Speaker 1: You're listening to Amma Mia podcast.
Speaker 2: Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters
Speaker 2: that this podcast is recorded on. We pay our respects
Speaker 2: to elders past, present and emerging, and feel privileged to
Speaker 2: continue the sharing of birth stories and knowledge that has
Speaker 2: been a fundamental part of Indigenous culture.
Speaker 3: Hi.
Speaker 1: I'm Cassania Lukich and this is diary of a birth.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the most powerful birth stories aren't just about bringing
Speaker 1: a baby into the world. They're about discovering strength you
Speaker 1: never knew you had. Today's guest had already proven her
Speaker 1: resilience after a spinal surgery complication left her unable to walk.
Speaker 1: She'd fought back to fitness and independence, but pregnancy tested
Speaker 1: her in unimaginable ways.
Speaker 3: So round about the three four month mark, I could
Speaker 3: not sleep for the pain in my leg. Like I'm talking,
Speaker 3: I've been awake for twenty four hours. I'm so much discomfort,
Speaker 3: and I fell over and I went to the hospital
Speaker 3: because everything just got wrong.
Speaker 1: By the time COVID hit, she was housebound on heavy medication,
Speaker 1: facing possible early delivery, but she was determined to give
Speaker 1: her daughter the best start, even if it meant months
Speaker 1: of pain. So let's meet today's mum.
Speaker 3: Hi, this is Bria and this is my diary of
Speaker 3: a birth with Theodora.
Speaker 1: So, Brian, I wanted to start off with a little
Speaker 1: bit about your history because you have had a number
Speaker 1: of health issues since you were what seventeen? Yeah, do
Speaker 1: you want to talk us through your health history so
Speaker 1: we can understand where you were before you got pregnant.
Speaker 3: So I had a really bad back from puberty. I
Speaker 3: had sciatica down both of my legs that would come
Speaker 3: and go, and I would frequently have issues and that
Speaker 3: program all the way through my life, and I would
Speaker 3: manage it and I'd have some time in bed and
Speaker 3: it was all contained, I guess, until I was about
Speaker 3: twenty seven. I'd move from New Zealand to Australia. I
Speaker 3: was working in a professional job and I just had
Speaker 3: another flare and I couldn't manage it. I just could
Speaker 3: not get on top of it. And it turned out
Speaker 3: that a couple of the disks of my lower spine
Speaker 3: had shifted and they were crushing my spinal cord, and
Speaker 3: so I had a spinal surgery, and in that spinal surgery,
Speaker 3: I lost the use and feeling of one of my legs.
Speaker 3: So if you put your finger in your belly button
Speaker 3: and just go straight down and across your hips like nothing,
Speaker 3: couldn't feel it, couldn't move it, anything like that. So
Speaker 3: that was pretty jarring at twenty seven and I'm in
Speaker 3: a different country from my family and my friends, and
Speaker 3: everyone really rally around to support me. And over the
Speaker 3: course of a couple of years, I learned to walk again.
Speaker 3: I got off all the pain medicare that I was on.
Speaker 3: I still have disc issues and I still have what's
Speaker 3: called a foot drop, so I can't lift my toes
Speaker 3: as well as on one of my legs, so I
Speaker 3: do have a trip risk, and I've got pins and
Speaker 3: needles in my leg permanently. But I got to the
Speaker 3: point where I was doing cross it five times a
Speaker 3: week I was traveling. I moved to England. I'm just
Speaker 3: doing life in pain and that progressed and I would
Speaker 3: manage that. And when I was planning to get pregnant,
Speaker 3: I knew I needed to make sure my body was
Speaker 3: really strong. I knew that I needed to be in
Speaker 3: the best possible condition because pregnancy is not great on
Speaker 3: anyone's fine. Pregnancy is not easy on the body and
Speaker 3: some of the pain medications that I would utilize, like
Speaker 3: say Europine it's not safe for pregnancy, So I also
Speaker 3: needed to prepare for that.
Speaker 1: The spinal surgery you had, was that just a complication
Speaker 1: of a surgery? Is that how you're expecting to come
Speaker 1: out of it?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: Was it something that it was just a complication.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was a non complication that can happen. It
Speaker 3: doesn't happen too often, but just the state I was in,
Speaker 3: the disc matter was really messed up into the spinal
Speaker 3: cord when they were operating. So it was like a
Speaker 3: really rare complication in that case. But fast forward when
Speaker 3: we talk about the second spinal surgery, it was a
Speaker 3: much higher risk on that same thing happening. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So you and your partner met in the UK. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and then you got pregnant at thirty five. So was
Speaker 1: that just one surgery between that twenty seven and thirty five?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I had just needed the one surgery and
Speaker 3: I think I was actually thirty four. It was not
Speaker 3: quite a geriatric pregnancy. I do remember that it was
Speaker 3: a disabled but not quite geriatric pregnancy. I had not
Speaker 3: needed any more surgical interventions. I still had you know,
Speaker 3: a pretty exciting bag of medications that I would use
Speaker 3: when I needed, but I wouldn't need them daily or
Speaker 3: even monthly, to be honest. But I hadn't don't had
Speaker 3: to have any medical interventions after that first operation. It
Speaker 3: wasn't until I got pregnant that things started to unravel.
