Kee's Birth Story

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
We acknowledged the traditional custodians of the land we're recording
on today. The head moved a significant amount down even
more into my pelvis, and I was just like, whoa.
That was really intense, like something is going on. And
then I kid you not. It was on.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Hello and welcome back to Eat, Sleep, Shit, Repeat your
wildly Unhinged podcast about the madness that is motherhood and
everything in between. I'm Kelly McCarron and guess who's back.

Speaker 1 (00:36):
It's Key Resells.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
Y'all.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Wow, that was a lot of energy for someone that
hasn't slept much. Yes, she is back. Her nipples are
currently being used as a pacifier, but she has popped
out of matt Lee for the week to share her
birth story. And if we hear babies yelling and i'l
b Allen barking and actually my kitten's going crazy, that's
why I thinks.

Speaker 1 (00:59):
That it's yeah. Sorry, This is a true representation of
what it's like with a newborn, a toddler, a new cat,
a dog, and just two very unhinged people in general.
There's a husband somewhere around here. He hasn't come to
get the barking dog, but anyway, I'll send him a
text and hopefully he vacates soon. This is so exciting.
Let me tell you what a treasure it is for

(01:20):
me to have a we break from a baby.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
I'm just also so excited. So Key gave birth two
weeks ago, and I'm yet to hear the tale because
I don't know. I kind of wanted to hear it
properly in all of the entirety, Like I wanted to
basically be you shitters at home listening to no detail spared.
I just love a birth story.

Speaker 1 (01:43):
Yeah yeah, and this one has got We got some
great storylines within the story.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
Let me tell you, Oh excellent.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Okay, So, I first of all wanted to start with
the fact that I had to admit that we had
been keeping a wee secret from our shitters, and that
secret was that I told everyone, yes, that I was
going for a bea, but there was a little bit
more to the story because we were actually trying for
a h back, which is a home birth after cesarean.
So that was the plan.

Speaker 2 (02:11):
King Reese had her tinfoil bray on.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
I was a big old layer and I felt real bad,
but my midwife had spoken to me and she's like, hey,
just like a little bit of advice, be careful about
who you tell that you're having a homebirth too, because
people can have reactions that are written all over their
face and they don't necessarily mean it. And with a
bit of talking to but she's like, you don't really
want to have to keep explaining yourself to people, and

(02:35):
you don't want people's initial reaction to be detrimental to
like your success and how you're feeling about your home birth.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
Which makes so much sense because like even people that
I would tell, like even though it was a secret,
it wasn't really a secret. So I tell people and
your people would be like, oh why, And I was like, oh, okay,
that's why she's not telling people, Like, yes, exactly, it's
her baby, Like let her do whatever she has and
it's not like you were free birthing anyway you get

(03:02):
into it.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
So just about this, because I do. I think it's
quite interesting to talk about. When you're doing a homebirth,
you engage the services of a private midwife, so on
the day that private midwife comes, and then a second
midwife is legally also required to be there so in
the event something happens to you. Two of them can
lift you or help or whatever, So there always has
to be two midwives present at a homebirth. It's exactly

(03:25):
the same as seeing a private obstetrician, except they come
and do all of your appointments at home. So it
was so fun, like sometimes Charlie would be there, Charlie
and Ru would be there. It was just really lovely
and it took us away from that hospital environment. So
one of the key reasons that we decided to do
a home birth is because we had spent a lot

(03:45):
of time in hospital about a year ago and it
just wasn't our lovely experience for us. And when I
went and had that pesky Pooh stuck in my barm,
we had another stint in hospital and we both kind
of agreed that we weren't really loving how it was
making us feel that we needed more of like a
continuity of care, like personalized care for this birth in

(04:09):
order for us to both feel like safe and secure,
and that ended up being a private midwife and going
the home birth route, So that was our decision.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
I loved Charlie's reaction when you first broached it with him,
like you thought that he was going to be like,
oh my goodness, like what are you in the woo
woo type thing, but he was just like yeah, why not.

Speaker 1 (04:28):
He was so into it from the get go, which
was so good, so I knew it was like definitely
the right decision.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
We love a supportive king.

Speaker 1 (04:35):
And just on that my midwife, she's actually British and
so she had been saying, or do you want to
get a duela because the thing about home births as well,
there is actually so much medical evidence to back it
up as to how much more successful physiological vaginal birth
can be. So she said, hey, something that also makes
your statistics higher for achieving a v back at home

(04:57):
is having a dula, so like having someone there who's
like just there for you emotionally rather than your midwife
who was typically there for you in a medical capacity.
And I was like, oh, well, you know, like my
best friend Lucy's going to be there, Charlie's going to
be there. I love you, Like I think we're okay.
Her mum was actually visiting at the time from the UK,
or was going to be visiting at the time, and
she was a dueler for years in Dubai. She had

(05:20):
her own practice there, so she ended up being our dula.
They got to do their first birth together as mother
and daughter. So that was another really lovely thing that
kind of came about from it. That is so special,
really special. Okay, so let's get down and dirty, well,
shitters and kel There were a few false starts. I
wrapped up work on I think what was I thirty

(05:42):
seven weeks?

Speaker 2 (05:43):
You wrapped up work on the fifteenth. You were like,
I think I'll go over the next few days because
my brain's like I'm done with work. I can have
my baby now.

Speaker 1 (05:53):
Yeah, And everyone was telling me, like my physio was
like I don't want to see you anymore, like you
are physically ready, and you're like everything soft, like your
cervix soft, Like I don't need to see you. I'm done,
I'll see you post Natalie, And I'm like, okay, cool,
And then my midwife was like, yeah, you're looking good.
That was thirty seven weeks. I did not give birth

(06:14):
to forty one weeks on the dots. So there were
many false starts in that time period. It was hard.
That is a month, It's a whole month. I was
literally like, fuck, I could have worked for another month.
I couldn't have couldn't though I was not feeling good,
you're off it. I was so off it. I was
off everything. To be honest, I was real big grumple
stilt skin. But yeah, there were many false starts that happened,

(06:37):
but kind of in that, I think I got to
like thirty eight weeks and I got to thirty nine weeks,
and I was just like, what the Hell's going on?
And then I realized like, I've just got to like
let go, because I think I was so convinced that
it was going to happen that it was almost like
not letting it happen. So I really had to just
like give in and I just had to do one
thing a day and keep planning, Like I was like

(06:58):
crossing days off the calendar, and I stopped at thirty
nine weeks, like putting it on there. And then I
was like, all right, I'm just going to right up
to forty two weeks just to give myself a little
bit more anyway. So yeah, Emma, my midwife, was just like, Babe,
you've got to relax, like just take everything off your mind.
Figure out if there's just like spin something on your

(07:18):
mind that's like niggling at you. So with the false starts.
I had like a bit of mucus plug fallout on
a Friday, and I was like, we are so on.
I was looking after Rue laying on the couch and
I was like, oh, things are starting to get spicy,
Like my cramps are cramping right now. And so I
messaged Charlie and I was like, hey, I Reckon, you
should come home just because things are starting to heat up.

(07:42):
And then I called my sister in law and I
was like, hey, just letting you know, lost a bit
of my plug and my cramps are cramping. And she's like, okay,
I'll be there in an hour to get Rue. That
was so nice, But I think what happened is that
I then realized I had this like freak out that
I was like, okay, this is literally the last time
it's going to be a FA family of three, Like
she's gonna go and her whole life's going to change.

(08:04):
And I completely wigged out, and I actually think I
packed myself out. So Ru got picked up and then
everything went away, like everything. I had no cramping. It
was like my cervix was like like closed itself.

Speaker 2 (08:21):
Was that the night that you were also vomiting in
diarrhea though.

Speaker 1 (08:24):
Yeah, that happened to me twice, so twice before that
plot came out. So that's the thing. It wasn't just
me thinking I was going to go at thirty eight
thirty nine weeks. It was like I'd have these things
where I'd open my bows, be vomiting, and then nothing
would happen. There was one of those instances that I
was having to like breathe through. I don't want to
say that they were like contractions, but.

Speaker 2 (08:44):
Like a strong cramp.

Speaker 1 (08:45):
Yeah. I really had to breathe through them. So but
as my doller kept saying to me, they're not false starts.
That is your body starting the process. Like it's a
long process. She was like to me, remember you haven't
dilated fully before, so if there's a bit of work
that needs to be done, you know that first. Like
six centimeters should be pretty normal.

Speaker 2 (09:06):
What did you get to with rue for six centimeters
over several days?

Speaker 1 (09:13):
Over two days? Yeah? Yeah, so it finally happened. Tell me,
I want to.

Speaker 2 (09:20):
Know everything, because it was a day that I all
of a sudden I realized that you'd gone really dark.
Lucy had gone dark, and Lucy never goes dark, and
I was like, it's on. And I sent you a
message saying you've got this.

Speaker 1 (09:32):
Happy pushing, you can get this baby out or something like.

Speaker 2 (09:35):
I was just so aggressive with my ha. I know
that you're in labor because you and Lucy are both dark,
happy pushing.

Speaker 1 (09:41):
Monday Day, I had, like, was making breaky in the
morning and I was like, oh, yuck, that's a lot
of you know, when you're just pregnant and you're just
there's a lot of sweat and things fluids coming out
of down there. And I was like, oh, that was
a lot yuck. And then but anyway, I made my
toast because food comes first, and then I went to
the bathroom and I was like, w that is the

(10:01):
rest of my mucus plug, like a big amount of
my mucus plug. And I was like, all right, we're
on here. So I texted midwife Adulla. I was like, Hey,
the rest of my mucus plug just came out, So
just giving you guys a little heel that we might
be on here. Charlie came home as usual that night.
We put rude down the whole day, nothing, no, nothing,

(10:22):
But do you know what I did that day was
like on my head. I was like, oh, because we've
been so ready for a month. The house was like
kind of a bit in shambles, and then you know,
life having a toddler all of that, and I just
wanted to like fold everything and put everything away because
it was just like some washing out and blah blah blah,
and I wanted to just you know, spruce it up
a little bit. So I did that that day, and

(10:43):
then I sat down and watched like a little bit
of TV. So the day went really quickly, and I
swear that was the thing that had been on my
mind that was annoying me.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
It was just like the messy house.

Speaker 1 (10:52):
Yeah, just the messy house needing to get ounder control anyway.
So we put rud to bed and then I'm sitting
on the couch. I'm just so uncomfortable because the baby
was so low at this point.

Speaker 2 (11:02):
If baby was hanging between your.

