33 | Laura
“Everything that I saw when I closed my eyes was terrifying, so I didn’t want to sleep. And they’d given me sedatives to help me sleep, which didn’t help me sleep. It was almost like my body was fighting it, fight or flight, we’re not going to sleep because we know what will happen... From that point, I just lost that connection with my baby, which was tough because she was supposed to be my redo...”
After experiencing birth trauma and the isolation of becoming a first-time mother during the pandemic, Laura was both excited and determined that her next pregnancy, birth, and postpartum was going to be different. The experience with her daughter, Millie, was going to be her ‘redo’.
Unfortunately for Laura, re-experiencing fetal growth restriction (IUGR) and a precipitous labour broke her. Flashbacks, insomnia, panic attacks, and depression immediately hijacked her second postpartum and left her feeling more hopeless and alone than ever before - an undoing, rather than a redoing.
As Millie turns one, Laura and I sit down to reflect on the year that was: the pervasive way that birth trauma impacts our parenting, the incredible and not-so-incredible supports that Laura was able to lean on, the challenges of navigating a mental health system that’s not neatly designed to accommodate the logistics of parenting an older child, and the moments Laura can now enjoy with her daughter thanks to the help she did receive.
This is Laura’s story - a story about reflection and rebuilding - and it isn’t one to miss.
“So I'm Laura. I've been with my husband now for 12-13 years. We have two children. We have a three and a half year old, Harry, and our little Amelia or Millie, she has just turned one, which is crazy to think that it's been a year since all this stuff happened.”
“So Harry was a COVID-baby, so that came with its own challenges. Spent my entire pregnancy in lockdown. Being in Victoria, we were under some really strict rules and regulations. Most of that pregnancy was spent at home, lonely, bored, missing out on a lot of those first baby showers and all that stuff, which I guess didn't know any different. It was what it was.”
“His birth was a bit full on, I guess, just because of my expectations of what I thought it would be. What happened was very different to how I imagined it in my head, which put me in, not a dark place, but just made me really, I guess, down about things that had happened and not having that support around us all the time, not being able to show him off to our friends and family. That first year of his life was not fun, to say the least.”
“But when I fell pregnant with Millie, it was almost like she was my, this is horrible, but redo pregnancy, redo baby, redo birth. Everything was going to be so much better this time. I went in, I think, with a lot of expectations, again, and a lot of things that I really wanted to change to make it a pleasurable and special experience.”
“I don’t think I’d ever had a proper, proper panic attack in my life where I felt like my heart was going to burst out of my chest and just the uncontrollable shaking.”
“I went into that pregnancy with probably a high level of anxiety because I knew what birth was like. And yeah, didn't really think too much of it until around 21 weeks, when we had a pre-admission appointment at the hospital that we birthed at with Harry. So I went into that a little bit anxious and scared to go back into that environment. And I think that's where I had my first ever real panic attack.”
“Just going through what had happened with Harry's birth and then being taken back into the birth suite really triggered me in a way that I wasn't prepared for. So I guess that's where it really ramped up from that moment on.”
“I then saw my obstetrician the following day and had mentioned what had happened. And he'd suggested at that point in time, ‘did I think that medication might help?’ And I don't know if I was too proud or worried. I'm not sure what it was, but I was like, ‘no, I'll be fine, things are different this time.’ I was doing hypno-birthing and all those sorts of things to really put my mind in the right frame of mind.”
“After Harry's birth, probably when he was around 18 months and we talked about having a second, my doctor at the time had suggested maybe speaking to a psychologist. So I'd started speaking to a psychologist and she had mentioned that maybe it was possibly a bit of birth trauma there, even though on paper everything was fine… Yeah, she'd suggested that maybe it was a bit more than just feeling down and COVID and everything else.”
“So that was the first time I'd ever - I don't think I'd ever had a proper, proper panic attack in my life where I felt like my heart was going to burst out of my chest and just the uncontrollable shaking. And being there, my husband had to work at the time, so he couldn't come with me. So I was there by myself. And the midwife that was taking me around, she was incredible. She picked up on what was happening straight away, removed me from the situation, and we had a really good chat afterwards, and I ended up seeing her again a couple of months later, kind of a redo appointment.”
“The second time around, when we went back, it was a little less daunting. We really did it slowly and went in a different way and sat and talk, which I don't even think I needed to, but I think just for that peace of mind, it was good.”
“I'm such a control freak in life in general. I'm a teacher, so I'm used to having control. So for me to go into a situation where it's out of my control, it makes sense now why I feel that way.”
“Harry was a growth-restricted baby. So we had that in the back of our mind, going into this second pregnancy that may happen again, even though I'd been taking aspirin from the beginning in hopes to help my placenta do its job. At 32 weeks, we found out that Millie was also growth-restricted, which was fine. She was measuring small, but within an okay range, nothing concerning.”