Speaker 3: And it was like it wasn't even a positive pregnancy test,
Speaker 3: it was conception onwards. It was instant. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the act of getting pregnant sort of undid all
Speaker 1: of this hard, you know, rehabilitation work that you had done.
Speaker 3: I think without the rehabilitation work and the real I'd
Speaker 3: spend a good twelve months with personal trainer, like I
Speaker 3: want to get strong for pregnancy, so we'd be really
Speaker 3: deliberate about that. So I think without it, things potentially
Speaker 3: would have gone much worse. But what happened was as
Speaker 3: soon as the relax and entered my system, I just
Speaker 3: seemed to relax all the structures that I had built
Speaker 3: up in my body to be strong, and so my
Speaker 3: leg would hurt more, or my pens and needles would
Speaker 3: be worse, or just bending on was like that shouldn't
Speaker 3: that shouldn't hurt that much? Because managing a spinal l injury.
Speaker 3: For that long, you kind of start to know like, ah,
Speaker 3: this symptom I can put up with that, this symptom,
Speaker 3: I need to triaute it this way, like it's for me.
Speaker 3: It's like a little bit like having a child already,
Speaker 3: like I had, I learned how to manage it. And
Speaker 3: so once I got pregnant, I was like, this is
Speaker 3: going in a direction that I am not used to.
Speaker 3: It's escalating faster, the symptoms don't move through the same process,
Speaker 3: and so pretty much straight away and we got pregnant
Speaker 3: the first time we tried. So of all the things
Speaker 3: we're going to share today, fertility was not one of
Speaker 3: those issues for us. And I tested positive within a
Speaker 3: couple of weeks. Like I woke up on a Monday
Speaker 3: morning and said, I'm pregnant. My periods half now late.
Speaker 3: It was literally one of those people. And I tested
Speaker 3: the next day and that sort of explained it. And
Speaker 3: so began a journey of just trying to keep up
Speaker 3: with what was happening in my body. The pregnancy itself
Speaker 3: was really easy. I think I was described as obstetrically boring.
Speaker 3: But the container that had the uterus and the baby
Speaker 3: was really complicated.
Speaker 1: I know that you mentioned a lot one of your
Speaker 1: biggest issues was facing the medical system and trying to
Speaker 1: figure out a way to manage your care correctly.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Can you talk to us a little bit about how
Speaker 1: you entered the system and how you kind of were
Speaker 1: able to gather a team. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So we made the very deliberate choice to go into
Speaker 3: the public system. The advice we received that I was
Speaker 3: so complicated, we were probably going to be punted back
Speaker 3: into the public system, so we started there. I shared
Speaker 3: all of my medical information, so by the time I
Speaker 3: was in that already put me into an obstetric stream.
Speaker 3: I was not under the care of like a midware
Speaker 3: free group practice or anything like that, primarily because they
Speaker 3: just didn't know how my body was going to react.
Speaker 3: So that was really good in that I was already
Speaker 3: in that stream. What was really difficult was so round
Speaker 3: about the three four month mark, I could not sleep
Speaker 3: for the pain in my leg. Like I'm talking, I've
Speaker 3: been awake for twenty four hours. I'm in so much discomfort,
Speaker 3: and I fell over and I went to the hospital
Speaker 3: because everything just felt wrong, and they end up doing
Speaker 3: an MRI on my body because they wanted to see
Speaker 3: what was happening with the spine during the pregnancy, So
Speaker 3: that's great. The maternity hospitals connected to a normal hospital,
Speaker 3: they do the MRI there. I come back to the
Speaker 3: practice and the neuro surgery team has said, ah, it's
Speaker 3: a minor dispulge, it'll be resolved in six to eight weeks.
Speaker 3: And the midwife who's the one meeting me through the
Speaker 3: obstetric stream, is like, but you'll be six to eight
Speaker 3: weeks more pregnant by them. Then I have to go
Speaker 3: away and come back and nothing's progressed because the neurosurgeons
Speaker 3: don't know about babies and the obstetricians don't know about spines,
Speaker 3: and nobody wants to help me with this app debilitating
Speaker 3: pain where I'm not sleeping for days, like I'm not
Speaker 3: able to sleep.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I suppose in terms of pain management, what
Speaker 1: were you Because you can't take neurop and you can
Speaker 1: take pan at all. But I suppose at that level
Speaker 1: of pain, what were you able to take?
