Speaker 1: You're listening to another mea podcast Hello Unleashes Me and
Speaker 1: Friedman back in your ears. You know, there are some
Speaker 1: women who you feel like you've known your whole life.
Speaker 1: You grew up with them on your TV. You know
Speaker 1: their voice and their face and their jokes, and especially
Speaker 1: you know their hair. In the case of Mary Coustas,
Speaker 1: sometimes the woman behind the character has a story that's
Speaker 1: even more interesting. So many of you have fallen in
Speaker 1: love with Unleashed and told us we want to know
Speaker 1: more about the incredible hosts that are on the couch
Speaker 1: every week. We want to go deep. We want to
Speaker 1: get to know them a little bit better, one on
Speaker 1: one and fair enough. Because I love them too, which
Speaker 1: is why I was so excited to bring them together
Speaker 1: for this show. Today, I'm bringing you something from the
Speaker 1: archive that you are going to love. Yes, I've already
Speaker 1: spoiled it. It's Marycustas, the big hearted, brilliant, wildly funny
Speaker 1: woman behind the character of Effie from Acropolis. Now and
Speaker 1: now she is still around. I saw her just a
Speaker 1: few weeks ago in her live show, which I would
Speaker 1: encourage you to go watch if you possibly can. But
Speaker 1: before she was Unleashed on this couch. Mary sat down
Speaker 1: with me on the No Filter Couch or behind the
Speaker 1: No Filter Mike when I used to host that podcast,
Speaker 1: and we had a conversation that went really deep. She
Speaker 1: has a very wise presence, I think is the best
Speaker 1: way of putting it on unleashed, and you're about to
Speaker 1: find out why. She's like the mother of the group,
Speaker 1: and she's also like the Yoda of the group. She
Speaker 1: sits there, she listens, she takes it all in, and
Speaker 1: then she just comes out with a cracking pearla. I reckon.
Speaker 1: This episode will hit you right in the heart. Here
Speaker 1: is our beloved Mary Custace.
Speaker 2: When death and life arrive at the same moment, you
Speaker 2: know it's you know, I mean, you imagine it. You
Speaker 2: just don't know what to expect. Hi.
Speaker 1: I'm mea Friedman and welcome to No Filter, a podcast
Speaker 1: where there is no such thing as too much information.
Speaker 1: Joining me today is Mary Custas, or, as you might
Speaker 1: know her, Effie, the lovable, outrageous Greek girl who's become
Speaker 1: as much of a cultural like on as Dame Edna.
Speaker 1: But behind that big hair and even bigger sense of
Speaker 1: humor is a woman who's literally gone to Helen back
Speaker 1: more times than you would believe in order to realize
Speaker 1: her deep, unquenchable desire to become a mother. Mary. Welcome.
Speaker 1: I'm going to read some facts about you. It's going
Speaker 1: to be a little bit this is your life, and
Speaker 1: please jump in if I'm wrong on any of them.
Speaker 1: All right, you were born and raised in Melbourne and
Speaker 1: you're fifty one years old.
Speaker 2: WHOA I can't argue with that.
Speaker 1: You can't argue about? Well, that's good. You studied a
Speaker 1: Bachelor of Arts at Deacon University and you made it
Speaker 1: in performing arts and you also did a minor in journalism.
Speaker 1: In nineteen eighty seven, you had your first major role
Speaker 1: in the stage show Logs Out of Work. You were
Speaker 1: the most popular character. It was the most successful original
Speaker 1: Australian theater show ever produced and it toured for two years.
Speaker 1: It led to Akropolers Now and from nineteen eighty nine
Speaker 1: to nineteen ninety two on that show you played the
Speaker 1: role of Effie Stephanidis. In two thousand and three, you
Speaker 1: met George Betsis, and in two thousand and five you
Speaker 1: and George got married. Six weeks after your wedding, you
Speaker 1: found out you couldn't have children naturally and IVF was
Speaker 1: your only option. You had twenty three failed IVF attempts
Speaker 1: while trying to conceive, and you suffered an early miscarriage
Speaker 1: during this time.
Speaker 2: It was twenty three. But I got pregnant the third time,
Speaker 2: which was a miscarriage, and the seventeenth time, which was
Speaker 2: the twins triplets Steevie pregnancy that was the seventeenth and
Speaker 2: not again until the twenty third, which was Janie. So yeah,
Speaker 2: I felt pregnant. I suppose you could say three times
Speaker 2: in twenty three, three.
Speaker 1: Times in the twenty three.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You once said that you stopped counting your ivfs. Is
Speaker 1: that really true? Oh?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean you have to. I think sometimes you
Speaker 2: just have to stay in the most positive frame of
Speaker 2: mind possible. And for me, I just had to believe
Speaker 2: that success was in front of me. And if I
Speaker 2: referred to the amount of failure I'd had in terms
Speaker 2: of IBM in tense, I think it would have just
Speaker 2: robbed me of the world to keep going. So I
Speaker 2: just I sort of had a vague idea. And it's
Speaker 2: really funny because I was with my IVF doctor, my
Speaker 2: Greek Australian who has got the clinic athms that I
Speaker 2: got pregnant buyer. I was with him, having dinner with
Speaker 2: him last year. This is like a year or so
Speaker 2: after Jamie was born, and I said to him, I'm
Speaker 2: going to throw you a number, and I want you
Speaker 2: to tell me whether I might or not. And he
Speaker 2: said yeah, and I said twenty three and he said yeah,
Speaker 2: it was twenty three. So I only found out when
Speaker 2: I was well out of it, and you know, with
Speaker 2: my healthy baby, did I dare to actually find out
Speaker 2: what the amount was? And it was twenty three?
Speaker 1: When when did you first have an inkling that you
Speaker 1: were going to struggle to fell pregnant?
Speaker 2: Look like a lot of couples at the beginning, we
Speaker 2: just thought we'd go a bit sort of commando on
Speaker 2: the contraception.
Speaker 1: Had you ever tried to get pregnant before? Or George
Speaker 1: was the one?
