Speaker 0
Into the wild, I'm
Speaker 1
going
Speaker 0
into the wild, I am. It's been a wild freedom child, since I left my roots back home. Into the wild I'm good. Into the wild I am. It's been a while, freedom child, since I left my roots back home.
Speaker 2
Welcome to the Free Birth Society podcast. This is a radical space for women who are ready to celebrate their autonomous choices in birth, motherhood, and beyond. Together, we'll learn about wild birth through personal narrative, we'll explore the politics of birth, and we'll analyze everything that relates to our lives as women from a feminist perspective. Here's your host, Emilee Saldaya.
Speaker 0
It's been a wild freedom since I've left my rules back home.
Speaker 3
On the show today, I have Simone from Australia sharing her heart wrenching story of losing her two year old daughter twelve days before free birthing her second daughter. Simone tells us of the gutting journey of going through her wild pregnancy while navigating the allopathic system for Evie, trying to maintain autonomy and dignity in her family amongst providers who were left astounded by her daughter's quickly diminishing condition. She vulnerably shares of her daughter's death, the redemptive birth of Freya, and everything in between. This is one of those impossible stories, and yet Simone is not alone. Bereaved mothers are all around us, and this is a deeply touching story that softens our hearts and reminds us of the enormous heartache, complexities, and courage of motherhood. May this story medicine today honor the sweet life of little Evie, and may all mothers who have lost their children feel our warm hug and solidarity within this episode.
Speaker 4
Right. Hi, Simone. Welcome.
Speaker 5
Thank you.
Speaker 4
You're welcome. I wanna first thank you for being willing to wake up so early because you are in Australia, and it is very early there. And I've got my tea. You've got your coffee. It's freezing over here. I'm very, very cold, so I'm gonna try to hide my shivering. So you've got a big story, and it is quite heartbreaking.
Speaker 5
And Mhmm.
Speaker 4
Is is epically victorious, and you just have really a big story to tell. So take your time and start from wherever you want, and I'm here to listen.
Speaker 5
Okay. Great. I, I I just I really wanna start with my grandmother and honor honoring my grandmother. She had really severe HG when she, was pregnant with all four of her children. And during one of those pregnancies, she was prescribed thalidomide, And it's sort of part of our family mythology that she brought it home, and she looked at it, and she threw it in the bin. And so it's it's sort of been part of, you know, my life that you can't always trust the medical industry. And the statement of the year. Yeah. Gosh. And, you know, I went to hospital a lot as a child for asthma, and so I feel like I peeked behind the curtain as well, and I was not it didn't fill me with trust either. So there's that as well. My mother's birth having me was so painful. It was, she went into labor naturally, but she basically had every intervention that you can imagine over a twenty four hour labor entering ending in a emergency c section, and, it was so painful for her. And at the age of nineteen, I said to her, can you just never tell me the story again? Because I just I can't hear it ever again because it was she she told it with such anger, and it was so awful. So that's kind of the background of my relationship with, you know, the medical industry and with birth. And it took me a long time to find someone who I wanted to have children with. I guess you could say I had an extended adolescence. Love that. Yeah. So I was thirty six when I met Harry and, was pregnant within six months.
Speaker 4
Did you just know it was him right away, though?
Speaker 5
Oh, yeah. We had a very strong energetic connection, like this really undeniable, deep knowing when we met each other. So the birth the the pregnancy was just, like, full of joy. You know? Even though he was, you know, young and and wasn't really planning on starting a family, he just gave me a hug when I told him I was pregnant. You know? I was just
Speaker 4
How much younger is he?
Speaker 5
Oh, he's he's, like, four years younger than me. Okay. Yeah. But, like, when you're in your thirties, it's a big deal. You know? Like, we were happy and we were joyful, and everyone was happy for me. You know? My family had been waiting forever for me to start a family, so just wonderful. And, my mother, my sister, and my closest maternal cousin had all had emergency cesareans, and I knew I didn't want one. And my first initial thought in complete ignorance of anything to do with birth was, okay. Well, I'll go to a birth center where there's no men, and maybe that will help me not have a cesarean. Right? That was my It's a start. Yep. Yep. That was my first initial little thought. So I went into work, and I told a colleague my plan. And she said, oh, Simone, look. Have you thought about home birth? And I went, no. And she said, look, just I've attended so many home births of my friends. It's so beautiful. It's a real beautiful bonding experience between the mother and the family, and it just it it begins life as a family in a really beautiful, calm way. And she said, just do your research. You know, just do your research. I'm like, okay. Cool. That day, within an hour of just getting on Google, I was like, I'm having a home birth. This is what I'm doing. You know? It did not take long at all.
Speaker 4
I really love that because a lot of women who do home birth or free birth, whatever, have a lot of hang ups around feeling nervous to ever suggest it or bring it up because they don't wanna be in people's businesses, and they don't wanna tell people what to do. And it's like, yeah. But what about being lovingly inspiring? What about planting seeds? You know? Like, speak. Yeah. I love that. Because that woman changed your life.
Speaker 5
She did. She absolutely did. If I had not had that conversation, I would not be sitting here, basically. So speak up, women. Speak up. And I went to see a GP. In Australia, you have to have a referral. And he was without I didn't know it at the time, but he was a bit alternative. And he said I said, oh, so so what's the next step? You know? I was almost excited about the whole mental the medical sort of, you know, conveyor belt because I'm like, what what what am I gonna get next? You know? Said, oh, nothing till twenty weeks. Don't don't worry about it. Like, nothing. And so I didn't do anything for twenty weeks, and I took my time finding a midwife. I had no idea that you had to basically, like, lock in a private midwife, like, really quickly. Otherwise, you know, you probably wouldn't get one. So I just I just chilled for the first twenty weeks, like, sixteen, you know, nineteen weeks of that pregnancy. I was just like, oh, whatever. Started looking for a midwife. Most of them were booked out by the time that I, was looking, and there were three that could fit me in. I went and saw the first one, and she was an older woman, and she was lovely, and she palpated me, and, you know, it was all very nice. And then she said that they would bring resource equipment to my house, and they said, it'll just sit in the corner. We won't have to use it. It'll just be there. And my sort of initial instinct was like, well, I don't want it to be there. You know, that's kind of creating a story that I don't wanna create.
Speaker 4
So you were already kind of tuned into
Speaker 5
because
Speaker 4
I feel like a lot of women do want it to be there because, oh my gosh, just in case. Right?
Speaker 5
Mhmm.
Speaker 4
But you were already not feeling that?
Speaker 5
No. It it didn't feel right to me. I thought it it it's like creating something that doesn't need to be created. You know? And the second the second midwife I saw, was interesting. She talked about herself for the first twenty minutes about Oh my god. She's literally like, oh, you even fit her own off well. And she just started hanging on about a bike accident she'd had and all this random stuff. Yeah. And I'm sitting there like, this is my first pregnancy. Don't you care? Like, you know, it was odd. And then she proceeded to tell me that she transfers fifty percent first time mothers to hospital.
Speaker 4
Hey. At least she was honest. Most of them are.
Speaker 5
And I said, why? Like, what's the reason? And she said, oh, you know, I get tired. I was like, okay. And then I met with the third midwife. Now I was sort of avoiding this midwife because she's sort of known as the radical midwife, and actually, the first midwife had warned me against her. And I met with her, and I was immediately I fell in love. I just thought she's amazing. She asked me all about myself. She asked me what my relationship was like with my mother. She asked me, you know, just everything about me, and she was her model of care was woman centered. So she had this infographic of the woman at the center and then, you know, all the services around. And she worked with an acupuncturist who, you know, she used to help women during pregnancy and labor and, you know, all this stuff. And I just wanna caveat this by saying that since my birth a few a couple of years later, she came to realize that she was a midwife, and went through her own awakening to do with that. She was deregistered.
Speaker 4
You said she you she came to realize she was a midwife?
Speaker 5
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So she thought that she could play the game and be a good girl. Yeah. And if she did everything right and then just served women, that everything would be okay. And she didn't realize how much she was compromising along the way, And so she's she's realized that now.
Speaker 4
Hey. Maybe I can have her on the podcast.
