The unCommon Exposè
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The unCommon Exposè
Twin pregnancy & loss.
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TRIGGER WARNING: Pregnancy loss & Premature Birth.
Listen to Eloise share her heartbreaking story about twin pregnancy, pregnancy loss and meeting her twin boys.
You will hear, Jackson, her earth side son's input throughout, which truely makes this story touch your heart.
If you are like me you will cry, get goosebumps, but overall have the utmost respect for this beautiful woman.
Thank you for opening up and sharing your story mama.
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SPEAKER_00:Welcome beautiful mamas, I am your host Shea Harrison. This podcast is a place for Springfield and local surrounding
SPEAKER_01:area mamas to share their stories about life, motherhood and everything in between, completely judgement free. I am so excited to be able to share these stories with you and give women an opportunity to be heard.
SPEAKER_00:So if you're ready to laugh, open your mind and be part of a supportive sharing community, let's crack on. Welcome beautiful mamas, I am your host Shea Harrison. This podcast is a place for Springfield and local surrounding area mamas to share their stories about life, motherhood and everything in between, completely judgement free.
SPEAKER_01:Hello and welcome to the podcast. How are you
SPEAKER_00:feeling? Good, thank
SPEAKER_01:you.
SPEAKER_00:an 11-month-old son, Jackson, who is earthside with us and sitting here for this. And he has an identical twin brother, Angus, who is looking down from us up above. And that's part of my story today. So my husband and I got married in early November 2020 after getting engaged very romantically in Austria at Christmas Eve of the previous year.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, wow.
SPEAKER_00:And So did you get married in the pandemic? Yes. How was that? We were supposed to have our engagement party the weekend in March when the world ended. Ah, yes. When the world ended. So our engagement party was cancelled. And then our wedding fell on the weekend in November where like the Wednesday restrictions had been lifted. Was this in Brisbane? In Brisbane, yeah. So we'd had to change our venue. So we changed and we ended up getting married at having our reception at City Hall oh okay then and my cousins from New South Wales were able to fly up which was amazing we could have people sitting at the table and the best part was we could have people dancing and mingling at the wedding so we were in this really short window because I think like two weeks later everything closed again again oh wow so we were really lucky and it was a great wedding like I think everyone was just so desperate to have a party yeah that everyone just got out let and had a great, great night. So that was really exciting. And then two weeks later, I had a week off work either side of the wedding. We didn't have a honeymoon. We just sort of chilled at home for the week, which was nice. And then two weeks later on the Monday, I hadn't been feeling really well at work that day. And I thought I was really anxious about a meeting that I was involved with. The Did not go away. And I don't know what it was, but on the way back to, walking back to the car that night, I stopped at the chemist and got a pregnancy test. And I'd never bought a pregnancy test before, so I bought the one that told you how many weeks you were. Yes. Because I was like, oh... won't be that many weeks like this will be an extreme fluke yeah um and i took the pregnancy test when i got home uh and it said three plus weeks wow and in my head i'm like oh the wedding was the wedding was only two weeks ago oh well um it was about five to six and uh my husband wasn't home yet because he usually works really long days yeah um and i didn't really know what to do so i went to boot camp it wasn't your boot camp it was a different boot camp but i was like oh I just don't know what to do. So I went to boot camp and the trainer actually said to me during the, he said, oh, Eloise, are you, are you all right? Like, you're not really like you use yourself tonight. I was like, yeah, I just, you know, not, not feeling best. Yeah. Um, so did some form of exercise, came home. Um, and my husband came home early that night, which was quite a shock. Were you expecting him to come home early? No, I was expecting him sort of anywhere between nine and 10 PM. Oh, wow. That is late. Yeah. And I said, oh, I have something to show you. And I showed him the pregnancy test. Yeah. That said three plus weeks. Yeah. And he was like, oh, okay. Right. He took it really well. Were you trying? Were you anticipating trying or? I had gone off contraception the November of the year prior before we'd gotten engaged. And we were just going to sort of see what happened. Yeah. when I came when we came back from our holiday engaged a good friend said to me maybe you might want to think about using protection until you get married because you probably don't want to have either just had a baby or be pregnant at your wedding oh yeah it's like oh that's really good advice thanks I'll jot that down so we did that up until October oh my god so close so close yeah and well I I was like, it's not going to happen that quickly. Oh, I thought the same thing. Yeah. I wasn't expecting it to happen that quickly. So we went to the doctor on the Wednesday, got blood tests. It was too early. She dated us at six, just over six weeks. I'm like, okay, right. It's
SPEAKER_01:getting