“Then again, at my 36-week scan, I just remember the sonographer taking the same measurement over and over and over. I could see on the screen what she was doing. That experience that I had with Harry, I knew exactly what she was looking for and what she was doing, and I could see the numbers. At that point, I was like, ‘Okay, we're doing this again.’ She was like, ‘Okay, I just need to go ring your obstetrician.’”
“Scott was with me, thankfully. We knew with these last scans, it was best for both of us to be there just in case we had to make any quick decisions. She got off the phone with the obstetrician and said, ‘Look, we're not going to rush you in to see him today, but you need to see him tomorrow.’”
“We went the next day, and he pretty much said, so we're either having this baby today or if you're really not, ideally wanted to get us to 37 weeks, just because she was so little, I'd have to go in for a daily monitoring, I'd have to have steroid injections, all that stuff to make sure that her lungs were developed. And because she was quite small, just to make sure, give both of us, I guess, the best chance for things to go well. So we opted for that.”
“I wasn't ready. I needed that week to spend time with Harry as well. We went daily monitoring, the injections. It was frustrating spending a lot of my time that final week in hospital, which in a way probably wasn't the worst thing. It got me ready, I guess, the fear around being there really diminished because it was like my second home.”
“From that point, I just lost that connection with my baby, which was tough because she was supposed to be my redo....”
“I ended up being induced at 37 weeks on the dot. A lot happened that I, I guess, wasn't expecting and neither was my obstetrician.”
“To put a long story short, I was induced and the first hour or two, I guess, it was pretty cruisy. We just sat around and I was induced with the gel. So yeah, really cruisy induction!”
“But it got to twelve o'clock and they were like, ‘We'll consider you in labour now’. But from there, it just ramped up really fast. My water's broke an hour later or were broken an hour later, and then Millie was born 30 minutes after that. So a very short last labour!”
“So I was in birthing suite, obstetrician comes, breaks my waters. And a few minutes later, she'd gone into fetal distress. They couldn't get any trace on her heartbeat, her movement, anything. And we were rushed for a category one C-section. So one of the ones where they kick everyone else out of theatre and rush you in. But in the time that, I think it was a space of 10 minutes between going the birth suite to the theatre, I'd already gone from 3 centimetres to 10, and there was no time.”
“They were supposed to be putting me in under a general anaesthetic. Got to theatre, forceps, episiotomy, and out she came and I didn't see her. She was pretty much taken straight away. Scott only just got into theatre as she was being born because they told him that it was under a general, so he wouldn't be able to be there.”
“While all this is happening, I had no idea. I'm screaming, crying. Yeah, full on. But yeah, she was born. Scott went with her to special care and I was just left with 30-odd doctors, nurses, everything else in theatre by myself, not really knowing if Millie was okay.”
“They'd told me before she left, ‘she's okay, she's breathing’. I didn't meet Millie until she was 2 hours old. The first time I saw her was over FaceTime with Scott. In recovery, I had no idea what was going on. I was groggy, just drowsy and dozing on and off and not really sure what had happened or why things had happened.”
“I think from that point, I just lost that connection with my baby, which was tough because she was supposed to be my redo birth. She was supposed to be… the hypno-birth, it tells you all these things of what your birth is going to be. It was nothing like that. All the videos they show you and how calm and relaxing. Yeah, just not that at all.”
“It was hard to hold her, let alone want to hold her...”
“From then, I was taken into special care, still in the bed. I couldn't walk properly. I hadn't been given any pain medication, nothing. It wasn't even that I couldn't walk. It was just that physically my body had shut down in a way, I guess from the trauma and the fear and panic, just trying to keep me going.”
“So yeah, met her in special care. I just remember all the nurses in there as I was coming in. It's only a small hospital. Special care only had eight beds, but as I was being wheeled in there, everyone just stopped. And special care was right next to our birth suites.”
“I'm like, ‘Oh, my God, have all these people heard me and what's happened?’ Yeah, so that was confronting, I guess. Yeah, met her, had some cuddles, but I guess that initial skin to skin and the being with her, I couldn't hold her for very long. She had to go back into the incubator thingy and she had drips and monitoring and everything on her. So it was hard to hold her, let alone want to hold her.”
“Later that day, we went back to our room and my obstetrician came in and he was just dumbfounded by what had happened as well. He said he'd never seen, they'd never seen, like they'd tried to stop the labour and they couldn't. He'd never seen things like that happen as fast as they did in that way. And I guess that made me be like, ‘okay, so that's not me being like, that was full on. It was actually full on.’ I'm not the only one making it worse in my head.”
“I couldn’t verbalise what was going on. I was just sobbing hysterically...”
“We were really lucky. So she picked up really well that night. She ended up only being in there for three days. She was only 2.4 kilos. She was just this tiny, tiny baby. We were expecting her to be there a bit longer. We were lucky that we were in the hospital the entire time she was in special care, and they did keep me there longer based on things that had happened and just to have that support.”
