuring perfectly. And we left with our picture of one baby and we were like, yay, this is amazing. And a few hours later, my GP, one who I actually liked, who I had found, she called me at about 4pm that day and I thought was really weird that she was calling. I thought something must be wrong. And she said, how's your scan? And I said, yeah, it was fine. Why? And she's like, what did they tell you? And I said, like, they just said that there was one baby. It was measuring well. That's it. And she's like, did she tell you there was two babies? And I freaked out. I- What? Yeah, I know. I was not expecting that. We don't have any twins in our family on either side except for IVF twins. So yeah, it was a huge shock. And I told her she had the wrong person and that she needed to double check. To your patience. I convinced her she had switched her patients up or that the sonographer had somehow switched up the patients. And yeah, she double-checked and it was me. And I was tapping twins. Yeah, so one of them had a heartbeat at that point and the other one didn't. So she said, you're to have to go back two weeks and see what's happening. So we waited two weeks, we went back and at the eight week dating scan, we saw two little babies with two perfect heartbeats measuring perfectly. Holy moly. Yeah, which was amazing at that point because yeah, in that two weeks I'd really gotten my head around it and I was really hoping that there would be two at that point. My GP referred me to the MGP program, which at that point I had no idea what that even was when she said to me, what model of care do you want? I was just thinking, what is she talking about? have no idea. But she kind of explained it to me and she sort of said that I should go with the MGP. So she's referred me, which is great. And the MGP at SCU took me on even though I was having twins, which was I didn't think that they did that, but apparently they did. Yeah, really good. I did all of the like. typical tests we did the NIPT came back low risk we did our 12 week scan came back low risk and then because I was having at that point they did already know that they were identical twins because there was only one placenta. So I was sort of automatically streamlined into obstetric care, but also with my MGP midwife as well. And they said that I would have routine fortnightly scans from about 16, 17 weeks. Okay. So I went along to that very first 16 week routine scan, not thinking that anything was going to go wrong. My husband wasn't even there. He was working FIFA at the time. So I went by myself and the scan just went for a really long time. And I knew there was something wrong because more and more people kept coming into the room. else. was just trying not to ask any questions because I thought if they can just figure this out and without me annoying them I can get out of here quicker and yeah I obviously just had no clue what was about to happen but eventually after about three hours of scanning they said to me that yeah your babies are no longer so at the 12-week scan they each had their own amniotic sac but they shared a placenta which is called MCDA twins. But at that 16 weeks scan they could just see one sac and one placenta which is MCMA twins or monomonotwins which is the rarest type of twin but also the highest risk twin. Yeah. and they also told me that one of the twins had a severe encephalocyle at the base of her skull, which is a type of neural tube defect. it's like a opening in the skull and the spine at the base of the neck. and that was sort of all the information that I was given, except for the fact that that was bad. and that I would need to wait, until I had a pediatric. appointment to give me information on prognosis and like that. they did tell me that the other twin was perfectly fine. from what they can see at 16 weeks. So from there I had an amniocentesis at 17 weeks, is basically they put a big needle into your belly and they suck out a bit of amniotic fluid to test the baby's genes, I think. I'm probably not explaining that very well, but. Yeah, no, I also know there's a big needle involved. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I closed my eyes so I didn't really see it. Yeah. Those results came back completely normal. So they were saying it likely wasn't a genetic issue. Okay. And then there was lots of waiting, lots and lots of waiting, lots and lots of like, we don't know what's caused this. We were gonna have a surprise, but we found out at that point, because we didn't know how long this little baby was gonna be with us. So we decided to find out the gender, which they were girls, which apparently over 90 % of MCMA twins are girls, which is pretty cool. Yeah, that is pretty crazy. Eventually we had an appointment around 19 or 20 weeks with the pediatric neurologist and he basically said that this was one of the worst encephalocytes he'd ever seen for that gestation and that it was affecting her brain development. Her brain stem wasn't developing properly and you can't live without a brain stem so his prognosis was that she would either die in utero, she would die at birth or she would have a very short life expectancy with no quality of life essentially. At that point, they did transfer our care to the Royal in Brisbane because it was a bit too complex for my local hospital at that point. And we had meetings with the palliative care team, the paediatric palliative care team, and a plan was made that we would go to 32 weeks, would have a C-section and the twin with the encephalocyl would be if she was still alive at that point she would be palliated at birth and there was lots of talks around what that would look like. Obviously like that was a pretty traumatic time like I was so organized I had pretty much bought everything before 16 weeks before finding that out so I had like two cots a twin pram that was way too organized. Yeah, my goodness, but so excited like I think that's understandable. Yeah. Just so excited and so naive as a first time mom, just no clue that something like that could ever happen to us. Yeah, yeah. So I went through the process of selling all my twin things and getting everything ready just for one baby because I was so certain that we were going to have to, we were going to get to bring one baby home. And then at 21 weeks, we went for a big anatomy scan up at the Royal in Brisbane with the maternal fetal medicine team. And again, that scan just went on and on and on. And I could just tell something wasn't right. At the end, she said, I'm just going to have to go and someone to talk to you about something and she left the room and I just burst into tears and I said to my husband like this is it. We're gonna lose them both. I work in hospitals. I know what that means. I know what it means when they say can you step into the room next door so we can tell you something and sure enough they told us that the second twin actually had severe deformities as well in her her skull, her spine, her ribs, that was affecting the development of pretty much every system in her