Speaker 1 (11:04):
Legs, literally, I could not sit, babe. There was no
position that I could sit or lay in that was comfortable.
I wasn't sleeping.

Speaker 2 (11:14):
I was just bad.

Speaker 1 (11:16):
It was bad. Walking. I was like waddling like i'd be.
It was like I was a caricature of a person
who was pregnant, like I was so dramatic. It was
just like, I'm embarrassed about how dramatic I'm being in
this pregnancy above all of the other things.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
Like it's not that common to go to forty one weeks,
especially with your second child.

Speaker 1 (11:35):
So well, it turns out it is, because remember when
I put it up on my Instagram and everyone's like, oh, yeah,
I was engaged at thirty six weeks and didn't give
birth to forty two plus.

Speaker 2 (11:46):
Who three And I'm like, oh wow, Yeah, I didn't
realize it was that common.

Speaker 1 (11:49):
Honestly, it can be anything. That's what I learned as like,
the baby will come when it comes, and it's its
own personality. It's whether it's stubborn, it's whether it's comfy
in there, whatever. This baby was like I'm feeling good
and he I don't know about you, but I'm feeling good,
and I'm like, I'm not feeling good. Get the fuck
out anyway. So we are brushing our teeth and I

(12:11):
sit down on the toilet to do a wee and
then I felt a massive drop of the head. And
I've heard people say this, so it was just like
so crazy for it to happen, but like the head
moved a significant amount down even more into my pelvis,
and I was just like, whoa, that was really intense,
like something is going on. And then I kid you not,

(12:34):
it was on. It was on straight away. So that
all kind of kicked off at ten PM as we
were going to bed, and for the next kind of
hour and a half, I was just trying to breathe
through the contractions basically, So I was laying down trying
to breathe through but not really getting any reprieve. So

(12:55):
I was finding it really difficult. And then the only
position that was like really comfortable for me was standing up,
but that was bad because my legs like was so
sore by the end of it. So about an hour
and a half and I said to Charlie like, hey,
I think we need to call Nikki the dueler over
just because I need help with like how to get

(13:17):
through these contractions. Like I feel like they're just coming
so fast and so quick that I need her there
to kind of like be doing kip squeezes and just
like coaching me through. Cheerleader yeah exactly. So Charlie's like, yep,
we'll get her over. So she came over. She was
like fifteen minutes away, so she got here and so
that was about midnight. She arrived. She was really great.

(13:38):
She was just like coaching me through it. She's like
doing great. And as soon as she kind of got there,
I relaxed a little bit more because I felt like, Okay,
Charlie's there for me emotionally, but she's there for me
as well, like to get me through it technically and
to figure out like what to do. And we were
trying a bunch of different positions and then she's like,
why don't you do some sideline just to rest your legs.
I was like, yeah, So in our room, we just

(13:59):
had like a little mattress on the ground that I
was kind of laboring on.

Speaker 2 (14:04):
Is Rue just sleeping through you laboring? Rue was asleep
at this stage, sort of quiet.

Speaker 4 (14:09):
Then.

Speaker 1 (14:11):
Yeah, So interestingly, for Roux's birth, I was really quiet
as well. I didn't make any noise, and I was
exactly the same for this labor. I didn't make any noise.
I was more like breathing, really controlled breathing. I felt
like that was the thing that was gonna help me
the most. So then yeah, I'm sidelining and my waters break.

Speaker 2 (14:30):
What did that feel? Like?

Speaker 1 (14:32):
Warm gush of water that did not stop for ages?
And then I can you know when you can just
like sense someone's like oh, I saw the doeler's face,
like oh, and then she kind of like tried to
take a picture really slide. She's like, I'll just be
back in a second. And I was like, okay, she's
calling Emma because there's definitely maconium in my waters.

Speaker 2 (14:50):
Oh my god, you got that just from her face?
Or could you smell it? No?

Speaker 1 (14:55):
No, no, I listened to so many birth stories that like,
you know, you just know. I don't know. I just
had a sense anyway, and she came back and she's like, okay, well,
I've just let Emma know that your waters are broken
and she is going to come over. So Emma got
here at like one or two am. She was like, Okay,
there's a little bit of maconium in your waters. But

(15:16):
what's happened is that as your waters are coming out,
it's getting clearer and clearer. So it's not uncommon for
babies to do who before they go into labor, they're
kind of empty their bows. But if it was like
consistently dark maconium. Then we would know that the baby
was in distress. So she checked the feet or heart rate.
Everything was fine, did my obs, like my blood pressure.

(15:38):
Everything was all good. So she was really happy for
us to continue to labor, and I felt confident in
that as well. But then things started obviously getting even spicier,
and I didn't think that they could get spicier because
I was fucking red hol at that point.

Speaker 2 (15:51):
Is Lucy here?

Speaker 5 (15:53):
No?

Speaker 1 (15:54):
And so after kind of Emma gets here, I'm like,
all right, I need to call Lucy because in my
mind I was like this, this is happening so fast
that she's going to miss the birth at this rate.
So I just called Lucy and I go hey, and
she's like, is it happening. I'm like, yep, you need
to get here now.

Speaker 2 (16:11):
She's like, oh, for goodness sake, thanks, I've had my
phone on laud all night, every night for the past month.

Speaker 1 (16:16):
And then that was it. And then I just like
hung up the phone. And so she appeared and she was.

Speaker 2 (16:21):
Great, did she have the cake? No?

Speaker 1 (16:23):
There was no cake. There was no cake. There was
no time for cake, let me tell you. So then
I'm like saying to everyone, can you guys get the
pool ready, like I need to not feel like I
need to be in water like right now. So with
the home birth, you get access to a birth pool
that they give you as well as like a tens
machine and other things to help you. We had birth combs.

(16:44):
Birth combs are fucking amazing, I will say that. So
they're just little mini combs that are that can be
made out of anything. But howls are made out of
like bamboo. We just got them of farmers on. They
were dirt cheap withought. I'm in a pair of two
and what you do is you have this pressure point
between your thumb and your pointer finger and your palm
and you bend the comb into that pressure point. When

(17:06):
you're having a contraction, you push on it and it
just distracts your mind because it's like a different pain
and it also released. And that was what I did
pretty much from ten PM until I got into the
berth pool around like four And that was a wow.
Like I wanted to get into the water because I
just didn't want like I wanted to float around and

(17:28):
kind of just have warm water around me. But the
birth comb one hundred and ten percent the Tens machine.
This time around, I was like, get it away from me.
Like I was like, it's not working for me. I
hate it. I hate it. I hate it. And Charlie
was like, fuck, that was like my thing from last
time that I was like contributing, like the Tens guy.

Speaker 2 (17:44):
I was like, I got I'm the Tens guy. I
got it.

Speaker 1 (17:47):
And I'm like, babe, I don't want to tell you
fucking I hate it. Get away from me. And he's like,
got it. So he's filling up the pool and then
we hear a little scuffle of the feet and little
root Cearles appears. I was just like, fuck, it's like
three four am. I don't really want to call, even
though it would have been fine to call my sister
in law, but I was just like, if she's sweet,

(18:08):
I'm kind of fine for her to be here. I
don't want her to be here on the business end
because I feel like it's a little bit too much
for her at that age. But I was like, let's
just see how she goes. And she was amazing. She
was just like super inquisitive, watching everything from the sidelines,
just like would bring me her toys and say like

(18:28):
here's lying for your mummy to help you. And I'm like,
thank you, baby.

Speaker 2 (18:32):
They have got the purest hearts, don't they?

Speaker 1 (18:35):
They really do, And like she knew everyone right, so
she knew Emma midwife. She spent a bit of time
with Nicki as well, because in the Nicki had been
here for a month, had to extend her trip twice
because it was no baby, so they were coming over regularly,
so Rue was like super comfortable with them, and obviously
Lucy is really close with Rue, so she felt super

(18:55):
comfortable and safe with everyone there. And I think that
made like obviously a really big difference. So the pool
finally is ready because.

Speaker 2 (19:02):
It's not a small body of water like I can
imagine then you waiting and it's like taking its sweethearts
don't feeling up and you're like, oh my god, oh.

Speaker 1 (19:10):
The thing is. It fills up quickly, But the fuck
our tap water it's like came out at forty seven degrees.
It has to be thirty seven to birth, Like that's
the temperature that you want, Like the baby cannot be
birthed into cold water, but ours is ten degrees high
as so Charlie, bless.

Speaker 2 (19:26):
Them, he's so specific though.

Speaker 1 (19:29):
I think it's just like the warmth of maybe your
tummy inside that the baby's in. I don't know, that's
just a guess. But when they told me it was
thirty seven degrees, I was like, please, please, don't let
this baby come during a fucking heat wave. I'm going
to be getting like my forty degree apartment into my
thirty seven degrees like gross. But luckily the winds had
changed that day, dyl and it was very cool for

(19:49):
laboring was so good anyway. So I'm like, what's going
on with the pool?

Speaker 3 (19:54):
Guys?

Speaker 1 (19:54):
Like, I'm trying to stay really calm, but I'm like
every single person that came up to me was like,
what's happening with the pool? I want to get in there.
Charlie Busson was trying to bring the temperature down by
ten degrees by putting cold water in. He got it
to forty and Emma was like, just let her get in.
She really wants to get in. So I got in
and oh my god, instant relief. That fucking water. Oh

(20:17):
it just felt so good. I felt. I just felt relaxed,
Like you're also weightless, right because you're floating. So yeah,
it's just really great to have that, and it was
just really nice to then have everyone kind of standing
around me. Were they chanting, No, there was no chanting.
We had lots of music on and we had like,

(20:37):
oh good, good good, kind of these like fake candles
that we bought off Amazon just like scattered around. So
it was very like Castle esque or.

Speaker 2 (20:44):
The one that you tricked me with. What was this
did I drink in when you sent me a selfie
like a week before?

Speaker 1 (20:51):
That's right, that's right.

Speaker 2 (20:53):
And I was like, oh my god, there's candles in
the background. Oh my god, we're in business. And then
she doesn't ride back for ages and she was like,
oh no, we've just been setting the mood every night.

Speaker 1 (21:03):
We had been every fucking night, Clarius Adoyle, fake candles,
every bloody thing. She still just came when she wanted
to come. Yeah. So we're in the bath, everyone's standing
around and Rue is just like so hilarious. At this point,
She's just like up in my face, just like giving
me like a little cold compress and then she like
disappears and reappears with her like frozen deck chair that

(21:26):
she has. It's like this deck chair that her grandma
got over Christmas a couple of years ago, and she
pushes the deck chair like right up to the front
of the pool and just like takes a seat as
if it's an actual pool. Okay, she's just like got
a front row ticket to mum giving birth. And I
was just like, everyone's pissing themselves laughing.