“It was one of the days she was in special care. She would have been maybe two days old at the time, and I'd just come back to my room and Scott had gone home to spend some time with Harry. I was just in my room, curtains shut, just sobbing and sobbing.”
“And a nurse came in… she must have just heard the sobbing and came back in. She's like, ‘You're not okay.’ I'm like, ‘oh, no, I'm not at all.’ I couldn't verbalise what was going on. I was just sobbing hysterically. And she just sat with me, let me cry. It was beyond lovely. I hadn't, I guess, expected that level of care when I know how busy they were. She just sat there and just waited for me to open up a bit more.”
“But she then went and spoke the head nurse and had organised for the pastoral care team to come and talk to me and organised to have a debrief with my obstetrician and the midwife from the birth. I said it so many times, I loved the hospital we birthed at, but I think that just made it even more validating.”
“They went above and beyond, really, what they needed to do.”
“So yeah, I sat down, had a debrief with my obstetrician, the midwives, and even then, I just don't think I was in the right headspace for it. It was way too soon. It was the day Millie came out of special care. She was only three, four days old. My milk was coming in, my emotions were high already. I can picture sitting in the room talking. I have no idea what was said. I have no idea what I was told. I just remember crying, crying, crying, crying. Yeah, it was just way too soon.”
“From that point, I couldn’t sleep either. And it wasn’t even that Millie was keeping me awake. It was the constant flashbacks. And every time I closed my eyes, I was back in the birth suite in theatre...”
“I guess the rest of our stay in hospital, how the nurses do their little swap-overs outside your room. Every time they did that, I could hear them talking about what had happened and my stomach would just drop. They'd be like, ‘Oh, gosh, poor thing.’ It was just that look as well when they'd come in. And that was full on.”
“And I guess from that point, I couldn't sleep either. And it wasn't even that Millie was keeping me awake. It was the constant flashbacks. And every time I closed my eyes, I was back in the birth suite in theatre.”
“Everything that I saw when I closed my eyes was terrifying, so I didn't want to sleep. And they'd given me sedatives to help me sleep, which didn't help me sleep. It was almost like my body was fighting it, fight or flight. We're not going to sleep because we know what will happen!”
“As much as they were trying to help in that way, it really wasn't helping. I guess it wasn't that it wasn't resolved. I felt like they did everything they could at the time to help.”
“My obstetrician had said, ‘You need to make an appointment with your psychologist. Make it now. Don't even wait to get home.’”
“So I had gotten onto them straight away. And unfortunately, the psychologist I was seeing at the time had quit. So they said that they could put me with someone else who they recommended as a birth trauma specialist.”
“So went home. Things just went really downhill very, very fast. Had my first session with the new psych, and I really felt like she was incredible. There was no judgement, which it shouldn't be with a psychologist anyway, but I just felt like she really listened.”
“Again, I spent a majority of that first appointment with her in tears, unable to talk, and tried to explain to her as much as I could what had happened. And yes, she was amazing. She's like, ‘No, we can't have you being like this. You can't be in this place. We can wait and see, but who knows whether with time it'll get better or if it'll get worse.’ So she wrote a letter to my GP explaining her thoughts and what she thought needed to happen and moving ahead, which gave me a little bit of hope, I guess. Like, okay, there's an end in sight. I'm not going to feel like this forever.”
“This isn’t me! I’m not this person! I cannot get through an hour without breaking down. My son is watching me crying all hours of the day, asking me what’s wrong. And he, being two and a half, cannot understand what has happened, let alone why mummy is so upset all the time.”
Armed with that little bit of hope, Laura visited her GP.
“This is a GP that I've been seeing for more than 10 years. I felt really close to her. I felt like she understood me.”
“We went to that appointment, Scott came with me because if I can't get the words out, Scott could.”
“I felt reassured that my obstetrician had sent notes from the birth to her as well, so she'd known what happened… My obstetrician, he was on the same page as well and had said, ‘She needs medication, she needs help. This isn't just baby blues. This is a bit more serious than that.’”
“So yeah, we went to the GP appointment, sat down, and she was like, ‘I read through your birth notes. That's full on what you've been through.’”
“And then I asked her about the letter. I'm like, ‘My psychologist said she sent me your letter’ She's like, ‘Oh, really? Oh, here it is.’ And opened it up and had a quick skim and was like, ‘Oh, that's interesting,’ and made the comment, ‘No, let's just give it 6-12 weeks and wait and see what happens.’”
“I'm sitting there thinking, 6 or 12 weeks? If I even wait another few weeks, I don't know that I'm going to be here. The way I'm feeling right now and explained to her, I don't... This isn't me! I'm not this person! I cannot get through an hour without breaking down. My son is watching me crying all hours of the day, asking me what's wrong. And he, being two and a half, cannot understand what has happened, let alone why mummy is so upset all the time.”