Speaker 3: So of my own volition, I could take the pan
Speaker 3: at all, which is what's recommended, and you can't take neurophine,
Speaker 3: and some of it was inflammation related, so that was
Speaker 3: really frustrating, but anything stronger than that, like, I needed
Speaker 3: the obstetrician and the neurosurgeon to kind of prescribe it.
Speaker 3: So the issue we were having was no one would
Speaker 3: prescribe it because they didn't know about the other thing.
Speaker 3: And I turn up to one appointment and I'm just crying.
Speaker 3: I'm in so much pain. I'm crying and midwives, bless them.
Speaker 3: I love them. My sister in law's a midwife. It
Speaker 3: is an amazing profession. She walks out and I can
Speaker 3: hear her yell something like, I get in here. This
Speaker 3: girl is suffering. You need to come in here and
Speaker 3: help her. And so she appears to wrangle an obstetrician in.
Speaker 3: I think there was a physician because I had gestational diabetes.
Speaker 3: They couldn't get the neurosurgery person in, but they got
Speaker 3: enough people in and she was like, what is the
Speaker 3: pain management plan here? So eventually I got onto some
Speaker 3: pretty like heavy medications, usually ones that you get like
Speaker 3: after a C section, stuff like that that I could
Speaker 3: use for cut through pain. So actually one of the
Speaker 3: things that happened was they wanted to give me a
Speaker 3: nerve pain medication. I took every day that would cut
Speaker 3: down my nerve pain. I love life to the max,
Speaker 3: so if you dull my nerve pain, I'm just going
Speaker 3: to live there, right And I got my partner and
Speaker 3: my mum at the time to look up the symptoms
Speaker 3: because I couldn't cope with seeing that. They looked up
Speaker 3: the symptoms and we've been given some of the information
Speaker 3: from the doctor and there was a risk of heart
Speaker 3: defect or the baby versus these other medications which are
Speaker 3: often associated with being highly addictive. So I actually as
Speaker 3: a patient went in and said, here are my patient
Speaker 3: files in these addictive medications on and off throughout my disability.
Speaker 3: I don't want to risk a heart issue with the
Speaker 3: baby if I could demonstrate to you that I can
Speaker 3: safely take these other medications. And so they agreed, which
Speaker 3: was really great. They trusted me. I could give them evidence.
Speaker 3: They trusted me. But that was probably one of the
Speaker 3: first like really advocating for myself saying I want to
Speaker 3: be able to take this type of medication in this
Speaker 3: way under your care. And we also found one that
Speaker 3: helped me stay asleep through the pain.
Speaker 1: It was like a like an antihistamine, an antihistamine one yep,
Speaker 1: that I ended up taking quite a lot of.
Speaker 3: But it would if I could sleep through the pain.
Speaker 1: I was okay, yeah, So we.
Speaker 3: Had a cocktail that I could. Initially didn't need to
Speaker 3: take too much, but it got a lot more intense
Speaker 3: over the time.
Speaker 1: This is only a four months mind you, So as
Speaker 1: the pregnancy progresses, the pain's getting worse, I'm assuming because
Speaker 1: you're getting bigger, obstetrically boring. So Bove is growing, She's.
Speaker 3: Doing all the things she's supposed to do. There was
Speaker 3: nothing concerning, nothing to worry about. It was me that
Speaker 3: wasn't coping. And prior to getting pregnant, I spent like
Speaker 3: two to four days a fortnight in Sydney, like I
Speaker 3: was traveling up there. I live in Melbourne. I was
Speaker 3: traveling up there all the time. So at four months
Speaker 3: I have to go back to work and say, hey,
Speaker 3: I can't I'm to Sydney. I can't run these collaboration
Speaker 3: workshops with loads of senior executives. I can't do my
Speaker 3: job and I'm definitely not gonna be able to do
Speaker 3: it for the rest of the duration of the pregnancy.
Speaker 3: And I'd say the most surprising thing of the whole pregnancy.
Speaker 3: I thought pregnancy was going to be hard because of
Speaker 3: my back, but I thought that my workplace was going
Speaker 3: to be somewhere I had to advocate for myself and
Speaker 3: the medical system would be supportive as a person with
Speaker 3: a disability who was pregnant. And it just was the
Speaker 3: exact opposite. My workplace. I had a great boss and
Speaker 3: a great hr business partner. They just found every policy
Speaker 3: and every procedure and every available support to help me out.
Speaker 3: They changed the type of work I was doing with
Speaker 3: that impact in my income. They just did everything and
Speaker 3: I never had to stress about work. I never had
Speaker 3: to stress about needing to take a bit of time off.