body. And they were obviously like, they were minor to the point where they could only pick them up in this 20 week scan. but yeah, they were affecting the problem is that the skeletal issues deformities were affecting the development of every other thing like her brain and her respiratory system and all those sorts of things. it wasn't in catholic years, so it wasn't the same as the first twins issue, which had all the doctors really stumped because they had different issues. and we were told that the prognosis was that, they would either die before they were born. And if they were born alive, they would have no quality of life to be able to live. They would have to be on respirators, breathing machines. They would be fed. They would be wheelchair bound. And yeah, there was no quality of life option there. yeah, basically we were asked to choose. to terminate the pregnancy at 22 weeks or continue and wait for them to pass on their own and they would be palliated at Yeah. Yeah. So that was horrible. It's taken me a long time to be able to speak about it so objectively, I suppose. yeah, it was horrible. It was the worst, the worst possible case scenario because, I mean, we were just holding on to hope that we would get to take one baby home. And when that... Yeah. Shattered we just fell apart Yeah. So we decided that we would terminate at 22 weeks rather than going to full term. Mostly my decision was around like how hard is this going to be for them? And the answer from the specialist was that they would feel a lot more pain if they were full term compared to 22 weeks. So that was the basis of our decision. So we were referred back to our local hospital and I was induced a few days later. And I was sort of told by one of the obstetricians just before they induced me like, don't worry, this won't hurt because you're only 22 weeks. It'll just feel like bad period pain. I hadn't done any like birth classes or birth prep or anything. I had absolutely no strategies. Spoiler, it did hurt. It was not like a bad period pain. I just had contraction on contraction. I didn't have any breaks at all in my contractions. I think they started the medication about 9 a.m. and by 12 p.m. I... yeah, I was in having a really bad time. I ended up asking for an epidural and they were born not long after the epidural about 6pm, only about 10 minutes apart. Yeah, yeah, yeah. everyone sort of like people have said to me like that must have been awful like when they were born but to be honest like when they were born and like put on my chest like that was one of like the best moments of my life and like the things that had happened before that and the things that happened after that were the worst moments but like when your baby is born and it's put on your chest no matter if they're alive or they're dead you get that overwhelming sense of like love and and you just think they're the best things ever. The moment they were born will always just be such a special moment for me. One of the best moments of my life. had you already named them? We had talked about names. We had to do a last minute scramble to decide. But we called them Ayla and Millie. So Ayla was born first and then Millie was born second and they had already passed away like during my labour which I was kind of grateful for as well because I didn't have to watch them suffer and they had passed where they felt peaceful and safe and together which was important to me. Yeah. Yeah. And then things started taking a turn after that. So I had a retained placenta, which is quite common with a second trimester birth. They tried to get it out, but the cords snapped when they were pulling on them. And I hadn't to, I started bleeding quite a lot. So I had to go down to theater to have my placenta removed manually. Yeah. There was like miscommunications between the midwives and the theatre staff and the theatre staff thought I had had healthy live twins. Fuck, my god. buzzing around me saying, my gosh your husband's a busy man up there with twins, wrangling twins by himself, like he's got his hands full and I was trying to tell them what had happened but I just couldn't form words at that point and I was also bleeding really heavily and feeling really dizzy. But yeah, that was quite traumatic. I had a general anesthetic and I had my placenta removed in theater and came up to the ward a few hours later. I got to spend two nights and three days in hospital with them because of the postpartum hemorrhage and my HB was really low. I needed an iron transfusion and I couldn't walk. I was so dizzy. from the blood loss. But that ended up being a blessing in disguise because I got to spend like three whole days with them. They were in a cuddle-cut next to me which is like a bassinet with ice packs to keep them cool. yeah, I just held them for three whole days which was amazing because yeah, that was the only time that I got with them physically. so beautiful. Yeah, my husband was there too, which was awesome. We got like little hand and foot impressions done to keep forever. But yeah, the worst part was leaving the hospital without them for sure. Instinct to hold your baby. It doesn't go away when your baby's died. and to turn around and walk away from your baby. Everything in your motherly instinct and your body is telling you to go back. So that was really hard. It absolutely broke me. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I just. Yeah, like Alice, how like how did you come back from this? Because that's just like so. Yeah, I just. Heart heartbreaking, I can't imagine like how much work. like you must have had to do to be able to be here tonight and tell this story and not be an absolute mess. Like, wow. A lot of time. It was a very, very dark time for me after that. I was lucky enough that I was working in Queensland Health at the time so I did get full paid maternity leave so I took 14 weeks of work off work which I really needed because eight weeks later I had a delayed postpartum hemorrhage again from retained products and I had to go back and have more surgery and also they were just telling us the whole time that they had no idea why this had happened and we didn't have any answers. Like, was it genetic? Was this something that I passed down? Like if we try for another baby, is this just going to happen again? So I had all these questions running through my mind and they told us to get any answers to those questions. We would have to wait for the autopsy results, which would take six months, about six months. They ended up taking 11 months to come back. Holy moly. It just was like this constant suspense, like every time my phone would ring I would almost jump. I was on edge for like 11 months waiting for these results to come back. And I desperately desperately wanted to try again and try and have another baby but I was just too scared without any answers and I just wanted to make sure it wouldn't happen again which of course you can never guarantee that it won't happen again but You know, you're trying to grip onto any sort of control in that