Speaker 2: Oh no, no. We just said, okay, well we're going
Speaker 2: to get married. Let's just start from now, and then
Speaker 2: six months is always what they say to couples of
Speaker 2: a certain age, you know, I give it six months
Speaker 2: and then yeah, after we got married, I said, well,
Speaker 2: it hasn't happened yet. Maybe we need to investigate, and
Speaker 2: that's when a laparos to be revealed that I had
Speaker 2: blocked tubes.
Speaker 1: How old was then at that point? I was forty
Speaker 1: And you said that it's really scary to look at
Speaker 1: the graphs that they show you when you embark on
Speaker 1: IVF at age forty? What do those graphs look like?
Speaker 2: A horror movie? In my case and for many women
Speaker 2: at that age. Look, you don't want people to be
Speaker 2: having children when they're not ready, but you also want
Speaker 2: to help people be conscious of the fact that, you know,
Speaker 2: anyone who's struggled with fertility knows that equality diminishes rapidly
Speaker 2: after the age of thirty five, So at some point
Speaker 2: you're sort of praying for a miracle science. You know,
Speaker 2: there's never been a better time in history to have
Speaker 2: children if you struggle with having them naturally, than there
Speaker 2: is now. And you know, we've got the best scientists, doctors,
Speaker 2: information drugs, alternative medicine practitioners helping to make that happen.
Speaker 2: But the assumption that we can just have children is
Speaker 2: a little bit of a myth. Beyond the age of
Speaker 2: thirty five, I mean, you really got to start weighing
Speaker 2: up what your battle is at that point, and yeah,
Speaker 2: those graphs, I actually said to my IVF doctors, I
Speaker 2: don't need to see that graph. I know what it
Speaker 2: looks like. Time I switched doctors or or had they
Speaker 2: felt the need to have to refer to it, seeming
Speaker 2: as though I wasn't getting there. So it is pretty
Speaker 2: frightened reality.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask you about IVF clinics, and
Speaker 1: I've never had IVF myself, but I've come close and
Speaker 1: to needing it. Is there a sense that you say
Speaker 1: that they're very open and upfront about the chances of success,
Speaker 1: But at the same time, IVF is a business and
Speaker 1: it costs what each cycle costs about ten thousand dollars,
Speaker 1: does it?
Speaker 2: Yeah? When I started, it was about seven and the
Speaker 2: government helped out with some of it. But I think
Speaker 2: in reality it's probably closer to nine to ten now.
Speaker 2: And so no, you don't seem to get as much
Speaker 2: back as you used to. And there are terms and
Speaker 2: conditions in terms of who can who is eligible for
Speaker 2: that help from the government now.
Speaker 1: And I think when you're over a certain age, I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's forty or maybe forty one or
Speaker 1: forty two, I think that you don't get anything back,
Speaker 1: or you get a lot less back. That's true, But
Speaker 1: is there a sense that anyone sits you down and
Speaker 1: says from the clinic and says, you know what, you're
Speaker 1: wasting your money.
Speaker 2: They don't like to be emotionally responsible for the result,
Speaker 2: They don't fit you with too much hope, but that
Speaker 2: they don't speak very negatively about it either. They just say, Okay,
Speaker 2: here is the graph, this is the reality. We're going
Speaker 2: to do everything we can to make it happen at
Speaker 2: some point. Though as much as I would like to
Speaker 2: think that doctors and staff of these places are responsible
Speaker 2: for decisions that we make, you have to, whether you
Speaker 2: like it or not, get proactive in terms of accepting
Speaker 2: responsibility for the fact that the chances aren't great, the
Speaker 2: cost is, and that how much do you tolerate before
Speaker 2: you look to a better chance at something? And as
Speaker 2: you know, I did fifteen ibfs in Australia and then
Speaker 2: came to the conclusion, you know, merely because of necessity
Speaker 2: and because of pain, that I had to look at
Speaker 2: donor Egg as an option. And I wish I knew
Speaker 2: ten goes before that that was an option for me
Speaker 2: that I could handle. I think I kept thinking, I
Speaker 2: know it sort of vaguely that I can go to
Speaker 2: that eventually, But I think I wish i'd known earlier
Speaker 2: that it was actually the best option on every level.
Speaker 1: When did it first? When did it first come up?
Speaker 1: And why do you think it didn't come up earlier?
Speaker 2: It sort of got brought up sort of loosely, maybe
Speaker 2: from other IVF you know, want to be mothers. I
Speaker 2: don't know whether I heard it from doctors very much.
Speaker 2: One did tell me on the phone, but he said it.
Speaker 2: He was a Greek, and he did say it in
Speaker 2: quite a brutal, you know, blunt maybe not brutal, but
Speaker 2: blunt way, and he said, you want a baby in
Speaker 2: a cot donor eggs? In other words, what are you doing?
Speaker 2: Are you trying to to have a baby or you
Speaker 2: trying to prove something to your body that your body
Speaker 2: can't deliver on, which is to work with what it's got.
Speaker 2: And he was right, and that was something that I
Speaker 2: couldn't handle right in those months. But then my next
Speaker 2: IVF doctor was very gentle in how he brought it up,
Speaker 2: and he just said, Mary, this is at this point
Speaker 2: your only option if you want to have the baby yourself,
Speaker 2: and then he put me on to the doctors that
Speaker 2: set it up with Greece. So you know, there are
Speaker 2: many privileges in having some public influence and attention. And
Speaker 2: I hope that my story, you know, makes the donor
Speaker 2: egue thing something that women are considering a lot earlier,
Speaker 2: rather than going through what I went through, which was
Speaker 2: you know, attempt or attempt and banging my head up
Speaker 2: against a brick wall of failure over and over. Because
Speaker 2: the reality is, there is something so spiritually uplifting in
Speaker 2: knowing that you know, you don't have to depend on
Speaker 2: your own body. There is a liberation in saying that
Speaker 2: I can do this, I just need a little bit
Speaker 2: of help. There's something really brave and liberating about that.
Speaker 2: And there's something fantastic about somebody saying, I know you
Speaker 2: can't get there, but I'll give you what you need
Speaker 2: in order to. I mean, it does take advantage, and
Speaker 2: nothing proves that more than you know, like the donor
Speaker 2: aspect of either sperm or egg in order for other
Speaker 2: people to have their family and live their dream. So
Speaker 2: you know, it's a great it's a great thing to
Speaker 2: offer somebody, and it's a great thing to accept when
Speaker 2: your body can't deliver for you.