Speaker 3: I never had to stress about what was going to
Speaker 3: happen when I came back. They went above and beyond.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's how it should be. It's not. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: it's not like that in every workplace, and I've experienced
Speaker 1: both sides the coin and to have that level of support,
Speaker 1: particularly with something chronic like what you have, yeah, and
Speaker 1: have people being able to be like, you know what,
Speaker 1: it's fine, We're going to make the accommodations because we
Speaker 1: value you as an employee. That is just I'm so
Speaker 1: glad that you at least had that, even though the
Speaker 1: medical system was harder to navigate for you.
Speaker 3: I don't know how I would have been able to
Speaker 3: cope with us fighting fires on two fronts. And bear
Speaker 3: in mind, by the time I'm having this MRI and
Speaker 3: getting this medication and this midwife has sort of ranked
Speaker 3: the doctors. We're in January twenty twenty, we're it like
Speaker 3: COVID's happening over there. It's something that we're not too
Speaker 3: stressed about yet. So by the time I progressed through
Speaker 3: this pregnancy, like, bear in mind, I'm still going to
Speaker 3: the gym four or five times a week because I
Speaker 3: have to keep moving. I've set this target for whatever reason,
Speaker 3: that I'm going to be able to continue to do
Speaker 3: overhead squats, Like if I can keep doing an overhead
Speaker 3: squat with thirty five kilos on the bar, my body's
Speaker 3: going to be doing okay. So say that it's hurting.
Speaker 3: But I'm also like I'm on that bike, like, oh
Speaker 3: my god, I got so circu the bike because it
Speaker 3: was the only way I could get any cardio in
Speaker 3: just doing everything sensible. So stopping the situps when you
Speaker 3: had to stop situps, and I never did a box
Speaker 3: jump because my foot doesn't work. But like I was,
Speaker 3: I was going to the gym and working with people
Speaker 3: I've worked with before I acquired my disability, throughout my disability,
Speaker 3: throughout this pregnancy, to be like, how do I stay
Speaker 3: as strong as I can within the context of this
Speaker 3: unbearable pain.
Speaker 1: Amazing. It's also a testament to your mental strength as well.
Speaker 1: Let's fast forward a little bit to March twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: How far along are you ated in March twenty twenty
Speaker 1: when COVID really hits.
Speaker 3: So by round about March, I'm already not going into
Speaker 3: the city. Oh, because the other thing that happens at
Speaker 3: the end of that year is the bushfires in Melbourne,
Speaker 3: so pregnant people are not supposed to go outside. So like,
Speaker 3: I've been working from home a lot at this point,
Speaker 3: so I'm at home permanently. Like the idea of getting
Speaker 3: into the office is just not possible. I am taking
Speaker 3: these heavy medications like four times a day. I'm still working.
Speaker 3: I'm lying in my bed. My partner stopped working because
Speaker 3: I couldn't even stand to make a piece of toast,
Speaker 3: so I could lie down in bed and do my
Speaker 3: job camera off, but I couldn't really do too much else.
Speaker 3: And so by this point I'm being treated by the
Speaker 3: neurosurgery department within their physio department to help me with
Speaker 3: anything particular that I need. I'm going in and out
Speaker 3: of the hospital three or four times a week at
Speaker 3: this point to be checked and make sure everything's fine.
Speaker 3: But it was probably around that time that they said
Speaker 3: to me, like I was really maxing out the amount
Speaker 3: of pain meds we could take, and they said to me,
Speaker 3: if it wasn't covid would probably take her out. But
Speaker 3: we don't know the effect of COVID on baby's lungs,
Speaker 3: So as long as you can cope with the pain,
Speaker 3: would like to keep her inside.
Speaker 1: How far along we at this point.
Speaker 3: Thirty two thirty three weeks, You don't want to bring
Speaker 3: a baby out early if you don't need to. So
Speaker 3: it was round about Easter time, maybe April. I stopped
Speaker 3: work and the hospital said, if you lose control of
Speaker 3: your foot, your bladder, or your beoll, then irreparable damage
Speaker 3: is happening to your body and will take the baby out.
Speaker 3: But until then, can you take this medication? Can you
Speaker 3: put up with the pain? And I was like, yep,
Speaker 3: we can do that because you're like, you're already a mother, right,
Speaker 3: You're already like, I will do anything for the health
Speaker 3: and safety of this baby. And it wasn't going to
Speaker 3: do a reprobable damage. And I probably spent half my
Speaker 3: life floating in the bath at that point because that
Speaker 3: was a nice feeling, like the temperature and it was
Speaker 3: a good way to take the weight off. And we
Speaker 3: just waited, coming up, You're gonna have to take the
Speaker 3: baby else we can operate on her spine, no preamble,
Speaker 3: no nothing, just goes and dry with that, and the
Speaker 3: midwive's face drops.
Speaker 1: When did Theodora come out? Tell me about her birthday?