SPEAKER_00:further along. Yeah. By this stage, I'm feeling really unwell each day as we're getting like, just terrible nausea. Yeah. No. um, not so much vomiting, just, just not feeling very well at all. It's like a hangover, isn't it? Yes. Yeah. Just that never goes away. Yeah. And you didn't get the fun night, like the night before. No. Um, although I had had a fun six weeks. Yeah. Good. Yeah. Yeah. Um, then got the blood test back and the doctor, she didn't really draw any, um, uh, conclusions, but she said, Oh, you know, your HCG levels are really high. Um, Yeah. I said, oh, okay. Oh, the night that I found out I was pregnant, this is an important part of the story. Yeah. Um, so my grandmother had fraternal twins. Yes. Okay. Um, and the night that I found out I was pregnant, I actually Googled symptoms of twin pregnancy. Yeah. And I know many people will be like, oh, you know, you're just making that up kind of thing. But I did, I legitimately Googled what, like, are there any separate symptoms for twin pregnancy? Yeah. Yeah. Um, And some of the factors are being over 30 and being overweight. And I was like, okay, well, two out of three. Also, African-American population, women are more common to have twins. I obviously don't fit that category. Eloise is blonde and blue-eyed. So, I mean, there might be a throwback in there that we're not aware of. But aesthetically, it's not something that jumps in front of my mind. The further is from that nationality. Yeah. We then had the ultrasound. at seven weeks and four days. So she, the doctor said, you know, push it out for as long as you can. So, and, and like all these things that you don't realize with pregnancy that they can't necessarily find the baby until a certain stage. Yeah. Um, so I went and had an ultrasound and seven weeks at seven weeks and four days. So this is sort of, uh, this was quite early, late November. Yeah. Um, and the sonographer said, Oh, I can see shadow, but I can't see what's in the shadow. Can I do an internal exam? Yep. So she left the room and I said to my husband, I said, if she comes back and says there's two of them, are you going to be okay? Like, you're not going to faint or anything, are you? Yeah. And he's like, no, no, no, I'll be fine. And he's like, what do you mean there'll be two? And I'm like, well, she's saying like she can see something. Yeah. So she came back and did the internal and she said, yeah, there's a second baby. Oh. So. How did your husband feel? What did he do? Was he okay? He was all right. Yeah. Like I think I'd always sort of had this, this inkling that there was going to be two. Yeah. I'm not sure at what stage we discovered they were identical. So the boys are identical, which means one egg was fertilized and it was split. And they shared a placenta, which is what caused some issues down the, through the pregnancy. Yeah. Um, but we got through, we told our parents sort of early December. Um, anybody who knows me knows that my family loves a glass of wine and we were visiting my parents for a weekend and we basically had to tell them because if I'd said I wasn't drinking, that would have been a giveaway. Yeah. Um, so we had a little onesie printed that said, you know, baby Longland coming June, July. And at that stage, When I'd ordered the onesie, there was only one baby. So my husband had a post-it note that said times two and handed that to my mum as well. Oh, that's cute though. So there was a lot of excitement. How many weeks were you, sorry, at that point? About eight. Okay then. Yeah. About eight. So we got through Christmas. By Christmas, I was really close to 12. So we'd seen family in the lead up to Christmas. So we'd shared the news with family. And then by early January, we were starting to share the news with friends. Yep. mid February I because our anniversary of becoming a couple is two days before Valentine's Day so I had put up on social media on our anniversary date that we were pregnant with twins and so Shane and I had been together for nine years on that date and we put up twins coming and then the next weekend we only had one baby left so in the space of the week so I was having fortnightly scans at Ipswich Hospital we were public patients for this pregnancy and I had been for a scan on the Monday of that week and the amazing obstetrician who reviewed my scans she took ages to come back and she said oh I've been on the phone trying to get you an appointment at the MARTA to go for a scan at the with identical twin pregnancies one of the biggest complications is that the twins can develop a condition called twin to twin transfusions syndrome and so what it is is where arteries form between the two babies so they're both connected to the placenta they both have their own connection but then they also decide the umbilical cord yes yes so they both have their own umbilical cord and that's connected to the placenta yeah but then they also develop these blood vessels and arteries that go between the two babies yeah and they start sharing does that happen with every identical pregnancy one in five okay one in five um and so that's quite common though yes but identical twin pregnancies aren't as common as what you would think okay yeah um so they and with these arteries they start to share nutrients and blood between the two of them yeah and so at this stage she she hadn't said that that was what she was concerned about she said i just want to send you for a precautionary check yep um so that was on the monday i got a phone call i think from the martyr on the wednesday saying they had an appointment friday lunchtime for me so i went to work i work in the city i went to work shane um picked me up from work and dropped me over at the hospital but he couldn't stay because he had he runs his own taxi so he had jobs on that he had to go and do and I walked into the hospital into the women's hospital mother mothers and I went up to the floor where the ultrasound was and I went to the normal ultrasound place where normal women go for their ultrasounds and they said oh no you're around in the maternal fetal medicine section because of twins that's where my Ferrer was because the maternal fetal medicine section they deal with all sorts of high risk pregnancies and when issues present with the babies so they're an amazing team of specialists and sonographers so I went and checked in there and I just burst into tears in the waiting room I felt so overwhelmed and I kind of sort of thought something wasn't right so they were running late too and I get really it's silly now now that I'm a mother but I used to get really anxious about like being missing work like I had the time off to go and have the scan but in my head I was like well I had sort of set aside like an hour or an hour and a half for the scan and they're late you know I totally understand yeah yeah um even late for work yeah yeah I'd hate it you know your car accident out of your control but oh I'm late yeah should have accounted for this yeah that's right yeah I should have known yeah so um had the scan and the sonographer was absolutely