Speaker 1: You aren't the first. I mean, donor eggs have been
Speaker 1: used by people for a long time, including a lot
Speaker 1: of people in the public eye, but you're the first
Speaker 1: person that I can think of who's admitted it. And
Speaker 1: I know that I've spoken to a lot of obstitutions
Speaker 1: who throw their hands up in frustration at the number
Speaker 1: of celebrities, particularly in the States, who have these miracle pregnancies,
Speaker 1: often twins at age forty seven, forty eight, forty nine.
Speaker 1: And the doctors say, well, quite obviously they would don't eggs,
Speaker 1: but the celebrity will never say that. So do you
Speaker 1: think it gives false hope to a generation of women?
Speaker 2: Definitely? And you know, look, I understand everyone has they're
Speaker 2: trying to protect somebody. My mother, for instance, in the
Speaker 2: Greek culture, she would prefer all the Greeks not known.
Speaker 2: You know, certain generations look at it differently. I think
Speaker 2: that's definitely changing now with these generations. And you know,
Speaker 2: but for me, holding onto a secret is so much
Speaker 2: harder than just being transparent. And I you know, you
Speaker 2: do get sold myths in life constantly. You get sold
Speaker 2: the myth that if you're beautiful and trimmed, then you're
Speaker 2: going to have a happy, you know, prosperous life. You
Speaker 2: get sold the myth that you know, if you get married,
Speaker 2: then you'll live together, you know, forever. And you know,
Speaker 2: we're into perpetuating myths or slash dreams or fantasies publicly
Speaker 2: because we all want to aspire to something. But then
Speaker 2: I always felt that it was my job to spew
Speaker 2: out the reality of you know, this myth. But I
Speaker 2: sort of felt that it was my responsibility to myself
Speaker 2: first and foremost, and then to other people like me,
Speaker 2: which I know that there are so many that need
Speaker 2: to know the how, and you know, we don't often
Speaker 2: talk about the how. We talk about the what, and
Speaker 2: so I just felt like for me, I needed to
Speaker 2: say it. My daughter will know, and you know, I
Speaker 2: want the world to know that this is how. And
Speaker 2: I wish I'd known how sooner. I wish there was
Speaker 2: another me that made it so public that it was unavoidable,
Speaker 2: so that I went, yeah, okay, I'm going to do that.
Speaker 2: But you know, no regrets. I you know, I wouldn't
Speaker 2: have written my book. I wouldn't have, you know, had
Speaker 2: the child that I've currently got. A best friend of
Speaker 2: mine is to say, you'll know why you waited so
Speaker 2: long for this child when you meet who that child is.
Speaker 2: And I wouldn't want a different personality than you know,
Speaker 2: the child that I've got. So I'm very, very grateful.
Speaker 1: After all of those years of struggling and striving and
Speaker 1: wanting desperately to be pregnant and weighing on sticks and
Speaker 1: only seeing one line, you finally did become pregnant, and
Speaker 1: at the seven week culture sound you discovered you were
Speaker 1: carrying twins. What did that moment feel like?
Speaker 2: Well, I just felt like I got everything that I
Speaker 2: wanted in one pregnancy, which was a child and sibling.
Speaker 2: And if I had contemplated twins the very first time
Speaker 2: I did IVF, you know, seventeen attempts earlier than that,
Speaker 2: I think I would have been you know, Petro. But
Speaker 2: after trying for so long, I felt like I was
Speaker 2: running out of time, And it proved to me the
Speaker 2: longer I tried how much I wanted it that you know,
Speaker 2: I've got the sibling and the child in the one pregnancy,
Speaker 2: and I was thrilled.
Speaker 1: So you had two glorious weeks of that feeling thing said.
Speaker 2: That I was bleeding a lot during those two weeks,
Speaker 2: So it was still a false economy as far as
Speaker 2: I was concerned, because I had, you know, and when
Speaker 2: you bleed and you're pregnant, there's nothing that implies that
Speaker 2: that's good UNI. So I was ecstatic and sort of
Speaker 2: a little petrified at the same time, not of the twins,
Speaker 2: but of the fact that I was bleeding. Apparently fifty
Speaker 2: percent of pregnant women bleed.
Speaker 1: It's common, but it's terrifying.
Speaker 2: It's a comforting fact for blood under any circumstances is
Speaker 2: a negative symbol.
Speaker 1: When you're trying to get pregnant, it certainly is, or
Speaker 1: trying to maintain a pregnancy. At that nine week culture sound,
Speaker 1: tell me what happened then, Well.
Speaker 2: I thought it was going to be the same as
Speaker 2: the other one. I just thought, you know, I will
Speaker 2: just see that they've grown and it's all good. And
Speaker 2: being aware of the fact that I've never made any
Speaker 2: assumptions that things should go, you know, in a predictable fashion.
Speaker 2: Nothing in my history had implied that. But you know,
Speaker 2: I was in a positive space, even though I was
Speaker 2: sort of scared of the blood. But I certainly did
Speaker 2: not expect to hear what I did, And it was
Speaker 2: the way my doctor told me that I knew that
Speaker 2: there was a problem because he sort of went silent,
Speaker 2: and I'm like, well, that's a you know, I know
Speaker 2: that he's spotted heartbeat, so that wasn't the issue. But
Speaker 2: one of the eggs that split into two, and he
Speaker 2: wasn't able to see that on the ultrasound two weeks earlier.
Speaker 2: But it was very obvious now that I was pregnant
Speaker 2: with triplets, and I could tell from his face that
Speaker 2: this was not good news because suddenly now the risks
Speaker 2: for all four of us were really high. So together
Speaker 2: he just said get dressed. I mean, I just my
Speaker 2: heart sunk. It was the last thing I was expecting
Speaker 2: to hear. In that tiny breath of a moment, I thought,
Speaker 2: oh my god, I'm rocky. There's nothing I can do.
Speaker 2: Check this body out. I am abundantly pregnant.