Speaker 3: So as everyone who had a baby in COVID knows, like,
Speaker 3: you're in the hospital by yourself. So all my appointments,
Speaker 3: my partner hadn't been able to come with me. But
Speaker 3: I can't walk, like I'm on crutches. I can't walk.
Speaker 3: I need a wheelchair once I get into the into
Speaker 3: the hospital. So for thea's birth, it's Mother's Day twenty twenty,
Speaker 3: It's a Sunday, and I call out to my partner.
Speaker 3: I'm like, hey, so I can't move my foot and
Speaker 3: they're like, Okay, I guess we're having a baby today.
Speaker 3: And do you know what's the most ridiculous thing. We
Speaker 3: hadn't packed a bag. Do you know how much like
Speaker 3: energy and like Instagram is actually dedicated to like what
Speaker 3: to put in your bag? We were so distracted with
Speaker 3: everything else, we were like surprised we were having a baby. Anyway.
Speaker 3: So we go into the hospital on the Mother's Day
Speaker 3: afternoon and I'm really adamant the whole way through, even
Speaker 3: though it's my spine that was not doing well. I
Speaker 3: was not going into the main hospital. I was always
Speaker 3: coming into the maternity hospital and they can bring the
Speaker 3: specialist over. So they bring the specialist over. And it's
Speaker 3: Mother's Days to the really, you know, if one's with
Speaker 3: their families, and we get we're going to guess, like
Speaker 3: the more junior doctors. So we're in the room with
Speaker 3: my partner, a medwife, an obstetrician in the emergency room.
Speaker 3: The neurosurgery junior I'm going to guess, comes in and
Speaker 3: touches my foot, doesn't move, goes away. It causes boss
Speaker 3: comes back and says, yeah, so you're gonna have to
Speaker 3: take the baby out so we can operate on her spine.
Speaker 3: No preamble, no, nothing, just goes and dry with that,
Speaker 3: and the midwives face drops, like midwives have seen everything,
Speaker 3: and your face drops, and that's the moment where we're like, oh,
Speaker 3: this doesn't happen very often. She composes herself, as does Osressia,
Speaker 3: like no one's unprofessional in that in that moment. But
Speaker 3: they just sort of what felt like pushing up against
Speaker 3: the system and constantly advocating for myself. Once that happened,
Speaker 3: they just went, they launched, and they were like, right,
Speaker 3: this is what we're gonna do.
Speaker 1: They finally became a team.
Speaker 3: They became a team. So I actually have a sensitivity
Speaker 3: to some types of anesthetics. So I had to go
Speaker 3: speak to the anethetist in the maternity hospital, and it
Speaker 3: was a really interesting conversation because that trying to make
Speaker 3: sure that you have the most gauging birth right, that
Speaker 3: they want you to be there when the baby comes
Speaker 3: out rather than under general anesthetic, and also there's risks
Speaker 3: when you're under general anesthetic because it goes and it
Speaker 3: gets into the baby pretty quick. But in my case,
Speaker 3: the anethetist, I think, first of all, said Oh, you're
Speaker 3: an exciting case today, so that was cool. I wasn't
Speaker 3: obstetrically boring in that moment. And then said, oh, well,
Speaker 3: because you've got scar tissue in your lower spine from
Speaker 3: your spinal surgery, if we put an epidural in here,
Speaker 3: you might feel some of the cuts. And I was like,
Speaker 3: absolutely not. I don't want that. I don't want that
Speaker 3: at all. I know No. It was just this really
Speaker 3: bizarre like is that would that be okay by you?
Speaker 3: And I'm like, no, I don't want to feel any
Speaker 3: part of that sea section.
Speaker 1: That's insane.
Speaker 3: Look in the moment, I was just looking at them
Speaker 3: like is this a real question? Like how do I
Speaker 3: really have to respond and say no, thank you, I
Speaker 3: don't want to feel any incision of my sea section.
Speaker 3: But I mean, on the flip side, I end up
Speaker 3: under general anesthetic for the birth. My partner couldn't be
Speaker 3: in the room because it's really confronting to see your
Speaker 3: loved ones out under anesthetic, but they had. I think
Speaker 3: they took her out with them under a minute of.
Speaker 1: Going under Oh wow.
Speaker 3: Because they don't want any of the They don't want
Speaker 3: a baby to be born with the anesthetics.
Speaker 1: How many weeks were you when you finally went in
Speaker 1: for that C section?
Speaker 3: I was thirty seven plus six. I've managed to carry
Speaker 3: her to term, which will I think to this day
Speaker 3: be one of my greatest accomplishments because we grew her
Speaker 3: to a healthy size.