lovely and she said you need to wait, I need to go and get the doctor and the doctor came in Dr Joseph and he said I can't really even remember what he said but it went something along the lines of you have twin to twin transfusion syndrome it's progressed to stage 3 we need to operate today so I met this amazing um like the senior midwife for the maternal fetal medicine barb and she was like yeah you're having surgery today so what do you need to do to get ready and blah blah and i was like oh like my car's at the my center like all of my stuff's at work like um and at this sorry at this stage did you know what the surgery was for oh so yes so we had we'd had a yes i've jumped ahead a conversation yeah they'd taken me into the conference room and Dr. Joseph and Barb had come in and had started to explain to me what was happening so they had said um that the these arteries had formed and what was happening was that Angus um was the donor considered the donor baby and Jackson was the recipient baby so basically all of the nutrients and blood that Angus was um delivering to Jackson um was making both of the babies sick angus hadn't really shown much growth um and it was evident that he was very like the equivalent of undernourished okay sorry um i how many weeks were you at this stage i was 18 weeks and five days okay yep so twin to twin usually presents itself around the 16 to 20 week mark yeah and there are varying stages of um seriousness of it yeah um The lower sort of stage one, stage two, you can be monitored. But sort of three and onwards, if the babies aren't viable for delivery, then this laser surgery, which was what I ended up having, is the option.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah,
SPEAKER_00:okay. So Angus was in effect undernourished. Yeah. And Jackson was overnourished to the point where he was showing issues with his heart from having received too much fluid and blood. So his heart was working over time. His bladder was quite large because he was taking on so much more fluid. Yeah. So neither baby was really well. Yeah. So what Dr. Joseph said was you will need to have... They'll never force you. Just make sure I get the percentages right. You're right. 25% chance... one baby would be saved and a 15% chance both babies would be saved as a result of the surgery.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Um, so I'm sitting in a conference room. I've got Shane on speaker while he's out driving. The doctor's explaining what's happening and they're like, yep, you're going into surgery this afternoon. When was the last time you ate? We've got to work out how far, like how many hours. Um, and then, then I had my panic about like the car. I was worried like the car was going to get towed because it was in at the Maya center and all this sort of stuff. So then, the midwife said you've got 45 minutes to go from the martyr back to work get what you need get your car and come back but she said but I don't want you to stress so if it's 46 minutes that's okay I was like oh okay so I get back to work pack up my stuff I'm walking to get my car and I ring my mum to tell my mum what's happening and at the time my dad wasn't very well he'd been in hospital for four weeks and he also needed to have heart surgery later on in the year and i was terrified that my news would cause him to have a heart attack
SPEAKER_01:oh my gosh
SPEAKER_00:fortunately it did it and he was also seeing his cardiac surgeon at the time i rang my mum so she delivered the news while he was with the doctor in case anything happened yeah um but i went i went via coles and bought a toothbrush and toothpaste and a They're necessities. Yeah. I thought you were going to say a cake. No. I would have wanted to have gone and bought a cake. No, no. I bought toothbrush, toothpaste and a pack of Lundies. Yeah. And maybe a packet of socks because I know I get cold in air conditioning. But because I had nothing. I had the clothes that I'd worn to work. And yeah, I didn't want Shane to be fairing underwear back for me. Yeah. So I got back to the hospital. I think it was about three o'clock. Then we had a couple of drinks. couple of hours of doing all my paperwork shane was able to get to the hospital about five and then it was just waiting um surgery took about two hours and they don't put you fully under um they start with i think what's a twilight anesthetic so you're still awake but they did say you will feel the like needle and stuff going in because we can only numb the outer layer like they can't numb the inner layers um and i did feel them pulling and i i feel like Like at one stage I twitched and after that, I think they actually put me out for a bit of time. Yeah. Um, but the, some like things with pregnant. It's unusual. They don't fully sedate you. Not unusual. I mean, like, I don't know what the process is, but. The doctor said that some people, some women watch it. Really? You could see. And I was like, Oh, I don't, I don't think I could handle that. So yeah. Um, but like things that I never thought of in a pregnancy, um, because the doctor said, um, if you start to miscarry while we're having while we're doing this surgery i can't stop it okay and i was really taken back by that and he's like well um babies aren't medically viable until 24 weeks yeah so if you start to miscarry there isn't anything we can do for the baby yeah um i was being given medication to prevent miscarriage and that was for a chance for both of them yes well yeah because because the needle was going to go into the womb and through the the stuff that's in there yes yeah could you remember um that that could have triggered for me um triggered early labor yes triggered the the miscarriage um but i was being given medication for um to prevent to try and prevent miscarriage yeah i had the surgery um the doctor said the doctor did an ultrasound after the surgery and there were still two heartbeats and he said i'll be back tomorrow on the Saturday to do an ultrasound and we'll see what's happened he said some of the arteries were really quite large and like you know speaking like millimetres but in the context of the womb and babies yeah they were quite large and he'd had to laser them in a number of places to try and prevent them from growing back which is a possibility so went back up to the hospital