Birth trauma permeated much of Claire’s story and it impacted her mental and physical health in ways she could never have imagined. This was only exacerbated by the border closures and a tumultuous feeding journey.

‘Failure to thrive’ was a label that was applied to her son, but ultimately became a label she applied to herself.

In this episode, Claire @mamahood.my.way talks about the anxiety and paralysis she felt when trying to conceive, a PTSD and Lupus diagnosis, a birth debrief with her hospital team to make sense of her experience, the power of reconnecting with herself, and the joy of her family finally meeting her son after more than a year of border closures.

This is Claire’s incredible story of learning what it means to thrive as a mother and empowering others to do the same - however that looks!

Please note, the episode discusses birth trauma. Go gently.

Like many of us who became mothers during the Covid-19 pandemic, Claire wonders how different her experience might have been were restrictions or lockdowns not part of her journey.

“I suppose an important point that punctuates my maternal mental health journey is really that we were in the pandemic… it just changed the dynamic of everybody's pregnancies, the way that they experience support around their pregnancy, what appointments look like, what the actual birthing experience meant and the restrictions around that. And then obviously into postpartum, it affected a lot of things like mother's groups and appointments and just that connection that we lost even with the implementation of masks, which were obviously very necessary. But it was a tough one, nonetheless.”

“I've had a few ‘false starts’ in my 20s. I was with a partner for about 13 years and that sadly ended in divorce when I was 30. So big life change! Moved to Australia with a new partner and then that didn't work out. So I'm all of a sudden sat with a bit of a question mark around, I guess, my dream of having a family, whether it would even happen at all.”

“I'm very goal-oriented. So I went very hard for the first time in my life at 34, 35. I think people thought it was a midlife crisis, but I went into the online dating world, which is a whole other experience which we won't talk about. But I did find my person and I did find a baby daddy, if you like, who was absolutely exactly what I could have hoped for, everything I could have fought for in a partner. And so that really punctuated, I guess, my journey because we had to move quite fast, right? We had to move quite fast in terms of my age. I was 37 by this point.”

“I had had some issues around my ovaries. I know you've spoken a lot on the podcast about health anxiety, and I think I had quite a lot of fertility anxiety, I would say. We took about eight months to conceive, which is nothing in the grand scheme of people's journeys. However, those eight months were very heightened. I was hyper-focused on falling pregnant and not falling pregnant. I had the typical fertility sticks and the counting of days and measuring everything and inspecting your mucus, just to be really graphic about it! But all the things, you just go down a rabbit hole.”

“I'd say that really did spark this obsessive approach to researching and just becoming, I guess, a bit paralysed in the whole process. But there was a circuit breaker when I fell pregnant.”

“It was a reasonably straightforward pregnancy, but I could sense that there was a heaviness in my heart, but I didn't give it any attention. So I guess the real grief aspect was that my family were locked out of the country and so I didn't really give it, I think, the air time that it deserved. I just was focused on growing that little human.”

“And so it's no wonder that fast forward into postpartum that the breakdown happened and it all came out when you are able to let yourself feel.”

“It was pretty straightforward textbook pregnancy. I was really lucky and I feel really grateful for the experience I had. I took a really nice long leave period before actually having the baby finished up at 34 weeks. Cannot recommend enough! I just went and took myself on dates and cinema and had lots of time. I think that was a big help actually for what was to come because I wasn't depleted. I wasn't working right up into the wire.”

“But then I went into labour at 40 plus three.”

“It was Saturday morning we were at the beach. I could feel a few twinges. We were with friends and I was like, well maybe, but I didn't say anything. Went home and I was like, yeah, no, I think this is it!”

“So it started off quite well, nothing really unusual. It's not pleasant, is it? But the contractions were going for around 24 hours and I thought it's maybe time now - because they're ramping up and they were getting a bit closer, but they were very sporadic - maybe time to reach out to my midwife.”

“I was very fortunate to get into a program, the midwifery group program in South Australia. I was very grateful for that, that I had my own midwife. She came out and she did her little check and I hadn't progressed, I wasn't dilated at all. So this is like 24 hours in and I felt like I wasn't really able to sleep. So that was the level of contractions we were at.”