Speaker 1: Abundantly pregnant. What a great term.
Speaker 2: And you know, he was someone that couldn't get pregnant
Speaker 2: no matter what I did, And suddenly, you know, I
Speaker 2: was overflowing with exactly. And then he said, I need
Speaker 2: you to get dressed. We need to have a conversation.
Speaker 2: And I was like starting panic now at this point,
Speaker 2: and then he sat down and he said this is
Speaker 2: the reality and went through it. And then I spoke
Speaker 2: to four other doctors separately, and they all concluded that
Speaker 2: in order for one child to survive, we needed to
Speaker 2: reduce the twins because the egg has split into two
Speaker 2: and they were in the one they were in the
Speaker 2: one unit, so they were robbing each other, they were
Speaker 2: sabotaging each other, and meanwhile they were risking the singleton.
Speaker 2: So and then how do you go from you know,
Speaker 2: finally getting there to having to look at a reduction,
Speaker 2: which is a very politically correct way of saying mortion.
Speaker 2: And time was running out because it had to happen
Speaker 2: before a certain point in the pregnancy. So we were
Speaker 2: coming up to the eleven week mark and we needed
Speaker 2: to make a decision. So we had a million conversations
Speaker 2: and you know, sleepless nights, and made the hardest decision
Speaker 2: of our lives, and that was to reduce the twins.
Speaker 2: And that was a whole other thing in itself, because
Speaker 2: what they proposed was that they reduced one and because
Speaker 2: they're sharing the same utilities, that that would then affect
Speaker 2: the other, so we wouldn't have to reduce both. But
Speaker 2: you know, they would reduce one, and therefore the other
Speaker 2: one would, as a consequence, also not survive. And so
Speaker 2: that happened, and I was crying so much I couldn't
Speaker 2: keep still, So then they had to keep me still.
Speaker 2: And so that happened on the one day, and then
Speaker 2: the day after that, I went back into check and
Speaker 2: the other one hadn't been reduced, so I had to
Speaker 2: go through it again.
Speaker 1: Marriage. For people who don't understand, I mean, I imagine
Speaker 1: you'd never heard of even the idea of selective reduction
Speaker 1: or reduction. For those who don't understand what the process
Speaker 1: involves without going into too much personal detail, for you
Speaker 1: and only what you're comfortable with, the baby's not actually
Speaker 1: removed from your body? Is it during that process?
Speaker 2: No, there is an injection which happens which therefore reduces that.
Speaker 2: You know, it's not physically removed, removed, it is terminated.
Speaker 1: How do you do that? How do you lie on
Speaker 1: that on that How do you walk into that room
Speaker 1: and lie on that table knowing what you have to do?
Speaker 2: Well, you feel like you're in a torture chamber. You
Speaker 2: know that you feel like for a moment, the dreams
Speaker 2: become the worst nightmare you could ever imagine, and you
Speaker 2: cannot with any logic understand you know what's happened or
Speaker 2: why this is happening, and yet you know you are
Speaker 2: I didn't go into either the IVF world or wanting
Speaker 2: to become a mother to give birth to children that
Speaker 2: were unable to experience life in the way that you
Speaker 2: would hope, and because of my size, there was no
Speaker 2: way I would be able to carry that pregnancy out.
Speaker 2: Separate to that, the twins were, in turn because of
Speaker 2: twinter twin transfusion, being high risk of sabotaging their own
Speaker 2: growth and well being. Oh my god, I mean, this
Speaker 2: is the stuff. And going to this what is what
Speaker 2: you think is a movie because you know it cannot
Speaker 2: be happening. It was horrific. And then the moment when
Speaker 2: I went home after the second day of this, I
Speaker 2: felt a big I was with a friend and I
Speaker 2: felt this liquid coming out of me. That was a
Speaker 2: major and I thought I was miscarrying the third because
Speaker 2: there are risks and I hadn't and I spent prior
Speaker 2: to all of this, I was still racing to my
Speaker 2: obstetrician's office two or three times a week, thinking I
Speaker 2: was miscarrying because of the level of blood prior to
Speaker 2: the reductions. And then yeah, then I raced to the
Speaker 2: hospital to see my doctor and he put the uldrasent
Speaker 2: on and said, no, everything's fine. That was that the
Speaker 2: eleventh twelfth week mark. At the nineteen week mark, we
Speaker 2: found out that the child that was the singleton, that
Speaker 2: was still the one that we.
Speaker 1: Were trying to protect, Stevie.
Speaker 2: Stevie was a girl, and we were thrilled. And two
Speaker 2: weeks after that, the blood continued all throughout from the
Speaker 2: eleven weeks, from the very beginning, all the way until
Speaker 2: my waters broke at twenty one weeks and then I
Speaker 2: don't know how, but I didn't go into labor for
Speaker 2: a further two weeks and I was hospitalized. And that
Speaker 2: was the twilight zone of psychological realities. That was one
Speaker 2: doctor after another coming in and telling us what the
Speaker 2: reality was of Stevie's state. I'd lost ninety percent of
Speaker 2: my amniotic fluid. She was disadvantaged by that, obviously. And
Speaker 2: then they would come in as they should and tell
Speaker 2: you if you were to give birth at twenty three weeks,
Speaker 2: this is where she'd be at in terms of her growth,
Speaker 2: and this is what the reality of that means. And
Speaker 2: then went through every single week until we got to
Speaker 2: the twenty eight thirty weeks. So then you know, and
Speaker 2: this is the will to want to survive, you know,
Speaker 2: the need that we have. I still prayed every moment
Speaker 2: of those two weeks that somehow she would get to
Speaker 2: twenty eight weeks and that she would survive and be okay,
Speaker 2: even though she only had ten percent amniotic to it.
Speaker 2: But on day one of week twenty three, I just
Speaker 2: woke up knowing. I just thought, no, it was the
Speaker 2: day after Mother's Day and I was in a maternity ward.
Speaker 2: It was just so and I woke up and there
Speaker 2: was no way I could be talked out of it.