Speaker 5
Yeah. I think that would be great. So it was interesting being in her care. At certain points, I was trying to give her my power and she was giving it back. And then but to do with other things, I realize now my power's taken away. Like, she just used the doppler. So she she was the one who, when I first rang her on the phone, said I said, oh, I'm about to go for my ultrasound. And she said, oh, you know, a lot of my clients don't get ultrasounds. And I was like, oh, really? She said, yeah. Yeah. I'll send you an article. And she sent me the I think it's a Sarah Buckley. Is it Sarah Buckley article about ultrasound? Yeah. I read that, and I was like, right. I'm not having an ultrasound. But then she'd use the doctor on me, and I didn't know that that was ultrasound. So that's sort of one of the things that that yeah. So I went along in her care. I was so happy. And, at one of our prenatal appointments, I arrived a little bit early, and I thought, let's just go to a cafe and chill for, you know, fifteen minutes or whatever. And all throughout my pregnancy, I allowed myself one coffee in the morning. And this morning, I walked in, you know, not not intending to get a second coffee, but I was like, oh, iced coffee. And I I got an iced coffee. I went to my appointment. She did some monitoring with the doppler, and the heartbeat was irregular. It was like the cadence was off. And so she said, oh, I'm just gonna put the the monitor the strap monitor on your belly and just see what's what's happening here. So she put the the strap monitor on, and the heartbeat was irregular. And she said, oh, I'm I think I'm gonna have to send you to the hospital just so that they can monitor what's happening here. And I was like, oh my gosh. I just Harry and I just held hands. We were just like, what is going on here?
Speaker 4
And how far along are you at the pregnancy?
Speaker 5
I think I was about, I reckon I was, like, thirty something weeks. Yeah. Early thirty something weeks. And, so I did some googling. She's like, oh, I don't know what it is. You might just have to be under the, you know, supervision of a cardiologist. I did some googling, and one of the causes of, you know, an irregular fetal heartbeat is too much caffeine. I was like, oh, that's what it is. That's what it is. So, she said, take your time going to the hospital. So I went home. I chugged about a liter of water, had some toast, went to the hospital. They monitored me for an hour on their machine, and everything was fine. Everything was normal. The obstetrician sat down with me, and she said, yeah. Look. Everything's fine. I'm happy for you to continue to have a home birth with your home birth midwife. She said, but if you came into the hospital, it would be in the back of my mind what happened today. You know? And I was like, well, I'm not going to the hospital then. Other than that, it was a completely normal pregnancy and a really enjoyable one. I just loved loved loved being pregnant. And, yeah, it was just it was wonderful. So I was manifesting a four hour labor at thirty eight weeks. Right? That's what I was gonna do.
Speaker 4
That's hilarious.
Speaker 5
Yeah.
Speaker 4
So you were kinda over it and wanted it to be fast?
Speaker 5
I don't know why I I I landed on that. I think I thought that that would, that would allow me to, you know, get through it. It would just happen, and I wouldn't think about it. Yeah. Totally.
Speaker 4
Because that's that's what everyone says about birth. I didn't even I didn't even notice.
Speaker 5
Exactly. Exactly. I just want it to happen. You know? Oh, little did I know. So thirty eight weeks went by, and then forty weeks went by. And then, it was like I was forty one plus one, I think. And there was a pink full moon. And I finally went into labor. I finally had some contractions, and I was so happy. And they really ramped up, and, they got to about four minutes apart, and we called the midwife. And she said, oh, you know, call me back when you can't talk and all this sort of stuff. And it ramped up, and then at about two or three in the morning, it slowed down and dropped off. And the contractions sort of about once it one one every twenty minutes or something like that. And I didn't know it at the time, but this would happen for eight days. So I would have plenty of time to think about it and plenty of time. Yeah. It was a head fuck, basically, is what it was. So every single night for eight nights, the contractions would ramp up, and I would think this is it. Except for the second and the fifth night, I was just angry. I was just so so angry Yeah. That I didn't even care if I was gonna give birth. I was just like, this is bullshit.
Speaker 4
You mean she never she didn't come to be with you?
Speaker 5
She came once during once or twice during the day, and once I went to her while I was yeah. And it was a long it was a long drive. It was on the other side of the city, and I remember being in the car clutching the handle just like, oh, this is so uncomfortable because they kept the contractions kept going during the day. They, you know, it might be every twenty, forty minutes or something like that, but that was still happening. I didn't really get, you know, a big break throughout those eight days. It was a very odd labor, and I just couldn't find I couldn't find anyone who'd been through it. All my googling were, like, normal. You know, even if a woman's labor was a long time, it seemed like it never went more than a couple of days. And I just had no idea what was going on, and it was almost like no one believed that I was actually in labor. You know? But I was like, well, I am actually in labor every single night. So it was it was a massive head fuck, and I just felt so alone. I'm just like, what is going on? You know? And on the I think it was about the fourth day, I got up and I'm like, fuck this. And I just, like, stripped my bed and I threw everything into the washing machine. And then I was looking for my phone and I was like, oh my gosh. And I just heard a banging in the washing machine. Because you know what? I told everybody that I'd got into labor the first night. So I was just getting text after text after text. Where's the baby? Where's the baby? And so I think that was my subconscious way of just kind of going within and going, I I can't deal with those questions at all.
Speaker 4
Yeah. To all you first time moms listening, don't do that.
Speaker 5
No. Don't don't tell everybody. Exactly. Because you might
Speaker 4
have an eight day labor, and then you'll get hounded.
Speaker 5
Exactly. And it was so painful to just be like, I don't know where the baby is. Leave me alone. So the midwife, she's I went to see the obstetrician on the Friday. I've been in labor since the Tuesday. She sent me to see him because she was concerned that my waters were leaking. So I went to see the obstetrician. He palpated, and he was like, no. You've got heaps of fluid. He picked up the, ultrasound little device to go give me an ultrasound, and I was like, no. Thank you. No. Thank you. And he was like, oh, okay. He's like, yep. You're fine, and just sent me home. So I, you know, went through my thing over the weekend, and it got to Tuesday night. The midwife came over in the evening, and she's like, oh, look. You've gotta relax. No. You've just gotta relax. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. She's like, have a glass of wine. Watch a movie. I was like, wine in a movie? I said, I need tequila and a joint. Like, this is, you know, reached, you know, critical. And she's like, have a joint. And I was like, oh, okay. Cool. So she left, and Harry went next door to the backpackers who live next door and banged on their door.
Speaker 4
My wife and labor needs weed. Exactly.
Speaker 5
He said, hey. My girlfriend's in labor. The my wife said that a joint might help. Have you got any weed? And they're like, sure. And they're just like, oh my gosh. They're like, bring us the baby to meet Yeah. Right. Who has it. You know? Like so I puffed up, like, half a joint, and I completely shifted. I remember being on the couch and just kicking my legs. I think I was holding so much tension in my legs and my pelvis. I was just kicking my legs and laughing and going, what have I been afraid of? What have I been afraid of? So it was a complete
Speaker 1
Mhmm.
Speaker 5
Relief. You know? The midwife then called me and said, oh, I've spoken to the obstetrician, and he assumed that you'd given labor over the weekend. And he said, if you don't give birth he said given birth over the weekend. He said, if you don't give birth tonight, you have to go to the hospital. And I was like, okay. And she said, look. It's gonna be okay. I'll come with you. Just don't worry about it. Just try to get some rest tonight, and I'll see you.
Speaker 4
Worry about it.
Speaker 5
I'm
Speaker 4
gonna threaten you with a horrible threat that's not even actually true.
Speaker 5
You
Speaker 4
don't have to do anything. What she should have said is, by my rules and regulations, I am not able to come to your house because, you know, my supervisor essentially told me that it's not okay. That's different than you have
Speaker 5
to go to the hospital. Mhmm.
Speaker 4
But just try to relax. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my god. Watch a movie.
Speaker 5
Yeah. Gosh. Yeah. So she sent the acupuncturist to my house, and the acupuncturist came over. And she's like, have you been laboring in the lounge room? Have you been spending most of your time in the lounge room? Because my call was set up in the lounge room and everything like that. And I'm like, yeah. And she's like, oh, it's a bit public. You know? She said, how about we go into your bedroom? And I'll put the pins in, and and we'll see how we go. And I'm like, okay. So I laid down in the dark in my bedroom. She put some pins in. She set up a little nest next to my bed and fell asleep. And so I'm laying there like I went into sort of a meditative state, sort of half sleep, half awake, and I was, like, imagining myself, you know, opening. The acupuncturist gets up. She pulls the pins out, and she said, look. I've gotta go home to get some rest because I'm probably gonna have to come to the hospital with you tomorrow. Just try to relax. This is about four in the morning. And she said, try to relax, and, I'll see you tomorrow at the hospital. She said, I can't put any pins in you, but I could do some acupressure. And I'm like, oh, okay. Okay. So she left. And then probably about five minutes after she walked out the door, I started pushing. Wow. Yeah. I went from a very calm, meditative state on the bed that she did not recognize as labor to pushing. Yeah.
Speaker 4
You know? I I have seen that and heard of that not infrequently with those long night labor, calm down the day. A lot of birth stories that have that pattern, then it's just on at the very end and fairly quick. Yeah. Wow. Okay. So you just start pushing. Thank god.