“More time passed and I said, ‘look, this is getting quite significant’. And I wasn't really looking for a pain relief, but she said, ‘look, go in to get checked because it's quicker for you to do that’. We weren't too far from the hospital. And again, I hadn't dilated at all. And so this was just frustrating.”

“That's what it feels like. It's disappointing and you feel like you're running the race but going nowhere. I was doing all the right things, all the right things that were told. I'd done hypnobirthing, I had my playlist, the oxytocin was coming. I was sniffing the Clary-Sage, I was bouncing on my ball. But I was also in a lot of pain.”

“I said to her, ‘I am in a lot of pain’. I've got a full sleeve of tattoos, my pain threshold is not amazing, but it's pretty reasonable. I was like, ‘I don't know how much I can do’. She sent me home with paracetamol, which was really offensive.”

“I got into the bath and just I slept there all night. I didn't sleep, sorry. I was just lying there. My partner slept on the floor next to me and I was just in the bath trying to get through every contraction. So that started the Saturday, this was Sunday. Monday, I got to lunchtime and I just had enough. So my midwife came back out again and she was like, ‘You're about two centimetres, but it's really slow. We should probably break your waters. Maybe you need an induction’. I'm like, ‘Okay, well, that's fine. I need to know that something's happening’. So we went into hospital.”

“I wanted to try for a water bath, so we filled the bath. We had a beautiful room. I got the gas in there, but it was so painful. And she just said, ‘You haven't slept in two days’. This was like the Monday night by this point. ‘I think you're going to need some stronger pain relief. I think you might need an epidural.’ Which was the first time that it came into my head, but that was fine. I had no aversion to it. It just meant that my water birth was out the window, which was fine.”

“And so the request was put in for the epidural. And to be honest, the next 12 hours, about 8 to 10 hours, actually, is pretty horrific. And I'm not going to go into it in too much detail because I do want to go through, keep going. But essentially, the epidural failed four times over the space of eight hours, which meant that every time it went in, I would get this relief. And sometimes that was only down one side of my body, but then it would almost triple the pain when it would fail.”

“So it was the middle of the night by this point on the Monday, and eventually they had to call in another anaesthetist at 5:00 AM because the anaesthetist that was administering the anaesthetic basically threw his hands up and was like, ‘I don't know what's going on. I can't do it.’ And he said a few things that were really not okay, but it was just horrendous.”

“My partner was in tears watching me in pain… It's always the bit that gets me, isn't it? It's like you can see yourself upset, but you can't see someone else upset. He wanted to take it away, but he couldn't and he was begging for them to help me and nothing else was touching the sides.”

“Eventually, they brought in the head anaesthetist. Finally, someone scanned me and identified they've been putting it into a complete dead spot. There was no way that it was going to work in the place they were putting it in. He'd even administered it there! So yeah, my confidence in who was treating me at that point was on the ground and I was really scared for my safety, essentially.”

“I had this innate fear and my body just went into complete shock. You know when they say that, your body is in shock, I now actually know what that means because I just didn't have any sense of it anymore. It was like I was having an outer body experience.”

“When it finally hit, after hours of trying to administer that - but meanwhile, I was just screaming in pain and I wasn't progressing either - they could then put in the Syntocin, they could then administer that, which meant that it did speed up. And look, that was great.”

“You just forget what's just happened in the moment because you're just so focused on making sure that the baby's all right. You've wanted this for so long, you've protected that baby, you've grown it for almost a year and then you're at that final hurdle. So I just put it out of my mind and got back into happy space again and I was actually able to focus on progressing and it was amazing.”

“I had a few hours of feeling amazing and I even got checked and they're like, ‘You're seven centimetres’. So I only had three to go, which was amazing and I felt really positive. Josh hadn't eaten in days. So he went, my husband, went to get something to eat. And when he did, he was gone for a minute and all the monitors started going and there was a rush of activity and the doctor came in and said ‘he's distressed, the baby - we knew it was a boy - he's distressed, you’re distressed, your heart isn't performing like we wanted to. So we're going to have to take him out now.’”

“My husband was called back and literally within four minutes, we were in the theatre. I had been given something that was making me violently ill, like vomiting. I was just vomiting and they just pulled him out and it was as quick as that.”

“It was all just a blur and I felt horrific. I just felt like a shell.”

“Obviously, when I saw him and he cried for the first time, it was amazing to hear him, but I was just broken. I knew I was broken in that moment, but I was just so glad he was okay.”