“Yeah, then she made the comment, ‘no, let's wait and see, the medication that you'll have to take will harm the baby because you're breastfeeding.’ What?!”
“She’s, number one, a woman. Two, has got notes from my psych, notes from my obstetrician, both advocating that I need help and that medication would be the best option - but was very much against me taking medication! She said it would make me worse, that even though I might not be suicidal at the moment, it may cause me to be suicidal.”
”I'm in my head thinking, ‘Okay, you're the expert.’ She's like, ‘I'll give you a call tomorrow and we'll see how you're feeling.’ I didn't answer that phone call the next day.”
“At that point, I left that appointment, I was, I guess, broken. I just couldn't comprehend how a medical professional who specialises in women's health and mental health could say those things.”
“And I just kept thinking, ‘I'm like, if we wait, my kids might not have a mother.’ As much as I wasn't, I wouldn't say I had those thoughts of harming myself, but I just kept thinking, ‘I'm going to run away. I can't be around them. I can't be their mum. I can't look after myself. How am I going to look after them?’”
“It's so hard to understand that there are so many of us and that we're not taken seriously either. I think after you have a baby, people just put it down to baby blues, which I think happened with Harry. It was just put down to, ‘Oh, no, you just go through a rough patch. First time mum.’ But I do think it was a bit more than that.”
“Maybe if I had have pushed a bit more then and got help, then things may have been different, but also they may not. So there's nothing I can do now to change that.”
“I just remember thinking, ‘if I leave you in the bassinet and just get in the car and don’t come back, Scott will be fine. He’s got his parents, he’s got my parents. Everyone will chip in and help. They don’t need me because really, I can’t settle her anyway. What difference does it make if I’m here or not?’ I just really didn’t want to be there.”
“The next couple of weeks were really just… I don't remember them. I look at photos and I'm like, ‘Oh, okay. I was around, I was present’ but I wasn't present.”
“I didn't want to hold Millie. I would feed her, put her down, pass her to someone else. It was almost like looking at her was a trigger. I just wanted to spend all my time with Harry. I remember saying to Scott at one point, ‘What have we done? Why did we have another baby? Why have I put myself back in this position? Things were perfect with Harry. It was just the three of us. Life was good. Why did I go and change that?’”
“Just that constant guilt feeling that, God, I've really stuffed up our lives now. I'm going to give Harry all this trauma now. He's seeing me like this, seeing me upset, not wanting to be around the baby. I remember she'd cry, and I'd just walk into another room because I couldn't pick her up to hold her. It wasn't even that I couldn't. I just didn't want to. I didn't have that, almost like that motherly urge to be like, ‘oh, it's okay. I'll make you feel better.’ I didn't want anything to do with her.”
“Night-time feeds were the worst. I think I used to wake up, feed her, and she was... Both my kids have been horrible sleepers in the beginning, but she was next level, just would scream for hours and hours. I just remember thinking, ‘if I leave you in the bassinet and just get in the car and don't come back, Scott will be fine. He's got his parents, he's got my parents. Everyone will chip in and help. They don't need me because really, I can't settle her anyway. What difference does it make if I'm here or not?’”
“I just really didn't want to be there.”
“Walking into the hospital, into the elevator, I just remember that gut-wrenching, sick feeling. The flashbacks started, I went into the room to have the appointment with this midwife, and I completely broke down. I wouldn’t even say a panic attack. It was literally a breakdown. I couldn’t talk, I couldn’t breathe.”
“Two weeks after that GP scenario, I had an appointment back at the hospital, which was the first time being back at the hospital since Millie was born, and Scott had just gone back to work. So went into that on my own, walking into the hospital, into the elevator. I just remember that gut-wrenching, sick feeling. The flashbacks started, I went into the room to have the appointment with this midwife, and I completely broke down. I wouldn't even say a panic attack. It was literally a breakdown.”
“I couldn't talk, I couldn't breathe. She was in a panic because we were just there for breastfeeding, make sure everything was going well, check up on Millie and all that appointment. She thought it was pretty much just a standard appointment, and I just could not function. I remember her taking Millie from me and holding her because I guess she was worried that I was going to drop her or maybe throw her, I don't know.”
“She ended up having to get another midwife to come in as well to sit with me while she went and rang Scott. She rang him and said he needed to come in straight away, which I felt horrible about. He's just gone back to work now but his wife’s having a breakdown, you need to get back here! He couldn't get there straight away, but he was on his way.”
“In the meantime, she also called my obstetrician to have a chat with him. Being the incredible man that he is, he rang the public hospital mental health ward, and told them that I was coming in. They didn't give me a choice. They hadn't told me what was happening yet. But when Scott got there, they're like, ‘Okay, this is what's happening. Your obstetrician’s rang ahead. They know you're coming. We can't let you leave unless you go with Scott, and Scott has to take you straight there’ - it was a two-minute drive down the road. I just remember being like, ‘I'm not going. I'm not going. You can't make me go. I just want to go home. I don't want to be here. I don't want to be back in another hospital.’”