room Shane was still there he left after a few hours I sent him home he needed to come home and have a sleep I hate being in hospital so I pretty much cried all night he came back the next morning and about midday we went down for a scan and the doctor who'd done our surgery who we have become very fond of Dr. Joseph he did the scan that morning or that lunch time and By that stage, Angus no longer had a heartbeat. So the effects of the twin-to-twin had become too great for him. He had given so much of the nutrients that his heart just couldn't handle not being connected anymore. And Jackson's heart was still beating, but it still was very... concerning with the amount of fluid that was still around his heart. So... Was your husband there when they told you that? Yeah, Shane was with me. Shane was with me. We went back up to the ward and my mum and dad had not long arrived, so the nurses had moved me into a private room and Shane went and got my parents and told them what had happened. So they live in Toowoomba, so dad had been discharged from hospital on the Saturday morning and they'd pretty much gotten in the car and driven straight to Brisbane. Mm-hm. And then they left for a little while and then Shane's parents came to
SPEAKER_01:see
SPEAKER_00:us. And then they left and then sort of Shane and I just, yes, we had another night in the hospital. And even though Shane was with me, I pretty much cried all night again because I hate being in hospital. And it was even worse on the Saturday night. It's not often you go to hospital for good times. No, no. One of the things that the nurse, the midwife had said to me on the Friday was that after the surgery, I have two weeks off work which to me i was like i don't like going into it i was like i don't need two weeks off work like that's fine and i mean i've never had two weeks off work where it hasn't been for a holiday yeah um and so we i was discharged on the sunday and um the doctor said i'll see you during the week for another scan um so yeah at that stage we the doctor said we'd have weekly scans to continue to check on jackson so i had the two weeks off work and Shane was here for most of the two weeks he would occasionally come and go if he had some jobs to do my mum and dad came for an odd day here and there friends dropped off food and visited which was lovely um and then so the end of the two weeks Jackson was Jackson's heart was still beating it was starting to show some improvement the fluid was starting to reduce around his heart um And I went back to work, which became a good distraction. I worked very long days and some days I'd cry on the way into work and other days I'd cry when I got in the car leaving work. I hadn't told very many people at work what had happened. They all knew I was having twins and then I disappeared for two weeks and then came back and just never really felt like myself again. never felt as pregnant as I did the Friday that I had the surgery I was showing some symptoms of twin to twin that I had never actually really been informed what symptoms were and I never felt as pregnant again as what I did that day like I felt huge that day I was retaining a lot of fluid which is a symptom of twin to twin so yeah so I went back to work we got to 24 weeks and around that time the doctor said we could go to fortnightly scans because Jackson was showing such good improvement and as a singleton pregnancy which cut a little bit deep he was doing really well we got to maybe 28 weeks and he said you know you can go to monthly scans now if you want I said I politely declined yeah absolutely any extra scan you can get yep i i would like to continue to keep coming i'd like a daily scan he's like that's fine um so i i actually would end up having um the the day off work of the scan yeah um i just particularly in the early weeks the the emotional toll like the night before just wouldn't sleep and then you know the day waiting and just that big sigh of relief once they put the wand on my belly and they're like yep he's got a heartbeat just so much relief so I would usually have the full day off work because I just couldn't concentrate and I'd come home and I'd just sleep because I was just so emotionally exhausted so we continued with our fortnightly scans they were getting ready for the next scan that I was due to have at 32 weeks and 4 days he was going to have a um like a cardiologist person come and check jackson's heart yep um we he'd been trying to the doctor had been trying to check it in the previous fortnightly scans but jackson had this innate ability to be able to hide both his face and his heart in every scan convenient we basically never had a scan where we could see his face um and his heart was pretty much always hidden so he was um made it quite difficult for the scans I've heard of babies hiding their faces but their heart yeah hiding their hearts not something he was always in a position that they could just never they could never really get the front of it yep um So occasionally in some of our scans, we would ask to see Angus. Obviously, we knew that there wasn't much to see of Angus, but it was just nice and important to us to see him. So we were gearing up for the next scan to be at 32 weeks and four days. The weekend leading into that week, Shane put the car seat in my car. I was in the garage fiddling around with our deluxe... bugaboo donkey pram that Shane wanted yeah and didn't like never considered how heavy it would be for somebody to lift it in and out of the car yeah that's what lots of people said they're quite heavy I mean they're fabulous prams but they're heavy so I'm 32 weeks pregnant I'm practicing lifting my pram the pram in and out of the car yeah and I started to get these paints yeah this is after Saturday afternoon and they weren't constant and can we just pause it honestly? So they'd started sort of mid-afternoon. They were infrequent, but they were there enough to know that they were there. And I don't even really know how to describe them. They were like literally just like that your belly was tightening. So they continued off and on Saturday afternoon. Saturday night, Shane and I were sitting watching the rugby union and he had to go and pick up a client from the rugby union and he was a bit worried about leaving. And I was like, look, so if it gets