situation. So yeah, we waited the 11 months. We sold our house. We sold all of our things. We bought a tiny home. We just flipped our lives upside down. Everything that we thought we knew before just changed completely and we changed completely. It actually, for some couples, that's really hard to get through, but... For me and my husband, really brought us a lot closer together, which was amazing. He was my absolute rock through all of that. And then after 11 months, we did get autopsy results back, which told us that it was a genetic issue, but it was a de novo genetic issue, which means it's not passed down by the mom and the dad. It's just a randomly occurring genetic issue. They were... There was only 30 recorded cases worldwide of what they had. None recorded in twins with a maximum life expectancy of six weeks. So no one had ever lived past the age of six weeks with that condition. I honestly, I don't even remember the name of the condition. I think it was just numbers and letters. Like it didn't even have a name. That's how rare it was. Holy moly, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, holy moly. why it hadn't showed up in any of the nips testing or genetic testing that we've done during the pregnancy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. so we started trying for another baby. I had back to back, straight up to, they call them chemical pregnancies. I hate that word. They're just pregnancies. we got the two lines, but then it would slowly start fading followed by like really heavy period a week later. So that happened. for two months in a row, which I think ordinarily I would have dealt with better, but given the circumstances of the last year, like it was just really, really hard. I thought I would never be a mom, basically. Your mind goes to really dark places. And then on the third month, the lines did progressively get darker. So that was our Vinnie. Yeah wow and so like obviously you had so much trauma from this whole you know I mean the stuff in the pregnancy of Ayla and Millie and then the you know the actual induction and then the postpartum bleeding and you know placenta and whatnot Had you given any thought, I feel like your mind would have been just filled with like so much other stuff, but like, had you thought about, you know, when I get pregnant again, maybe this is like what like, I definitely want to see section or I definitely want this like had your mind jumped to anything like that and like a attempt to sort of like, I don't know. try and guarantee something. Yeah, so in terms of like the trauma, because I worked at the hospital that Ayla and Millie were born in, every time I went anywhere near maternity, I was wearing my Apple watch and my heart rate would jump to like 130 resting. I would start shaking. I'd feel nauseous. I'd feel myself start like tearing up and shaking. And I knew that that was a trauma response to like the location. of what and what had happened there. So I did think to myself, because in that time I was listening to all these podcasts and like binging these amazing books like Rhea Dempsey and Rachel Reed and learning about the hormones of labor. And I was thinking to myself, like, how would I ever give birth here? Like, this is not a safe space for me and my body. And my body is yelling that at me every time I come. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I was just thinking, well, I really needed all that obstetric input last time and I needed the hospital last time. And I just couldn't rationalize that that wouldn't happen again. Pregnancy after loss is so hard and yeah, your brain just automatically goes to worst case scenario. I just couldn't see like any other option for myself at that point. So I did call my MGP midwife and I got straight back in with her, which was awesome. Cool. Yeah. And the plan was to have a hospital birth. We did all of like the standard testing up until 20 weeks. I was under the care of the maternal fetal medicine unit for the first half. Just because of what had happened before, they said that they'd be happy to see me for subsequent pregnancies, even if there was no indication that anything was wrong. Just my own peace of mind and extra scanning. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we did the nip testing and the 12 week scans, which came back fine. But obviously that meant absolutely nothing to me after last time. So it was really hard to connect with the baby for that first 20 weeks too, just because I just kept thinking like, if this happens again, you know, I can't, yeah, your brain just does crazy things to you. Yeah, yeah. So we did have an early anatomy scan done at 16 weeks, which came back fine with no problems, which was a big relief because that was the first scan where the twins issues had showed up. And then at 20 weeks, we had our big anatomy scan. And scans were really hard for me as well. Like there was lots of scan trauma there as well, especially being in the same building and sometimes the same rooms as like my amniocentesis, like 18 months. So yeah, that 20 weeks again came back normal, fine. And that was the moment at 20 weeks where I was like, my gosh, we have a normal, healthy baby that we might get to bring home. And I started thinking about how I was gonna give birth in hospital with that trauma response in my body. And I was, one of my biggest fears was induction because of being induced with the twins and how painful I found that experience and how awful that was. And I could kind of just see it playing out where I would go into labor, I would go to the hospital, I would get that trauma response, which would shut down the hormones of labor and my labor would stop. And then I could see like, I could see the future like getting induced. Yes. And it was just everything I didn't want. I'd had so much intervention before and I just really wanted a physiological birth this time. I'd even said to my MGP midwife when she asked me what kind of birth I wanted, I said, I want a home birth but in hospital. And she said, well, if you want a home birth, you have to have a home birth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then I was talking to my husband about all these things running through my mind and I said, damn, like we probably should have had a home birth, but it's too late now, I'm 20 weeks. And he's like, yeah, call around. We should have a home birth. Let's do it. So wow. And so so he jumped on board so quickly. Like, did he have like any prior knowledge of like home birth or he had sort of gone on the learning journey as you had with, you know, Rachel Reed and Rhea and whatnot? Yeah, he had only learned what I had sort of told him that I was listening to. But he did have like, I would say like, healthy skepticism of like, government and the health system in general. he was so up for a home birth as soon as I mentioned it. That was definitely his preference. And yeah, he was immediately like, I'll help you call around like, let's call every midwife on the Sunshine Coast. my goodness. Wow. Yeah, so I called a lot of midwives and most of them were fully booked but eventually I found one. Yeah. wasn't booked so I booked her in straight away and yeah yeah and when I called my MGP midwife I was so nervous I felt like I was breaking up with her because it was nothing to do and she was beautiful she was just so excited and she said oh my gosh I'm so happy I had all my babies at home and that I just think that that is gonna be the absolute best thing for you so yeah yeah my goodness, that's so special. Yeah, what are the odds? That's... Wow. And so you completely stepped out of that MGP model because how far were you in your Monday then? Yes, yeah, we had moved to you Monday by that point. were living... far is it from Yumanji to Skoo? It's about a 35 minute drive. Yeah. Okay. I thought it was a bit longer, but it's been a while since I've been to you, Mon-D. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And so then the appointment started to be at your place. so the midwifery clinic that I chose, am I allowed to say it? It's Coast Life Midwifery in Maroochydore. They're awesome. They're more of like a clinic based practice. So there's lots of midwives that work there. And you go to the clinic for appointments. And then from 36, 37 weeks, then they start coming to your house for appointments. And after the baby's born, come to your house for appointments as well. So I would go into the clinic to have my appointments. And they also had like monthly group education with all the women who were due in the same month. So it was really good. So we did that from 20 weeks. And how did you feel like being put in that space? Like, did you feel like a sense of like, of relief or comfort or something, you know, like going into such a different space that's, you know, not the hospital where you've experienced all of this trauma. Yeah, it was a massive relief. It finally felt like, this is a different pregnancy and a different situation and I'm going to have a different outcome because it was so far removed from my experience before. So it was definitely a massive relief. And I had just been so many birth stories and like become the biggest birth nerd in the time between losing the twins and getting pregnant with Vinny. And obviously being a health professional, like I'm such a like stats and evidence person. So I had like, yeah, I was such a nerd. was reading like papers, evidence-based papers at night before bed. And so I knew that the safety with home birth for low risk pregnancies was just as good, if not better than having hospital birth. Yeah. So yeah, I felt so comfortable and so safe with my decision. And my midwife also had treating rights with the local hospital. So I knew that if I did need to go to hospital for any reason, I would still have her support and she would be my treating midwife in hospital, which was a rather big, it just made me feel really safe and really comfortable basically. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think Well, I wonder if you know I don't know off the top of my head like thinking about publicly funded Home birth programs and like the whole low risk high risk thing because obviously your first pregnancy with the twins was high risk like obviously The But you know with Vinny That was low risk and I wonder like how in a system which so heavily puts women in these categories of high risk, low risk, especially like, you know, VBAC women, for example, I considered too high risk for these programs. Like I wonder like how they would have like responded to your situation. I think that's yeah, just so amazing that you were able to find a. private midwife because in your situation, two completely different pregnancies, two completely absolutely different situations. Yeah, recently with that whole indemnity insurance debate that there was, you know, with the whole cat sea thing and who they were going to rule out of funding for a home birth, I would have 100 % been ruled out because I'd had previous postpartum hemorrhage, termination for medical reasons, genetic issues. So I would have been 100 % ruled out of that. Yes So was very grateful for private, midwifery care. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And like, did you have to like work through any particular things other than trying to aim for like a physiological birth at home? Was there anything in particular that you feel like you had to work specifically through from the induction and the labor with Ayla and Millie? Yeah, I did have a big fear of being induced again. I also had weird fears that popped up throughout my pregnancy. for example, like things I could never have predicted. for example, Ayla and Millie's deformities were all based around their skull and their spine development. So lots of like head related issues, I suppose. And at 37 weeks, my midwife was trying to check the position of Vinnie. and she said, I just can't find his head. and she got another midwife to check and that midwife also said something along the same lines. in a normal non-pregnant after loss woman's brain, they would go, they don't know where the, they don't know the positioning of the baby, but pregnancy after loss is crazy. and my brain went, my god, my baby doesn't have a head. At 37 weeks after, we'd seen its head multiple times on scans. Yeah, that's understandable I think. And it wasn't really a conscious thought, it was just this massive stress of like, my God, there's something wrong with my baby's head. They can't find its head. So they sent me for a ultrasound to confirm the position of him at 37 weeks. And he put the ultrasound wound at the top of, very top of my belly. And the first thing that popped up was this big skull right at the top of my belly. Yeah. And he was like, damn, your baby's breech. But I was like, thank God my baby has a head. Goodness. Yeah. And then I wonder if the sonographer like had any idea like, yeah, I'm sure that's probably not the response that people have when they're being told they've got a breach baby. Yeah. and yeah, okay. So you find that you have got breach. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So 37 weeks, baby's breach. They also, was not very good at that scan. They measured his size without my consent and it wasn't written on the referral for my midwife to measure his size. They just went ahead and did it anyway. They give us a printout of the report that said he was in the 99th percentile for size. the next step was that my midwife was referring us up to the hospital, the local hospital for an east where they manually turn the baby. And I did lots of acupuncture and spinning babies as well. I did all the things to try and turn him. I was upside down more than I was right way up. I think the ironing board got a workout. And I said to my husband as we were walking into the hospital for the ECV, I was like, brace yourself, they're going to tell me that this baby's too big and that I shouldn't be home birthing. I'm waiting for the conversation because I can see the 99th percentile thing highlighted in the report. And they did the ECV, which actually wasn't too bad. I'd heard some like horror stories of ECVs, but, um, I would say it was uncomfortable, but definitely not painful. took about 45 seconds and it worked instantly. So for me, it was a really good, um, really good decision. I was super happy with that. Is it that I could have a home birth? My mid, my particular midwife didn't support, um, breach at home, but she was willing to do obviously like a vaginal breach in hospital. but I would have preferred to just have like a head down birth at home. So at the end, the obstetrician comes in after the ECV and she's like, your baby is measuring really large, he's in the 99th percentile. We would definitely recommend that you did not home birth. It's not safe with a large baby. He could get shoulder dystocia and you're at an increased risk of postpartum hemorrhage. And we would recommend that you're induced, we could induce you tomorrow. or you could have a C-section if you want one. And even though I knew that conversation was coming and I had like mentally prepped myself for it, it still threw me and threw my confidence. And I sort of went home in tears and I didn't know what to do. yeah, obviously I spoke to my midwife and she talked to me down and, and, really reassured me, sort of by saying things like, like the management for shoulder dystrophy at home is exactly the same as it is in hospital. And if in the unlikely event that you had a postpartum hemorrhage, we have all the medications, that we would need. so yeah, she sort of went through the evidence and was like, there's no reason, why you shouldn't have a home birth with a large baby. And also those scans are really inaccurate. So we don't even know if he is large. When she measured my belly or when she felt my belly in my baby, she said, he feels a very, very normal size to me. And she's been a midwife for like over 30 years. So she knows what she's doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I wonder what that obstetrician would have rebutted if you were like, well, I have lots of trauma and I had my babies here and this is what happened. I wonder what her response would be because like, it's just like the mental like that's not it's not mentally safe to give in a place give birth in a place where you've experienced significant trauma for multiple reasons. Like it's just, I mean, and there's so many examples of that, you know, of people that have had, you know, really crazy medical histories and have had lots of surgeries in hospitals. And it's, yeah, it's not a place that they actually feel like happy about being in, but that's just completely disregarded when it comes to what their definition of safety is. Yeah. Because that yeah, I mean, I'm always outraged with, you know, people saying things like that. But I think in your case, especially like how untrauma informed is that comment? Yeah. But I mean, hardly surprised. Sorry, I'm pretty like, I feel pretty hopeless about it. Yeah, I mean, I even saw it coming. I'd like prepped my husband for it. Yeah. yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I was absolutely grateful for the medical system when I needed it because that ECG was one of the best decisions we made and it worked amazingly. Yeah, 100%. 100%. And that it worked so quickly as well. Like that's, yeah, brilliant. Yeah, amazing. Yeah. Did you have any inspo or ideas that you definitely wanted to use during labor or in your birth at home? I had done a calm birth course. I knew I wanted to try like, just have all the tools there, but I didn't know what exactly I would want or need in labor. but I just wanted to have everything available to me so that I could try it and see if it worked. so I had like a tennis machine and we had been practicing hip squeezes and all the things that we learned. Cool. and a comb and those sorts of things. We had a pool, a birth pool ready to go. Yeah, I forgot to mention as well, we were living in a tiny home during my pregnancy. was going to say, wait a second, pool and tiny home. So we were building a granny flat, a two bedroom granny flat on our property and it was supposed to be ready when I was 34 weeks but of course we moved in when I was 38 weeks on the dot. I didn't know. Wow, We were planning, we're trying to figure out how we would fit a birth pool in a tiny home, like a two metre by seven metre tiny home. My new wife was like, it's fine, we'll just put it on the veranda. It was winter, so was freezing. So that was so stressful. But yeah, we moved into the granny flat when I was 38 weeks, and I went into labour at 38 and six. So it was like... cutting it fine. Oh my goodness. I'm just thinking back to like somebody's Facebook post that I commented on recently. It's like, oh, like I gave birth in a two bedroom apartment and it was completely fine. The pool took up the whole lounge room, but it was fine. But I would like to put a disclaimer out there that if you live in a tiny home, maybe you might encounter some problems with the birth pool. Yeah, no, the birth pool was like two metres and the width of our house was two metres, so yeah, wouldn't have worked. No, no, my goodness. Yeah, cool. Okay. And did you have any like signs of labor in the lead up to labor? I'd lost my mucus plug 10 days before labor and I got all excited about that. except for the baby, the baby was breached then. So it was, I was like, well, that's exciting, but hopefully, hopefully it's not. Yeah. But yeah, that was a bit non-eventful. And then the day that I went into labour, yeah, 38 plus six, so one day before 39, I was so tired that day. I could not keep my eyes open. And I had even Googled, is fatigue a sign of labour? And it said yes, but I didn't believe it. I was like, doesn't know what it's talking about. Google, you know, it doesn't know anything. yeah. And so I napped a lot that day. had a plumber come over to my house and like was banging around for an hour in the room next door and I slept through the whole thing. didn't have a single thing. I had to get my mom to come over to wait with him. And yeah, I was so tired. My husband came home and we just put a movie on. We were watching the Wolf of Wall Street, which I think is hilarious. And so we were laughing a lot watching this movie. It was about 7.30 p.m. and I noticed that I just had like lower back pain and I thought I'm just heavily pregnant. I'll just get up and grab a like a hot water bottle. So I walked into the kitchen to fill out my hot water bottle and I had a contraction that put me to my knees like first contraction to my knees. Yeah, it was so unexpected and like But for all the things that I'd read and learned, I thought labor was supposed to start really slowly and you'd have one contraction every 20 minutes and you get to do that like fun, enjoyable stage where you knew you were in labor, but yeah, and sort of your way into it. But mine did not start like that at all. It was like zero to a hundred from the very get go. And. I said to my husband, my gosh, I think I'm, I just had a massive contraction. or I've got gastro one or one