“‘We can't let you go home like this. You have to go. Whether you like it or not, Scott can either take you or we'll have to find other ways to get you there’, which terrified me. I'd never set foot in a mental health ward, let alone thought that I'd ever end up there. So yeah, Scott took us across there. I waited in the car, he went in to speak to them, and they told him, ‘No,’ I had to come in. They couldn't speak to him. It had to be me.”
“I just remember walking up to a little window, again, I guess it was another panic attack, I'm not sure, but my heart was racing, they took my pulse and she's like, ‘your pulse is way too fast. This is not right. Go sit down’. I waited there and I just remember everyone looking at me in the emergency wait room because the wait rooms are the same. I'm sitting there with this baby. Millie was an angel, of course, at the time, and just asleep, bless her. Just people looking at me, her in the capsule, not really looking at her, not acknowledging that she's there.”
“One of the emergency nurses came over and sat me. She's like, ‘It's okay. I'll wait with you’. Scott had to go move the car and this and that. So she waited with me and then they took me through to the short stay unit. And I didn't know at the time what it was. I just thought it was emergency.”
“So I went around and I'm like, ‘These are interesting rooms’. They're all single rooms. There's no blinds. They're very interesting. Like everything's locked away in cupboard. It's like this is different. And then I realised where I was. And I could just... Even the feeling to it was dark. It was very clinical In a way, all cords and anything that you could use for any particular reason was gone.”
“I just kept thinking, ‘Have they taken her away? Have they taken her out of the ward, back up to a maternity ward or something, where I’m not going to be able to see her?’ I started to panic.”
“I remember sitting in this room waiting for Scott to come back, just being like, ‘Oh, my God, where have they brought me? I'm not crazy. I don't need to be here. I get that I'm not doing well, but this isn't where I thought I needed to be.’”
“So yeah, they had a psychologist come and talk to me. Basically from there, she's like, ‘Yeah, this is typical anxiety. You've got birth trauma, and we're going to say you've got postpartum depression. Yes, it may be early on, but we can see this isn't going to get better on its own.’”
“And yeah, they gave me, no idea what they gave me, but gave me medication and basically told me I needed to stay.”
“I said, flat out ‘no! I'm not staying here. I have a toddler at home. He needs his mum. I don't need to be here. Give me the medication, I'll go home. And It'll be fine.’”
“Obviously, they said no. By that time, Scott had come back and they're like, ‘Okay, well, we're going to keep you here for a few hours at least, and we'll see from there.’ So Scott, I said to him, ‘go back to work. I'll let you know when you can come and get me.’ So he went off to work, and in that time, they’d come in, we'd have a chat. The nurses were lovely. Obviously, they’re trained for these sorts of situations. And they're like, ‘you need to get some rest. We'll take Millie.’”
“I'm just like, ‘Why are you taking my baby away? Do you honestly think I can't look after my baby?’ So they took Millie. She'd been fed. Everything was fine. They took her and just get some rest. I couldn't sleep, of course. Then I just kept thinking, ‘Have they taken her away? Have they taken her out of the ward, back up to a maternity ward or something, where I'm not going to be able to see her?’ I started to panic.”
“At that point, I'm like, ‘Scott, you need to come back. I don't know what's going on.’ Which he couldn't get back, obviously, at that particular time. But the nurses kept coming in and out. They're like, ‘Look, we really recommend that you either stay and be admitted here or we send you to a mother-baby unit an hour up road.’”
“I'm like, ‘I'm not going to a mother-baby unit.’ I kept telling them, ‘I have a toddler at home. I can't leave him.’ He is very much at this point when he was around that age, I had to do everything. Until Millie was born, we'd never been apart for more than a daycare day, let alone me going an hour up the road to another hospital again and him having no idea. I went out for an appointment, I was supposed to be coming back. And yeah, I just kept saying to them, I can't be away from him. I can't. You need to understand, I have another child. It can't just be all about her. There needs to be him taken into consideration as well.”
“They ended up coming back probably an hour later, I reckon. They're like, ‘Look, there is this program we can have you participate in that might be an option if you're open to it. I've never heard of it. It was one of those things that I'd never heard of in my life. I think it was relatively new to the hospital at the time as well. It was called the Hospital in the Home (HITH) program.”
“Basically, they could treat me as an outpatient. The person who ran the HITH program came and spoke to me and ran me through what I guess was expected and that there were certain rules around me going home. It wasn't just, I'm going to go home and life will be good again.”
“At the time I was like, ‘Yeah, I'm happy to do that as long as I can be at home. And as long as I can be with Harry’, still at that point, I really wasn't too fazed if I was with Millie or not, which is horrible, especially thinking back.”