Speaker 5
Yeah. Yeah. Thank god. Exactly. And, I I'd really wanted a water birth, but, obviously, you know, that didn't happen because everyone was just like, oh my gosh. It's happening. It's happening. So I started pushing, and I told Harry, call the midwife. Call the midwife. And he called her, and, I was on the all fours on the bed pushing, and he put her on speaker. And I said, I'm having this baby tonight. I don't care. This is happening. You know? Blah blah blah blah. I was, like, so determined. And she's like, okay. Okay. Call me when, you know, blah blah blah blah blah, like, still not believing that I was in labor. Hung up the phone. I kept doing my thing. And then she said that she went back to bed What? And then thought yeah. She went back to bed. And then she had the thought that maybe I had I was making pushy sounds. Yeah. And she was like, actually, I better go. And she walked in with about, I think, an hour or two. It was about an hour before I actually gave birth. So, I pushed for four hours, and I gave birth on the bed. And, oh, the pushing felt amazing, by the way. Oh my gosh. After eight days, it was, like, the best feeling in the whole world. I just thought, that birth, you know, I it wasn't ever it wasn't ever what I would describe as overwhelmingly painful. It was intense, and it was energetic and even slightly pleasurable at some points. Like, it wasn't it wasn't, you know, like my second birth. Cool.
Speaker 4
Yeah. You had eight days to go through the process.
Speaker 5
Mhmm. How
Speaker 4
many hours was your second birth?
Speaker 5
Seven.
Speaker 4
Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense to me. I mean, I had a similar mine was not eight days. Mine was three, but I had a similar, like, yeah, it wasn't painful. And then my second one was like, ah.
Speaker 5
Yeah. It was mentally painful, but Yeah. Yeah. Fair enough. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it was just so wonderful. Like, Eve, her birth, it was just so wonderful. There's a there's a photo of me just, like, just this big smile on my face when she came out. And I just I was just saying, isn't she pretty? Like, I was just so ecstatic. Like, it was really, really wonderful. And, yeah, I was so happy. It was interesting, though. Like, I I birthed the placenta, and I Harry held her skin to skin, and I went to have a shower. And while I was in the shower, they weighed her and did all the all the measurements and everything. And I was like, I wanted I wanted to be there for that. Like, I you know, why would you do that when I'm in the shower? Like, that was a bit weird. And then I got back into bed with her and, you know, the midwife cleaned up and everything like that. And then she wouldn't breastfeed. I couldn't get her to latch, and the midwife kind of tried to force her onto my boob, and she wouldn't she wouldn't take it. She just cried until we stopped trying to force her. Mhmm. And then the midwife left. And so I was left with this baby who wasn't breastfeeding. And, she latched a couple of times that night, but it wasn't I couldn't feel, like, a proper suckling. It was just this really weak kind of and I couldn't I couldn't feel her really any, you know, anything happening. And that began our very difficult, breastfeeding journey, which was so painful and quite traumatic, actually. So the sort of pattern of what would happen is, you know, I would freak out that she wasn't breastfeeding enough, that I wasn't feeling a latch. The midwife would come over. She would assist a latch, and she would say, okay. That's good. That's good. And, you know, baby would just kinda just be half suckling, and I'd just be like, this doesn't this doesn't feel right. Throughout the day, baby might be suckling. Evie was suckling for, like, two hours straight and stuff, but there was no and then just sort of passing out. Like, there was no, like it it didn't feel right to me. And I knew on a deep, deep level that something was wrong, and it didn't feel like anybody was acknowledging it around me. You know, everybody was like, she's fine. She's fine. And, you know, whenever the midwife would come over, she would latch on, and she would observe and say, it's fine. It's fine. Anyway, she'd been weighing her. And after I think it was it was a week, she lost too much weight. She she she dropped back down to her, birth weight, and then she dropped more. And, basically, the midwife said, okay. You've got two options. We either go to the hospital and she gets a breathing tube or you get donor milk and you give her a bottle immediately tonight. With those two options in my mind, obviously, I went with the donor milk. So she contacted one of her other clients who had some frozen milk. Harry went and picked it up. We bought a bottle. She said, get yourself a breast pump. I went to, like, a twin Harry went to the hospital where they rented out breast pumps, like, twenty four hours a day, got me a breast pump, and we began the joys of triple feeding. So, we're on a twenty four hour clock, and it was every three hours. And the whole process took, you know, an hour and a half. So, yeah. So that was my first two weeks, completely sleep deprived, completely full of adrenaline, and, scared out of my mind and wondering wondering where I'd gone wrong and, the midwife telling me she had a tongue tie and me not wanting to acknowledge that. I didn't want to, admit that that was the case. I felt like I had spent so much of my time and energy trying to protect her, my little baby, from being traumatized that I did not wanna accept that I would have to cut her mouth in order for her to breastfeed. But she just wasn't interested in the breast. Like, I I called it rage against the boob. Every time during the triple feeding fiasco, I tried to get her to to accept the boob before I pumped and before I gave her the bottle and pumped, she would scream. She'd just scream at my nipple. Like, she just did not want anything to do with my breast.
Speaker 4
Ugh. So stressful.
Speaker 5
It was so it was it was so it was awful. And, meanwhile, the the narrative within, you know, all of the circles that I was conscious of was just keep trying, drink lots of water, you'll get there. You know, you get it established by six weeks, and then everything's fine, you know, all that stuff. And it just I was just like, this is not relevant for me and and what's going on for me. You know? I felt so alone. And, then the midwife added me to a tongue tie Facebook group, and I immediately saw a picture of baby going like this. You know, they stuck the and I was like, oh, that's what Eve does. And that image changed my mind. And I was like, okay. Alright. I need to do something about this. Like, that's obviously, you know, an issue, and I did a bit of research and, you know, it can affect speech. And I I had no illusions that getting the tongue tie released would, help her breastfeed because there was no breastfeeding relationship established. None whatsoever. So for me, it was about the long term, effects on speech and things like that. So we had her tongue tie released at, six weeks with a water laser. Mhmm. And it was awful, to hand my baby over to someone to be taken into a room to have that done. And immediately afterwards, they're like, put her on the breast. Put her on the breast. You know, that'll help her calm down like a normal baby, but there had been no breastfeeding relationship established, and it was the bottle that would calm her down. And so I had this person in the clinic trying to force me to put my baby on my breast, and I'm saying no. And I basically had to growl at the woman to get away from me so that I could give my baby a bottle. And it was, yeah, it was awful. You know, it just made me feel like I was complete. And then, you know, you've got the the weeks of, like, you know, going like that with the wound to make sure it doesn't close over because your number one fear is having to do it again. You know, you'd rather do those exercises than having to do it again. So and I was left quite traumatized by that whole thing. I couldn't look at breastfeeding material online. I was part of all these, you know, natural parenting and natural birth groups, and breastfeeding stuff would just trigger me. I was just like, you know, I can't I can't deal with that.
Speaker 4
You're like an open wound.
Speaker 5
Yeah. So I gave her donor milk through a bottle for fourteen months, and that was, you know, a feat in itself. I pumped for five months. And in the I I look back at it now. I'm like, why did I pump? I was getting, like, probably I was getting between, I don't know, ten and thirty percent of her milk pumping. And it was so awful to be honest.
Speaker 4
But totally. And, I mean, I get it. I get I get that in wanting her to have some of you and, like, you were doing everything you could think of and, you know, it's complicated. Mhmm.
Speaker 5
Yeah.
Speaker 4
It's so emotional. I mean, it's it's not maybe the most logical, you know, for your, like, mental health and all that, but it it also makes sense.
Speaker 5
Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Exactly. And, so yeah. But after that was sort of resolved and I stopped trying to latch her Mhmm. And we were in our little routine with the bottles, It was just wonderful. You know? Yeah. I loved I loved being a mother to Evie, and, you know, she just became my best friend. Oh, wow. Especially when she was about six months. You know? We just we just had, like, a great little time together, and she was such an easy baby. I used to call her my happy baby. She was just so happy, so calm, so grounded, and she was just always smiling. Like, I've literally got thousands of photos of her just like she was just always smiling. Yeah. She was amazing. And when she was eighteen months, we decided to move to the country, and, we went to the other side of the country where my partner's from, three hours south of Perth in Margaret River, which is like a country town to start a new lifestyle. And, within three months of being there, I got pregnant again with my second daughter.
Speaker 4
How old is Evie at this point?
Speaker 5
Evie was, when I got pregnant, she was just over eighteen months, so about twenty months. Mhmm. Yeah. About twenty months. So, you know, that was great. I was like, oh, cool. I'm gonna have a nice little gap. Blah blah blah. And within two weeks of getting pregnant, I was like, I'm free birthing. This is what I'm doing.
Speaker 4
Had you already heard about it?