worse... call an ambulance and you can just meet us at the hospital like there's nothing happening like it's just this funny pain were you now booked into the martyr or were you still breaking through the switch no i was we had asked for our care to be transferred to the martyr yep um after we had had the surgery yeah um so yeah so we were at the martyr yeah um nothing much happened they just continued but i went to bed that night and i i don't even know how frequently it was that i was waking up but i felt like i was frequently waking up waking up with these tightening paints at about 3 3.30 I was like to Shane I think maybe we should go to the hospital he was home by this point he'd only been out for about an hour he went to pick up the passenger I was like I think we should go to the hospital and get these checked they haven't stopped I don't really feel like they're getting worse but I feel like they're getting more frequent so we got in the hospital about 4 o'clock and they hooked me up and they they're like oh no it's these tight that they are called tightenings um like but you can see a contraction on the monitor like i didn't really know what i was looking at it was first time baby oh yeah um but like you could see these blips on the on the monitors yeah and they're like no the baby's fine your heart rate's all fine they went and did an internal and they're like no your cervix is still high and closed um so by this time we got discharged at 8 a.m on the sunday morning so i was 32 weeks on the sunday we came home and had two two-hour antenatal classes to do they were online ones um so the first one was the breastfeeding one which i slept through but you know fortunately shane paid attention so that'll help yeah then we had an hour's break oh they sent me home with panadol they gave me two panadol and said take this when when i was leaving yeah yeah if the pain comes back you can have more panadol good um but if it gets worse come back to the hospital. I was like, okay. So I came home, pain kind of went away for a little while. As a result of the Panadol? So we finished the first class at 11am. We basically both went to bed and slept for an hour before the next one. By then the pain had started to come back. So we're sitting listening to the next antenatal class and I'm not feeling really comfortable. We're both exhausted. That one finished at two and we were like, right, let's just go to bed let's go and sleep so I went to bed and about quarter past twenty past two I just got this almighty pain in my back that just radiated down my back into my pelvis like and I couldn't I was laying down and I just had to stand up I couldn't get rid of it so I'm bending over the like the vanity in the bathroom and Shane's rubbing my back and it just went on and on and on as a consistent pain pain yeah um then it eventually went away then i'm not really sure what happened between the period of it going away but then at three o'clock i was standing back at the vanity and my waters broke oh wow um and i'd had my hospital backpack for a few weeks yeah uh and i said to shane i was like oh i think i think my waters have just broken and he's like oh you know what makes you think that i was like i felt a like right let's go to the hospital yeah so he drove very quickly to the mater um we got there about half past three twenty to four and i went into the assessment center and i said oh you know you go park yeah um i'll be right um walked in and checked in and like the ladies on the desk looked at me and i was like yeah i was here this morning but like okay i'm sitting and i'm like the contract like contractions were happening the whole drive to the hospital they were very frequent um i'm sitting in a chair waiting for somebody to come out and get me in this and midwife comes out and she goes oh are you in labor and i was like i'm pretty sure i have never been here before but i'm pretty sure this is what labor is and she's like oh okay and she took me off to her room and she's like well what makes you think your water's broken i was like well i felt it yeah and she didn't really believe me but i had a pad on and so they took that and she tested that and she's like yeah your waters are broken yeah hooked me out to a machine contract contractions are still happening yeah i was having sort of three every 10 three in the space of 10 minutes um so by now it's about four o'clock and they've started to realize that Jackson's 32 weeks they know my history yeah I was in there this in the morning one of the nurses the nurse who had been with me when I'd had my internal done yeah she came in and she was like I thought I recognized the name I was like yeah I'm back yeah yeah hi they took me to a birthing suite um and like my contractions were still happening they were intensifying um A doctor from the pediatric, like from the special care team came down and spoke to us and said, we're going to be set up in the room right next door to you. As soon as the baby's delivered, we will be taking it. And they had given me a steroid shot in the first room that they'd taken me to in the hopes that my labor would take 12 hours and they could have given me a second one. The steroid shot was to try and help his lung development because he was still early. and by 5.45 both boys were born so it had been a 2 hour and 44 minute labour from the time my waters broke to when I had delivered I didn't really have any time to think about the delivery of Angus and because Jackson had been born so early we had never really had those conversations with the bereavement team at the hospital or the midwives around how I would deliver Angus but Jackson actually brought angus out with him
SPEAKER_01:oh wow
SPEAKER_00:he had his umbilical cord wrapped around his hand and my husband saw the boys be delivered and told me that oh wow um jackson cried yeah when he came out which was amazing to hear yeah um and then pretty much the doctor the the pediatric baby team took jackson and they shane cut the umbilical cord they took jackson next door yeah shane was really torn like where do i go and the doctor was like you can come with us So he went with, um, Jackson. Yeah. Um, the doctor came back about 15 minutes later and was like, and Shane was with him and was like, do you have a name?
SPEAKER_01:And I'm like, oh, um, Jackson.