“I think he was almost at that grounding point, and I needed to get better for him, but I wasn't going to do something that was then going to potentially cause him more trauma as well. There was enough change going on in house at that point in time that he didn't need me disappearing either.”
“They literally threw everything at me that they could.”
“I agreed and consented to the Hospital in the Home (HITH) program, and then they said to me, ‘Oh, we think you need to stay the night.’ I was so out of it. I'm like, ‘no, I'm not staying the night. There's no way you're keeping me here. I don't have anything with me. I don't have anything for Millie either. I literally came with a couple of nappies and wipes and that's it.”
“And by that point, Scott had come back and they're like, ‘okay, well, the HITH team is going to come to you as soon as you get home.’ So we went home and we literally walked in the door and they were there within two minutes. It was almost like they followed us home, they weren't convinced that I was actually going to go home. I don't know.”
“Anyway, they came and it was one of the mental health nurses and a midwife that came out and ran me through the entire program and handed me this massive folder of what they were all about and what they were going to do and how they were going to support me.”
“Basically, it's daily visits. I wasn't allowed to be home by myself, and especially not by myself with the kids, which was tricky because Scott only got two weeks off work for paternity leave. I was just lucky that my mum was able to stay. My mum was there at the time when they came to our house because she'd been watching Harry, and she's like, ‘Look, I'll be here every day. Scott will go to work and I'll literally come the second he's about to walk out the door, I'll be there.’”
“So yeah, my poor mum for the next, I guess, month, nearly. She was just at our house all day, every day. But yeah, they came and with them each day, there was a whole team of people. There was a psychiatrist, a psychologist, an OT, the mental health nurses.”
“They literally threw everything at me that they could.”
“So the OT came and helped with a bit of emotional regulation and using tools to help me calm myself when I started to get into that panic. Weighted blankets, which I still use, like I've never used one before. And even the zones of regulation stuff, which as a teacher, we've done so much with our students, but I'd never really enforced it with myself. So almost relearning all of that stuff.”
“And then the psychiatrist, I'd never seen a psychiatrist before. So I didn't know the difference between a psychologist and a psychiatrist. And this man, he was exactly what I imagined in my head, just this really serious, stern-looking man, glasses, grey hair, exactly what I'd pictured. But he was lovely. I was scared of him initially, but he was so good.”
“With him, we worked through a few different medications before we found the best one for me. The first one they'd prescribed me, I felt like a zombie. I was only on a very low dose of that, but I couldn't stay awake. I found myself feeding Millie and falling asleep, or I'd be sitting on the couch and just doze off. I just felt woozy all the time, just not at all me.”
“I remember saying that to him. He's like, ‘That's fine, this is what we're here for. We don't want you to feel not yourself. We're here to try and help you feel like yourself again.’”
“And he kept explaining, ‘this isn't anything you've done’. I think I kept blaming myself. And he's like, ‘it's just the way your brain's wired. You can't change these things. It's either going to happen or it's not.’ And having been through what I went through, basically said, ‘no one's surprised that this is what's happening’. So, yeah, we played around with different medications and eventually found one that worked for me.”
“They said that anything that they were prescribing was 100% safe for Millie. I could still breastfeed her. There may be a slight chance that some of it passes through the breast milk. But in the end, if I'm not well, how is that any benefit to her? I don't know if you've heard Rodney Whyte? Basically, you can email or ring him any questions about breastfeeding and medications, and he will basically let you know if there's something wrong.”
“I guess to backstep a little bit, after I'd seen my doctor, I had emailed him, ‘Look, this is what I've been told. Is this right?’ He emailed back, he's like, ’No, that's wrong. See a different GP, ASAP, and start medication. You are more important than the slight risk of anything happening.’ I guess that was validated again when I was taking all these medications and feeding Millie. I was reassured that no, he said it's okay. Psychiatrist said it's okay. Everyone else has said it's okay. Everyone that knows what they're talking about has said it's okay!”
“Yeah, so I guess, trialled different medications, and they visited daily. I think it was either three or four weeks. I keep saying this, but that whole time is a bit of a blur.”
“I guess if things hadn’t happened the way they did, it’s scary to think now where we’d be or even where we would have been a few months further down the line.”
“At that point had withdrawn from a lot of friends and family, they were saying they were going to come over and visit and help. And I'm like, ‘Look, I don't want to speak to anyone. I don't want to be around people. I just need to be on my own until things get a bit better.’”
“And a lot of our friends were really good about it. As much as they didn't know what was going on and happening, I was just like, ‘Look, I'm not up for visitors right now’. My really close friends knew what had happened to an extent. They were the ones that I'd let pop in just to sit. We didn't talk, we just sat there, which was really nice just to know that they're still there willing to sit and do nothing with me.”