Speaker 5
So when I after I'd given birth to Evie, before I got pregnant with Freya, my friend added me to your Facebook page, to the Free Birth Society Facebook page. And I remember getting onto the page, and the first photo I saw was a blonde woman from Sydney sitting on the floor of her bathroom just having free birth. And I was like, what? I'm like, Like, I I just couldn't comprehend. What? Why doesn't she have a midwife? These women are crazy. What's going on? Like, I just couldn't comprehend it. And then I started ring I started as soon as I was, thinking about having another baby, I listened to the podcast, and I was like, oh, yeah.
Speaker 4
I feel like I feel like every woman on this podcast is like, at first, I thought you guys were crazy. Yeah. I couldn't stop thinking about it. And then I got obsessed and then I prebirt. Stop hiccup. It's
Speaker 5
it's a remembering of an ancient truth. Yeah. And the remembering of an ancient truth and the sloughing away of lies always feels so right and good and inspirational, and and that's what happens. You know? And, so, yeah, within two weeks, I was like, I'm pre birthing this baby. And I was in a small town. You know? There was it it's not like there was a lot of choice of midwives. You know? Right. Yeah. So when I was I was about to go see a holistic GP who is also an obstetrician. I was gonna see her just to do, like, the paperwork and all that sort of stuff. And I waited until I was, you know, entering my third trimester to have an appointment with her. And on the day I think it was the day before I was supposed to have an appointment with her, I was just about to enter my third trimester. Evie had had a bit of a cough and was a bit sick the night before. And for the first time in her life, she was, like, around two. I checked on her. I sort of opened her door and had a little check on her before I went to bed to make sure she was okay, and I'd never done that before. And then in the morning, when we woke up, she was like she had mottled skin, and it looked like her breathing was slightly labored. And we were like, okay. We tried to get her in to see a local doctor, but they didn't have any appointments. So Harry took her to the emergency room. And I thought he was slightly overreacting. I'm like, oh, we can just wait for a doctor's appointment. It's probably just a virus or something like that. But he took her to the emergency room, and I was like, okay. And then he calls me, and he said, they've listened to her heart, and they said she's got a murmur. And they want to send her up to the big hospital in Bunbury, which is, like, ninety minutes north. So you're gonna have to come to the hospital. And I was like, oh, okay. He said, we're going in the ambulance. I'm like, oh, okay. So I met him at the hospital. I got in the car. I drove up, and they they said we're gonna X-ray her. And she went in for a X-ray. We're in the emergency area of the hospital. They came out. Before before they got the X-ray results, they said, look, you know, if it's if it's something that we're not quite sure about, we're gonna send you to Perth to the cardiology department. If not, she can stay here, and and we'll we'll work out a plan. And we're like, okay. Cool. And then they came back in and their faces had changed, and they said, we're gonna send you to Perth. We've warned the cardiology ward that you're coming, and they'll explain what's going on. And there was no room to ask a question. Oh my god. I felt like there was no space to ask what was going on. So I get into this ambulance with my baby, and the amb one of the ambulance officers, not the one who was sitting in the back with me, but the one who was driving was hostile towards me, and I couldn't work out why. And we got to Perth Children's Hospital, and we went into the, you know, triage emergency. And she spoke to the, the the doctor there, and she slammed down Eve's file, and she said, and she's not vaccinated. Oh, wow. And I was like, okay. Cool. No compassion whatsoever.
Speaker 4
Wow. The the unvaccinated in a medical facility are like the, you know, the the plague. Oh, and I'm I'm like Like, sub sub citizen.
Speaker 5
Yeah. And I'm a terrible mother. Of course. So anything that's wrong with her must be my fault.
Speaker 4
And because she didn't get a ton of shots. Mhmm. You know? Mhmm.
Speaker 5
Of
Speaker 4
course, it's linked to that somehow.
Speaker 5
Yeah. Exactly.
Speaker 4
Wow. That's intense.
Speaker 5
Yeah. And so I was sitting there with Evie. They got us up to the cardiology ward pretty quickly. It was about nine o'clock at night. By this point, we'd be just been shuffled around all day. The cardiologist and the, stenographer, the person who takes ultrasounds of the heart came in, and they gave Evie a little ultrasound of the heart while we were sitting there in her in one of the rooms. And they were, like, muttering away, and we were sitting there. And, he asked he when he'd finished, he asked us about Eve, you know, and I said, look, you know, she's a home birth. She has been completely healthy. She's literally never been sick. Like, literally, she was never sick. She got her first virus after her second birthday because there were so many kids in the house. But prior to that, she'd never even had a cold. And I always put it down to all of the donor milk. I was like, she had, you know, fifty women's breast milk, so all of these antibodies had protected. And she'd just never been sick. So I thought I had this super healthy baby. Yeah? And, she'd walked late. But besides that, all of her developmental milestones had been hit or even early.
Speaker 4
What does late mean?
Speaker 5
Late. Late. Late. Late. Like, twenty two months.
Speaker 4
Oh, that is late.
Speaker 5
Yeah. And but she was walking, holding my hand Uh-huh. And and pulling herself up on furniture for months before that.
Speaker 4
Interesting.
Speaker 5
So when she didn't walk by eighteen months, I took her to a GP, and I said, look. I know eighteen months is the the cutoff point. What, you know, what might be going on here? And the GP observed her pull herself up and walk around a chair and went and sort of, like, checked her hips and checked a couple of other things, didn't listen to her heart, and said she's fine.
Speaker 4
Do you think it's related?
Speaker 5
Yeah. In the end, it was related. Okay. Yep. Yep. If if yeah. So we told him all that, and he said, oh, one of the cardiologists in my team didn't walk till he was two. He said, you know, some kids just walk late. You know? He said that's not an indication of anything. So he said, I'm gonna need you guys to sit down. You think you've got a healthy child, so what I'm about to tell you is gonna be really difficult to hear. He said, your Evie has three heart defects. She has two holes in her heart. She's got a VSD and an ASD, and she also has a co opted aorta leading to the bottom half of her body. So that explains why the bottom half of her body was, less developed. And, yeah, I mean, obviously, it was a huge shock. It's, yeah, your whole reality shifts Yeah. In that moment. And, actually, one of the things that shifted in my reality was my breastfeeding journey. Like, immediately, I went, oh, okay. That's why. That's why. And at the time, that didn't explain it all, but as I get down, you know, for the rest of the story, it does explain it all. They moved her into a more permanent, like, private room. They walked her across the hallway. Harry and I followed, and Harry and I just stopped in the middle of the hallway and just hugged each other. Like, we just we didn't you know? It it was complete shock.
Speaker 4
He went home Was the doctor like, this is the deal and it's really, really bad or, like, it's fixable? Like, was there like a
Speaker 5
He he didn't wanna make any Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4
Because, like, I don't know what that really means. It doesn't sound good, but I don't know. Right. Anyway, I mean,
Speaker 5
that's I think he might have mentioned possible surgery. But I think at the time, he didn't wanna say too much because she was older when she was diagnosed, and her heart had compensated in a few ways that would have complicated things. And, yeah, there's there's a few other little complications in there, and I don't think he wanted to make any, yeah, he didn't wanna make any big statement.
Speaker 4
How old is she again at this point?
Speaker 5
Two years, three months.
Speaker 4
Two years, three months. Okay.
Speaker 5
Yep. And so, the first thing I did after Harry left, because he had to go home to the dogs and pack a bag and all that sort of stuff, was I got onto the Freebird Society community, and I just told everybody what's happening because I needed to tell somebody. And I just couldn't tell anyone, you know, else at that moment. And I knew that that community was a safe place for me. In the morning, I told my family and everybody and, yeah. Basically, I blamed myself. I blamed myself for a while. And after three days, Harry and I sat down, and we discussed everything that had happened from when I got pregnant right up to that point. And we analyzed every decision along the way and everything that had happened, and we came to the conclusion that we probably wouldn't have done anything any differently. Mhmm. That there wasn't really any point where it was obvious to have her checked by a pediatrician or take it anywhere. You know what I mean? Like so we we made peace with it ourselves, but there's always that thread of me blaming myself as the mother. And it's all and it
Speaker 4
Meaning meaning that you, sorry. The blaming meaning that you should have caught something? Like, what what was the story of blame exactly?
Speaker 5
Well, his mother kept saying there's something wrong with her and wanted me to, you know, have her checked out by a pediatrician. And she had a friend who was a doctor who examined EV and gave a referral to some doctor who was, like, three hours away and six hundred dollars. And I just I didn't I I didn't think there was anything wrong with her. And, you know, when she wasn't walking at twenty months and I was at Christmas, my aunt came up to me and said, aren't you worried? Aren't you worried? You know? So there was this influence of worry from older women around me, and it didn't it didn't sink in. And for me, that's because it was meant to happen when it happened. Sure. You know, she wasn't meant to be caught any earlier, and and it would never would have made any difference. Like, when I get to the end of the story, no matter when she had her surgery, she wouldn't have made it. And, you know, there's a sort of
Speaker 4
That's a huge piece to hang on to. Right?