Speaker 2 (21:45):
She's like, well, I need to be comfortable so I
can enjoy the show.

Speaker 1 (21:48):
She's like, I've been standing for long enough. I also
need a little bit of comfort right now. Anyway, So
that was just beautiful. She is so funny, she's hilarious.
So it started getting even more intense, I guess, but
you know, it was so.

Speaker 2 (22:03):
Weird, like what time's this now?

Speaker 1 (22:06):
This is four or five am. And I probably stayed
in there till about six thirty, and then I was like, okay,
I need to change it up. They were like, why
don't you try. I'm sitting on the toilet because that's
like a really well the toilet and a berth stool.
My god, it's just like the exact angle that you
need for a baby to like increase your surges your contractions.

(22:30):
So we did that for a bit.

Speaker 2 (22:32):
How many centimeters were you at that point? Like were
they checking?

Speaker 1 (22:35):
They were not checking. So yeah, we weren't doing any
vaginal examinations only when we absolutely needed to. But even then,
I think maybe when she got there, I think I
was already at six and then later on I got smaller.
But I'll tell you that in a second. Anyway, so
I was like, I need to change it up. They're like, hey, yeah,
let's go. Let's try birth stool. So we're trying like

(22:58):
the birth stool, which was really good. It made it
so intense. We were trying like kneeling and then leaning on
the couch, which was really good. We went back and
did sideline for a little bit, did the toilet.

Speaker 2 (23:10):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (23:10):
Then I realized the sun was coming up, and I
was like, fuck, okay, I think Roote needs to well
it's like seven am. I was like, Roue needs to
go to daycare and things are firing up here.

Speaker 2 (23:21):
How are you feeling mentally at this point? You've been
in a lot of pain, no pain relief, Like I
know this is what you wanted, but how are you
feeling mentally?

Speaker 1 (23:29):
I was feeling okay, you know, like I was really calm,
but I was like feeling I was saying like I don't.
I can't do it, guys, I can't do it, and
they're like you can, you can remember.

Speaker 2 (23:41):
Lice he played the playlist.

Speaker 1 (23:43):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. She played all of these videos from
my friends, voice notes from my friends and also my godmother,
my godparents from overseas, and that was like beautiful and
she did like bring one out at like the right
time when I was just having like a little crisis
of confidence or just being like because I just thought
like every fucking contraction was so intense, and I was

(24:05):
just like I can't do it. And they'd be like,
you literally just did it, though, you just did it,
and I'm like, okay, yeah, I just did it. I
just did it. I just gonna remember I am doing it.
And I was like that what the doueler was so
good about, because she just kept saying to me, but
you are, like you are doing it, and you're so calm,
you're so composed. It doesn't matter how you birth, like
you don't need to be calm and composed. But she's

(24:26):
like you're okay, like you're getting through it all, like
it's hard, it's meant to be hard, and I'm like, yeah,
you're right, okay, and then Emma, my midwife, was like
to me, Okay, I need you to go and rest
for a little bit because I feel like you're getting tired.
I need you and Charlie to go lay down on
the bed for a little bit and rest because I
feel like we've been going for a while and we've

(24:47):
just kind of reached like a bit of a block.
I don't know what words she used, but I need
you to go and rest for a while. But what
had happened is that I had also started to have
involuntary pushing. So basically my body was like during a contraction,
my body was like trying to expel the baby, right, so.

Speaker 2 (25:08):
Our bodies are wild, Like that's wild.

Speaker 1 (25:11):
And I was actually so excited about this because I
had heard like not all women get that sensation, but
like I was so excited when it started happening because
I was like, oh my god, like this is such
a cool thing to experience, you know, like this is
when the baby is in the right position, When you
have that involuntary pushing, that's often how the baby like
comes out. So I was like, oh my god, this

(25:33):
is awesome. And then she's like, I need you to
go have a rest. And if you can, I need
you to not push, because what has happened is that
your cervix is you've got a cervical lip. So basically
what that means is like the baby comes down pretty much,
it has to be like on a target with your cervix.

(25:53):
If the baby's slightly off, the cervix doesn't like dilate evenly,
and you end up having like too much cervix on
one side and the baby's kind of trying to push
through and you're not properly dilated. So she's like, I
just need you to stop pushing for a bit so
we can see if some of that inflammation of your
cervix comes down. And I was like, well, so you
want me to not push when my body does like

(26:15):
the involuntary pushing, and she's like, yeah, I know, it's
really hard, and I was just like fuck. So, like
I said to Charlie, like, how many do you reckon?
I was like breathing through and letting through, and he
was like, oh my god, it was like fifty to fifty.
Like you would breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe, breathing, and you
would let like two through. And I was just like fuck.

(26:37):
So we laid down for a while. Some really beautiful
pictures actually that Lucy took of Charlie and I just
kind of like laying there in bed and cuddling and
he's just like, you can do it. And then she's like,
I also want to try some front lying in versions.
So it basically I had been doing these and the
lead up to the birth, but one of them, for instance,

(26:59):
was like on the edge of the bed, bringing my
top leg forward and like my belly, letting my belly
fall over the side of the bed, and with gravity
it kind of sometimes can spin the baby a little
bit to get into a better position. But she was like, Okay,
we need you to do this, and I was like
I can't do that. It was like that is too painful,

(27:21):
and she's like I need you to do it, and
I was like, okay, let's do it. She's like you
didn't take much negotiation.

Speaker 4 (27:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (27:27):
I was like I really don't want to do this
because it was just so painful, and I was like,
any any additional thing that I'm doing is just like
freaking me out. Anyway, So we did a few of
those and I'll be like, how long are we holding
for and she'd be like, we need a hold for
a minute. I was just like, oh my god, this
was fun, Like I haven't been doing my pilates lately,
very fit. It was honestly so intense because it's like

(27:50):
your whole belly hanging off the side. It just wasn't
the feeling that you want in the process of labor.
It just was like kind of a yucky feeling. And
then we did another position which I cannot, for the
life of me remember what it was, but it was
like rocking the apples, so you're like kneeling and then
leaning onto like the bed and then they get like
a wrap. So I think we just had like a

(28:10):
terry towel, like a Terry beach towel. They put it
under your booty and then they just like wobble from
left to right basically, and it actually feels fucking amazing
that one didn't have to that good and that kind
of can jiggle the baby into place. Anyway. We did that,
and then I was like, oh, I need to get
out of the bed, Like I just want to get

(28:32):
out of bed. I had also been vomiting a lot,
but they were worried because I hadn't done a wee
in ages, so they were like, I think what's happened
is that you've been drinking heaps of water, but you're
not getting a sensation to wei because obviously everything's so
smushed down there. What we're going to do and I
wish I could remember what the term was, but instead
of putting a catheter in, they basically put something into

(28:54):
your urethra and they drain it. So instead of doing
a catheter. So what can happen, right, is it if
you've got a full bladder, The full bladder can be
impacting how the baby's coming down, right, So the head's
like not coming down completely on target because the bladder
is so full.

Speaker 2 (29:12):
Logistically it makes sense.

Speaker 1 (29:13):
Yeah, And I was like, oh, here we go. Okay.
So they did like an empty for me, and it
was so much wee so much?

Speaker 2 (29:21):
Is it painful? It sounds painful.

Speaker 1 (29:23):
No, it was like a relief. No, they just gone
through urethra. I actually have quite a nice urethra. I've
had to do a lot of this because I've had
that underactive bladder.

Speaker 2 (29:31):
How do you know what your urethra looks like?

Speaker 1 (29:33):
I don't know. But when I went to the hospital.
They said I had a beautiful urethra. I think it
just means I have a big one and it's easy
to get a fucking carpeter into my board.

Speaker 2 (29:42):
I've got a wide set urethra.

Speaker 1 (29:45):
Anyway, so they emptied that, and that actually did feel good.
It felt good to get that out. And then I
just said to them, Okay, I need to get out
of this bed, like I feel like I need to
change up the energy. I feel like I need to
sit on the toilet. But that just increased my pushing
because of the fucking the.

Speaker 2 (30:03):
Like I'm on the toilet, I'm pushing.

Speaker 1 (30:04):
It's just also gravity. It's everything. It's like how they
tell you, like the optimal way to push is by
putting your feet on a little stool and sitting on
the toilet. Same like that setup is really good for birthing.
It's like too powerful. I was like, oh, that's too powerful.
I've got to get out of here. And then they
were like, okay, we want you to come and lay
down in the lounge, just on your other little thing

(30:26):
there and we'll just do your obs. And at the stage, like,
what time is it at this point, maybe eight or
nine am? So the whole time this is happening, that
involuntary pushing contractions are still happening, right and I'm trying
to breathe through them, but a lot of them are
getting through. And I did notice that I had a
bit of blood that had started coming out as I

(30:48):
was moving around, which I didn't really have before. I
just had that clear liquid. But I had a bit
of blood and kind of thought to myself and my head, oh,
I wonder if that's like a flag. So when we
went down, she was doing my obs and my blood
pressure spiked and my heart rate spiked, and they were like, okay,
we're going to give her some fluids. So I had some.

(31:10):
They gave me like an ivy bag of fluids because
they just thought maybe I'm really dehydrated. So they were
trying to see if that would kind of stabilize everything.
It didn't. Like my heart rate was still really high.
And then the other thing that happened was the baby's
heart rate decelerated. It went down. So Emma came and
sat with me and she's like, key, we've had three markers,

(31:31):
so we've had the spike and your blood pressure, we've had.
Your heart rate is really high. We're struggling to get
it down, and you've also got a bit of blood
and she's like, those are markers for a scar tear.
So that and also the fact that the baby's heart

(31:52):
rate decelerated when we were doing checking. She's like, I'd
like us to go into hospital. I think as a precaution,
just to make sure that we are we need to
be should anything happen. The one thing we wanted to
do was labor at home for as long as possible,
because I feel like with Rue, we just didn't know

(32:13):
enough right first time parents giving birth, we just didn't
know enough. We actually stayed at home for quite a
long time in comparison to other people. But we were
listening to an app that was saying, your contractions are
so close together, go to hospital, go to hospital, like
and we went to hospital and that kind of started
us down the path of rus birth. But this time
we got to really stay at home. We got to

(32:35):
do the laboring that we did, try everything, We got
to use the pull. At that point, I felt like, yeah,
I need something to actually stop the involuntary pushing, because
she was saying to me, the reason you have started
bleeding is because your servix is so inflamed and that
is just blood from your cervix, but it's as a precaution,
you know, all of these things together. And I was like, okay, cool,

(32:57):
that's fine, Like I feel fine to do that. And
I just said to her, do you think I'm going
to have to have a cesarean? And she said, yeah,
I think that that will be the likely scenario. So
the decision was made not to call an ambulance because
we weren't in an emergency. And also if we had
called an ambulance, they would have had to do obs
and like basically do a whole thing.