of the other. I convinced myself that it was gastro because yeah, then when the next one came a minute later, I was like, well, it must be gastro because this isn't how the textbooks say that birth starts. So I was in denial, he said, should I set up the birth pool? And I said, no, no, this is going to go on for like 24 hours, so don't even bob up. and see ya. Luckily, he didn't listen to me at all and he set everything up, which was great. So he was sort of, put the TENS machine on and I was just on all fours on my bed, like working through the contractions with the TENS machine while he was setting up the birth space. He walked in after like 30 minutes and asked me something really trivial, like, where do you want the affirmation cards to go or something? And I just looked at him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. death in my eyes and I was like, do not ask me anything else. I just could not use my brain at that point at all. So yeah, he did a great job at setting everything up because I hadn't even told him about, like the liner wasn't in the pool because he didn't know that liners were a thing. We had not talked about any of that. Yeah. So he set everything up. The TENS machine was amazing for me. I don't think I could have done it without the TENS machine. That really helped me. And then my midwives arrived at about 10 p.m. My husband had called them and she'd heard the noises that I was making on the other side of the phone and just got in her car straight away and called the second straight away. And yeah, it was just like minute on less than a minute off. Really intense contractions. And we tried a few different positions. I tried the birth combs, but they didn't really do much for me. So I ended up, I think, flinging them across the room pretty quickly. She did ask when she very first got there at 10 PM if she could do a VE. And I was like, no, absolutely not. I don't want any VEs. I don't want any interventions really at all, unless it's medically necessary. And in the moment I was a bit confused as to like why she would even ask that. later on when we spoke about it, it was because he had been breached and she just wanted to make sure that her head was gonna come out from the bottom. when I said no, she was like, that's fine. It's all good. And she didn't ask again at all. She was checking his heart rate with the Doppler intimately, which was like perfect the whole time. There was no problems. My waters hadn't broken at all, but I was leaking like a little bit of fluid. maybe it was like that hind waters or whatever they call it. then at midnight, they said I could get in the pool. So I hopped in the pool. I had a really early urge to push. So from like 10 PM at the peak of my contractions, I would just get this uncontrollable like, of like that. Yeah. Gross. Almost like. that vomiting, like reverse vomiting reflex just at the peak of my contractions. So I thought I was fully dilated at that point, but in hindsight, I definitely wasn't. Yeah. And I probably should have tried to breathe through them a little bit more, but at the time I was just going with it. So I got in the pool at midnight and yeah, had that urge to push just increasingly got more and more intense. And then I really don't have a lot of... memory of being in the pool. I remember bits and pieces of it or I remember when people would ask me questions and I would have to use my brain it would sort of like pull me back into my memory if that makes sense like they're the bits that I remember but I think I was just so far off in labor land for the majority of it I don't have much memory. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just remember feeling that ring of fire, hardcore ring of fire. I do remember that the midwife was having trouble finding his heartbeat in the last sort of two minutes before he came out. But I do remember thinking like, well, no wonder they can't find his heartbeat. Like he's so low in my pelvis. There's too many bones away. And I wasn't concerned at all. I remember feeling like intense stretching. and pushing really really hard when I probably should have tried to breathe through it but I was just thinking I don't care if this tears me in half I'm getting this baby out this is going to be over I was really impatient in that moment Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then my midwife said, reach down and catch your baby. And I looked at her and said, what is he out? I didn't even realize he'd been born. Like I was just, Yeah. And I reached down under water and I could just feel this baby under the water. And yeah, it was amazing. She said, pull him up slowly. So I pulled him up really slowly out of the water and put him on my chest and he cried pretty much straight away and After that the silence from the twins birth like hearing him cry was just the greatest sound I have ever heard in my life and my husband burst into tears behind me and it was just amazing. It was so yeah great. I remember feeling him and thinking he was the silkiest thing I'd ever felt like the smoothest silkiest thing. That's the main thing I remember, how smooth he was. It was weird. See ya! That was beautiful. Well, how much did he weigh then if he was 99 percentile? So it was 3.8 kilos, so slightly above average. Such rubbish. Yeah. I feel like anybody that gets told these things should then like photocopy like the stats of when the baby's born and then send it to the person that said this and be like, you said this, but this is what happened. Here's my huge baby. Yeah. Yeah. just, Alice, I can't even like, I can't. Yeah, I didn't even think about like how I mean, everybody loves obviously when their baby, you know, that first cry or that first noise, you know, it's like, you know, it has such a big meaning behind it for everyone. for you in your circumstance, like I just like I'm I am like quite honestly speechless because I just cannot imagine like how that would have felt. Apart from like very oxytocin filled but like what would do you remember like what was going through your mind like apart from him feeling very silky like do you did you do you remember having any particular thoughts like in those first few moments or first few minutes, etc. I remember saying, my God, I did it. did it. Because I guess another one of my fears during the pregnancy was that I just would not be able to handle the pain of labor and that I would be begging to go to hospital for the epidural just like I was for the twins birth. I could not handle the pain of that induced labor with the twins. So yeah, that was one of my fears. Like I didn't have any really like safety fears. for myself or the baby because I knew what the research and the stats said and I trusted my midwife so completely. But yeah, I guess my biggest fear was that I just, I would be a wuss and I wouldn't be able to do it. So yeah, after he came out, I just thought, my God, I did it. And for me personally, like the difference between an induced labor compared to like a natural physiological labor is just completely chalk