Speaker 5
Yeah. Because there's this sort of story that if I'd caught it earlier, it wouldn't have been so complicated and she would have made it, but that's that that there was something else that they missed anyway. So that that's irrelevant. But on a spiritual level, her little soul said two and a half years. I need two and a half years, and I went okay. You know? And that's it. And so
Speaker 4
so we at the point that you found this out, you only had three more months with her?
Speaker 5
Holy fuck.
Speaker 4
Wow. That is so fast.
Speaker 5
Yeah. So we had a lot of joyful time together, you know, with with a seemingly healthy child who we took to Bali. We took her to Byron Bay. We took her to Bali when she was six months. You know what I mean? None of that would have happened if we'd known. Right. Yeah. Totally. You know? And she loved Bali. Who doesn't love Bali? Yeah. Yeah. And, so what happened was they took some blood and everything like that. And what they realized over the next few days is that her labored breathing and her modeled skin was actually from a blood infection that she picked up, and it wasn't from the heart condition. And so they gave her antibiotics, and then they saw the EV that we'd been living with and said, oh, we thought that we had a cardiac patient come in who happened to have a blood infection, but we've had a blood infection patient who who happens to have a cardiac issue because they saw that she's actually quite animated and normal looking. They saw the the EV that we saw. You know? Because when we when she first got diagnosed and we're looking at her, we're like, how could we have not known? And then they gave her the antibiotics, and we're like, this is the EV that we know. Right? So over the next two to three months, we went through the rigmarole of the medical interventions. Now the first thing they wanted to do was check that her lungs would respond if she had heart surgery. So they do what's called a catheter test, where they put a little tube in the lungs and do some kind of oxygen test. I'm not really sure of of what it is, but, basically, she had to go in for a minor surgery before the major surgery. And the outcome of that surgery would tell us if she was eligible to have the massive open heart surgery to basically fix her heart. Right? So the catheter test was a success. We had to wait for it because the only person who could perform it in Perth was on leave, and so we had to wait a while. And so I think it was like it was about three three weeks or something like that, which was a really long wait when you found out Something like this. And then that was a success. And what we discovered during that time is that Evie doesn't respond to things like other kids. So, you know, they wanted to give her some ketamine before they had to give her a scan prior to this surgery, and they had to give her about five times as much as they give a child her weight. You know? There was some presurgery drug that is supposed to sedate children before they take them in for the presurgery, you know, mask and everything. In five percent of children, it makes them hyper. She got so hyper. You know, she just was an odd case, and and she was an odd case in general. Like, they just couldn't believe that a child with ASD, VSD, and a coactive aorta had grown because she was actually still within the normal range of of weight for her. I mean, when I'd started bottle feeding her, she went from the fifth percentile to the thirty fifth percentile. And that's when these heart kids usually get picked up is when they don't thrive on formula. So if it's not picked up in utero and it's not picked up because a lot of it's hard to pick up a murmur with a newborn. Most of them are picked up when they don't thrive on formula. But she thrived, and she was in the normal weight range, and they could not work it out. A cardiologist with over thirty years experience looked at her one day and went, I just can't work out how she's grown. Like, he just couldn't work it out, because their blood is just not as oxygenated, and their lungs really struggle with the consequences of of this heart defects. So she was a bit of a miracle. And, the first time she was supposed to go into surgery, she got RSV. She picked up RSV at the hospital during all the presurgery tests that they do. Yeah. And the presurgery tests are traumatic within themselves. Like, they have to take blood and all this stuff, and it's just so so traumatic. I remember at the end of the first round of presurgery tests, she'd screamed the house down when they tried to take blood. And, you know, we she was like we got out to the car park and she was all sweaty, and I was holding her, and I was gonna get the ticket for the car parking. And she looked at me and she said, mommy, I'm sorry. Sorry, mommy. And I said, honey, you've got nothing to be sorry about. Okay? You've got nothing to be sorry about. You've done your best, and I know it's hard. And then a few days later, she developed RSV, and so she couldn't have her surgery. Now And you're pregnant? Yes. I was just gonna say, meanwhile, I'm about to give birth. I'm in my third Wait.
Speaker 4
You're that pregnant?
Speaker 5
I'm in my third trimester approaching. Oh. Yeah. So she gets RSV, and they're supposed to wait six weeks after RSV to give surgery. The surgeon decides that they need to do this surgery before I give birth. Okay. That was his decision.
Speaker 4
Wow. This is so intense. Third time I swear.
Speaker 5
So his decision was we're gonna do the surgery five weeks after she gets RSV. By the way, she had to be hospitalized for the RSV. So we had another hospital stay where she had to have, like, an oxygen pump, you know, thing on her nose for days and, you know, she was almost taken, yeah, she was almost taken to the ICU during that stay, but she ended up recovering. We came home with an extra medication that she hated and, had to wait again for the surgery. And the waiting during that that time between when I thought she was gonna get the surgery and when she got the RSV and we had to wait was the hardest hardest time of my life. Like and the whole time, there was this knowing inside of me that she wasn't gonna make it. And one night, I remember during that time, I went into the bathroom and I I just screamed, like, this primal scream came out of me. And I didn't even do that after she died. It was almost like a pre knowing.
Speaker 4
So in this in this space, there's still obviously hopefulness because she's gonna have a surgery, which is supposed to hopefully fix the defects.
Speaker 5
Yep. So in the presurgery interview with the surgeon, he said she has an eighty five to ninety percent chance of walking away with zero complications. Woah. So yeah. And and she's not the first child in the world to have discovered a heart defect later on. You know, we were when we're in the recovery, there was a nine year old who came through. Her particular three defects are usually picked up earlier. But, you know, they said it's not unheard of, and they said because of the nature of everything, she should have no complications. You should have a normal child after this. Right? So that's what I was telling myself intellectually. That's what I was telling everybody else. Oh, don't worry. Just imagine Evie running around happy with a big scar on her chest. That's what I want you everyone to envision. Right? That's what's gonna happen. So, we go in for the surgery, and, you know, you have to sit around and and and, you know, her going in was traumatic because they couldn't give her any presurgery sedatives because she didn't respond to any presurgery sedatives. So Harry had to hold her while she was kicking and screaming, and they put the mask on her face. Yeah. I'll never forget that, and he won't either. And so, that was the last we saw her, conscious. And,
Speaker 4
That was the last time you saw her conscious?
Speaker 5
Yeah. Well, not drugged. So she went in for the surgery, and they give you update. So the nurse will call you throughout the day you're in the hospital, and she'll say, oh, yes. Well, they're at this stage, and everything seems to be going well and blah blah blah blah. And we had a couple of updates like that. And then she called and said, I'm gonna need you to come upstairs. And we were like, okay. And so we went upstairs, and the cardiologist who was the original one who'd been seeing the whole time was quite animated and full of adrenaline. And he said, yeah. She wasn't able to come off the breathing tube. She keeps crashing every time they try to bring her off. They tried to bring her off, and so they opened one of the holes that they closed in hopes that that would relieve the stress on her system so that she would come off. She hasn't. So we're going to have to put her on an ECMO machine, and and I just need to warn you that this is very serious. Right? So I'll I won't go into too much detail, but, basically, an ECMO machine is a external heart and lung. You you know you worked in ICU a little. Yeah. Cool.
Speaker 4
But you can explain I mean, yeah. Give give the listeners some context if you want.
Speaker 5
Yeah. So the the chest remains open and the blood is pumped through a machine, basically, to act as the heart and lungs. And they prepared me for that, and they, you know, they have the plastic thing over the open chest. And then when the parents approach, they kind of throw a blanket over over so you don't see what's going on under there. So as we approached, they threw a blanket over her chest, and, yeah, I mean, it was completely surreal those first few days while she was on ECMO. I can't remember much of it. They it was a brand new hospital, so they had, like, apartments where you could stay. So they put us in the apartments within the hospital. So we were only a a an elevate elevator ride away from her the whole time. And they said to us, I and when I sat down with the surgeon after the cardiologist had spoken to me and she'd been wheeled into ICU, I sat down with the surgeon, and I said, this is how they die, isn't it? They don't die on the table. They die in here, don't they? And he said, yes. They do. And I and immediately, I said, well, who's to say that a two and a half year life is less worthy than an eight year life? You know? I mean and I got philosophical straight away, and he said he was shocked about that. And, so we went in to see her, and he said, we'll try and get her off the ECMO in three days. If she doesn't get off the ECMO the first time, it just gets worse from there. So, we had to wait three days. After three days, they got her off the ECMO. She came off on the first go, and I was everyone was just so happy. You know? Fantastic. She's off the ECMO, which was a big relief because they could actually close her chest. And then then, you know, there was a sort of series of things that needed to happen after that. So, you know, the drainage tubes needed to come out next. But a couple of nights later, she they there was so much blood coming out of the draining tubes that there was about ten people around her bed. And there was it was sort of an emergency and the the consultant was worried and everyone was worried. And, you know, me and Harry and his mom were sitting by her bed, and we didn't really understand why everybody was freaking out so much. And, basically, she would have had an internal hemorrhage, and so the surgeon had to come back in, open her up again, and fix the hemorrhage. That was on the Friday night. And, then then a couple of days later, the the the drainage tubes came out. And then a couple of days later, the, the pacemaker came out. And so everything was, you know, moving along, and she'd responded well to everything. And, you know, they'd come in and and they'd look at her heart and they'd say, oh, you know, well done, surgeon, and and what a great job. And her heart's looking great and, you know, everything's looking great. And there was all this hope because it had looked so dire. And now they got to the point where it was just the breathing tube.