Speaker 2: I just knew because I hadn't felt like that. I mean,
Speaker 2: I was upset and depressed and full of worry, but
Speaker 2: I just knew that a one hundred percent that that
Speaker 2: was the day. And I was right. About ten hours later,
Speaker 2: I started feeling what I didn't no, you know, but
Speaker 2: they were contractions. And then my doctor came in and
Speaker 2: had a look, as he did twice a day for
Speaker 2: me every day while I was in hospital and said,
Speaker 2: may everything's fine, don't worry, and I was like, no,
Speaker 2: it's the first time I didn't believe him. And then
Speaker 2: an hour later George came into the room and I said, Georgie,
Speaker 2: I'm feeling a clenching down below. Can you time them?
Speaker 2: Any timed them? And you know there was a regularity appearing.
Speaker 2: And so I called the midwife and she gave me
Speaker 2: a panadom and called my doctor and he came in
Speaker 2: and took me into the labor ward and he checked
Speaker 2: me and he said, Mary Stevie is still alive, but
Speaker 2: you are in labor and she won't survive coming through
Speaker 2: the birth canal. And now you you know, you have
Speaker 2: to give birth. So that in one moment she went
Speaker 2: from alive to not and so I was just completely shattered.
Speaker 2: But I had to give birth. So I was in
Speaker 2: the midst of the labor So he called my grief
Speaker 2: counselor who's wild debt of wild, and brought her in
Speaker 2: and so she was there with me. George was with me,
Speaker 2: my doctor and my favorite midwife and.
Speaker 1: I were scared, terrified, Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was. I didn't know what I would encounter. You know,
Speaker 2: I assumed the worst, and it was the opposite of that.
Speaker 1: You were you scared of how she would look or
Speaker 1: how you would feel.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, when death and life arrive at the
Speaker 2: same moment, you know, it's it's you know, I mean,
Speaker 2: you imagine that you just don't know what to expect,
Speaker 2: and you know, our mind's giving to fear a lot
Speaker 2: more than they do. You know, fear is such an
Speaker 2: overwhelming feeling, and so you know, your mind tends to
Speaker 2: indulge that first, and so I assumed the works, but
Speaker 2: it was completely the opposite. I was completely in love
Speaker 2: the minute I saw her. I was so in awe
Speaker 2: of how beautiful she was and how perfectly formed she was,
Speaker 2: and how much love I felt towards her. Was just
Speaker 2: the overriding thing above everything else. And Dad placed her
Speaker 2: on my chest, and you know, it was incredible. George
Speaker 2: struggled with it a very different way, because I think,
Speaker 2: you know, he thought he could somehow fix, save, help,
Speaker 2: and you know, he was as helpless as I was
Speaker 2: in the moment. And I think it's different for women.
Speaker 2: I think that we our maternal instinct kicks in and
Speaker 2: overrides everything else and it was incredible. It was you know,
Speaker 2: I describe it as the crush of a lifetime, and
Speaker 2: it was.
Speaker 1: You wrote so beautifully in your memoir. All I know
Speaker 1: about the day after Stevie was born and your girlfriends
Speaker 1: came in because you got to spend the day with her.
Speaker 1: Some people would find that surprising or shocking. What was
Speaker 1: it actually like and how did you how did you
Speaker 1: get through that day?
Speaker 2: Well? I didn't. I didn't ask anyone to be there
Speaker 2: with me because I figured my best is, most of
Speaker 2: which are mothers, wouldn't be able to handle that, you know,
Speaker 2: like that it would be such a scary concept for them,
Speaker 2: being mothers, to hold a child that wasn't alive, you know,
Speaker 2: So I just I didn't ask anyone to come in
Speaker 2: if In fact, I tried to talk people out of it,
Speaker 2: and then deb just said to me, at one point,
Speaker 2: Mary dies in the waiting room. She's prepared to be
Speaker 2: sent away, But what do you want me to do?
Speaker 2: And I said, bring her in, And so she came
Speaker 2: in and we held Stevie and we kissed her, and
Speaker 2: we you know, we cried and we laughed and it
Speaker 2: was incredible. And then my other bestie Susie. It was like,
Speaker 2: you know, a groundhog day. Suddenly Susie was there, and
Speaker 2: then you know, after d left, and then Susie came
Speaker 2: back in, and both those girls would rate it as
Speaker 2: one of the highlights of their life. And I know,
Speaker 2: it's a weird thing.
Speaker 1: To say, no, you gave them such a gift.
Speaker 2: It was such an unexpected privilege to witness something that
Speaker 2: you know is a mother's greatest fear, and to be
Speaker 2: able to see something so great in it, and to
Speaker 2: be able to be convinced of that from from Stevie,
Speaker 2: just from her being. You know, it's just weird. I mean,
Speaker 2: these are the type of things that you can try
Speaker 2: to explain, and yet unless you've experienced it, you don't
Speaker 2: really realize the contradiction and the beauty that lies in
Speaker 2: the contradiction of all of it. And so it was
Speaker 2: a bond that was was, you know, forever, going to
Speaker 2: be there after that. And George wasitness to it, and
Speaker 2: he said, now I get why the sisterhood is so strong.
Speaker 2: There is no way men would do that. And yet
Speaker 2: we danced around her, you know, and we held her
Speaker 2: and we kissed her and talked about her and were
Speaker 2: in love with her together, George couldn't hold her. You know,
Speaker 2: George was too confronted by it all. I mean, he
Speaker 2: was a mess. He was crying all the way through it,
Speaker 2: but he couldn't bring himself to connect.
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you about that because I've lost
Speaker 1: a baby halfway through a pregnancy, and I've got friends
Speaker 1: who've had stillborn babies and lost babies at various times,
Speaker 1: and They've often talked about the difference between how they
Speaker 1: reacted and how their partner reacted, and I know that
Speaker 1: was true for me. Did it Did it make a
Speaker 1: gap between you and George? Did you? Were you angry
Speaker 1: with him or did you resent him for not being
Speaker 1: ab to grieve Stevie in the same way that you did?
Speaker 2: No, if anything, the opposite. I tell you what I'm
Speaker 2: being in such a such a difficult circumstance to you.