and cheese. Like obviously physiological labor for me, it was painful and intense, but it's nothing that you can't handle. Like you can breathe through it. And there wasn't one single point where I thought, I need an induction. I need an epidural or I need pain relief or I need to go to the hospital. you my mind once. I just thought I've just got to keep going and get through this. Yeah, yeah how how long do you consider the labor like how many hours? So from very first sign of labor from that back pain on the couch to him being there was about seven and a half hours. No, six and a half hours, yeah, six and a half hours, so was pretty quick. That's pretty quick. my goodness. And what about the placenta and afterwards? So we got out of the pool pretty quickly because I think it was getting a bit cold and I delivered my placenta on the bed about 20 minutes later. So that came pretty quickly. My midwife like very gently sort of tugged on the cord and could tell that my placenta was just sitting right there like ready to come out. And she just said just give a little push and I thought, my God, if I push, I'm going to turn inside out. I can't. But it was fine. I gave a little push and it came out. Yeah, we called, and then she checked and I did have a second degree tear, which didn't surprise me because of how impatient I was in that last phase and just pushed with all my mom. so she stitched me up, just in the bed while I had Vinnie on my chest. and that wasn't so bad. Like she put the local in and I was so distracted by him that I honestly didn't I wasn't really paying much attention to what she was doing and it was super quick. And then we tried to latch him, but he was really sleepy. So we tried to do the breast crawl and I think he used like all his energy doing the breast crawl and then he didn't have much energy left to latch and he just wanted to sleep. So I had him expressed colostrum from 37 weeks. So I gave him a bit of colostrum from the freezer. And then I had a shower. I did feel pretty dizzy at the time. the shower wasn't like that amazed. Everyone talks about how amazing that first shower is after birth, but for me it was like just a bit dizzy and I needed to get back. to bed. And yeah, they tucked us up to bed. And then they left at about 4am and we had about two hours between when they left and when the sun rose. And that was like probably one of my favorite times because no one except us and the midwives knew that he'd been born. And we were just laying in bed with this little baby on our chest like it was so surreal. It felt like we've just been watching Wolf of Wall Street one second and then there's a baby in our bed the next second and we were like my gosh like he's here and he was just like our little secret no one knew yet we just watched the sunrise from bed over our property with him on our chest and yeah it was just surreal and then yeah about We decided when the sun rises, we'll start telling people, but until then, we're just gonna keep him to ourselves. Yeah, so then when the sun rose, we started calling all our friends and family to tell them that he was here, because a few of them were quite nervous about the home birth, obviously. Yeah, I live next door to my parents, so I texted them and I said, the new neighbor wants to meet you. that's so beautiful. I actually didn't ask that. If you got any unsolicited unsolicited sort of opinions about having a home birth after having had such an experience first time round, did you feel like you had to protect your space a little bit? Or did you feel like people were respectful? How how did you feel about that? I think I knew that from with my family and my friends, I was expecting them to be a bit worried, but I knew it was coming from a place of care and not judgment. and when I explained my reasoning to them and the trauma that I felt in my body when I went to the maternity unit at the hospital and then explained the stats and the research and the safety. of home birth for low risk pregnancies. They all were very understanding after that. I got a lot of like, are you sure you're very far from the hospital? What if something goes wrong? But yeah, I just tried to remind myself that they're saying it from a place of love and not judgment. And then I knew working in, so normally I work in the emergency department. So I was expecting like some judge, more judgmental comments from colleagues, I suppose, people that I work with. So I tried to keep it to myself. If people would ask me about my birth plans, I would just say, I have a private midwife, but I wouldn't necessarily say I have a private midwife and I'm doing a home birth. And I got for the people, no, or the people who found out, I did get a few judgmental comments, things like someone said to me, well, I won't tell you what my opinion of that is. And then just, I was like, what we just did. I think a lot of that also like, like they, in AD, they see a lot of, like free birth gone wrong transfers, I suppose. So I think a lot of the judgment came from that. and then. they honestly like they're almost like scared of birth sometimes I think in that ED space. So there was like lots of lots of judgmental sort of more theory comments, but also coming from a place I felt of lack of education or understanding of what home birth is and the difference between me having a free birth and then me having a registered like healthcare professional with me, with my private midwife. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Two of them actually. Like, yeah, like it's a pretty, it's a pretty organized thing. And what was your like postpartum like with Vinny? Did you feel that you had to process some of that like grief? Like did you find like, like mentally did like your grief with Ayla and merely come up in that journey? like how how did you experience that? It definitely added a new layer of grief that I hadn't felt before because I had this little baby and I knew what he looked like and I could imagine that this is what the twins might have looked like or yeah I just I knew exactly what I was missing out on if that makes sense. So that was really hard it was like a whole other layer of grief but On the other side of that, I can't say that I'm ever going to be healed from what happened with the twins, but like having Vinny was healing in the sense that having the weight of a baby on your chest is so, yeah, so healing, I suppose, after something like that. After feeling empty, like so empty for so long. Yep. Yeah, it was just surreal and I would say my postpartum physically was a lot rougher than what I thought it was going to be. I think I from pushing really hard and pushing for a lot longer than what we should have. I didn't have any sensation to like, like the nerves in my pelvic floor had sort of turned off for a few days. So I didn't know when I needed to go to the toilet. I had to set alarms. Everything felt very heavy. I was quite dizzy. The stitches weren't too bad. It wasn't so much the tear. It was more that like feeling of heaviness and lack of control over my pelvic floor, I suppose. And it did all come back like within a week or so. But I guess I just wasn't prepared for that. Like I didn't, yeah, I probably didn't do enough education or reading into like what might happen after the birth. I thought everything would just be fine. Yeah. yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, so now you're 34 weeks pregnant Are you planning to have another home birth or what's what's the deal here? Yes, definitely. So I have another home birth planned with my exact same midwife, which is awesome because she is retiring. So she's just taking repeat clients now. So I feel a bit special. Yeah, that's all planned. Feels like I only just did it like yesterday, even though Vinnie is almost 18 months old now. Yeah, it's just surreal that I get to do it again. And I'm so excited to do it again. I just think, yeah, birth is such a as well. I'm just really grateful and super excited. 