“And then it turned out that he was deflexed, which meant that no matter how much I was pushing and how much the contractions were happening, we weren't progressing. I wasn't dilating and so he was never coming out. I was dilating, but he wasn't moving with the dilation. He was stuck behind my pelvis and he was also back to back, which is why the contractions were so painful.”

“So it felt just like a series of unfortunate events, but when it's life and death potentially - that's what it feels like - it's not as light-hearted.”

“And it was all good the first 24 hours because he latched, which was so important to me, really important that I breastfed, I put it in my head that this was a priority. But that was short-lived. That was unfortunately very short-lived.”

“And that was probably worse than the birth in the end, the breastfeeding experience, and added just to the struggles I ended up having mentally. If it had gone well, I think I'd be telling a different story today because it would have been a line in the sand. Like, yes, those were 72 very difficult hours, but it was for a reason but it just continued. He had a tongue tie, it turned out, and my supply was really affected and it was the perfect storm with my mental health.”

“I just couldn't find answers to help me. I reached out in so many different directions with the community health nurses, with my own midwife, with lactation consultants and none of them, they all provided different advice, every single one of them! I just was so confused by what to do, which then added to feeling like a failure and I couldn't do this. I couldn't give birth properly, I couldn't feed properly.”

“And of course, at the time I wasn't aware of all of the resources like podcasts, like books, that actually speak truth about childbirth and what it can be like in postpartum. I had no resources and we didn't talk about it in my friendship group. Not many had had children at that point either. So it was really difficult to know what to do and Doctor Google was not helpful and just added to the problem.”

“I was phoning the breastfeeding helpline multiple times a day, but depending on who you spoke to, you would get different advice. And I just actually needed someone to say, ‘You just need to stop now. You just need to stop because you're making yourself ill and if you're ill, that's the main thing that you need to look after. And that's the main thing we need to ensure.’”

“The focus just shifts at lightning speed from you as the vessel that's carrying the baby to the baby. And it's almost like you're left behind. Wait, what just happened? I don't know. I had whiplash from the whole thing. And it just... I just needed that. I just need it. But of course, nobody was willing to say that to me. And so it took weeks to make the call that I would mix feed.”

“Meanwhile, he's dropping weight. My baby went to below his birth weight at four weeks, which was traumatic. ‘Failure to thrive’ is what I was told. I mean, how damaging is that when all you want is to keep your child, to love them, to nourish them, to help them thrive from the minute that you know they exist and then to say that they're failing to thrive in your care is heartbreaking, absolutely heartbreaking.”

“I used to have absolute anxiety every time he was to get weighed because I was trying so hard with the pumping and the feeding, but I really wanted him to latch. And I was trying everything I thought I could, but throwing so much money at it that we didn't have.”

“I've been very used to, very focused on goals and making sure that I am fulfilling my potential and really looking to achieve and succeed. And that's the person I am, very driven, very tenacious. But when motherhood came along, it just threw all that out the water and I had nothing left to give. I had nothing left to give. And as a result, it really affected my attachment to him, which is heartbreaking to look back on.”

“I had been through some mental health struggles in the past and knew that I wasn't okay. I was fortunate enough to be able to identify that because I think that can be a huge barrier for people and being able to recognise it and then ask for help. That's step one. It's just the awareness factor.”

“I think the fundamental things were physiological for me… I wasn't eating, which is not like me at all. Your nervous system is not being nourished. You don't have anything in there, which is what gives you those hunger signs. So my whole body was just not functioning well.”

“The other trigger or sign, major sign, was I had such bad insomnia. When people said to me, ‘Sleep when the baby sleeps’, I was so triggered because I couldn't sleep at all. I was just awake all night. I was awake. I just dreaded night-time. I absolutely dreaded it and I dreaded the wake-ups and because of the feeding, because the feeding was so traumatic, like he was just screaming at me because he had colic, he had reflux at this point, it was undiagnosed and he was in pain and he was hungry. So every feed, I was just having all of these responses, these stress responses. And the feeds are very often, very regular, at that stage, 4-12 weeks. It's constant. So not sleeping, not eating.”

“And then just I would honestly, the biggest feeling or emotion was a disconnect. A disconnect from myself, from others and just feeling like I was existing outside of myself.”