Speaker 2: This is the privilege of great crew, is that you
Speaker 2: realize that everyone makes a choice that they can live with,
Speaker 2: and that it's everyone's right to choose to deal with
Speaker 2: things in their own way. That who am I to
Speaker 2: say that my way was the only way? That was
Speaker 2: his daughter? He wanted her as much as I did
Speaker 2: and I respected the fact that I saw that he
Speaker 2: couldn't do more than what he could do, and I
Speaker 2: it became very apparent that that men and women are
Speaker 2: very difficult different in terms of how they deal with
Speaker 2: that sort of stuff, but that it was in no
Speaker 2: way an opportunity for me to handball my heartbreak, my disappointment,
Speaker 2: let it manifest into anger and blame Jordan for something.
Speaker 1: What about your own body, I mean, you went, you
Speaker 1: made the decision to go back for more more IVF,
Speaker 1: to try again with all of those years that you experienced,
Speaker 1: the IVF, the failed pregnancies, the twins Stevie, what was
Speaker 1: your relationship to your body like? Were you angry at it?
Speaker 1: Were you frustrated with it? How did you feel about
Speaker 1: your own ability to conceive and carry a pregnancy?
Speaker 2: Well, obviously I thought, you know, especially with the odds
Speaker 2: going up to fifty percent with Donor Egg. You know,
Speaker 2: I knew at the end of the day it was
Speaker 2: going to be a numbers game. You know that you
Speaker 2: suddenly minute I went to Donor Egg really strong, and
Speaker 2: so it was just a matter of what I could withstand.
Speaker 2: That's so pregnatic, I can get pregnant and that you know.
Speaker 2: As much as the fact that that delivered a lot
Speaker 2: of heartbreak, complication and loss, it proved that I could
Speaker 2: get pregnant. And any time you go in to see
Speaker 2: an IVF doctor, the first question I'll ask you is
Speaker 2: have you been pregnant before? Yes, if your body's done
Speaker 2: it before, it knows how to do it. So that
Speaker 2: with the with the confidence that I could survive such
Speaker 2: massive losses and still be upright, still function, somehow gave
Speaker 2: me the faith that you know, I could get there.
Speaker 2: It's just a matter of you know, where that finish
Speaker 2: line was for me, and how many we have to
Speaker 2: do before I said that's enough. And I sort of
Speaker 2: felt like I'd said that's enough after twenty two. At
Speaker 2: that point, I just thought, I'm kidding myself, this is
Speaker 2: not happening. I need to take the hint it's not
Speaker 2: going to happen for me. And that was one of
Speaker 2: the darkest moments for me, when I honestly had run
Speaker 2: out of hope, not just stamina, but actual hope. And
Speaker 2: then George said to me. I was in Greece on
Speaker 2: my own, and I ranged George and told him that
Speaker 2: we'd had yet another failed result, that was up to
Speaker 2: the twenty second and he said to me, Mayor, I'm
Speaker 2: jumping on the next plane. One more go, one more
Speaker 2: fresh batch. And then my mother spoke to my mother
Speaker 2: who was in Melbourne, who I retired from being my
Speaker 2: right hand a lot of this because she was with
Speaker 2: me when my waters broke and she held Steve. You know,
Speaker 2: that took a toll, as you would imagine as a
Speaker 2: mother watching their child go through that and all of that.
Speaker 2: So I'd retired her and I rang her and I
Speaker 2: said to her, it didn't happen. And I can't even
Speaker 2: get out of bed. I can't lift my head, I
Speaker 2: can't do anything. And she said to me, I don't
Speaker 2: care how you feel right now. That will pass. You
Speaker 2: will somehow find the strength to get up tomorrow morning
Speaker 2: and you will jump on that and go back to
Speaker 2: that sacred church that we prayed at, that that delivered
Speaker 2: that pregnancy for us. You know, she believed that there's
Speaker 2: a church in Greece that delivers miracles that people from
Speaker 2: all over the world go to. It's on an island
Speaker 2: next to Michinos, and when you go there, you see
Speaker 2: how many miracles it has delivered for people. Because then
Speaker 2: they they have these these symbols of thanks which are
Speaker 2: in the actual church, and it is it's like a
Speaker 2: chandelier of fankuse that are hung from the church ceiling.
Speaker 2: And so I went there after my sixteenth failed attempt,
Speaker 2: and we got pregnant and prayed, and we got pregnant
Speaker 2: on the next one, which was two weeks later. So
Speaker 2: she said to me, it delivered for us before. I
Speaker 2: want you to go back, jump on that ferry for
Speaker 2: four hours, go and pray and come back, you know,
Speaker 2: and just do that for me, if not for us.
Speaker 2: So I did. I don't know how I did, but
Speaker 2: I did. And when I went there to pray, I'd
Speaker 2: never been taken downstairs to where they christened the children.
Speaker 2: And then there's this whole other room and it's like
Speaker 2: a cave like room, and it's only lit by candles,
Speaker 2: and it's the most beautiful looking room. And I was
Speaker 2: so overwhelmed with how beautiful it was that I made
Speaker 2: a promise in that moment to God or to the
Speaker 2: universe or whoever whoever that power is, and said, I
Speaker 2: can't do this without you. I've tried everything, but if
Speaker 2: you can deliver me a healthy baby, I promise you
Speaker 2: I'll come back here to christen it. And so I
Speaker 2: got pregnant on the next attempt, which is two weeks later,
Speaker 2: and then the year before last, seventy two of us
Speaker 2: went to christen Jamie.
Speaker 1: Then wow, so you know, look, how was that pregnancy
Speaker 1: with Jamie? How did you get through it? What was
Speaker 1: the hardest point of that pregnancy.
Speaker 2: I was still bleeding in the first three months of
Speaker 2: that pregnancy, so that sort of kept me my alert
Speaker 2: as well. And we did the sixty minute story. I
Speaker 2: mean the book. I didn't tell anyone that I was pregnant.
Speaker 2: The book got released, and the book was written with probably,
Speaker 2: you know, with the assumption that I wouldn't get there.
Speaker 2: That book was about Stevie. That book was about not
Speaker 2: getting there. That was not you know, some sort of
Speaker 2: oh yeah, you'll get there too. That's what happens when
Speaker 2: you don't get there.