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm so happy for you because that would have
Speaker 1: been so stressful and considering the amount of pain that
Speaker 1: you were under, it's amazing that you were able to
Speaker 1: do that. But you basically had to go straight to
Speaker 1: spinal surgery.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so they actually didn't take us straight, and they
Speaker 3: sent my partner home and said, go have a good
Speaker 3: night's sleep. This is so complicated. All of our specialists
Speaker 3: will be here on Monday. We'll have everyone we need
Speaker 3: so that Bria's under anesthetic, the baby safe, like, we'll
Speaker 3: have the full team. That was okay. We went to
Speaker 3: sleep that night, and so we had Theodora on Monday
Speaker 3: about eleven something like that, and I'm under general anesthetic
Speaker 3: and they take her out, give her to my partner
Speaker 3: like walk away, and so they're like, is she okay?
Speaker 3: Like everything fine? And they get given this like sticky
Speaker 3: baby to get dressed in some formula and stuff. So
Speaker 3: then later that day, they take me and get an MRI.
Speaker 3: But like I've just had a c section, So there's
Speaker 3: like six or eight people. They have to wheel me
Speaker 3: between hospitals. There's all sorts of protocol because we're in COVID.
Speaker 3: They wheel me through, they lift me up and put
Speaker 3: me in the MRI, and like I was just lying,
Speaker 3: you have to say still in the MRI. And I'm
Speaker 3: just lying there with like tears like rolling down my
Speaker 3: face because I'm just trying to hold myself so still
Speaker 3: and I'm so terrified. Like last time this happened, I
Speaker 3: lost the use of the leg. So we go back
Speaker 3: to the hospital. I have a night with my partner
Speaker 3: and my daughter, and then the next morning they wheeled
Speaker 3: me off to the other hospital. And in this whole process,
Speaker 3: the only time I saw my partner cry was when
Speaker 3: I left to go to the other hospital. Because it
Speaker 3: was COVID, they weren't allowed to come and see me
Speaker 3: after the operation.
Speaker 1: And you weren't allowed to be with your baby either.
Speaker 3: I wasn't allowed to be with my baby, and initially
Speaker 3: the hospital protocol said you need to go home with
Speaker 3: the baby, and like hands washed done, right, because that's
Speaker 3: what the protocol said, and to the hospital's credit, like
Speaker 3: once we were having a baby. They were so good.
Speaker 3: They were like, h this does not make sense. So
Speaker 3: they called the head of the hospital on Mother's Day
Speaker 3: and say, hey, we've got the situation within the other
Speaker 3: parents should be staying in the hospital. We know that
Speaker 3: that's not protocol, but this is a situation like I
Speaker 3: couldn't get myself to the toilet, I couldn't do anything,
Speaker 3: so my partner got to stay in the maternity hospital.
Speaker 3: I went next door. I had a spinal surgery on
Speaker 3: the Tuesday, and I like hyperventilated on the table before
Speaker 3: they could knock me out because they said to me,
Speaker 3: it's like a forty percent chance we're going to net
Speaker 3: your spinal cord. And I'm like, wait, this isn't this
Speaker 3: is like that's a lot. That's a really high and
Speaker 3: then you have to lie perfectly flat or they have
Speaker 3: to glo it back together, and I'm just like, I'm
Speaker 3: a mess.
Speaker 1: And you've just had a C section.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so your hormones are absolutely like you're going to
Speaker 3: You're going to cry and everything. Right. Everyone was just
Speaker 3: so nice because this was just such a messed up situation,
Speaker 3: and they calmed me down and I had the operation
Speaker 3: and I woke up after the anesthetic and a friend
Speaker 3: came and was my person there to help me through
Speaker 3: and that was really great. And the hospital said, okay, well,
Speaker 3: when you can get up, go to the toilet, not
Speaker 3: passed out, come back to bed, you can go back
Speaker 3: to your baby. So it's like eleven o'clock at night,
Speaker 3: and like, I'm nothing if not stubborn, and I'm like
Speaker 3: chop front to back trying to get out of bed
Speaker 3: to go to the toilet, and the nurse is like,
Speaker 3: nobody's letting you out of here tonight, No one is.
Speaker 3: This is not happening till tomorrow morning. Lie down and
Speaker 3: go to sleep. Absolutely adamant. I just needed to get
Speaker 3: back there. The maternity hospital is so good, Like the
Speaker 3: medwives were coming over and helping me get the colostrum
Speaker 3: out so that they could take it back for Saya.