100%. Yeah. Have you felt like your pregnancy this time around has been different to with Vinny, especially in terms of that grief, but also just in general, has it been different? I thought pregnancy after loss the second time around, like after having a healthy baby, I thought it would be easier, but it honestly hasn't been. It's been just as hard for the first time. there was still all those exact same fears for the first half of the pregnancy until we got to that anatomy scan. I still had the early anatomy scan through the maternal fetal medicine unit, even this time. cause yeah, you're Your brain, it just doesn't mean things to you. And you just go worst case scenario. decided to have those extra scan at 16 weeks, which did give me some more peace of mind. But yeah, as far as the pregnancy after loss side of things, it's been just as hard, which has shocked me because I really thought it would be easier. But yeah, you don't get out of it the second time around once you've had a loss. Subsequent pregnancy is a pregnancy after loss. And do you feel like you'll do anything different this time around in labor with this baby? Get rid of those birth combs maybe? Don't worry about it. The only thing different that I really want to do is I've been looking into like that, the pushing phase and I really want to try and breathe through those early urges to push for as long as possible so that I'm not like pushing against a cervix that isn't completely open yet. and I'm gonna try and avoid some of those pelvic floor damage. Not that I really had too much damage, but I'm just kind of hoping for an easier pelvic floor recovery this time. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully I think you'll have. I think most of us get it, so. And do you think you'll have Vinny there or what do you reckon? The other day we did some practice labor noises and it made him cry so probably not. Oh no! Yeah, he's only 17 months old so I don't think he really understands the concept enough and I don't want him to feel frightened and then for that to take me out of my like laboring headspace. So I'm really lucky my parents just live next door to us so as soon as I go into labor I can just call them and I think they're gonna come. grab him. Or if he can sleep through it then we'll just leave him but I don't think he'll be at the birth. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Just reminded me of Frankie. I was like whippersnipping this afternoon and I had shut the doors and everything so he couldn't hear. But like as soon as he heard he was like just screaming because he is 18 months. So yeah, like that totally makes sense to me. Yeah. Yeah. It's it sounds cute and I guess it could be cute. But I feel like, yeah, it would have to be like the real perfect situation for such a little kid to be present because they're just so sensitive. And I thought he was understanding the concept of the baby in my tummy because he would always touch, he's always touching my tummy saying, bubba bubba. But then he went up to my dad the other day and touched my dad's belly and said bubba. So I don't think he gets it. Thanks for bubbles. That's awesome. Yeah. I actually feel like he, Frankie has been saying something lately. Um, and it sounds very similar, but he means my boobs. And so when he wants milk, he's been saying, yeah, I feel like he's been saying that. Um, can't be trusted. Yeah. The other thing that I forgot to mention too was that breastfeeding was really hard with Vinny. Yeah. Cause I had quite like flat nipples. So that initial latching for the nipple into the back of his mouth, that was so painful. And that went on for like a good, probably the first three months, I had a lot of pain with latching. we pushed through and he never had any issues. Like he was putting on weight and he was fine, but it was just painful for me. But yeah, we pushed through and we fed up until two months ago when with my pregnancy hormones this time around, it's just sort of dried up my milk really quickly. And he was also ready to stop. So that made it easy. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I, yeah. Frankie is 18 months and is an absolute boob monster, but like with Murphy, he was, yeah, around 14 months as well. And yeah, he just decided to stop. but Frankie, there doesn't feel like there's an end in sight. I know, I know it will stop eventually, but it just. Like I started leaking at work the other day and I had no breast pads and so I was like, my gosh. And it like went through my clothes. was like, I'm 18 months postpartum. Why is this happening? What? anyway, it's not forever. It's not forever. like, holy moly, what a powerful story or stories of your whole entire journey. And I'm so excited to hear how your next birth goes, your next home birth. Is there anything, you know, about what we've chatted about that you feel like we've missed or that you wanted to say to anybody that's listening that might be going through like a similar journey in terms of you know rainbow babies and like the trauma of hospital and choosing home birth or anything like that. Yeah, I guess like, I guess that you can home birth after loss. I think I hear so often in the loss community that with pregnancy after loss, women get streamed into like a highly medicalised model quite quickly because of their own anxieties and obviously their previous history, which is completely understandable. But Just having a real think about like, what do you need? What is going to make you feel safe? And that home birthing is an option. And you absolutely can home birth after loss. Yeah, yeah, just making sure that you're really thinking about what is gonna make you feel safe and exploring that to pick the best model of care for you in pregnancy after loss. Yeah, that's perfect. And yeah, definitely for people to go check out Halo Mama because yeah, what a beautiful resource that you're creating and the community that you're creating. Yeah, it's obviously very much needed. Yeah, yeah, it's awesome. It really definitely helped me. Thank you so much, Alice. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me.