Pregnancy Uncut

When his partner Maddy went into labour with their second child, Matt was excited to meet the new addition to their family, but a cord prolapse leading to emergency surgery, saw him instead, alone in a waiting room looking at the seemingly motionless hands of a clock. When Baby Wren was born, she required intensive breathing support, and soon afterwards Matt and Maddy had to make the impossible decision to palliate or transfer her to Melbourne to see if specialist help could save her.

Wren spent 8 days in the Royal Children’s hospital in Melbourne and underwent cooling. Despite receiving the devastating news that she would not be able to live without a ventilator, Matt describes them as some of the most treasured days of his life, and the special memories they created that captured her last moments.

In his grief and trauma, Matt has been mobilised to bring about change. He is an incredible advocate for bereaved parents, creating spaces where they, especially the Dads, have the support and resources they need to support themselves and their families. 

Join Matt as he talks to Alex about the heartbreaking and precious short life of baby Wren, and how they navigated pregnancy and birth after birth trauma and loss.  

After a complex fertility journey and a birth and post-partum overshadowed by Covid, Isla was hopeful that she was through the complexity and her journey to her next baby would be more straightforward. At first, this seemed to be the case - as Isla naturally fell pregnant with second baby Freddie. Everything seemed to be going well when Isla discovered a lump on her breast.

Thinking it was likely nothing, possibly mastitis or something connected to the changes of her body in pregnancy, Isla couldn't get rid of the nagging feeling that something wasn't quite right. She persued it further and, after being sent for scans, was told that her hunch had been right - she had aggressive Stage four breast cancer.

Only 33 weeks pregnant at the time, Isla suddenly had to make all kinds of hugely difficult decisions, not just about what was right for her, but also what was the best thing for her baby and she had to do so fast.

Isla speaks of the enormous support she found in community groups, two of which can be found here:

Cancer Chicks.
https://www.instagram.com/cancerchicksau?igsh=dHMzNHFvNTdjeDd2

Pregnancy With Cancer Support Group. (Note, this is a private group and you must ask to join)
https://www.facebook.com/groups/168089259921374/?ref=share&mibextid=NSMWBT

When Candice took her baby boy Emmett home from hospital he had twice failed the standard hearing tests. However, no one seemed too concerned,  her pregnancy had been uncomplicated and everything seemed well. However an outpatient audiology consult that should have taken a couple of hours, lasted nearly a full day and maternal instinct started tingling.  At the end of that day she was told that Emmett had permanent hearing loss on one side and they were referred for further testing and consultation.  

Congenital CMV was listed as one possible cause and there followed a whirlwind of appointments  and tests to arrange to determine exactly what might have caused the hearing loss. Candice and Isaac had never heard of CMV and they took to google, quickly heading down a whirlwind of their own. The symptoms of CMV vary wildly, are often difficult to diagnose and may only present later in life.

Testing confirmed that Emmett had CMV and the next few months were absorbed by days of testing and appointments. Emmett is now a happy boy, developing and learning well - navigating around his hearing loss and Candice is confident that with their support, he will be able to take on the world. With the benefit of hindsight, Candice reflects that there is little she could have done differently, with the precautions to prevent CMV being virtually impossible when living with a toddler and the prevalence of infection being so high.

This episode includes a bonus mini-discussion of the complexities of CMV following Kara's interview with Candice. 

In this episode we side-step from our usual content to hear the considered insights of Dr. Nisha Khot.

Nisha grew up, studied and practiced to become a consultant obstetrician and gynaecologist in India - where 'a feminist was born'.  After further training and working in the UK she landed on Australian shores, practising and training the next generation of O&G specialists, many (including our co-host Kara) are all the better for it. Working as a consultant, Nisha realised that the injustices she was seeing were not going to be fixed by a magical ‘someone’ and so took it upon herself to do something about it.  As a fierce advocate of equity in healthcare and medicine, she is now the Vice-President of The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RANZCOG), and is committed to ensuring the future of the profession has women at its very core .

Join Dr Kara and Dr Nisha as they explore topics close to their hearts and to their practice: the value of diversity, and importance of informed decision-making, and advocacy for gender equity in healthcare.