Speaker 4
But was she still in, like, a sedative state?
Speaker 5
Heavily heavily sedated. Okay. Because they had so much trouble intubating her with the first, surgery, they'd given her a smaller intubation tube. And so after all of this, they were starting to try to bring her up out of the sedation occasionally. And when they brought her up out of the sedation, at one point, one of the consultants, my favorite consultant, said, oh, you can give her a little ice lolly if you want, like an ice block because she's got a smaller tube, so she she'll probably be able to swallow. And so I was able to give her icy poles when she came up out of her, sedation, which was such a blessing for her to be able to have something some pleasure in all of that horrificness. And she didn't respond to anything like any other kids. So, you know, a consultant who was a specialist in pediatric cardiology, he traveled the world. He'd done it all. He said she is her own universe. Eve is a universe unto herself. Another consultant said she needs her own textbook. She just did not respond to anything. The she didn't fit into any of their stupid little clinical boxes, basically. And they could not work out why she wouldn't come off the breathing tube. So the first time they tried to get her off the breathing tube, she crashed, and they tried every few days after that. So she was in ICU for a total of seventeen days. It came to a fry a Friday. I went for an energy healing session. The next day was Saturday, and this was day sixteen, and her color had just changed. Like, I looked at her, and I was like, there is just something that's different about her. And her heart was doing different things on the monitor, and they were all trying to tell me that it was normal, that whatever was happening on the monitor had happens to kids, you know, in this situation all the time. And I just it I knew it wasn't normal for her. You know? And they got us away from the bed when this happened, to so they could do something to her. And I was sitting there with Harry, and for the first time, I said to him, maybe we should just let her go. And then she she she was gone the next morning. So the next morning, they called us at five AM. They told us to come downstairs. There was twenty people around her bed. I was pacing back and forth, and the cardiologist came over. They started giving her, chest compressions, and, cardiologist came over to me and he said, you you can tell them to stop. And immediately, I went over and I just said stop. Like, stop. I was just so done with them touching her. I was so done with it. And so I told them to stop. And, that I don't know when she left because it was so dramatic. I tried to pull her towards me, and I said, get all of this shit off of her. And so they were taking all the monitors and taking all the crap off of her. And I said, take that breathing tube out. And the doctor who was on at the time said, oh, oh, oh, oh. She was sort of hesitating taking the breathing tube out. I said, take the breathing tube out. And she said, oh, there'll be blood. I said, I don't care if there's blood. Just take it out. So she took it out. There was a tiny bit of blood. I wiped it away. I said, that was fine, wasn't it, honey? And I picked her up and just held her, and I was finally able to hold her. I hadn't been able to hold her for seventeen days. It felt so good just to hold her in my arms. And, Harry held her and and then his mom and his stepdad came, and we all just held her for a few hours. And, they gave us a big room with a bath, and they said you can bathe her. So, we took her in, and I was holding her. And we bathed her and gave her a a bath. And I picked her up. We wrapped her in a towel, and I was holding her. And I put her down on the couch in a towel, and I looked at her, and I knew that what I was looking at wasn't Evie. And that's when I was, okay with them with them taking her downstairs. Yeah. So, you know, for someone who doesn't trust, the medical system and who yeah. It was a really traumatic and horrific experience for me watching them treat my little girl like that. I I consented to a, an partial autopsy. So the surgeon asked me if they could do that because they were confused. They were confused as to why she passed away. There was never any talk of her like, there might have been one point where the surgeon sat me down and said she might not make it, but then she'd improved after that. And the consultant I told you about before who was an expert, he came up to me afterwards and he said, I have no idea why she passed away. I can't work it out. I never expected it. Nobody ever expected her not to make it. The experts didn't expect it. So he asked if he he said, we will only touch what we've already touched. Yeah. We won't touch anything else. And I thought, okay. So they did a partial autopsy, and they found that she also had agenesis of the lungs. And the only so, basically, the lungs branch out like a like a a tree with several, you know, sacs. The the, you know, big and complex, and there's lots of them. Hers were just like one one.
Speaker 4
No branching?
Speaker 5
No no branching. So where there would be, like, twelve, there was, like, four or something like that. You know? So yeah. So she and I said, well, how could you have diagnosed that? And he said, well, we would have had to have taken a biopsy of her lungs to know that that was the case. And I said, well, are there any circumstances under which you would have done that before you went in and did surgery and kept her on a breathing tube for seventeen days? And he said, there are circumstances that we would have done that, but she didn't exhibit any of those symptoms.
Speaker 4
And in a world where that could have been diagnosed earlier, could it have been supported?
Speaker 5
I don't know. I don't know whether that would have just meant that they didn't do the surgery. Right. Whether there would have been different things they've done along the way, but I don't think they would have treated it like they did if they'd known. But that's the that's the,
Speaker 4
like, catch twenty two. Right? Because they wouldn't have taken the biopsy with what was presented. Right. Is that what you said?
Speaker 5
Yeah. She fooled everybody.
Speaker 4
I liked when you said she's her own little universe.
Speaker 5
Yeah. She loves that image.
Speaker 4
Yeah. Is that her behind you?
Speaker 5
Yeah. That's her. She was my happy baby. Let me see.
Speaker 4
It was wild. Okay. So how at this point give me just a quick time frame reference of when Evie passes to when you give birth. Twelve days. Holy shit. Twelve days? Woah. Did you okay. So I mean, I just can't even, like, begin to
Speaker 5
I was in my thirty ninth wake when she passed.
Speaker 4
So you knew, obviously, that you were entering that, and I imagine that birth was not probably at the forefront of your mind the entire pregnancy. And was it just kind of, like, I know I'm gonna free birth, and then, like, everything's you know, your focus obviously is completely on your daughter. And, like, what happens next? What what is this twelve days like into your birth? I mean, I just wow. What what what crazy terrain to be in?
Speaker 5
Yeah. So I I I I was thirty nine weeks sitting in the ICU, and all the nurses you can imagine ICU nurses just saying, where are you giving birth? Yeah. Where are you giving birth? And I was like, over there in the woods.
Speaker 4
Yeah. She could do it. Not here.
Speaker 5
Yeah. No. No. In the woods. One of them actually said that would call a code blue on me if I went into labor. Like Wow. Anyway yeah. They tried to get me an appointment at a local birth center, and, Yeah. I yeah. That that went badly. Basically, I sat down. I I thought I'd I'd they got me the referral to the birth center, so I thought I'd better go. You know? And so I walked in, and, they'd obviously got my notes from Eve, and I sat down. And I'm a thirty nine week pregnant woman with my daughter in the ICU, and the first thing this midwife says to me is, if you go to forty one weeks, you will give birth in the hospital.
Speaker 4
Ew.
Speaker 5
Jeez. That was the first thing that came out of her mouth.
Speaker 4
It's insane. Like, who are these people?
Speaker 5
I have no idea. I have no idea. Anyway, they didn't accept me because I hadn't done the the, Everything? The, the diabetes test, the gestational diabetes test. So I wasn't allowed to give birth there. Thank god. So I was looking at Airbnbs. Yeah.
Speaker 4
Exactly. This might be a stupid question. But was there, like, how much of of your mind was consumed by, like, is this gonna happen again? Like, did that was that on your mind at all that that not to say that that's even, like, a rational thought necessarily, but
Speaker 5
I had an ultrasound after Evie was diagnosed with Yeah. Because I haven't had an ultrasound up until that point, and, I did have an ultrasound. But the thing is the Right. The cardiologist told me that there's only a twenty percent chance it's gonna get picked up anyway. Exactly. But I wasn't worried. My instincts were telling me that this was a complete this was a different story. Yeah. But I did have that ultrasound at thirty three weeks with Freya. Yeah.