“The HITH team visited every day, and some days I just didn't want them to come. I just didn't want to have to get out of bed and talk to them and just sit there and listen to what they had to say when half the time I wasn't taking in anything they were saying, but also knew that that's what I had to do, I guess, to move through it. And until they deemed that the medication was making a difference.”
“So yeah, they kept visiting until they started to scale back. So they gradually did that. Instead of doing every day, they came every second day. And then the following week, it was twice a week. And the following week, it was one day a week.”
“And then I was handed over to the community-based team, which to start with was house visits. I think they were weekly to start with as well. But I just found that after being in such an intensive program with the HITH team, that the community-based team wasn't the same. Not that level of support that I was getting. But also, I think at that point, I probably didn't need it as much either… It's going to sound horrible, but they didn't have time for me. A lot of the times the nurse that was assigned to my case would cancel or reschedule. So I just felt like, they don't really want to be doing this. They've got more important people and issues to be dealing with. And they knew that I had quite a of support. They just fizzled out, really.”
“Before I'd been handed over to the community team, the HITH team had put forward a referral to go to mother-baby unit as well. After the hospital suggested it and I'd said no, the HITH team were like, ‘No, we really think this is where you need to be. We can do all we can here, but they will be able to help you more. They're the ones that are trained for this. You're there, you're living it 24/7. You've got the support.’”
“I was a bit more open to it at that point and had an appointment over the phone with the, I guess, nurse that ran the ward or whatever they're called. I don't know what they're called! I had to go through everything that had happened again. And I was just at this point sick of retelling our story. And I remember saying to her, ‘How long do I have to be there?’ And she said, ‘At a minimum, two weeks.’”
“And I thought, Two weeks away from Harry? She's like, ‘Oh, he can visit as much as he wants.’ I'm thinking, it's an hour away. It's not just driving around the corner and coming to visit. It's a decent drive. And who's going to look after him as well? Scott can't get time off work. My mum's already taken time off work. She can't move into our house and look after our child. She's got her own things that she has to do as well.”
“I just remember saying to her, ‘Look, I can't.’ They kept reiterating that it was important that I go and it will do everyone good. It'll be good for Harry in the long run. At one point, they're like, ‘Oh, maybe Harry could stay there with you.’ I'm like, ‘That is not the environment I want a two and a half year old, almost three year old to be in.’ And how am I supposed to focus 100% on me getting better, bonding with Millie while he's there? It wasn't an option.”
“I just kept saying no, which hindsight, I wish I did go. I guess I can say that now. But at the time there was no way I was leaving and going unless they were putting me in a car, driving me there in handcuffs, I guess. That wasn't happening.”
“I guess if things hadn't happened the way they did, it's scary to think now where we'd be or even where we would have been a few months further down the line.”
“I don't know. I wonder now, would it have been a good option to bring that bond with Millie together much earlier than it came? I think for our first six months, I just really didn't feel at all connected to her. Harry, I never wanted to leave ever with anyone, whereas Millie, I was like, ‘Yeah, take her, go do what you want with her.’”
“That constant guilt. I don’t think it’s ever going to go away.”
“I guess Millie was a tricky baby as well, which made it worse in a way. She had horrible colic. She screamed every time she'd feed. She was little as it was and wasn't gaining weight very fast. She wasn't even on the percentile charts, which we then ended up having to switch her over to formula anyway, just because she wasn't getting what she needed from me. Everything I ate seemed to make her worse, and it was just one of those battles that I feel like I wasn't going to win.”
“I ended up finding a new GP who was very much on board with everything and I still see her now. She's absolutely incredible. But I remember saying to her, ‘I don't know what to do’. She's like, ‘Look, your health and mental health is more important than nearly being breastfed. She's been breastfed for 12 weeks now. At the end of the day, it's not going to kill her being on formula. It might even be better for her in the long run.’”
“So, yeah, we made the switch. I guess I was hesitant to stop breastfeeding as well because I'm like, ‘That's our one bond.’ That was supposed to bring the connection between us closer because everyone kept saying, ‘just have skin to feed her and just let her lay on you.’ But I lost that as well. It was one of those things.”
“I breastfed Harry for so long, and it was like a special little thing that no one else could do. Now, Millie’s on bottles and anyone can feed her. It's not really our special time. Even now, she loves Scott, which I'm like, ‘Have I done this to myself?’ I don't know. She's not a very cuddly baby either, which is hard now as she's older. I'm like, ‘Oh, I should have just embraced those cuddles when you were a newborn and all you wanted to do was be on me. All I wanted to do was get rid of you.’ That constant guilt. I don't think it's ever going to go away.”
“Being around Millie’s birthday, the flashbacks have started again. There are a lot of triggering moments.”
“We did end up doing a early parenting unit, residential stay. So they said up until Millie was one, if I wanted to re-refer to the mother-baby unit, but the early parenting unit was always an option as well.”