Speaker 3: Everyone just was like, this is messed up. This would
Speaker 3: be messed up with that COVID, and so they just
Speaker 3: did everything that they could. And I had to have
Speaker 3: two blood transfusions because you know, there's a lot of
Speaker 3: blood coming out at this point, and the hospitals coordinated
Speaker 3: for me so like, if the neurosurgery department had done
Speaker 3: whatever blood test it was to see if I needed
Speaker 3: another transfusion, they were responsible for administering it. So they
Speaker 3: worked with the maternity hospital to like get the right
Speaker 3: people to check me off so I could go back
Speaker 3: to the maternity hospital and matternity hospital could be responsible
Speaker 3: for any iron or blood transfusions that I needed, so
Speaker 3: I could get back to my baby and stay there
Speaker 3: with my partner, and they didn't have to leave because
Speaker 3: I was back, because I wasn't doing anything other than
Speaker 3: lying there. Like, it was an absolute mess in so
Speaker 3: many ways, but people really rallied around to help us
Speaker 3: make the best of it and to do the right
Speaker 3: thing for us in those moments. And so what could
Speaker 3: have been it's objectively quite traumatic, was less traumatic than
Speaker 3: it needed to be because people just did the best
Speaker 3: they could in that moment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and your partner is, you know, obviously terrified for you.
Speaker 1: Thankfully they're able to stay in the ward with the baby. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but well, okay, now I'm a parent, what do I
Speaker 1: do now?
Speaker 3: Like, so one of the real positives is my partner's
Speaker 3: sister is a midlife and she was in the UK
Speaker 3: at the time, so the night times and Australia were
Speaker 3: like her daytime, so so like my partner could call
Speaker 3: their sister and asked about So that was quite good.
Speaker 3: The maternity hospital and the midwives were all standing outside
Speaker 3: trying to help, and we stay for another like two
Speaker 3: or three days. I say, there were two wounds to
Speaker 3: check and all of that, but again, like it was
Speaker 3: COVID time we went home. We have no family here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you're recovering from multiple surgeries.
Speaker 3: Yes, And the reason I went in was because my
Speaker 3: foot wasn't working, so I'm learning to walk again. One
Speaker 3: of the things that worked really well was that their
Speaker 3: midwives would come to the house and check on you
Speaker 3: and the baby and check on the c section, and
Speaker 3: they also checked on the surgical scar that was my back,
Speaker 3: rather than a second nurse happened to come in and
Speaker 3: one checks the front, one checks the back, So like
Speaker 3: they just coordinated on some really basic stuff that maybe
Speaker 3: COVID prompted them to do. The neurosurgery department had hydrotherapy
Speaker 3: recovery for their surgical patients. Yes, it was for my back,
Speaker 3: but actually I'd also had this baby come out, and
Speaker 3: so it was also so so good for my core recovery.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so now that these five how is your movement now?
Speaker 1: How is your recovery being over the last five years.
Speaker 3: Look, I'm able to walk. I use a walking stick.
Speaker 3: Today things are just deteriorating a little bit. But immediately
Speaker 3: after her birth, my mum was actually able to come
Speaker 3: from New Zealand and she happens to be a physical therapist,
Speaker 3: so she really focused on how for me learn to
Speaker 3: walk again?
Speaker 1: Oh that's amazing.
Speaker 3: And she stayed with us for six weeks, and so
Speaker 3: I was able to walk much faster than she hadn't
Speaker 3: have been there if I relied on all those other services.
Speaker 3: Twelve months after I'd had there, I did a competition
Speaker 3: at a CrossFit gym. I can last, like, don't get
Speaker 3: me wrong, but I did it.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, you're amazing, Brier.
Speaker 3: I was back at the gym as much as I can.
Speaker 3: My body is not the same as pre pregnancy, and
Speaker 3: I don't have the same strength. My back is not
Speaker 3: quite so good. But it's really hard to go to
Speaker 3: the gym five days a week when you have a
Speaker 3: baby and a kid, Like, it's just as different hard.
Speaker 3: So I go. I do different things like I go
Speaker 3: to acquicise classes, I ride a bike to work, I
Speaker 3: do yoga stuff like that. But yeah, I got my
Speaker 3: body back to being still disabled, but not it wasn't debilitating,
Speaker 3: it wasn't forever.
Speaker 1: So that was really good from your story me hearing it,
Speaker 1: You're saying you're stubborn, but I think it's it's to
Speaker 1: your benefit in this stage because you were like, I'm
Speaker 1: going to walk again. I really applaud you for that.
Speaker 1: It's incredible.
Speaker 3: I like to take got really difficult jobs. And by
Speaker 3: that I mean like I do a lot of disability
Speaker 3: advocacy stuff, right, And I joke I've learned to walk
Speaker 3: three times in my life, Like how hard can this be?
Speaker 3: One of the benefits of acquiring disability in my twenties
Speaker 3: is so much eager you have to let go. I've
Speaker 3: walked with a limp since I was twenty seven. I
Speaker 3: don't get to wear high heels, and some days the
Speaker 3: medication makes my skin hurt. I don't wear make out
Speaker 3: something like that. You get to figure out what really matters.
Speaker 3: And I wanted to be a mom that was rolling
Speaker 3: around in the garden with my kid, and so that
Speaker 3: was the most important thing so why am I going
Speaker 3: to the gym? Why am I doing this activity? Because
Speaker 3: I want to be active in her life. And for example,
Speaker 3: we made the choice not to have any more kids
Speaker 3: because the surgeon's like, oh, you can have another one.