Speaker 2 (33:17):
How are you feeling?

Speaker 1 (33:18):
I was feeling emotional. I was feeling that the thing
that was detrimental to what was going on was involuntary pushing,
and I wanted that to stop. And I was just like,
I just want that sensation to be taken away because
I'm really struggling now to I mean, I had been
dealing with that for two and a half hours, right

(33:39):
I And I was trying not to push against what
my body was wanting me to do. So I felt relief,
I guess because I felt relief in that Okay, I'm
gonna meet my baby soon regardless of what happens. And
I felt relief in that the experience I had was
still really beautiful, Like it felt like it was a

(33:59):
really posit that of experience, and I knew that I
had done everything in my power at that point.

Speaker 2 (34:05):
It was literally your body that like, well one part
of your body that wasn't letting you progress.

Speaker 1 (34:12):
Exactly, and it's just unfortunate. And the thing is you
can persevere and continue to labor with a cervical lip,
but for us and those markers, it was just like
not worth it. For us, well not not worth it.
It was just like to labor then for another day
or so with no guarantee that it would happen. So

(34:32):
that was for our choice to do that. Charlie like
six four, he ran to get the car. He was
back in two minutes and I was like, do you
think I had packed a hospital bag at forty one weeks?

Speaker 2 (34:45):
No, of course you didn't.

Speaker 1 (34:47):
I hadn't.

Speaker 2 (34:47):
It's ridiculous.

Speaker 1 (34:48):
We were like, oh, we'll pack that during the labor.
It'll give us something to do. So I'm going to Lucy, Lucy,
I've poked my hospital bag and she's like, I'm on it,
so she's like throwing stuff in. It was fine, you
don't need like that much. But I was like, I
don't need anything, you just need few things exactly. I
was like, put the adult diapers in.

Speaker 2 (35:09):
Put those bloody diapers back here. I love those things.
I noticed, yes, and the other day when I was
talking to you that you had one, and I was like,
key in those diapers. She loves them.

Speaker 1 (35:17):
Honestly. I'm like, literally almost stop bleeding after like two weeks,
and I'm like, oh no, I don't have to wear
normal undies again. It's just so nice.

Speaker 2 (35:25):
Just chuck them in the ben when you're just going
to pretend that she's still bleeding simply so that she
can wear them.

Speaker 1 (35:30):
Literally. So we get in the car, so it's me
and Charlie and Adula. Niki in the back, who's wedge
between two car seats. She's tiny, she's like five feet
so it was fine. And then Lucy and Emma are
in the car behind us. Oh, I forgot to say.
Sorr the second midwife had been there for ages, just
like pottering around waiting for her thing, and she was

(35:51):
really lovely.

Speaker 2 (35:52):
Oh what was her name, Kate. It's a full house
it's a lot of house.

Speaker 1 (35:56):
And the dog was there too, obviously pottering around.

Speaker 2 (35:58):
Oh god, of course I'll be allen.

Speaker 1 (36:00):
He was good though, he didn't hit him, bark or
anything like that. So Kate stayed behind. And this is
the other great thing about having a private midwife. They
clean the house for you. They drain the pool, they
pack the pool down, they take everything away, so you
come home to like a really neat house. We just
had some washing and laundry that we needed to put
on and that was it.

Speaker 2 (36:18):
Oh my god, that's so good, so so good.

Speaker 1 (36:21):
Anyway, so the car ride to the hospital was about
as good as you'd expect it to be. It was
fucking terrible. I thought I was really loud, but Nikki
was like, you didn't make her sound, so in my
head I was going fuck.

Speaker 2 (36:33):
Yeah, but in reality you were just like.

Speaker 1 (36:37):
She's like, you did squeeze my hand a little hard. Anyway,
we get to the hospital and Emma's like, just parking
the five minute parking thing. It's fine if you're like,
if they give you a ticket, we can just say
it's to the birth whatever. So we pull in and
it's Simon's right, Royal Women's. Yeah, in Sydney, amazing hospital,
the greatest, the best, the best, and I can't walk

(36:57):
Guys like I am, yeah, deary, pushing is still happening.
And also the contractions were on top of each other
so they were not stopping, so it was like it
was just fucking mental. I was just like, how is
this happening? This is so crazy? Sorry, I was making
noise with the involuntary stuff, like if I couldn't breathe
through it, then I was like like letting it out.

(37:22):
And would you believe that happened in the car park
in the front of the hospital, just everyone there, and
I'm just like it was like out before.

Speaker 6 (37:32):
No.

Speaker 1 (37:32):
But I was just like in my head like, Okay,
this is just so funny. These people are leaving.

Speaker 2 (37:36):
Did they still make you do a COVID test as
you enter? No?

Speaker 1 (37:40):
No, no one did. It's so lax. Emma went and
got me a wheelchair, so that was good. And luckily
it's like right there, you just go straight into the
lifts and up to the berth suite and we went
into the room and they're like, sorry, we don't have
any big rooms, and they wheeled me into what is
the biggest room I've ever seen in my life. What

(38:00):
do you mean this is a small room? This is
like the same size as my private room. When I
burst threw like, I was like, what do people expect?
Like I was expecting nothing. Public hospital was expecting.

Speaker 2 (38:12):
Like like a tiny room.

Speaker 1 (38:14):
I would just be happy with whatever I got, Like
I'm getting it all for free care.

Speaker 2 (38:18):
Yeah right, it's public. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (38:20):
But it was a massive room. It had like four
chairs in it. I mean I was like, fuck it,
it's bigger than my apartment almost anyway. So we get
in there and I'm straight onto the gas, and let
me tell you, the gas was good, but the contractions
were so big that it wasn't really touching the sides.
I was like thinking, are they just give me fucking oxygen?

(38:40):
Like is this in my head? I would never say
this out loud, obviously, but I was like, is this
just oxygen? Anyway? It wasn't, and I just said to them,
I just want to stop the involuntary pushing because like
it's really scaring me about how intense it is. And
they're like, yeah, yeah, we're going to do that. We're
going to give you something for that. So they're like
we're just waiting for the obstetricians to come. The obstetricians

(39:00):
came and it was three women, and I was like,
I just said to them, I cannot tell you how
amazing it is to see three female obstetricians. I'm so happy. Yes,
because what had happened is as we're going to the hospital,
I'm thinking, Okay, the thing about having a vback but
also a H back is that there can be a
lot of judgment, right, And I was worried that us

(39:22):
coming in was going to be like, oh great, here
come the you know, the hippie dippies with their h
from home. Yeah, coming into the hospital. But everyone was
so lovely. Everyone was like, okay, so you're coming in, like,
let's do a vaginal examination just to see where we're out.
Like they've got to do the whole thing obviously, and
they're like, wow, okay, you've actually gone up to seven centimeters.

(39:44):
So I think what happened is because I was like,
on the way to the hospital, I knew that the
baby was going to be here, and a few hours
ish that maybe my body had relaxed a little bit,
and then my servics had dilated a little bit. So
they were like so we actually could still have a
chance here at birthing vaginally. And I was like, oh
my god, Like I didn't even think that was like

(40:04):
an opportunity. So they said, Okay, what we'll do is
we'll give you an epi dural and then we will
see how that goes. And they did say, like, look,
the thing about an epi durl is that we need
it because we need you to stop the involuntary pushing.
But the thing about an epidural is that every it
can slow everything down. So we might be kind of

(40:25):
like counteracting and a little bit here, but let's give
it a go. This was the only bad experience at
the hospital. Everyone else was fucking rainbows and butterflies, so supportive,
so nurturing, so loving. The anetheist comes in, lovely guy,
the kindest eyes I've ever seen. The senior an ethetist
walks in now, because this anetheist hadn't practiced at this hospital.

(40:47):
He's he's been working for years, like he's like our
age or a little bit older. This was his first
day at this hospital, so he needed to be supervised
by a senior attendant there. And this guy is us,
like this old prick of a guy. So I'm having
these involuntary pushing contractions and he doesn't give a shit,

(41:11):
and I'm saying to them, I cannot sit still. And
it's lucky that Emma was in the room. Like Emma
used to work at this hospital, so she knows everyone,
like she knows the Oh my god, my boob's fully leaking.

Speaker 2 (41:23):
Oh my god, that you've just wasted milk.

Speaker 1 (41:28):
Oh my god. I was like, oh my.

Speaker 2 (41:31):
God, look I feel a bit moist. Look at you,
you little milk machine.

Speaker 1 (41:36):
Milk machine. Anyway, and that was just like an awful experience.
And who I felt worse for was the actual anethetist,
because what would happen is he's administering something and I've
just gotten through a contraction. I'm like, Okay, the contraction's finished,
and he's like, okay, I'm going to do the first
step now, and he does it, and then the fucking
guy that's supervising is like, and why would you do that?
So like testing him while he's doing it, and he's.

Speaker 2 (41:58):
Like he's only got like ten seconds.

Speaker 1 (42:01):
Exactly, and bless the guy, he's like he's like trying
to speak so quickly. He's like, ah, I would do
this because then I would do that.

Speaker 4 (42:07):
Da da da da da.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
And I'm just like, in my head, I'm going to
bless you your kind soul, like thank you so much.
He was trying his hardest, but this this guy, like
I was trying to sit up to get into the
position for them to administer the thing, and he like
put his hands on me, like he was like pulling me,
and I was like anyway, And when I had to
lay back down again, he was like pushing me, and
I said to him, please don't push me. I'm in

(42:29):
a lot of pain, like I'm trying to move in
a way that is least painful for me. And his
answer was, we are the priority here, the anethetist, And
I was just like, in.

Speaker 2 (42:44):
My head, I'm my father in labor, the old doctor.
He's the priority.

Speaker 1 (42:48):
And I just think he's one of those guys who
thinks that women are hysterical when they're having pain.

Speaker 2 (42:53):
He's one of those guys that would like institutionalize us all.