Pip had always seen herself having a family and as a driven and organised obstetrician she had clear expectations about how, and when, that might happen. But rarely do fertility journeys unfold as we expect.  After an initial miscarriage that instantly her interactions and understanding of the women in her care, she found herself on an IVF journey that would bring heartbreak, complications, twists and turns that she could never have predicted.

Now a mum of four, the family picture belies the journey that Pip and her husband went on to get there. She talks to us about how that journey has shaped every aspect of her, not just as a person but as a doctor as well. Pip’s open and moving conversation with Kara shows how what we see of a person is often only the tip of the iceburg of who they are and the experiences they have had. We carry all our pregnancy experiences in our hearts, those visible to all and those hidden to the outside world.

Alexandra had always imagined being a mum,   but the onset of baby hunger in her late 30s, while a long term relationship with a man who didn’t share her dream, led to a change in direction. After moving back in with her parents, a series of bad dates, time began to outrun her reproductive age, so Alexandra made the pragmatic decision to go it alone using donor sperm.

What followed was a journey of discovery; leading her family through their unease and grief of an expected path, encountering strangers and health professionals quick to share opinions and assumptions.  Alexandra surrounded herself with a community of people who understood and supported her, and in her memoir shares her experience of pregnancy, birth and parenting  baby Quinn. 

Alexandra's book, Inconceivable, is a beautiful, raw, honest, and at times hilarious journey into solo motherhood, one becoming ever more prevalent amongst Australian women. 

Nine years on from a traumatic birth that led to a fourth degree tear, Verity still finds herself wondering if there is more she could have done; asked a different person, articulated herself differently, said the magic words that would have got her the help she so desperately needed.

The reality however, is that she pushed and pushed and pushed. Went down every avenue, was articulate in her concerns, her needs and her emotional vulnerability. Had it not been for her mother and a GP who finally listened, Verity believes her story could have had a disastrous ending. 

In her conversation with us, Verity is open and honest about her birth, her fourth degree tear, subsequent surgery and the toll that took, and continues to take, on her physical and emotional health. She believes that this transparency is crucial, not just for her healing but for others in her position, and there are many. With so much secrecy and misunderstanding still surrounding severe tears, many woman still feel ashamed to talk openly about the reality of living a changed life as a result.

Verity speaks eloquently about this, her personal experience, her fear at falling pregnant a second time and her belief that the impact of her trauma will continue through the generations. Yet at the time, not one person even mentioned the phrase 'birth trauma'. 

Married to a busy farmer and working as a midwife at their nearest hospital, Marnie’s dream was always to have her family born and bred close to home. 

She was just 19 weeks pregnant with her second baby, when her rural GP obstetrician found that baby's heartbeat was around half what it should have been, and diagnosed fetal heart block - a rare condition that would shape the pregnancy, birth, and first months of baby Amelia's life.

What followed was the opposite of what Marnie had envisaged, with hours and hours of driving to multiple appointments, days of intense monitoring and months of uncertainty, all far from home. Impacting the whole family - Marnie is so proud of her partner Pete as he worked all hours of the day, every day, keeping the farm running; and her son Jack who quickly had to get used to spending a lot of time away from his home and his parents, something he had never done before.  

Marnie shares with us her incredible story of a rural family under pressure,  out of their environment, in a pandemic; and of the pacemaker that finally turned Amelia's life around.

Heidi is mother to three children but her firstborn, Harry, was stillborn at 38 weeks after a seemingly straightforward pregnancy.  The delivery of that news, that no expectant parent should ever hear, was done in a way that lacked the care and compassion it warranted and that memory continues to loom large. Returning home, Heidi and her family were lucky to be surrounded by love and support but there were still moments where she felt isolated and alone.

That unique and difficult insight is one that guides her as she supports other families and educates health workers in her role as a Bereavement Support Worker for the Red Nose Foundation, a position that she was offered after sharing Harry's story in a campaign around Stillbirth Australia. 

In this episode, Heidi shares her story of Harry - how he remains a large presence in her and her family's lives and how her work with Red Nose is such an important part of the slowly improving approach to supporting families through stillbirth and pregnancy loss.