Speaker 3: You might need a spinal fusion, And I was like,
Speaker 3: a spinal fusion, a toddler and a newborn. Count me out.
Speaker 3: I've got one kid. She's hilarious, she's such fun. I
Speaker 3: get to be an active part of her life. That's
Speaker 3: like the anchor point that's the most important in it.
Speaker 3: My backslides to her, It's like, Hey, what do I
Speaker 3: need to do to be the type of mum that
Speaker 3: I want to be?
Speaker 1: What would you say that this whole experience has taught you?
Speaker 3: So I think I never really talked about having a
Speaker 3: disability at work, and it impacted me hugely in my
Speaker 3: career like it does because if you don't ask for
Speaker 3: what you need, then it can really inhibit your ability
Speaker 3: to do your job. And after I experienperience pregnancy and
Speaker 3: the difficulties in the medical system and all the support
Speaker 3: that I got at work, it actually encouraged me to
Speaker 3: start speaking about this at work and I shared my
Speaker 3: story once and then someone's like, hey, would you mind
Speaker 3: telling a group of people, and I told my story
Speaker 3: again and someone would message and say, hey, I'm now
Speaker 3: asking for that because I knew this policy existed. And
Speaker 3: then I got asked to lead our employee resource group
Speaker 3: at my previous organization, and I got to bring together
Speaker 3: people with disabilities and cares at work, and I got
Speaker 3: to run an annual event for the whole company, and
Speaker 3: then that snowboard in too, do you want to write
Speaker 3: an accessibility action plan for the business, And then that
Speaker 3: snowboarden to like winning awards and getting all of this traction,
Speaker 3: and so I found that by last year I won
Speaker 3: the Disability Inclusion Change Maker of the Year with the
Speaker 3: Australian Disability Network simply off the back of I told
Speaker 3: my story and it helps someone, And then it just
Speaker 3: I just saw the power of your voice and sharing
Speaker 3: your story and what you can do for someone and
Speaker 3: how you can help them. And that was probably one
Speaker 3: of the most beautiful things other than I don't know
Speaker 3: to come out of this, was the confidence to share
Speaker 3: it and how I've been able to help others.
Speaker 1: With such a complex medical case. I wanted to find
Speaker 1: out from our resident obstrician and gynecologist doctor Bronwin and Devine.
Speaker 1: What do you do if your patient has a complex
Speaker 1: medical history and requires not just obstetric support but also
Speaker 1: additional specialists.
Speaker 4: So this is probably done par excellence in the public
Speaker 4: hospital system. It's certainly possible in the private sector. But
Speaker 4: when you work in a big public hospital, you've got
Speaker 4: access to what we call a multidisciplinary team. So if
Speaker 4: someone had history spinal surgery or a spinal injury and
Speaker 4: was pregnant, we would manage them in conjunction with the
Speaker 4: spinal team, often the neuros surgents and the neurologists and
Speaker 4: the very specialized nursing staff who deal with spinal patients.
Speaker 4: We would liaise very carefully with the anthetists because they're
Speaker 4: obviously very much involved with particularly if someone's having acessarean
Speaker 4: section with analgesias going to be or anesthesia is going
Speaker 4: to be conducted during that procedure. So it's one of
Speaker 4: the good things about working in a big public hospital
Speaker 4: is you get this lovely interaction between all the medical
Speaker 4: teams coming and talking together and planning things in a
Speaker 4: very methodical way for patients. One of the things I
Speaker 4: noted in this particular case was that it occurred during
Speaker 4: COVID and that was really must have been really rough
Speaker 4: because COVID was such a I think we're realizing now
Speaker 4: the far reaching impacts on pretty much all of society
Speaker 4: by the COVID pandemic. People coming through the healthcare system
Speaker 4: who may not have been affected by COVID, but people
Speaker 4: whose health care was limited or compromised because there was
Speaker 4: so much of healthcare resources that were being sequestered into
Speaker 4: caring for critically sick people with COVID, and so it
Speaker 4: meant that people's experiences in the healthcare system were certainly limited.
Speaker 4: In this particular case, it would have been very tricky
Speaker 4: for her to go through with all the limitations that
Speaker 4: we had because of the compromise to the healthcare system.
Speaker 1: Diary of a Birth was hosted by me Caseni Lukitch
Speaker 1: with expert input from doctor Bronwin Devine. If you like
Speaker 1: our show, don't forget to subscribe and rate. It goes
Speaker 1: a long way to allowing us to continue sharing your stories.
Speaker 1: This episode was produced by Ella Maitland and myself Cassemu Lukitch,
Speaker 1: with audio production by Tina Mattalov.