Speaker 1 (42:57):
Exactly the Emma the midwife doing is she like, oh,
she was fucking not happy. She was advocating for me
one hundred percent. She was like, look, guys, she's in pain.
She will tell you when she's finished, like blah blah blah,
Like she was really good and she actually, like afterwards,
went and spoke to some people and everyone's like, yeah,
he's a dickhead, like literally walked in arms crossed like

(43:17):
such attitude, and it just changed the whole mood. Anyway,
We're gonna forget about that part of it because we
ended up just roasting him for the whole rest of
the labor, so it didn't even matter.

Speaker 2 (43:26):
It was like, also, like, what's a birth story if
it doesn't involve one sad little old man?

Speaker 1 (43:31):
Exactly? So true. So they ministered the epidural and they
both left and then kind Eyes, an ethetist, came back
in and he was like, I'm so sorry about that,
and I'm like, no, I just want to thank you
for oh crushing rushing your answers in order for us
to get through that as quickly and painfree as possible.
And his epidural was fucking slay. He was sligh under

(43:55):
all that pressure. That fucking epy durol was slay. They
did do a top up, but my gosh, it felt good, honey.
My epi dural with route didn't work, so I was
a bit like, oh, yeah, they're gonna give me an
EPI dural. Will it work, won't it work? Who knows? Anyway, spoilery,
Well it's working.

Speaker 3 (44:10):
It's good.

Speaker 1 (44:11):
It's real good. It's real good. So then I was
just like cracking jokes. I was just like the life
of the hospital room guys.

Speaker 2 (44:20):
It was so cute.

Speaker 1 (44:21):
And then everyone's like, you need to have a sleep,
and I was like, so true. I've been up since
ten pm the previous day and it was like literally
mid day by that point, and so I ended up
having a week sleep. And then they came back and
did a vaginal exam I think maybe four hours later,
and they were like, Okay, hasn't been any progress. We're
still sitting at seven centimeters, but let's give it another

(44:44):
couple of hours and then let's have a chat then
and see how you're feeling about everything. So two hours
or three hours later, two three hours later, they checked
again and nothing had happened. It was still the same,
and so they kind of had a chat with me.
They were like, you can continue to keep laboring like this,
but like explaining, the epidural has slowed everything down, obviously

(45:05):
we need that to control the pushing that you're having,
so we would recommend getting a sea section, and I
just said, yeah, I'm super comfortable with getting the sea section,
and then yeah, that was kind of it. We went
through the kind of procedure. They talked me through the
risks of everything, which I feel like didn't happen the
first time around. I don't want to say that for sure,

(45:26):
but they talked me through every single risk that could
possibly happen as a result of a sea section. And
another thing happened that they gave me the stuff to
stop the clotting and I had to take the injections
home with me and give myself an injection every day
for five days. That did not happen.

Speaker 2 (45:45):
Everyone has to do after a sea section.

Speaker 1 (45:47):
I did not have that with RU. We never had
to do that.

Speaker 2 (45:50):
So that's literally just everyone has to do. Oh my god.

Speaker 1 (45:54):
They were like really shocked when I said that, and
I was like, I think it's because remember how I said.
When I went and got my hostpital records, they had
discharged me under a different name. I think that's what happened.
I think I fucked up my discharge, so which is
lucky that nothing fucking happened. It's really bad anyway. Then
I'm like, well, how long until this is happening? And
they're like seven thirty and I'm like, oh my god,

(46:15):
it's seven pm right now and half an hour I'm
going to meet my baby. And they're like yeah. So
we were just so excited, like it had been such
a beautiful and long day and now we were going
to meet our baby, and we were just fucking stoked.
I had a new anethetist because the other one is
just on the ward, and this anetheist comes into the
C section. He explains all of the things about the

(46:36):
epidural just and also kind of the procedure that's going
to happen, just so from start to finish, so I
understand what's going on. And he's like, we're going to
wheel you in to prep you, and then I'm going
to take you in to get the drugs and everything right,
and then Charlie can come in after Emma was allowed
to scrub in with us, which was awesome because she
still work there. So we had two midwives present, which

(46:56):
was awesome, and then we did have to do a
spinal tap. It was awesome. He just gave me a
bit of time, and that's what happens.

Speaker 2 (47:05):
The spinal tap on top of the ePIE is what
makes you like, gives you the really bad shakes and stuff.

Speaker 1 (47:10):
Right, Oh, no, I get the shakes anyway from from it. Yeah,
it's not good. I was like shaking it immediately as
we went in there, and they're like trying to talk
to me and I'm.

Speaker 2 (47:18):
Like, no, put a blanket on me, please. They're like,
you're not cold.

Speaker 1 (47:23):
I remember, yes, from last time. But we said to them, hey, like,
obviously we'd really love skin to skin straight away. We
want to do delayed cord clamping. And also Charlie will
announce the gender because we didn't know the gender. Obviously
we thought it was going to be a boy and
they're doing it and so obviously we didn't know this
at the time, but Emma, our midwife, told us this

(47:44):
after the fact. Was that the surgeon who did the
C section ended up being doctor Harry, my other doctor.
Because they were going to give me the spinal she
ran out because it was like an emergency on the ward,
and then because the spinal didn't happen, epidurer worked, she
missed out on the berth and she was really devastated.
She came in the next end She's like, I cannot

(48:05):
believe that I missed the birth, and I was like,
oh my god, it's fine. Doctor Harry was amazing, lovely,
loveliest guy and really like OCD like it took him
an hour to sew me up, and I was like, well,
list oh it was starkay. Anyway, he did this thing
called a gentle cesarean, which I had never heard of,
and basically what happens is that rather than like pulling

(48:27):
the baby kind of out of your stomach, they still
put pressure on you. So I felt still pressure on
the top and the bottom of me, but it's almost
like a bit of a reflex that the baby ends
up pushing itself out, and it's it's something that they
do to kind of mimic the feeling of and it's
obviously not the same, but to mimic the feeling of
them coming out of the birth canal, so it's like

(48:49):
they're actually birthing. And it was really cool because I
felt like our whole experience, even though we didn't get
our v back when we went to the hospital, I
obviously had resis about how people would view our choices
for birthing, even though I feel confident in them, but
you just never know we'll welcomed like so nicely, had
full female obstetrician team. Everyone was like, yeah, let's keep going.

(49:12):
There could be you know, we could do a vaginal birth.
I didn't say this before, but they actually did do
another vaginal examination on the table just to make sure
that I hadn't like miraculously dilated to ten centimeters, to
be like really sure that we had exhausted all opportunities,
and then for it to finish with this like gentle cesarean.
I just thought it was so nice, such a beautiful

(49:33):
end to our birthing story. And I never had any
trauma from Ru's birth, so I wasn't like worried. I
just was so emotional about everything, and I just felt
like when I found that out, I was like, Okay,
this was meant to be the birth that we had
on the day. And so they lifted the baby up

(49:54):
and doctor Harry was like okay, and the father's going
to announce the gender. Everyone so no one say anything,
and then Charlie goes.

Speaker 7 (50:01):
It's a it's a girl, and then we both just
like pissed ourselves laughing because it was so funny, Like
we were one thousand percent convinced that this was a boy,
so for her to.

Speaker 1 (50:15):
Be a girl, it was just like the biggest and
best surprise, Like there is something in not finding out
the gender because you always think it's going to be
one thing, and then for it to be the exact opposite.
It's just so fucking funny. So anyway, it was beautiful,
and she was.

Speaker 2 (50:30):
So chubby, like she was chubby but like the photo,
she's like, there's big chunky monkey. How much way when
she came out, so.

Speaker 1 (50:38):
Rue was like three kilos and this baby was three
point eight, so almost almost a kilo more, like not
far off from being a whole kilo more than Ru
was no wonder. I was like hobbling around like it's
biggest baby I've ever had. But yeah, she was just
so beautiful and has dark coloring, like I could tell instantly.

(50:59):
I was like, oh my god, looks like you. She
looks like me, like jet black hair, so much hair,
which I already knew from the scans. I had said,
like they've got a lot of hair, but jet black
hair and this like darker skin. So it's just so
interesting the way that genetics all works. Like I was
just straight away, I was like, oh my god, she's
so different looking to rue definitely my coloring, and yeah,

(51:22):
it was just really exciting. So they put her straight
on my chest and she was there the whole time.
They'd like, they're like, oh, we can do her way
in now, or we can do it later and recovery,
and I was like, oh, let's do it in recovery.
I just want to like spend that time with her.
So we just like spent time as a family of
just me and Charlie and the baby and just cuddling
and just looking at.

Speaker 2 (51:41):
Hercuse she looked quite alert after a long labor and
also so cooked. She looks like quite an alert little baby.

Speaker 1 (51:49):
Well, the thing was, her heart rate was fine the
whole time except for that deceleration. She was like so normal.
That's why they were so happy for me to continue
to try and die, because she was fine. Once they
got that involuntary pushing stopped every my heart rate, my
blood pressure was all good. So she was so calm,

(52:11):
Like she let out a massive cry instantly, and that
would like flooded me with tears because they're like oh
my god.

Speaker 2 (52:18):
And then she was just like when they come out,
and then the rest of the time that they're they're small,
you're like, please don't cry.

Speaker 1 (52:24):
Yeah, that's enough now. But then the most sort of
chillst thing, like she just wanted to kind of feed
straight away because she's a chunky monkey. But yeah, she's
really alert for sure because she cooked for two more
weeks than Ru. So it's just completely different. Rue was
like quite a sleepy baby. But I also think that's
because I labored for so long with drugs like I

(52:45):
did the potocin, I did morphine, potocin, had the epidural, Like,
there are a lot of drugs in my system with
that birth, whereas with this birth, I think the total
amount of drugs I would have had would have been
seven hours worth of drugs and the whole which started
at ten pm. So like it's just a different, yeah,
different scenario. But yeah, she has been awake, alert and

(53:09):
ready to fucking live life. So that's the story.

Speaker 2 (53:13):
You took her home the next day, right.

Speaker 1 (53:16):
We took her home. No, So technically the day they're
born is day zero, so day one and day two,
so we took her home on day two.

Speaker 2 (53:24):
I've never heard of someone being able to leave that
soon after a sea. Well, I just like.