UNKNOWN:Yeah. Jackson. That was Shane's pick. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Um, and he looks like a Jackson. Yeah. It suits him really well. It does. Yeah. Um, and so then I was just in the delivery room. Um, I, all I had had was gas. Yeah. Wow. Again, one of the naive things, like, you know, going into pregnancy, yes, I want all the drugs, I want an epidural. Never realised that an epidural actually made you lose, like, your feeling and the ability to walk. And I had a real issue with not being able to be in control of my body. So I had said to Shane, like, epidural as an absolute last resort. I don't want one. If I'm handling it, that's fine. A nurse or a doctor stuck their head in me 10-15 minutes before I actually gave birth and said has she had an epidural and the nurses were like oh we haven't asked her I was like no and then I pretty much in the next breath I was like I need to push yeah wow so there wouldn't have really been any time no for an epidural anyway no they take a while yeah yeah so that yeah like it was just this whirlwind then the midwives are inspecting me I had even though he was only four pounds so it was 1800 grams I still had a grade 2 tear and they suspected that's because not only did he have angers with him but he also had his hands over his face when he came
SPEAKER_01:in
SPEAKER_00:what a cherub yeah so he had a little bit of extra face which may have helped and the most weirdest thing so I'm in the room with the nurses Shane's next door and they said you know, they gave me some medication to help, um, deliver the placenta. Yeah. And the nurse was like, oh, we, I don't want to pull it because the, the, the placenta cord like is still really thin because she's really early. And she's like, do you think you could like feel up to walking to the toilet to see if like you can push it out? Yeah. Yeah. I was like, oh, okay. So I got up from the bed, walked to the toilet. I'd had a cold two weeks earlier, so I still had this residual cold. Oh my goodness. She's holding the kidney dish with like the umbilical cord and like the clamps and stuff yeah and she's like oh do you want me to go and i'm like well it's not like you haven't just seen everything i was like you can stay yeah yeah she's like oh it's all right like i'll give you a bit of privacy hold this like literally she chained around i coughed and my placenta fell in the toilet and everything from the instrument dish was in the toilet i was like it's out come back i'm finished it was such a weird thing and then i walked back to the bed and like there's just blood Oh, wow. trying to deliver i think it's the afterbirth now i i may have the sequence out in terms of the placenta in the afterbirth but she was pushing down on my stomach and i must have pulled a muscle on the right side of my stomach um because the pain of her pushing on my stomach was excruciating it was worse than the labor like i was just in agony like i had to tell her to stop like they like here have the gas um i'm gonna have to Cass isn't doing anything like you've got it like she's like I can't stop like you have to pass this the afterbirth but it was just the pain was just excruciating so after a little while she eventually stopped she obviously figured enough had come out and whatnot if you've just birthed two humans one with fingers over their face and that's what's causing you to ask to stop yeah so they stitched me up they let me go into the bathroom and sort of like wash off my lower half which was very nice um and then then i was in the room um with the two the delivery nurses and they had wrapped up angus in a blanket and i had always said to shane i'm not really sure if i want to see angus yeah um but then i thought well will i come i will come to regret that at a later stage in life yeah i can't go back no that's right um Um, and I didn't have anyone else because Shane was with Jackson and Shane, when they, um, took Jackson up to the NICU, Shane went with him. Um, and I don't even remember them telling me they were moving him up to the NICU. I think Shane came back and said like, he's okay. Um, and maybe brought a photo. He'd taken a photo of him. Cause like, I didn't, I didn't like, they held him up and then they took him away. Like I hadn't even touched him yet. Um, and like, you know, there was so much else that I was processing that I don't even remember seeing him when they held him up. Yeah. Um, I just remember Shane saying like, he's coming out and he's got Angus and, um, and he cried. Yeah. Um, and so I had just, I held Angus while the nurses did everything that they needed to do. Yeah. Shane came back down after maybe an hour or so. Um, and we kind of processed what had happened. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and then we started ringing making the phone calls we rang my parents and ironically my dad was only two weeks post open heart surgery that stage so again I was worried about panicking him and worrying him and we rang Shane's parents and we rang my sister passed away when we were quite young so I don't have any other siblings and Shane isn't close with any of his so we It was just sort of the parents to ring and then some friends. Yeah. And then our parents shared the news with all of our relatives and aunts and uncles and cousins. But also Jackson and Angus were born on one of my very special cousins' birthdays. Yeah. And also another cousin from the same side, their wedding anniversary. So it wasn't already a busy enough day. Add some more in. Why not? We've got another birthday to add to the day. Yeah. So... after they kept me in the delivery room or in the birthing suite for hours because I ate my pulse was really erratic and it was quite high everything else like my blood pressure and everything all through delivery had been completely fine completely normal but my pulse just and so they were worried that I had developed an infection oh okay then so they kept me in there until about 10 o'clock and then they finally took me up to the ward and you know they started to talk about like you know going down to the NICU and like I was like oh my god it's 11 o'clock at night like you can't go and wake a baby or see a baby at that time and they're like no no you can go you're right you can go to the NICU at any time yeah to your baby yeah yeah but like I just you've got business mind on still it was so foreign well I went like I finished work at 6 o'clock on the Friday night and by 6pm on the Sunday night I was a mother yeah In the space of 48 hours, I went from being a working, not that I'm not still a professional, but a working professional to a mother. Yeah. And it just blows my mind. Yeah. And work, we're having a morning tea for me on the Monday for my baby. Send off. Yeah. Yeah. I still had two more weeks of work. Wow. No, no. No. So we went down to the NICU and as we were walking down the halls of the ward I was on, the doctor who had seen me on the Sunday morning was on the ward. Yeah. And I said, oh, baby's here. Yeah, yeah. And she said, I heard, she said, like, there is no way that I thought I would be seeing you tonight. Like,