“I just had no joy and people would give me the platitudes of like, ‘Oh, are you in the love bubble?’ I think the Facebook announcement situation and the things people say, I'm so aware of now because I just think we assume that everything's happy-go-lucky and it all went to plan or it all went well, at least without any trauma. But we know from the statistics that that is so rare. That is so rare and it's only since I started sharing my story with my friendship group that I realised that they didn't tell me that they had gone through things because we don't talk about that.”

“So the disconnect from those feelings that you're meant to be feeling as well as another one like feelings of overjoy and overflowing love and abundance and just feeling really happy, I had none of that. Those three things together and the connection, obviously, you don't feel that connection with your baby. I think mine was causal from all of the things that had happened, but I knew that I wanted to remedy it as quickly as possible.”

“I accessed some support, typical support, mental health plan. I went on medication.”

“I guess mentally, I started to feel better, but physically, there's been a lot of damage done that I wasn't yet aware of at that point. So I did start to feel a bit better, but a lot of damage had been done in such a concentrated amount of time. And that's when I realised with my psychologist that I had PTSD from the event, which I had never experienced before or certainly I wouldn't recognise that. I have not had experience that I would recognise as that.”

“So that was quite confronting because I guess it's what an author called Mark Manson, in The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, he writes about the ‘two-arrow effect’ and it's like you hurt from the pain of the experience itself, but you hurt from the narrative that's created around the experience as well. And I held on to that second arrow for quite a long time, really trying to understand what the narrative was and how the whole thing has affected me. But I did know that I didn't want that arrow to be stuck in my chest for too long and I wanted to take it out, I guess.”

”I've had a bad experience with a previous run on medication for depression in that I gained a lot of weight and spoiler alert, it happened again. So I had flagged that I had put on, I'm talking 30-40 kilos the previous time in my 20s and the doctor gave me a specific drug that was intended not to have that impact but unfortunately, it just went the same way.”

“So the medication for me, personally, it doesn't affect everyone like this, of course, but it wasn't great. But it was all for a reason, because actually it led me to gain again another 35 kilos in a year, which is a significant amount of weight to put on. And I was also diagnosed with a chronic illness.”

“About 14 months after the birth of my son, I was mentally starting to feel better, although I was having issues looking at myself in the mirror. So there was that. But physically, I was becoming more and more immobile, which I put down to the weight gain. But it was more than that. I was fatigued, my joints were aching. I was getting these rashes. I was actually hospitalised. They thought I had hives because I came out in this huge rash all over my face and chest.”

“They sent me for tests and eventually, after a misdiagnosis, I took home the blood results and reread them and found that they'd read one of the blood results wrongly and took it back to another doctor. And he said, ‘Oh, yeah, I need to send you to a specialist’. And the specialist is someone who treats bone disease or diseases that affect the joints.”

“And I was diagnosed with Lupus, which was likely triggered by the birth because I spent such a long time in a fear response, my body was so heightened, my body was in so much pain that it was paralysed, my immune system then reacted and it started attacking itself. And what lupus does is attack your tissue, your organs, your joints, your skin. And you have what's called flares, which is you just feel terrible. I'm on medication for that now, but it was a real turning point where I was like, I need to take back control for my life.”

“I'm not just looking at my mental health, I'm looking at my physical health and of course, the two support each other. And that diagnosis is very pivotal in that it allowed me to take steps towards... I actually had a gastric sleeve because I was really scared that if I have mental health issues and I'm reliant on medication in the future, then what's going to happen? I'm just going to end up gaining obscene amounts of weight that put so much pressure on my already frail body that's struggling. And I wanted to thrive. I don't want failure to thrive. I wanted to thrive as a mother, finally.”

“So I had surgery just over a year ago and I've now lost nearly 50 kilos, which feels incredible and it's not the weight loss because healthy looks different on everybody, but it's not about the weight on the scales, it's about my ability to move again, to run after my son, to be with him… I've had to make very active decisions on what next. And I now feel like it's a constant evolution, but I really feel like now I am where I am because of those steps.”