Speaker 1 (53:28):
There was one actually one complication, Like it wasn't end
up being a complication, but when they were closing me up,
they saw a little bit of blood in my bladder
and they thought maybe they had nicked something. So they
had to like clear it out with this methylene blue
twice just to make sure that it wasn't actually blood.
In the end, they just think it was a bit
of blood from her. But because of that, they wanted

(53:49):
me to keep the catheter in, like they wanted me
to stay. They wanted me to have the catheter and
basically the whole day. So typically they'd take it out
the morning after the sea, but I had to leave
it to the following morning. And I just was so
uncomfortable with the catheterine. Like I was really bedbounds, you know,
like your bedbound until the epiduro and things were off.
But I just just doesn't feel good having that catheterine.

(54:13):
That made that first night really difficult. And then it
came really down our decision to leave early came really
down to how it was affecting Rue. Like Charlie went
to go pick her up from daycare to bring her
because that's like Jem, friend of the Pods, sister in law.
She had been taking rid of daycare picking her up,

(54:34):
but after we birthed, Charlie wanted to pick her up
just for a bit of normal scene that the educator
said to him, Oh, we're so glad that you picked
her up today. Apparently she had just been like she
was fine when Jem dropped her off. She's so happy
with Jim, loves her, loves her cousins, but just was
like sobbing in the educator's arms and she's just not
like that, you know. So the educator yeah, oh my god.

(54:55):
And they were obviously fully aware of what was happening
and everything like that, but me finding that out and
then having her come, so she came. Lucy was there.
We had like a little birthday party for Suki. Lucy
baked a cake and brought it. We had some champagne,
and Rue got to meet her, and then we stayed
like roue stayed till like eight o'clock, and then Charlie

(55:16):
took her back to our sister in laws. But we
were both kind of talking like we need to get
out of here. We just need to all be together
because the transition is really difficult, and she was already
showing signs of struggling like that early on the baby
was had only just arrived or wasn't even there yet,
you know, when she was really upset. So yeah, we
just said, like, can we leave tomorrow? And they were

(55:38):
like you can. I think they wanted us to stay
a bit longer, but they were like no, you know,
if you want too, you can, but just like, obviously
call us if there's anything going on. It was fine. Look,
it wasn't ideal.

Speaker 2 (55:49):
Could you not have stayed by yourself or you wanted
you wanted all of you to be together.

Speaker 1 (55:54):
Well, we did talk about that. Charlie's like, I'll go home,
But the thing was, it was like it's a bit
useless meeting hospital by myself. Like what had happened actually
when he was dropping her back at eight o'clock that night,
is that the baby started crying. I couldn't move because
I still had the catheterin and the buzzer had dropped
on the ground and I was in a amount of pain.

(56:15):
I needed pain relief. So it took me probably fifteen
minutes to get the courage to push or pull myself
up to then get out of bed and get the buzzer,
and I was in tears, and I just was like,
there's a reason why, like you need a support person
with you in hospital, because like if the fucking buzzer
falls on the floor, you were fucked. Like I was

(56:36):
like trying to think, like what number would I call
right now to reach the midwif sit outside my door?

Speaker 2 (56:41):
Like it was, so do you not just be like
help help?

Speaker 1 (56:45):
I did think about that, actually, I was that would
be my next thing, right, But anyway, I managed to
get the buzzer and they came in and I was
just like in tears. So when Charlie and I were
talking about that, I was just like, but I kind
of need you here, so I'd rather all be together
so that you know you can be there for real,
you can be there for me and I can be
there for the baby kind of thing. The funniest thing
happened though not funniest thing, but like the fire alarm

(57:07):
went off. It was like cold red, evacuate, evacuate, and
I was like, fuck, You're like I can't. I was
like I can't.

Speaker 5 (57:14):
Really do that.

Speaker 1 (57:15):
I'm like, should I be evacuating right now. And then
people pop the head and be like, hey, it's all good,
nothing nothing to see here.

Speaker 4 (57:21):
Both um.

Speaker 7 (57:22):
But then it was like evacuate now, evacuate now, and
I was like, evacuate now, yeah, and they're full on, like.

Speaker 2 (57:28):
The yeah, and there was aggressive and.

Speaker 1 (57:31):
They're like, oh, there's just been a little fire on
the floor and.

Speaker 2 (57:34):
I was like, oh, no, worries.

Speaker 5 (57:35):
All good.

Speaker 1 (57:35):
But they had it all yeah, they had it all
on to control. But I was like, I think it's
time just to get home to creature comfort. So yeah,
we went home on day two. And I will say
something about leaving in the hospital early that because and
Dona is a controlled substance, they only give you ten.
So had I stayed in hospital for like the full
five or whatever days that you're meant to after a

(57:58):
C section, they would have given me because they are
controlling the substance and how it is been dispersed. I
would have been able to continue like the four a day,
but the ten lasted me two days.

Speaker 2 (58:11):
Would they not have given you a script or something?

Speaker 1 (58:13):
No, Like I would have had to go to the
doctor and ask for a script. And even then it's like,
because it's a controlled substance. They like, I really want
to make sure and I just didn't really want to
go to the doctor's surgery. I was like fine, So
we just took major like my panadol and my I
took voltairein for inflammation was regular and there was a
bit a day where the pain was like not ideal,

(58:35):
but I just had to really stay on top of
the panadole and it was okay. I mean I liked
the end.

Speaker 2 (58:41):
It was a controlled substance. I've got so much here.

Speaker 1 (58:44):
Okay, Well, you could have told me that, I would
have realized.

Speaker 2 (58:47):
I didn't know that it was because I don't like
the way that it makes me feel. So whenever I've
been given it, I just s.

Speaker 1 (58:53):
A take it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, well it's it's it's
an opiate.

Speaker 2 (58:58):
It just makes me sleep, which I don't like.

Speaker 1 (59:00):
Anyway, So we all came home and that was at
and now it's been crazy ever since.

Speaker 2 (59:05):
So talk to me about your feeding and latching, Like,
how's the feeding process going?

Speaker 1 (59:12):
Okay, So this time around, I really wanted to like
nail breastfeeding the first time. It was also new to me.
I also got different advice. Saw that Dodgy lactation consultant.
I was fine with bottle feeding Rue, but I was like,
if I can do it, yeah, So best feeding has
been going really well. We have Look, it's been really hard.

(59:35):
At the same time, I'm not gonna lie. Obviously, when
you have a c section, your milk can take a
little longer to come in. I felt like my milk
did come in. But she has was cluster feeding for
like a week straight and it was just insane.

Speaker 2 (59:50):
Are your nipples okay? Have you been using those little
silver things? Hello?

Speaker 1 (59:54):
The silver eggs? Hello, Sheilby.

Speaker 2 (59:57):
I can't wait to squeeze your cheeks. She was so cute.

Speaker 1 (01:00:01):
Look, it's been really challenging the feeding, just because of
it's so different to Rue. She's just such a completely
different baby in every way, Like she's so hungry all
the time, she's clinging, so she wants to sleep only
on me. She doesn't like the snow, she doesn't like
the snow as a busnet. So it's just been a

(01:00:23):
lot different. And the midwife. The thing about also having
a private midwife is they come every second day in
the first week, every four days, every five like, and
it kind of peeters off after six weeks so you
see them quite regularly. So she was like, would check
her latch and she'd be like, her latch is amazing,
she's good, she's pink. We weighed her and she'd only

(01:00:43):
lost four percent of her body weight in the first
way in which is awesome. So she's like, everything is happening,
like you're doing really well. It's just whether or not
mentally it's too much for you with you know, the
slipless nights and that you maybe want to introduce a
pump or you want to do a little top up,
like that's completely up to you. But she's like, you know,

(01:01:05):
your milk's still establishing, so those things can also be
detrimental to that. And I was just like, look, we've
come this far, let's just like get there. And I
think the two week mark is when I'll make the decision,
like if I start pumping then, because obviously like doing
a fake pump, like your body doesn't know that that's

(01:01:26):
milk for the pump versus milk for the baby, so
it can fuck up like your supply. So only because
I had issues with my supply last time, like other
people who don't have supply issues wouldn't have to think
about this too much, but because my supply was so
bad last time, we're just trying to get it up
as good as it can be as a standalone and
then introduce some of those things. So I'm seeing Emma

(01:01:48):
today and we're going to do a way in for
Suki then to see how much weight she's lost. Hopefully
I founder up a little bit, and then we'll make
a plan for how everything's.

Speaker 4 (01:02:00):
Going to go.

Speaker 2 (01:02:02):
So how are you feeling mentally?

Speaker 1 (01:02:05):
Look, it has been quite different this time around with Rue.
I didn't have baby blues. With Rue. I had a
drop in my hormones after I stopped breastfeeding, which we've
talked about in our feeding episode or the mental health episode.
But other than that, I was pretty blissed out for
that whole pregnancy and newborn phase. Obviously, our life and

(01:02:28):
our family was a lot different back then.

Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
You were really in the bubble, the baby bubble, really
in the baby bubble. You also were working for a company,
so maternity leave looked a lot different exactly.

Speaker 1 (01:02:40):
And just like money stuff, even like you know, government
stuff is great, we've applied for that, we're getting that
money amazing, But you know, there are more significant stresses
this time around, and more things that are sad at
this time around. So the baby blues definitely kicked in,
and in the first few days it really kind of
grasped onto the that we didn't get our v back.

(01:03:02):
So even though like logically and rationally in my head,
I was saying I was so happy with the birth
and the labor and how everything went, and I was like,
there literally was nothing else they could have done, my
baby blues were like, you failed at that.

Speaker 2 (01:03:18):
You know, when you messaged me and told me, you
were like, it's all fine, though you know I didn't,
And I was like, no, it's not no one. When
you have a plan and it doesn't go to plan,
or it doesn't matter how rational your brain can be,
that doesn't change the way that you feel. And of
course you would feel that way, like it's just normal

(01:03:39):
and that's okay.

Speaker 1 (01:03:42):
Yeah, And so that was pretty hard. And then we
had a lot of they just shouldn't let your name
a human when you've just had a baby and you're
emotional and the.

Speaker 2 (01:03:53):
Especially if you've got no idea what to call it.

Speaker 1 (01:03:55):
And it took us days and it was just like
I don't know what to call this because we thought
she was going to have a penis and we had
only penis names.

Speaker 2 (01:04:04):
Well, I loved the story about the white board that
you had, like all of the names and a white board,
like as if it was a like a spy show
or something. You're like, right, we have to name this kid.
We were just trying to have a name for like
what five days.

Speaker 1 (01:04:17):
Yeah, yeah, a week, almost a week, and it was
just like, what did you call her?

Speaker 8 (01:04:21):
Baby?