Speaker 1: And I interviewed you after that book came out, and
Speaker 1: I knew you were pregnant. I just took one look
Speaker 1: at you and I knew, but I didn't want to
Speaker 1: say anything because it's just too fragile, and I didn't
Speaker 1: want you to have to either deny it or confirm it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I sort of started when we did the
Speaker 2: sixty minute story. I was like a bad actress that
Speaker 2: was hiding behind filings. Every single shot there's me holding
Speaker 2: a very large handbag oddly in front of my stomachs.
Speaker 2: And so in the eleventh hour, literally the last day
Speaker 2: of the sixty minute shoot, I just thought, well, I'm
Speaker 2: twenty two weeks at this point, and I just said, oh, FYI.
Speaker 1: A lot of people were very scared for you after
Speaker 1: you said that. I bumped into one of your closest friends,
Speaker 1: Lisa Hensley, and we were talking about how the fact
Speaker 1: that you'd sort of come out as being pregnant on
Speaker 1: sixty minutes, and she said that what you hadn't realized
Speaker 1: is that by doing that sixty minute story, which was
Speaker 1: such a gift to other women who either had gone
Speaker 1: through something similar or would go through something similar in
Speaker 1: the future, so many people contacted you with their stories
Speaker 1: of loss and grief, and that included people who'd had
Speaker 1: still born children, children who died of SIDS. And you
Speaker 1: said to her, I didn't even think that something like
Speaker 1: that could happen. I hadn't even considered that I could
Speaker 1: get all the way have a deliver a baby and
Speaker 1: have her be alive and healthy and then lose her.
Speaker 1: And did you suddenly feel quite weighed down by all
Speaker 1: of these stories and all of these energies of these
Speaker 1: lost babies.
Speaker 2: Yes, and no. Firstly I didn't. I sort of had
Speaker 2: a feeling when I wrote the book that something bigger
Speaker 2: just happened. You know, when I finished writing it, I
Speaker 2: just thought, Oh, something's just happened now, you know, I
Speaker 2: could feel that, you know, it had a life, this
Speaker 2: book outside of my experience, certainly when people saw it
Speaker 2: on sixty minutes, I got so many I mean literally,
Speaker 2: I got my Facebook page for the book went from
Speaker 2: nothing to twenty two thousand in like a week. So
Speaker 2: but separate to the heartbreak, there were a lot of
Speaker 2: positives too, and there were a lot of There was
Speaker 2: a lot of support and a lot of people that
Speaker 2: told their stories that did get there that and a
Speaker 2: lot of people that said I didn't think I could
Speaker 2: go again, but I'm going to go now because I
Speaker 2: saw your story and I bumped into a lot of
Speaker 2: them or they've written to me. So the goodwill of
Speaker 2: being transparent and daring, and I had to, you know,
Speaker 2: I didn't want then suddenly a week later for me
Speaker 2: to go public with it, I mean I was with them.
Speaker 2: I had I had to say it, you know whatever,
Speaker 2: you know, it wasn't going to be as bad as
Speaker 2: what I've been through.
Speaker 1: When did you stop in that pregnancy going from being
Speaker 1: terrified to having faith that it would be okay when
Speaker 1: you held her in your arms?
Speaker 2: That pregnancy for me was week thirty one. Because the
Speaker 2: carrot was dangling in front of me, I felt like
Speaker 2: it was everything was going as it should, but it
Speaker 2: was still too far away as far as I was concerned,
Speaker 2: you know, Like I just felt like I thought I
Speaker 2: was doing a really good job of hiding it. And
Speaker 2: then I walked in to see my obstetrician VJ. Because
Speaker 2: the reception, I said, oh, don't you look great at it?
Speaker 2: And I'd had a terrible morning. I'd been crying to
Speaker 2: Lisa on the phone and she said, hey, you doing
Speaker 2: And I said, I'm really scared. It's close, but it's
Speaker 2: not close enough, you know, Like I still feel like
Speaker 2: eight weeks away still a long time, and am I
Speaker 2: going to get there? Like I felt like it was
Speaker 2: looking like I would, but I still had to wait
Speaker 2: another two months and so I walked in and VJ said,
Speaker 2: not having a good day. You know, knows me backwards,
Speaker 2: seeing me through the Stevie loss and all of that
Speaker 2: and all the way through this pregnancy.
Speaker 1: He delivered Steve right, Yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 2: He told me about someone that I should go and
Speaker 2: see to talk to about having some tools to be
Speaker 2: able to lean on when the anxiety was going to
Speaker 2: kick in closer to the birth and throughout this last
Speaker 2: two months. And she was fantastic, and she is very
Speaker 2: good at sort of demystifying the psychological minefield that this is.
Speaker 2: And said to me, Mary, there are two ways that
Speaker 2: you can deal with this. One is to tell yourself
Speaker 2: that this is a fantasy of your own making. You
Speaker 2: don't have the privilege of that option. This is something
Speaker 2: you have not imagined, this is something that you've lived through.
Speaker 2: So that option is not going to work for you,
Speaker 2: So you can't talk yourself out out of it because
Speaker 2: it did happen. The next option, which is your only option,
Speaker 2: is to calmly tell yourself, this is the feeling I'm
Speaker 2: feeling right now, and there will be another feeling that
Speaker 2: will come into takeover from that feeling, and trust that
Speaker 2: you will move through many feelings and that you won't
Speaker 2: stay in the one feeling for too long. So she
Speaker 2: gave me some exercises to do come the day of
Speaker 2: Jamie's birth. Because it was a planned season, because of
Speaker 2: the complications of my past and my age and all
Speaker 2: of that, it was decided that we would do a
Speaker 2: cesarean day one of week thirty eight. I was nervous
Speaker 2: about going to the same hospital, the same corridor where
Speaker 2: I stood with a bath twel between my legs, bleeding profusely,
Speaker 2: and where I blacked out when I actually got to
Speaker 2: the maternity ward when my waters are broken with Stevie.