“So, yeah, when Millie was around five months old, I did that. The hospital we chose to do it through was a private hospital two hours away from home, which was tricky, but also I knew it was only going to be six days and I knew I was coming home at the end of it. It wasn't an indefinite amount of time. And that was a bit of respite for me and to get Millie on track, sleeping a bit better, which, as we all know, sleep doesn't help mental health at all. There's a lack of sleep on top of everything I was feeling.”
“I think going there was, for us, a great decision. My mum took the time off work. She stayed with Harry. Scott came up on the weekend and stayed with us. I was able to get that rest that I really needed. I was able to come and go as well. As long as I was there when Millie had to sleep and eat, I was able to go for walks. It was refreshing in a way. Then we came back and Millie slept better. That was a win.”
Laura still sees her psychologist every 3-4 weeks, and is hoping to commence Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR). “I haven't started yet, which I'd hope by this point I had. But yeah, our last appointment was a bit of a full on one, just being around Millie's birthday, the flashbacks have started again. There are a lot of triggering moments.”
“She's really pushing for me to organise another debrief now that it's been a year. So, organise a debrief with the hospital, which I keep putting off. I'm such a procrastinator. But part of me is like, ‘Oh, I don't want to waste their time on me’. In my head, it's like, ‘I don't want to inconvenience anyone else’, but I know I need it. I have a list of things I want to ask and want to know. And it's not from a blame side either. It's more I just want to understand what went wrong… It is closure. How could we have prevented? Could anything have been prevented? Or am I literally just one of those people that things happen and we can't explain it?”
“My obstetrician had even said that they'd sent off my placenta for testing because it was so small and bizarre that this had happened again. But yeah, not that I even... This has come up a lot lately, but a third child, would this happen all over again? In my head, I know mentally I could not have another child, but I just need to know, I guess for myself that, yeah, it's one of those things that I just can't say definitely not either.”
“Millie was supposed to be in my redo. I can't go again and hope for the best when it really won't go well. But yeah, it's tricky at the moment. I think I feel like I'm in such a better space, but at the same time, there's a lot of things that need to still change, and I definitely need closure. It's crazy to think that it's been a year.”
“Like I said before, my memory of the first six months, there isn't any.”
“I guess from that comes a grief and regret as well, that I really should have embraced that. Millie's almost likely to be our last child, and I've thrown it away, really taken it for granted. I guess at the time, there's nothing I could do to change that. But looking back now, I'm lucky I had the people around me that I did. I'm lucky that I went to the hospital for that appointment because I feel like if I didn't, it'd be a very different story that I'm telling today.”
“It'll be interesting to see what the next year, few months brings with the EMDR and debrief.”
“We’ve come a very long way, and I think I need to recognise that more than I do.”
“At the time, I just felt like I knew I wouldn't have been the only person to go through something like this, but I felt like no one understood. Even Scott, who was there, I don't feel like he completely understood the toll it took on me.”
“I started listening to your podcast not long after Millie was born. I started listening, and I'm like, it was what I needed. I remember listening to other podcasts about all these amazing birth stories and how amazing it is. I'm like, I just can't relate to any of this. I hated it. I hated every second of newborn life as much as I hate to admit it. And yeah, it's nice to be able to know that if someone else listens to this and feels like they can relate, it's a good feeling.”
“I hope that anyone listening in our area and needs that service, he is about it and does inquire, because without that HITH programme, I honestly don't know where or how I'd be today.”
From where she was a year ago, Laura’s love and bond with her daughter is everything she hoped for. “She has the scrunchiest smile, if you can call it that, like her whole face smiles, her nose, her eyes, her mouth. It is the most adorable thing. And I think once she started doing that and her personality started to really show, I think that was almost like the moment where things were like, ‘Oh, my God, what have I been missing out on? You are amazing.’ She's such a happy baby now - I say ‘now’, once we got on top of allergies and things like that. She's just a ball of sunshine. Honestly, I've never seen a baby smile so much. She's incredible. She really is.”
“Now it makes that regret and guilt even harder, I think, because I did take that time for granted and could have been much more in tune with her… Even today, she's with my in-law's and I'm like, ‘When can I come pick you up?’ Her and Harry are there. It's just the house feels so weird without them. As much as when they're here, it does my head in. When they're not here, it's so weird!”
“I think we've definitely, we've come a very long way, and I think I need to recognise that more than I do.”
“Just know there are people out there that will help you and want what’s best for you.”
“As much as I say this and probably wouldn't do it myself, really, if you think things aren't right, advocate for yourself. Get a second opinion, push for what you think you need because I didn't and I'm just lucky that other people did for me.”
“I can say this and I can probably say it with 99% honesty that I probably wouldn't have found help myself. I don't know at what point I would have, which is hard. So yeah, I guess just know there are people out there that will help you and want what's best for you.”
Listen to the full episode:
“She has the scrunchiest smile, if you can call it that, like her whole face smiles, her nose, her eyes, her mouth. It is the most adorable thing.”
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