Speaker 1 (01:04:21):
Yeah, we called her a lot of different names to
test them out. We were like, hey, but Susie, Susie,
rue Wren, but we yeah, ended up picking a name
and then it just we started telling people and it
was in my mind it felt like it was like
this runaway train because I don't know. It's just like

(01:04:43):
with Rue, I knew her name was meant to be
her name straight away, but Charlie had a lot of
like we because we talked about this, because I was
like having a full meltdown, and Charlie was like, I
felt exactly how you feel about Rue, Like, but you
you were so confident in the name at that I
was like, Okay, it's going to be like it's fine.
He loves the name of this.

Speaker 2 (01:05:04):
You just mean that you feel like now that everyone
knows what her name is, but you're still like not
one hundred percent sure, and you are like, but what
if I wanted to change it?

Speaker 1 (01:05:13):
Exactly?

Speaker 2 (01:05:13):
What mean?

Speaker 1 (01:05:14):
That's exactly what I said. And then Charlie was like,
if we want to change it, we can who cares?
And I was like, so true, a famie, Shuma can
do it. When the kid's a year old, you can
do it.

Speaker 4 (01:05:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:05:24):
I remember she named her kid like Gene, I'm a
Janital or something without realizing.

Speaker 1 (01:05:28):
Yeah, that was a bit silly. Someone should have told
her it was a tribute to her bestie the middle name.

Speaker 2 (01:05:33):
Not one person was like doll, no, no, So that
was just Trumas people don't have good friends clearly.

Speaker 1 (01:05:40):
No they don't. They need us in their lives to
tell them. But yeah, it would just attach itself to
things like that. And so it's just been a bit
different that there's time around, like you know, and you've
been struggling a lot with Ruth, and Rue has been
the hardest challenge of it all, Like having a new
baby is hard and normal like way like lack of sleep,

(01:06:01):
but it's really difficult with Rue. She's just not handling
it well. She loves her sister. She comes and she's
so gentle with her, and she cuddles and she's like,
I want to do this, and like holds her hands
like she wants to hold the baby, and I'm like,
you want to hold the baby.

Speaker 3 (01:06:16):
She's like yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:06:17):
So she obviously loves her, but I don't think she
fully understood how that would impact our dynamic as a family.
Like she didn't understand her getting a sibling meant. She
was just like, oh, I get a baby.

Speaker 2 (01:06:28):
Cool.

Speaker 1 (01:06:29):
I've got my dolls they're pretty cool, but this baby.

Speaker 2 (01:06:32):
And then she see other people with siblings, like her
cousins or whatnot, and think that that's what it meant.
But for the first while, it doesn't mean that at all.
It means Mom and Dad in particular, Mom, a lot
of that your energy is just on the baby and
forever more the energy is.

Speaker 1 (01:06:49):
Split, exactly. And so she's just having a lot of
meltdowns about different things. And you know she wants something
and you don't want her to do it or have it,
and you're kind of putting a boundary in place. She'll
just scream and cry and be upset and it's really difficult.
And what we're finding at the moment is she'll scream

(01:07:11):
on purpose to wake the baby up because she knows
that that gets me upset. And I'm just like, but
do you not understand that the baby being asleep means
that I can give you attention, Like, babe, I'm trying
to do this for us, And so I just feel
like I've been really grumpy with her, and you know,
Charlie's like your sleep deprived babe, like you know. And

(01:07:34):
so basically at the moment, we're having to all go
to bed in our bed together because she doesn't want
to sleep in her bed. She doesn't want to miss out,
you know, she wants to be with the baby. Is
So once she's asleep, we're just transfer her and then
we're just going to bed early, just to get a
little head start on the bloody cluster feeding monster.

Speaker 2 (01:07:53):
Because Suki is feeding every twenty to thirty minutes. You
said during the night.

Speaker 1 (01:07:59):
Yeah, she's kind of eats a little bit more, but
in the last two days eased up a little bit.
But even though last night's tenth card again, yeah, so
that was the first you know, ten days and then yeah,
in the last two days, it's gotten a bit better.
She's starting to do long distance of sleep during the day,
so the day is better dependently independently. Yeah, I put

(01:08:19):
her in the pram. She seems to like the pram bassinette.
You know, whatever works, whatever works. She hates the bloody
cocuona babay.

Speaker 2 (01:08:27):
It is not cheap.

Speaker 1 (01:08:29):
I just got a whole new cover. I'm just like, well, fucking.

Speaker 2 (01:08:32):
Hell, apparently a lot of babies don't like this new
till they're like a little bit older.

Speaker 3 (01:08:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:08:37):
Well we put it on really gently and she lost
her shit. So I'm actually getting a side sleeper because she,
like Emma said to me, the midwife was like, and
she actually asked her other midwife that she works with,
and she was like, one of them said, I had
a baby exactly like this. They just want to be
on you, and often second babies want to co sleep.
So I'm getting like a side bed coat. Oh that's

(01:09:00):
a good idea, yeah, And iltatoan to test that out
and see if that works, because I'm just also a
little bit anxious about not having my eyes on her.
This is the other thing that's happened. Like I've got
like weird things I'm anxious about, Like people were looking
after Rue, but yeah, she was going to like a
pool party, and then our other friends were looking after her,
going to their like Nana's house with the pool, and

(01:09:21):
I just had this like crazy anxiety about like not
being there to supervise her. And it wasn't like I
didn't trust them to look after Rue. It's like, you know,
Ru is just so different to her normal self at
the moment, like worrying that she gonna just like run
off because she wants to find me, and then like so, yeah,
there's just been a few I get it around. My anxiety.

Speaker 2 (01:09:43):
It'd be so hard, Yeah, just hard because.

Speaker 1 (01:09:45):
You're not there, and I don't want her to like
I don't want want her to send her away, but
also I want her to have fun, you know, and
have these outings, and it's good for us to have
like a little rest as well. But it is very hard,
and I thought I had prepared myself for that, but
I don't think you really can because you just don't
know how your child's going to react. So that's the

(01:10:08):
hardest thing at the moment, and that's the thing that
I is really weighing quite heavily on me, but I
just have to keep remembering it's a sibling for her.
Yeah that hopefully one day they'll get along and.

Speaker 2 (01:10:21):
Oh my god, they will look at me and my
sister like and my brother like they will. I was thinking,
next week, once Charlie's back at work and you could
use the extra hands, I'll come over and just even
play in the backyard so you can still see us.

Speaker 1 (01:10:36):
Oh yeah, nice, love that.

Speaker 2 (01:10:37):
And then Lenny and Ruke can just like play in
the backyard. Yes, supercure arrest upstairs.

Speaker 1 (01:10:42):
I love that, Thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:10:44):
What would you say is the best thing? You know,
you've spoken a little bit about that, you feel a
lot more confident, Like, what's the best thing about the
second time around?

Speaker 3 (01:10:55):
Ah?

Speaker 1 (01:10:57):
I think this time around just like knowing how hard
our like family life has been and everything, just seeing
the joy that it's brought Charlie, Like, because I've been
pregnant for nine months, you know, so I'm having this
connection with the thing that I'm growing. But they've been
for ten months actually ten months, thank you. But the
guys kind of sit on the sideline. So I think

(01:11:20):
for me, the best thing has been seeing him become
a dad. Again and just like how stoked he is
and how happy he is, and it's been like a
very long time since I've probably seen him that happy.
So that's probably my favorite thing about it so.

Speaker 2 (01:11:36):
Far, Like watching him in the birth video that you
put up will link it. He was just the pillar
of strength that men should all like look to.

Speaker 1 (01:11:49):
Yeah, he did a really a good job he did.

Speaker 2 (01:11:52):
So I can't wait to hear his little thoughts about everything.

Speaker 1 (01:11:57):
Yes, yes, hopefully that don't make me cry.

Speaker 2 (01:12:00):
They probably will, that's okay. Now we're lucky enough to
have insights from a few other people who were at
Sukie's birth.

Speaker 5 (01:12:12):
Hi, shit is longtime listener, first time caller. This is Lucy.
I wanted to give you my perspective on Key's birth. Spoiler,
she was amazing. I got a call from Key at
about three point thirty in the morning, and for a
good four weeks, I was so scared that I was
going to sleep through this call that I had my
phone like not on, do not disturb on four volume,

(01:12:34):
but one ring and I answered and Kay just said
it's happening, come over here, quick, quick, and then hung
up the phone. So when I got there, Key was
in her bedroom on the floor with Nikki, her Dula
and Emma, Andrew and Alan and Charlie, and it really
was a really beautiful experience from the get go, like

(01:12:56):
it just felt very peaceful, very calm. There were many
comments throughout the whole labor from the midwife, Emma and Nikki,
the idola just saying how calm and controlled and kind
of like introspective Key was. She was really really looking
inward for that strength. And Charlie was setting up the

(01:13:18):
bath and I decided that it would be a good
time to play Key the first video message that I
had gathered from people in her life, and this one
was from George, her sister in law, Charlie's sister. And
my intention with it with these messages, I gathered about
ten from her nearest and dearest, and I just wanted
them to be little moments of kind of community and

(01:13:39):
support throughout Key's labor in those tough moments, just hearing
from the people that back you the most. Even I
can imagine, like I haven't had a baby, I haven't
been through labor, but I can imagine that it gets
to a point where like I don't know if I
can do this, and I obviously knew he could do it,
and so did everyone else, but I wanted her to
hear that from them, so I played that, and then

(01:14:00):
from her godmother Sue, I played a voice note. Of course,
Kelly got a voice note in there, and there was
lots of other videos throughout, but they were just moments
of kind of lifting spirits, I think. And then Kee
was like, something's coming out. I think I'm giving birth
and it was her. I'm sure she's talked about this

(01:14:22):
her like the sack, like the amniotic sack. But I
was like, holy shit, I think she's having a baby.
And I've run out to the midwife being like I
think she's having a baby, like something is coming out.
Obviously I was wrong, And then Rue was amazing. I
just kept being like, gosh, she is so calm and
collected and wasn't like wigged out by the experience at all.