Speaker 2: I was going back into that same lift, same corridor,
Speaker 2: all of that, and I was scared about, you know,
Speaker 2: reliving that on what I hoped was going to be
Speaker 2: the happiest day of my life. As it turned out,
Speaker 2: I didn't none of that. I was so excited on
Speaker 2: the day and so calm that I didn't relive any
Speaker 2: of that until a male nurse came in to check
Speaker 2: me just before they took me into the theater and
Speaker 2: said I asked to be put on today, and I thought, oh,
Speaker 2: that's really sweet. And I am with my scrubs on
Speaker 2: and you know, in my little shower cap on, and
Speaker 2: he said, I've walked in your shoes, and he and
Speaker 2: his wife had had a stillborn months earlier, and he said,
Speaker 2: I needed to see the happy part of the story.
Speaker 2: And I thought, what a brilliant way for that to
Speaker 2: be delivered to me through a person, not through walls
Speaker 2: or you know, through another person. And we had a mind,
Speaker 2: we had a bit of a cry, and it was
Speaker 2: all fine. Then they wheeled me in. I was back
Speaker 2: in the excitement of giving birth. And the minute, I mean,
Speaker 2: we had four cameras set up, George set up close
Speaker 2: and everything, and one of the doctors was getting close
Speaker 2: ups while you know, it was so cute because we
Speaker 2: really wanted to capture it. And the minute Jamie was
Speaker 2: born and VJ spun her around for me to have
Speaker 2: a look, I knew the minute I looked at her
Speaker 2: that there was nothing to worry about anymore. I just thought,
Speaker 2: everything's going to be just fine. And I thought, oh
Speaker 2: my god, she's so cute, and that from that minute
Speaker 2: on there was this calmness that then took over my body,
Speaker 2: which is sort of very rarely left me. And as
Speaker 2: I was being wheeled out with Jamie on my chest,
Speaker 2: going to the recovery room. I looked up and that
Speaker 2: male nurse was there and we had a smile. We winked,
Speaker 2: and you know, he got to see that, and so
Speaker 2: did I. That you know you can get there doesn't
Speaker 2: take anything away from the grief of the loss, but
Speaker 2: it's just it's good to know that there. You know,
Speaker 2: if you just keep going, you can achieve incredible things.
Speaker 2: If somehow you can muster the strength to just believe
Speaker 2: that it can happen, and you make every effort possible
Speaker 2: to make that happen, then the result can be there.
Speaker 2: And then sixty minutes were waiting for my room and
Speaker 2: Michael Lovesha walked in. I'll tell you this, nothing good
Speaker 2: comes out of giving out. I mean, if I'd given
Speaker 2: up this, we wouldn't have got to this. I just
Speaker 2: thank God that somehow I had the will to continue.
Speaker 1: How old is Jamie now? Is she too?
Speaker 2: She's to it a bit, She's marry everything. She's very cute,
Speaker 2: she's very verbal, she's very bright, she's very violent. She
Speaker 2: loves a bite and a whack. She's very animated. She's
Speaker 2: just a dream. She's very tender and romantic until the
Speaker 2: bikes come and you know, it's fantastic.
Speaker 1: His motherhood was would be it is.
Speaker 2: It is so incredibly illuminating of everything. You know. It
Speaker 2: forces you to look at the world through this whole
Speaker 2: other lens. And yeah, it is tough, you know, and
Speaker 2: you do judge yourself harshly because you expect yourself to be,
Speaker 2: you know, a superwoman. I believe that a great mother
Speaker 2: requires two things. Great snacks, like you better have some
Speaker 2: good handy, you know, like if you're going out and
Speaker 2: if you've got ten good snacks in there or even five,
Speaker 2: you're doing really well. And infinite patience. You know, you
Speaker 2: just need to be as patient as possible just to
Speaker 2: deal with the level of emotion and commitment children take.
Speaker 2: But it becomes second nature because you so in love
Speaker 2: with them that you know you want to understand them
Speaker 2: and help them, you know, express what they're feeling and
Speaker 2: all of that. Yeah, I've never felt more content, and
Speaker 2: I've never felt like the world was bigger than it
Speaker 2: is since she came along. Everything's bigger, that's beautiful, everything's better.
Speaker 1: Hey, thank you by writing about Stevie and the twins
Speaker 1: and the IVF and by talking so honestly and openly
Speaker 1: and doing sixty minutes and speaking to me and giving interviews.
Speaker 1: I hope you know what a gift you give to
Speaker 1: women and to men, but particularly to women. And your
Speaker 1: generosity of spirit in sharing you know, Stevie with all
Speaker 1: of us is just an extraordinary act of generosity. So
Speaker 1: thank you, Mia.
Speaker 2: I just want to say that I've known you for
Speaker 2: a long long time and we sort of went up
Speaker 2: in our own little ranks similar time. But yeah, like you,
Speaker 2: I like to give back to my gender in any
Speaker 2: way I can that informs them to make the decisions
Speaker 2: that they need to make in order to have a full,
Speaker 2: better life. And it is a privilege. And what we
Speaker 2: get back, and specifically what I get back from my
Speaker 2: audience is what has propelled me to get back to
Speaker 2: what I love doing and to give back because I
Speaker 2: feel like I received so much. Females are fantastic at
Speaker 2: being excited by information given to them from other females
Speaker 2: as to how to you know, be better and stronger
Speaker 2: and braver and and happier and healthier. And that's what
Speaker 2: you do, and that's what I do. Mine's a bit
Speaker 2: more comic than yours usually, but you know, it's a privilege.
Speaker 2: So thank you to you, and thank you to everyone.
Speaker 2: I hope they come and see the show.
Speaker 1: Lots of love, my darling. Ah. Thanks for listening to
Speaker 1: No Filter. Subscribe to iTunes for more episodes. This show
Speaker 1: is hosted by Me and Friedman and produced by Eliza
Speaker 1: Ratliffe for the Mom and mea podcast network. That was
Speaker 1: Mary Custas on No Filter. If you've forgotten what you're
Speaker 1: listening to, because that happens to me sometimes. Every time
Speaker 1: I listen to Mary, I'm just so struck by her
Speaker 1: warmth and her strength and her absolute honesty. She's like
Speaker 1: ballast on a ship. She's just such a grounding, grounded
Speaker 1: force and it takes incredible courage to share such raw
Speaker 1: parts of her life. So if you loved that episode,
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