SPEAKER_01:your
SPEAKER_00:cervix was high and closed. Like, there was no signs. They knew they wanted to come. One of the possibilities with having the laser surgery is that it can bring on an early labour. Oh, okay, that's good. the median time frame is 10 weeks um is so post surgery post surgery yeah so we were pretty lucky to get 13 weeks yeah yeah um and get a very healthy baby yes at the end of it so went to NICU and Jackson was in Jackson was tiny like Shane has quite large hands and his hand pretty much covered all of Jackson just one hand yeah one hand wow he was tiny he had a CPAP mask on he was in a crib like one of those humidity cribs that was completely cut like the plastic perspex um he had like a needles in his arms he had monitors on his feet um the nurse was like you know you can touch him but you have to wash your hands really thoroughly and like tomorrow when you come down don't have your wedding rings on and all that sort of stuff or bracelets so like we need to minimize the risk of infection i was like oh my god like yeah So we didn't stay very long with him that night. But we went back up to the room. Shane stayed with me the night. The nurse was like, oh, you know, you wouldn't normally do this. I was like, oh, no, come on, give us a break. So Shane stayed the night. They had given us, like we were still obviously public patients, but we were in a room. It was a two-bedroom, but there was no other patient in there. There was just us. And also two with... um infant loss they actually record it with a purple butterfly so we had a purple i had a purple butterfly on my room door there was a purple butterfly on jackson's crib um and he was um we were very adamant that we wanted him recorded as a twin yeah on all of the paperwork yeah so he was twin two of two because he had always been our twin b so um like his his little tags in hospital said twin two of two and and all the paperwork, like we have a birth certificate and death certificate for Angus and he's reported as a baby so then Jackson spent about 32 hours in the intensive care unit of special care just basically being monitored the CPAP machine wasn't for anything else but just to help his lungs sort of catch up he was able to breathe on his own it was just taking off a bit of the pressure yeah um he was then transferred into the special care nursery um he was still in the the isolate so the the crib with all the sides on it because he had a lot of trouble regulating his temperature yeah it was quite low which isn't uncommon for a preemie baby yeah um and we I was discharged on the Wednesday um I had said that I wanted to go home on the Tuesday day but I pretty much cried all day and the doctor who saw me on the Tuesday morning had said well if you want to go you can go but I don't really don't think you should yeah and that afternoon i saw a nurse and i was like no i think i think i need to stay it was like and it wasn't really for any reason in particular like i just they were so and i think like it well was the actual physically leaving the hospital leaving angus and jackson there yeah um because by this stage angus was in the morgue at the hospital yeah um we had amazing bereavement midwives at the martyr who had been with us since we had lost angus during the pregnant and see so they were regularly checking on us when i was still a patient and then they would come and see us at least once a week when jackson was in special care
SPEAKER_01:yeah
SPEAKER_00:um and we had an amazing social worker in the midwife who had seen me right um on the day of the first the scan at the martyr she continually came to check on us yeah um so i came home on the wednesday and it is i mean i don't know what the feeling is like of leaving with your baby after you've just had them but the feeling of walking out of the hospital carrying a bunch of flowers with a balloon that says it's a boy and no baby is the weirdest saddest feeling in the whole world my mum had come down on the Wednesday to meet her first grandson first grandchild and so she and Shane were like carrying my bags and I had a pillow and a bunch of flowers and we got in the car to drive home and it was just the weirdest feeling and Shane and I got home and my mum my mum left not long after we got home um and we kind of just sat there and we were like what do we do now yeah um and because the nurses in the special care were just just phenomenal and they were like you know it's open 24 hours a day you can come and go as much as you want you can ring us all the time so we'd gotten home we'd had a sleep probably done some walk washing we'd eaten dinner and then about 8 30 we were like let's go back to the hospital so we went back and he had one of our favorite nurses looking after him that night and she always knew just how to wrap him up but I'd had I'd been able to express some colostrum and they'd only started to feed him on the Wednesday they'd started with some formula he had maybe two feeds of formula and the rest he'd been able to have of breast milk that I was starting to express but I remember am asking the nurse that was looking after him I was like oh how do I know like when my milk was coming because I'm like in a lot of pain because like nobody had spoken to me about that like I assume if you have a full-term baby or with no complications when you like that they come in and tell you about like because he couldn't latch but again another thing another thing with with babies is they don't develop their latch skills until between 34 and 36 weeks oh wow yeah so did
SPEAKER_01:that surprise
SPEAKER_00:you so he had an NG tube in so he was being fed via syringe so the tube was up in his nose and down into his stomach so yeah they don't again like you know unless you need to know these things you never really know them so I said to the nurse I was like how do I know like if my milk was coming like my boobs are killing me and we had bought a pump because we had been to the pregnancy expo the weekend before I'd had the surgery and at that stage we were still having to tween or having to yeah um so i'd and it's like you know it's just so fortunate that we had a pump like we came home from the hospital and i washed everything that afternoon yeah um and then we came home after having been back to visit jackson um and i pumped i got milk and i was like oh my god so then you know i had to start setting a time like an alarm to get up and pump so i was pumping during the night in the morning i was pumping at the hospital so we went to and from the hospital every day for 32 days
SPEAKER_01:yeah