(01:14:45):
Every now and then she'd look over to me and
be like, is mummy okay? Just like a look like that,
and I'd just be like, mummy's okay, Mummy's good. And
there was like a couple of really cute moments. So
obviously prior to the birth, Key was like, look, you
might see me pooh, like I just need to get
that out there. That happened sometimes in birth, and I
was like, truly the least of my worries, but glad
it's out there now. And Key was in the bath

(01:15:09):
and Rue was at the business end and she looks
at me and goes mummy, poo pool and Key's face.
She turns to me and just gives me this look
like did I just shit? And I was like, you
actually didn't. Like I was like, no, you did not, pooh.
So there were lots of like really funny little moments
throughout it. Rue like pulled up her favorite Elsa chair

(01:15:30):
and literally sat right in front of Key in the water,
like she was just divine throughout it all. And Key,
I was obviously Key and I've been friends for you know,
a good time now. But seeing her in labor and
delivers Suki, like seeing her bring Souki into the world,
I can't quite even express how incredible it was to witness.

(01:15:54):
I was in awe of her and her strength and
her courage and her determination to meet her baby, and
oh gosh, I had just so many moments where I
was like, this is incredible. Like people who give birth
are unbelievable, and this person that I love is so unbelievable.
I did have a few teary moments. I cried when
we got to the hospital and it was time to

(01:16:15):
go to the hospital, and that decision was made just
because she was in pain. And I went.

Speaker 1 (01:16:21):
To give her a hug.

Speaker 5 (01:16:21):
She looked at me, she started tearing up. I was
tearing up, and it was just kind of a moment
of like not necessarily a sad cry, but like you
got this, like I'm just trying to transfer all of
my strength to you. When we went up to the
hospital room, I just felt that Key had a real
sense of calm and control around the berth, you know.
Of course she was going for a vback and the

(01:16:43):
team was so amazing, Like once she had the epidural,
they really gave her her body that chance, do you know,
to keep trying. They didn't rush her into surgery, they
didn't try and speed it along. She really was given
a lot of choice, as she should be. But I
just felt like Key was in control of a pretty
like out of control situation, you know. And of course

(01:17:04):
then I was sitting in the waiting room while she
was in theater, and then we went up to the
room where she would be recovering and Charlie walked in.
A couple of nurses and doctors walked past me going
do you know? Do you know about the gender? And
I was like no, no, I don't know. And then
Charlie walked in with Key following behind him in the

(01:17:25):
bed and he just said, has anyone told you? I said,
no one's told me anything, and he had this look
of pure joy and delight on his face and he
just said, it's a girl. And I was convinced it
was a girl. So it feels good to be right again. Crying,
just so proud of Key and of Charlie. He was
an incredible support. And also just witnessing Emma and Nikki.

(01:17:48):
It really as someone who hasn't experienced this before, it
made me think, I think this is the kind of
experience that I would want to have. These people who are,
you know, advocating for you, you and by your side
and seeing you through this transformative experience. I was just
in awe of everyone, and it's an experience that's changed
my life, There's no doubt about that. And I feel

(01:18:12):
more connected to Kay than ever and Key and Charlie
and Souk and Ruit and Alan of course and Allen
are my chosen family. Like I really believe that we
have a bond that is very special and being there
in that moment was the greatest honor of my life.
And even I feel like saying that is an understatement,
Like I just can't express enough how much it meant

(01:18:34):
to me to be there with them in that moment.
Just congratulations, Kay, you are a rock star like anyone
who gives birth. I'm like, you really fucking did that?
Like that is wild and I'm just I'm just in awe.

Speaker 1 (01:18:49):
Okay, what's your name?

Speaker 3 (01:18:52):
Very good? And did you just become a big sister?

Speaker 2 (01:18:56):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:18:56):
What's your sister's name?

Speaker 4 (01:18:58):
So cute?

Speaker 3 (01:19:00):
What's your favorite thing about being a big sister? Mid baby?

Speaker 1 (01:19:06):
Do you like holding your sister? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:19:09):
Do you like giving her big cuddles, hair and kisses?

Speaker 2 (01:19:13):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:19:13):
Nice work.

Speaker 3 (01:19:14):
You're such a good big cissy.

Speaker 6 (01:19:16):
Hi. I'm emma. I'm Key and Charlie's midwife. My experience
of Key and Charlie's labor is just awe and I'm
just so impressed with how they both coped, and especially Key.

Speaker 3 (01:19:31):
It's been such a difficult.

Speaker 6 (01:19:33):
Year and throughout the pregnancy she just fought for what
she wanted and for what she wanted to achieve, and
that's very much how she was in the labor and birth.
She overcame so much. It was really amazing to watch
him and be a part of you know, she genuinely
had the full home birth experience, and you know, I

(01:19:54):
know that baby Soukei wasn't born to her vagina, but
she did absolutely everything she could her power to try
and that wasn't what was meant to be on the day.
But Key and Charlie should be so immensely proud of themselves.

Speaker 1 (01:20:09):
So what they achieved. I haven't seen so.

Speaker 6 (01:20:13):
Much love in a room before, with Rue running around,
our running round, My mum was there as Adula, Lucy,
so much support, and I know that he will look
back at this as a positive experience. I know I
left that long labor and birth feeling really positive, and

(01:20:36):
that's not always the case when somebody has necessarian but
I remember leaving feeling like we have done absolutely everything
in our power to try and achieve this, and it
hasn't gone that way today, but I know that, you know,
Key will look back at this and use it to
do something positive, because that's just what she does. And
I know that her sharing her story and her experiences

(01:20:58):
is going to be huge, and that's It's been the
absolute pleasure. And I'm just in awe of that beautiful family.

Speaker 8 (01:21:04):
Hi, I'm Nikki, I'm Key and Charlie's doula. But the
thing that I was really struck with straight away was
their openness to not to be stuck just to the
idea of having a vaginal birth after cesarean, but to
go with whatever was right on the day, So the
right birth on the day for everybody, and that's exactly

(01:21:26):
what happens. And you know, the labor and birth itself
was absolutely lovely. It was a joy to be part of,
you know. For me, I see the whole experience in
two parts, really, the part at home where I went
and spent the earlier part of labor with King Charny.
And at home it was just beautiful, really relaxed and

(01:21:48):
happy and lots of laughing dogs running around, really bringing
her elsa chair to sit and watch mum laboring, something
I shall never forget. It was just beautiful and to
watch the obvious adoration that Charlie has for Key and
the support he gave which was really lovely. So we

(01:22:09):
had that part and Key labored beautifully and was very
determined and strong and just kept on going. And then
when Emma and Kate arrived and we tried all manner
of things and to keep Key comfortable and in charge
of everything, and then the decision was made obviously to

(01:22:31):
get to hospital at that point, which was the decision
that everybody agreed was the right thing, and it was
a decision that Key helped make, and the fact that
she felt empowered and had the information, she knew what,
you know, what she wanted and was happy and you know,
at the end of the day we had a lovely

(01:22:52):
happy experience. And then when we went to hospital, we
had a lovely happy experience as well. Key was relaxed
the situation, It was handled really really well staff around us,
and you know, for me, it was just an incredible
experience really seeing Key and Charlie become parents again, so
the gorgeous little girl, and you know, watching their family grow,

(01:23:15):
but most importantly seeing them have a birth that they
felt was right for them. So I feel incredibly lucky
and happy to have been part of it and to
have been there doers. I thank you, Key and Charlie, Henry.

Speaker 4 (01:23:28):
I now, hey, I'm Charlie and baby Dunny. Like Monday night,
we'd just put my head, I'd feel head to go
to bed. Key, that's something change, you know. I'm probably
it's going to be like contraction to the first few hours,
so let's just trying to get to sleep and you
pick things up in the morning. But they escalated quite quickly.

(01:23:50):
I think the midwife said that by the time she
came over at two am, he was already around beautiful centimated,
so the contractions were already pretty intense after about an hour.
There's all a bit of a shit show on my end.
The first couple of hours. I hadn't set the pool up.
I hadn't cooked any food or you know, packed a

(01:24:11):
hospital bag because I thought i'd have a bit of
time in the early stages. I was able to do that,
but it was a bit of a scramble at first,
you know, I get any electric pump out to pump
up the inflatable pool, and when I am I'm sure
the neighbors went too keen on that, but didn't get
any complaints by then. The dueler and a lovely midwife
thinking and Emma over and helping out quite a bit.

(01:24:33):
I mean, I don't know what I would have done
about them, to be honest, Row work up and was
with us for the entire time. Between trying to set
things up and controlling Brew, I didn't really have much
capacity to help. Can you get through the contractions in
the early stages there, but things kind of normalized after
a few hours. We're all set up and he was
just got throwing through the motions pretty intense pain. To

(01:24:57):
think that she went twelve hours in total adding pain
really his bloody impressive And you know, I don't have
any any profanities or anything, which I was sort of
expecting she changed it to custing out people around her
when she's under duress, But no, she did. She did
it all with a lot of a lot of grace,
and unfortunately we didn't get to finish it at home.

(01:25:19):
But I was very confident that that key had one
hundred percent put everything she could into doing things naturally,
And the great thing about having the private midwife with
us is that we felt safe to continue to over
at home even though things have kind of slowed down
a bit, and they really did everything they could to

(01:25:41):
make sure that Key was comfortable where she was at
and that she was comfortable she had done everything she
could before we finally made that call to go to hospital.
From there was it was quite a seamless experience. We
had a great, great team around at the hospital who
were really supportive of Key, you know, even tried to
encourage it to continue for a feedback, but made the

(01:26:02):
call to do the see that but didn't ever put
any pressure on us to jump straight into surgery or
anything like that. And we're very accommodating to me. And
you know, let's let me play my mum's playlist, which
was really special and important to me speaking ended up
coming out one of her favorite songs, which is really
really nice. Much let's I'm plaud mind.

Speaker 2 (01:26:27):
Well, thank you so much for joining me, Key reseals
you can you can go back to your cozy chair
on Matt leave. And we've really loved hearing the tale
of how sweet Little Silky came earthside.

Speaker 1 (01:26:39):
Thank you so much, and thank you the shit is
for all the lovely messages. It's meant so much getting
them all, and I can't wait to well, I can't
wait to get back, but I'll be back soon.

Speaker 2 (01:26:52):
Yeah. I love that. You were like originally I said
to you, didn't I. I was like, don't you promise anything,
because you're not going to want to come back as
soon as you think you do. But you know, don't
mind me. I'll mind the fort. I'll go find more
people to farm for content from my pumpkin.

Speaker 1 (01:27:06):
But what do we agree on?

Speaker 2 (01:27:07):
No ghosts, I'm not promising anything.

Speaker 1 (01:27:14):
Huge thanks to our audio producer Maddie Joanna and if
you like the pod, please rate and review us. It
means a lot.

Speaker 2 (01:27:20):
Bye.

Speaker 6 (01:27:20):
Shit is ye

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