“The final step, I'll just add, that I did take, this is rewinding back to those first few months postpartum. When I was really like an empty shell of a person, I had a friend reach out and say, ‘I know this is probably not for you because you're postpartum and it might be too soon.’ And she had kids herself, she understood typically we don't leave our children in postpartum. But she was running a retreat for women and I sat with it and something in me, I don't know, it wasn't my rational brain, but it was something in my heart or my gut that said, You have to go.”

“The retreat was being held about two minutes down the road from the holiday house we had at the time. And so it meant that my partner could take the baby and he could stay there and the host of the retreat agreed for them to visit during the retreat, which was not really commonplace. But given he was only five months old at the time I went on retreat, I did and it was such a cathartic, life-changing experience that I had this visceral response to everything that I engaged with.”

“We did breath work, we did childhood inner child work, we did ocean swimming. I mean, I was not physically very well at all, but it was exactly what I needed. Actually, that's when it became very clear that the fact that I hadn't had my mum for support around all of these struggles was actually probably one of the hardest things. And I hadn't really given it any air time. I hadn't processed and the borders were still locked. We didn't even know when my parents could meet my son. So it was wonderful.”

“And fast forward two years on from that, I'm now running retreats of similar ilk, but just for mums and just focused on that self-care and getting that time out to connect to self because it is so powerful as a healing tool. And even if you don't need to heal particularly, I mean, I think every single mother does in some way, there's some season that's challenging or more challenging than others. But it's just a beautiful way to really immerse yourself in that healing and just joy, absolute joy. Women being with women is so powerful and that was definitely part of my potent package of postpartum toolkit.”

“We need to just let go of the shit that doesn't serve us. Is it really important to us? What's important? And being on retreat helps, I guess, gain clarity on that. Am I living my life on purpose or am I a bystander and letting things just happen to me and expectations that come from other people, in-laws or parents or mothers groups? It's just we got to look inward but we don't have a minute to do that. We don't get a hot minute from the minute that baby's out to actually look inward.”

“Immediately, we become a mum and then it's just self-sacrifice central and that's all we're thinking about. It's all we're expected to do. And society would have you think that if you sign up to the good mother myth, but that's as toxic as F and I unsubscribe wholeheartedly.”

“I took a long time to accept that and to accept that I have so many strengths as a Mum and what I'm gifting him in terms of creativity and play and connection and his ability to be with himself and look after himself and know his needs. He's not even three and he every night tells me the colour of his heart and how it feels. That is what matters to me, not if he eats Tiny Teddies for breakfast, which okay, it doesn't happen every day, but it happens.”

“It's the reason why my Instagram is called Mamahood My Way, because it's about doing it your way. And that is just—it's going to be a game-changer when we realise that that's what motherhood looks like. It's whatever is good for you.”

“So this is what these retreats give mums: two nights, three days just to decompress, take a minute, think about what they need and what they want from their life and if it's serving them and how they want to show up for themselves.”

“And I don't like using this as the only reason or the driver to do self-care or self-development or self-love, but our kids are watching. And that's not the primary reason. It has to be about you and you matter and you're worth it. But they are watching and what do we want to teach them?”

”I'm really focused now on being as much as I can rather than doing. It doesn't always work out like that. And hey, I've not got it sorted. This is a work in progress.” It's like, they say, Speak about the things you need to learn the most. That's probably why I talk about self-care and self-love because I'm still on it and still doing it. It's just ongoing.”

In addition to attending, and now running, retreats, another key feature of Claire’s recovery involved a birth debrief with her birth staff at the hospital.

“I couldn't let go. I needed answers.”

“There was a massive gap in my knowledge of why it happened the way it happened. And I needed to understand, we need to sometimes know the why. I mean, some people are very good at just letting go regardless, but I’m a very evidence-based, research-based person. I work in a university, so it's in my DNA. And so I wanted to understand it better. And when we can understand it, we can almost put it to bed, put it to rest.”

“And I didn't even know that I could do this. But my psychologist, once she identified I'm still holding on to this anger and resentment about the experience, once she identified that and once we talked about that in my appointment, she said, ‘Well, you can actually request it.’”

“So I did a bit of digging and I put in the request and it took months. It's a bit of back and forth but really there's just a lot of admin because mainly the coordination and the timetable.”

“You're pretty free as a mum on mat leave with the baby other than the sleep schedules. But the midwife, with the obstetrician that ended up delivering the baby, and the head anaesthetist of the hospital - getting their schedules aligned was quite laborious! But overall, the actual request for it was pretty straightforward.”