Speaker 4
And you were looking for an Airbnb near the hospital because you were juggling the reality of not knowing what the heck was happening with EV slash birth is impending in is a ticking time bomb any day. That is a lot to juggle.
Speaker 5
Yeah. So Airbnb was my and Of course. I think I I think I yelled at a couple of nurses because they kept asking me about my birth. And I kept saying, I don't give a fuck. The birth is not an issue. My baby girl is the issue.
Speaker 4
Of course.
Speaker 5
You know? So we after three days, we had a funeral and cremated her. And that day, we went home. We drove down from Perth, and I had her. And even though she was in ashes, I it would just felt so good to be bringing her home and to be going home with her because that's all I'd wanted for seventeen days. And, I knew I I knew I wanted a free birth, but I also maybe I wanted to have a birth photographer there. And I messaged the birth photographer and told her I was on my way home, that we'd just had Evie's funeral, and that I was on my way home and was likely to give birth, you know, soon. And she sent me this giant text basically all about signing some sort of waiver, and, like, risk and all this sort of stuff. And I was like, look. The fact that you would send me that today means I can't have you in my birth space. I'm really sorry, but, you know, see you later.
Speaker 4
Like, could anyone just think about you for a while?
Speaker 5
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that twelve days, you know, you asked about that twelve days. I was in shock, so I I wasn't able to process a lot of grief. What would happen was I would the grief would hit me when I'd sit down to eat. So I was in shock for the the rest of the time, and then we'd sit down to have a meal, and I'd be like, where's Evie? Oh, totally. And so I'd burst into tears every single meal time and then go back into shock. So that's what that twelve days was. My sister came. She flew in from interstate, and she was with me the whole time. And, you know, we did a bit of nesting, and we did a little maternity shoot, and we tried to focus on Freya. And, you know, I'd obviously done a lot of research about stress during pregnancy because I was worried about Freya as well. I mean, Freya's in her third trimester. She's feeling and seeing and hearing all of this. And the conclusion I came to is that, obviously, you can't, avoid stress during pregnancy, but you can actively bring your system down to a point of calm, and that will will be enough. It's like the good enough mother. You can't stop yourself occasionally losing your shit. Just calm down and apologize. You know? It's rules for life. Yeah. So I I tried to focus on, yeah, Freya for that time. So, yeah, my sister was with me, and, you know, she was there for a couple of weeks and was sort of waiting for me to give birth and waiting and waiting. And then I ended up going into labor the night before she was due to leave. And I think that that's just how it was meant to be. My sister has a lot of fearful, anxious energy. She had an emergency cesarean herself. She doesn't trust birth. And so, you know, I don't think I could have had her in the house while I gave birth. So the day before she left, I had some light surges in the morning. And so we went to the shops and we got our little, you know, supplies for the for the labor. And, you know, I was breathing through the surges. We came home, we had lunch, and they stopped. And I was like, okay. Cool. So I had a normal afternoon, ate dinner. Zoe was going to the airport in the morning and, woke up at about one o'clock in the morning with strong contractions. Like, I was, like, started verbalizing through them, couldn't go back to sleep. I stayed in bed for till about three AM, just like laboring in bed. And then at about three AM, I'm like, got up, ran the bath, and then started laboring in the bath. And, you know, Harry was pouring water on me, and he lit some candles, and I was just in the bath all morning. My sister was, like, timing the contractions on a little sheet, and, apparently, they were, like, up to one minute apart at that point. Like, it was a a hard and fast labor. Like, it came on from that one o'clock in the morning. It was like all systems go. And I'm, like, in the bath, you know, in full labor going, Zoe, just let Harry drop you at the bus station. Like, she said yeah. She's like, I'm worried about you. I could just get a cab. I'm like, no. Don't. Get let Harry do it. She's like, are you sure you wanna be left alone? And I'm like, anyway, we're having this argument. I'm like, I'm fine. Like, just just go. So that they left to to to drop her off, and I got out of the bath. And I labored a little bit in the lounge room, and then, I went into the bedroom, and I was laboring on the bed. Harry filled up the pool. And, I organized for the midwife that had been at Evie's birth to be on the phone for Harry, not for me. You know? It was a big leap fit for, you know, him to support me in a free birth, especially what after what had happened with Eve. So I thought it would make him feel safe to have her on the phone. So she was on speaker phone for the last couple of hours of the birth, I think. So, he's filling up the pool. I'm laboring on the bed, and it got to the point I was on all fours sort of, you know, I'd have a big contraction. My whole body, you know, moved, you know, and then I'd, like, lay down on the pillow and just fall asleep in between contractions. So I was doing that for a while. He, set up the pool, which a local midwife had dropped off kindly. I got into the pool and it was so intense. Like, it was completely different to Evie's birth. It was like a freight train, you know, and I was just I couldn't I felt like I couldn't go through it. You know? I just I I had no idea how I was going to do this, and I felt down, and there was no change. I was just like, there is nothing there. There's no baby there. I just can't believe this. And then finally, my waters broke while I was in the pool, and it was like the best feeling in the entire world. I was just like, yes. It was such a relief, and then they just came on just as strong. It was like there was this tiniest little break from it. And then, yeah, finally, she was born. And it wasn't long after I thought I think it was transition where I was like, I can't do this anymore. But it wasn't long after that she was born, probably about forty minutes later. And, she was born into the water. And about three days before the birth, I was, like, in between sleep and awakeness, and I just had this thought, suck her face when she comes when she's born. Like you know? And so she was born into the water. I pulled her up, and I immediately kind of went like that. And she was a little still a little bit gurgly after that, but she was fine. And I just went like this, and then I put her to my chest, and she actually did the little, you know, finding of the breast, and then she latched on. And I I looked up at Harry with this big smile on my face, and I said, that's what a latch feels like. Like, it was amazing. And she was the best breastfeeder. Like, she's she just went for it. And I was and it healed everything, that had happened with Evie, and it was wonderful. And, you know, she was a big baby. She was like four point two kilos and, yeah, I didn't tear or anything like that. I had a tiny little grays and, yeah, it was perfect. I think I tried to I wanted to birth the placenta immediately because I was so over it. I was like, that was so effing intense. I just want it to be over. And so I think after about, I don't know, I have time is weird in that space. I have no idea how long it was, but it would had probably only been about fifteen minutes. I tried to birth the placenta, and it just wasn't coming out. And so about half an hour after that, I stood up, squatted, and it and it slipped right out. And we had an amazing three hours together, and then we called my parents and we let them know. And I my plan was to go to the hospital after I gave birth. Now who I am now wouldn't do that, but where I was at that time, it felt necessary for the people around me because what we've been through with Eve.
Speaker 4
And to go to the hospital to get her heart looked at? Or
Speaker 5
Yeah. To get to get a referral to get her heart looked at, to get the paperwork, and to get a the pediatrician to check her, which
Speaker 4
They don't really, like, do anything.
Speaker 5
Wasn't necessary for me at all. I had a four point two kilo pink breastfeeding baby. There was no need for me to do that, but that's what it was. And
Speaker 4
So you felt other people in your life really wanted a medical provider to say this baby is healthy and fine?
Speaker 5
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And as I said, sitting here now, I wouldn't do it. Sure. So I thought I would go in. So so we called my parents. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Everything's great. Harry called his mom, and we hadn't told her that we were planning a free birth. Harry didn't think and just told her that we were at home and, no, there was no midwife, and she said something nasty and hung up on him.
Speaker 4
Three hours after you gave birth?
Speaker 5
Yep. Wow. So then I said, okay. Let's go to the hospital. So we went, so he called an ambulance, and everything changed. The energy changed.
Speaker 4
Why do you call an ambulance?
Speaker 5
I can't remember. It's
Speaker 4
so dramatic.