SPEAKER_00:so he was in there for yeah um he came home at 36 weeks and four days so um we and the day wasn't without its challenges those four and a bit weeks there was he did there was a worry that he'd had had developed an infection at one stage because his temperature had gotten quite low um then after that once he could stabilize his temperature we started like a um We were doing a lot of skin-to-skin cuddling and giving him a lot of opportunities to suckle and to try and breastfeed. Then we were offered two nights of rooming in, so the equivalent of if you had had your baby at full term and your baby was in your room with you. I had two nights of staying in the hospital where he was in the room with me and the nurses from the special care ward would come up and check on us. And the first afternoon that that happened, I got really excited because my baby was fine. with me like properly and i bathed him um and got him dressed and his temperature plummeted um and he just he was really um drowsy and not unresponsive but not real like not waking for feeds and the nurse kept coming up and taking his temperature and she was like no we've got to take him back down um so he went back into an isolate that night to get his temperature back up and within half an hour his temp was back up but they were like no he needs to stay down he for the night
SPEAKER_01:yeah
SPEAKER_00:so then we tried again the next day and i was very sternly told not to bath him i was like yep no got that yeah got that um it was probably one of the hardest nights of my life because i didn't realize until a couple of weeks later that um he wasn't actually really breastfeeding very well and there'd been a bit of confusion with the hospital because they had tried to transfer us back to ipswich and um we had said no we didn't want to go but because Angus was still at the hospital and we had it set in our mind that we would farewell Angus on the day that Jackson would come home with us and farewell in terms of having a funeral home come and pick him up so that both boys left the hospital on the same day and I had said that to somebody in the special care nursery and then there'd been all this sort of confusion around when we wanted to do this so like in the last week that jackson was in hospital he actually didn't put on any weight but they still sent us home and so i don't actually think he had been breastfeeding very well and so the first night that he was actually with us he was super unsettled and he just cried the whole night because i think he was hungry yeah and then when we got him home for like the next two weeks he just cried at night all the time because he was hungry but during the day i'd sit on on the couch and he'd breastfeed for two hours and he'd sleep for four hours and it was amazing and then at night I'd cut him off after an hour because like I was exhausted and he'd be awake within 60 to 90 minutes yeah yeah so he cut yeah he came home at 36 weeks and four days he was weighing 2.4 kilos by then and it's so small still it was tiny um and then we then we became family of three at home yeah and then had to fix figure it out from there yeah but he's now we're now in his birthday month which is hard to believe yeah um he's chunky he is thriving you would never ever imagine that he was a little preemie baby no you wouldn't hey no he um we we had some great support with the child health nurses from queensland health so they we saw i called myself the frequent flyer i was down at orion every monday getting in weighed and measured and once we discovered he wasn't putting on weight i had quite a lot of um express milk that was frozen that had been at the hospital oh yeah because once once i started producing milk i would could take it in and they would feed it became his food yep um so we came home with a one of those like coals bag freezer bags full of express milk oh wow plus what else i'd already had at home because they got to a point there they were like stop bringing it in yeah we've got enough you've got enough yeah your baby actually like you know you're producing 250 mils a pump but your baby only takes maybe 50 mils a day yeah wow um so um yeah we bottle we bottle fed him express milk and i i tried to keep up with pumping and but it just got a bit too much in the end so you did well though that's sensational yeah we had we had 11 weeks of him on express milk that's that's such an
SPEAKER_01:achievement yeah whether it's one day 11 weeks a year like you just absolutely smashed it that's
SPEAKER_00:amazing yes so but no he hasn't gone without he loves food he does hey so yes that that was our story it certainly wasn't the uh first pregnancy um i ever thought that we would have no um we just shane was amazing through it all and i remember saying to him at one stage after we lost angus i was like you know this this is your grief as well like i've so many times and I see like I don't think of Angus as the fact that I had a miscarriage but so many times I see a lot of women who or situations where the father is forgotten and you know everybody everybody deals with grief and loss in their own way and I certainly am not to judge but I just I said to him a couple of times like this is your loss as well and this is your grief um you can grieve Any way that you need to. But, you know, we're in this together. And, yeah, as a husband and as a father, his support was just unwavering. Even when I would be very upset and cranky when we'd leave the hospital over night time because I was just so emotional and exhausted and we'd get home and I'd... get shorted in for like you know the fact that the washing was inside which I'd put it inside because it was winter and it wasn't drying any other way yeah
SPEAKER_01:yeah
SPEAKER_00:but I just hated the fact that the house just always felt messy because we were never here because we were always at the hospital and
SPEAKER_01:yeah
SPEAKER_00:I just was waiting for that next stage of our journey to start yeah yeah um and of course we just had so much support and love from family and friends and and I've had so much support from the mums that I have met since I've become a mum yeah Which has been amazing because they don't have to take on my story or my grief. They barely knew me, but they've been very open and warm and accepting in listening to me talk about what happened and what, which has been really special. That's lovely. Yeah. Yeah. The only thing I hope is that for a future pregnancy is that quick of a delivery. Yes. Yes. You champion. Your body was obviously ready. Ready to go. Yes. Yes.
SPEAKER_01:Well, thank you so much for coming on. That was just so beautiful. I've just paused it for a second and then I had a chat with Eloise. I got shivers at certain points. I wanted to cry at certain points as well. I'm sure that hearing Jackson's little babbling in the background is really going to... Add to the sincerity of this whole podcast. So thank you so much for sharing your beautiful, beautiful story. Thank you so much. It's lovely. And yeah, Jackson is absolutely gorgeous. And if anyone who's seen Eloise, they'll know that he's just the happiest, most beautiful little boy. So thank you. And thank you, Jackson, for joining us today. You
SPEAKER_00:were very well behaved. You were
SPEAKER_01:a very good little man.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.