“So I had this session with them and my husband and I went in and we took the baby with us and I think it humanised the experience for them because we're just a name on a clipboard at that point.”

“It really became clear when the obstetrician actually said to me, ‘Thank you for sharing that this experience because I think sometimes we can forget the emotion attached’. And I felt like, at first, I was really a little bit agitated or I guess, angry at him saying that because I'm like, But we're literally giving birth to a human that we want so much in the world. It's the most important thing we'll ever do as a woman for so many of us, for most of us. That's how we feel about it. And you can't think that there'd be emotions around that and if it doesn't go well or there's a risk to life that it would be very traumatic?”

“But the fact that he said that, I think it had a profound effect on people in the room because they hadn't been to do one before either.”

“But yeah, it was a good conversation, but it was very hard to have because it's a lot to put yourself through, especially quite early on. I find talking about the birth very cathartic and healing and I know that's common across these interviews.”

“It's very empowering and they say you grow through what you go through and my life wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for that experience. I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing and working with the incredible women that I get to work with. But there was some lessons to share or there was some wisdom, I guess, or experience to impart on them, on that team so they can do better.”

“I felt like I actually had a responsibility. Not only did I get some closure… we just got to speak about it all and I just got to voice so that they can do better. I left them with that message like, I never want another woman to go through what I went through. And obviously, you can't be reassured of that, but I think they will do better or they'll try and do better now. And so it just felt like a really empowering and it gave me closure.”

“Look, it's not closed. The door is never closed. Of course. And if the door is closed, then you have to move on and that's when you know you've moved on and you've taken the lessons and you've learnt and you've healed, but the door is still open for sure. But it feels a lot less fiery. The redness in it has been taken out, it's getting yellow and soon it will become just a rainbow. It's just going to be something that happened punctuated my life, but it's not got that grief or trauma attached to it.”

Finally, after more than a year of border closures, Claire’s family made it to Australia.

“It was the most incredible moment. So the minute the borders opened, the day that we got the announcement, they booked their flights and they were out here within two weeks. It was a week before his first birthday, which was amazing. I had this thing in my head that I wanted them to meet him while he was a baby still, and they technically, I guess, did.”

“I watched the video of my mum holding my son over and over and over again.”

“It's really made me realise how important those connections are, how important our relationships are in nurturing those and the village doesn't have to be physically located. It exists all around us and there's so much love and just to really hold on to that.”

Claire’s advice:

“You got to do what's best for you… just know what you need, really connect to yourself. Do as much of that as you can during the pregnancy. I wish I'd focused less on the colour of the nursery and the feel of the bloody cot sheet and just focused on how I support myself emotionally, mentally, physically before, during and after the birth.”

“I think podcasts like this are just absolute lifeline for people and I really would just encourage people to connect with you and access support.”

“I probably, knowing that I have predisposition to mental health issues, I might have had my psychologist on standby and maybe would have had some appointments in advance of the birth just to really talk through some of those anxieties that I think I actually shut away and they were there, they were waiting to just come out, especially with the pandemic.”

”So if you know that you do have challenges, chances are we know from the research it is going to be trickier and there'll be something that comes up that creates a stumbling block. So if you can access that support, just do it. Don't hesitate. It's not weak. So just please look after yourself. You are so important to your babies and to everybody in your life, and you deserve it.”

“I think that for anyone that's resonating with any of this one tiny bit, it's worth a conversation with a medical professional, health professional, because the sooner that we can take back the reins of our mental health, the sooner we get to feel that happiness and joy out of motherhood again.”

”We can't take away the pain that we feel, but we can stop the suffering.” I read that quote quite recently and it really resonated when it came to postpartum and how we feel. That pain will never not be there. It will never not be a part of you, but you don't have to suffer and suffering is being silent about it.”

“So the minute you start to get that niggle, just take one step and it's not a commitment to anything that you don't feel comfortable with. It's just saying, I want to change things for myself. I know that things get to be better. Even if you don't actually believe that things can be better, just take the step because you'll soon see, it will show itself to you. And then before you know it, you can genuinely reflect that you've healed or you're on your healing journey. And it's an amazing place to be at the other side of it all.”

“So just do what you need to do to be okay again and that's going to look very different for everybody.”

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