Speaker 5
I know. No. No. What had no. No. No. What happened was we called the the hospital where I wanted to go, which was half an hour away. It wasn't the local hospital. And we said, oops. We gave birth. Right? And, they said, oh oh, we're not sure what to do about that. Let us call you back. And they called us back, and they said, we're sending an ambulance. That's what happened. Yeah. And they said, we're gonna bring you up here. And I, thought I was going to that hospital because it's sort of the preferred hospital. Instead, they took me to the local one. So the ambulance pulls up at the local hospital, and I'm like, aren't we going to Busselton? And they're like, oh, no. They sent you here. And I'm like, okay. And this is this tiny hospital, which, yeah. Anyway, I thought I'd I I thought I'd be at Usselton for two hours and come home. Instead, they sent me to the local one who, frankly, don't know what they're doing. And because this was his excuse, because she had some muck in her hair and they weren't able to monitor her during labor, and because of what happened to her sister, they wanted to send her to Bunbury, the big hospital for, you know, a proper checkup and blah blah blah follow-up. Right? Now at this point, I should have said f you, but I was so vulnerable. And this is, this is what is, I think, the the haze of acquiescence. You know, I think I heard an author describe it as that, and that's what it is. It's like this haze you get into where you're like, yes. Okay. Okay. Like, there's no autonomy left, you know, when you get in these situations, and that's why we, you know, we wanna avoid these situations. So they sent me up to the big hospital, and I hadn't cut the cord when I got to the hospital, and so I rock up at the hospital with my baby and my placenta in a and they're like, can we cut the cord? This is like four hours later. I'm like, yeah. Okay. Cut the cord. So they sent me up to the big hospital, and I was just like, why am I here? And that's what all the midwives are saying as well. Like, I think I had two midwives say that to me that night. Like, why are you here? And then we were waiting for the pediatrician to come in the morning. And so in the morning, it got to about nine AM. I'd pressed the buzzer because I just wanted to go home, and I wanted to know where this doctor was. And Harry walked in, and I burst into tears. And I said, I've been pressing the buzzer to get this doctor to come at because I just need to go home. And he's like, hang on. And he goes out and he gets a midwife. The midwife comes in, and she looks at me and she's like, honey, your baby's perfect. You're you're perfect. I don't know why you're here. I'm gonna go get the doctor so that you can go home because that's obviously where you feel the most safe. And I was like, thank you. So this doctor comes in, checks out Freya, and goes, oh, what a healthy looking baby. You don't often see them looking so healthy. And, you know, gives me a referral for a cardiologist to do the, you know, the test in a couple of weeks and then sends us home. And I'll never forget the sun on my face walking out of that hospital and how it felt. And, you know, I wonder about those effects on Freya of that energy happening, you know, from the four hour mark to the next morning. But things happen the way they happen, and, obviously, you know, I'm I'm planning on getting pregnant again this year, and, obviously, that won't be happening. But, yeah, I I think I did the best I could.
Speaker 4
That's how you felt on Grace.
Speaker 5
I mean Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it wasn't it wasn't
Speaker 4
We moved the needle at the pace we moved the needle. You know? Mhmm. You moved it. You are new. You know? And I hear you, though. I mean, I understand.
Speaker 5
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 4
And so how old is Freya now?
Speaker 5
She was three in October. Yeah. And she is an absolute whirlwind.
Speaker 4
Yeah. Was that crazy having her become older than what Evie was?
Speaker 5
Yeah. It was significant. Yeah. It's funny that they're exactly six months apart to the day, and they were born exactly thirty minutes apart on the clock. So it was, like, eight twelve and eight forty two. It's like the little half moon. You know? Yeah. It's made I think that the grief has changed since Freya turned two and a half. It's become a little bit more intense, I think. It's like I was shielded from it a little bit up until that point. And now I think about Eve and, you know, what I'm missing from not having her here more because, it was a special connection.
Speaker 4
Yeah.
Speaker 5
She was, very special.
Speaker 4
Is there a a place in your house where you still, like, feel her or talk to her?
Speaker 5
She's gone. Yeah. Yeah. And, I felt that quite early on. Yeah. I don't one of my friends, his bro her brother is a Buddhist scholar, and he says that when a child dies of a, congenital defect, the soul has a choice to either come back to Earth, sometimes within the same family, or just move on to the higher realms and just be gone. And I feel like that's what she chose. I don't you know, I I do have access and intuition and my when I feel into it, she's just gone. She's gone. What'd you do with her ashes? I've still got them. Yeah. I can't let go of them.
Speaker 4
You don't have to?
Speaker 5
No. I won't be. You know, I might release them just before I die or something like that. But, they're they're with me. Yeah. I had a portrait painted of her Yeah. That's in my bedroom. And, I've got a little diary that I write in. I write her letters sometimes on her birthday and sometimes when I'm just grieving. Yeah.
Speaker 4
Have you found other mothers that not that anyone's walked this path, but that have. Have you found, like, refuge in other mothers who've experienced this kind of grief?
Speaker 5
I had an opportunity to go to, like, a heart kids event where there were other parents there who'd lost children to to congenital heart defects, and I couldn't go. This was, like, late last year. I couldn't I'm not ready yet. Yeah. That will happen, though. Yeah.
Speaker 4
And in in any other, like, social arena, have you
Speaker 5
I
Speaker 4
just I'm just imagining how what a unique experience it is as a mother and and grief in general, you know, can just be so isolating. And so, you know, like, the world just keeps happening while you're inside out, you know, and for so for so long and it's not like it goes away. And, yeah, I just I I would imagine that, like, the the the hug and the tears of another mother who has lost their child would be, like, yeah, just such a, like, irreplaceable, like, specific kind of
Speaker 5
Yeah. That happened actually, like, not long after all this happened. I went came back to Adelaide to go to a music festival called Warm Adelaide. And one of my managers that I'd worked with, her she'd lost her daughter to suicide. Wow. And, I saw her at the festival, and I and she'd known what had happened to me because she'd been working with my sister. And I ran up to her and I hugged her and I just broke down. And I just sobbed into her chest, and it was different. You're absolutely right. It was a there's a knowing there. Yeah. Well, no. I I I will seek out seek that out because it is you you you tell people and you don't even go into detail, but you tell people and they there's a there's an immediate, like, I can't imagine that. And that's almost more isolating because
Speaker 4
Totally. Like, no. Actually, imagine it so that you can feel some of this. Yeah. Totally.
Speaker 5
Nobody wants to touch it.
Speaker 4
But we're very, very unskillful group of people.
Speaker 5
You know? I mean, there's just not
Speaker 4
a lot of skills in in this arena.
Speaker 5
No. We're we're a a grief averse, grief suppression, and a a death phobic culture. Yes, sir. Which which I think causes a lot of issues. You know?
Speaker 4
Yeah. Oh, sweet little girl. Eavy girl. I really appreciate you sharing this. And a lot of women and a lot of mothers have reached out to me and asked me for more stories of loss and for more voices from mothers who have experienced loss. Yeah. And it's I'm just I'm really grateful that I get to share your story, and and I know the, like, energetic kinship that will be found within within the story.
Speaker 5
Thank you. Yeah. So I'm I'm hoping to do your RBK school. Okay. Yeah. I see myself running, prenatal education groups. Mhmm. So Okay. Yeah. I see that happening in my future. It's not happening right now, but that's definitely coming up. So Good to have you. Yeah. I I think that would be wonderful. So, yeah, I'd love people to find me on Instagram, especially mothers other mothers who've been through similar. So yeah.
Speaker 4
What what why don't
Speaker 5
you say your handle? So what do you mean? Simone awakened birth.
Speaker 4
Really? I don't actually know what it is.
Speaker 5
I don't go I try not to go on socials because every time I get PMT, I say something controversial, and it makes upset. Oh, you've been into RBP. Great.
Speaker 4
Well, I'll make sure it's in the show notes and, obviously, I'll tag you on Instagram and stuff so women will be able to find you.
Speaker 5
That would be wonderful. Thanks.
Speaker 4
Alright. Well
Speaker 5
Thank you so much.
Speaker 4
Yeah. Thank you. I really I'm very happy to hear this story and hold this story, and, yeah, would love to see you in in RBK and in IRL someday.
Speaker 5
Definitely. Yep. Alright. Thank you so much. Bye.
Speaker 3
And that's it for today, my sisters. Check out everything we do, including one on one and group coaching. Learn about our private membership, in person retreats, and more on free birth society dot com. Our online courses are on free birth society courses dot com, including our flagship course, The Complete Guide to Free Birth. Don't miss the Radical Birth Keeper School if you're ready to become the authentic midwife that women are searching for. Together we rise, and the revolution starts inside each of us. I'll leave you with our Free Birth Society theme song, Wild Woman by Aruba Red.
Speaker 6
I honour you for the wisdom you held, the ancient traditions of plant medicine and womb magic. I feel the spirit of the ancestors as I place my hands upon my belly. This sacred portal will be honored, eons upon light beams of survival, withstanding the eradication of our power by design. I will not allow the separation of our young to be forced upon me. My sisters will no longer birth in captivity. The picket line redefined from burning our wild women to paralyzing us and drugging our babes. Strapped down in a clinical white bed, drying up the milk from our breasts, keep your needles. My family will never again be doomed to chase those dragons all your poison. We reject your fear. We choose love. Everything with intention. Death, ascension. I will fly and bring her back from the star.
Speaker 1
Wild woman, she still lives inside. Wild woman, from you, I will not hide. Hide. They could not bend your spirit away, so please teach me your way. I'm ready to learn from you
Speaker 5
wife.
Speaker 1
I still run, run, run, where the wolves went south. We all came from Wild Woman.
