Speaker 1: You're listening to a MoMA Mea podcast. Mama Mea acknowledges
Speaker 1: the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast
Speaker 1: is recorded on. Hey friends, I'm excited to share a
Speaker 1: brand new episode of our sister Mama Mea podcast. It's
Speaker 1: called Diary of a Birth.
Speaker 2: And it's hosted by Cassenya Lukisch. This episode is about
Speaker 2: an amazing woman who gave birth to quadruplets. I picked
Speaker 2: this one for your no filter ears because it is
Speaker 2: a cracker of a story. Imagine having four babies at once.
Speaker 2: She answers all the questions that you've probably been wondering
Speaker 2: since I said the word quadruplets, like how do you
Speaker 2: actually fit them all in your body? And what is
Speaker 2: the birth like? And also what happens when they come out?
Speaker 2: How do you even remember which one is which? It
Speaker 2: is a truly remarkable story, So take a listen and enjoy.
Speaker 3: I'm Cassenya Lukitch and this is Diary of a Birth.
Speaker 3: I'll never forget the day that I found out that
Speaker 3: I was having my first baby, after two years of
Speaker 3: infanteen and the constant cycle of two weeks of hope
Speaker 3: then two weeks of disappointment. And anxiety. We got that
Speaker 3: positive pregnancy test and it was one of the most
Speaker 3: incredible days of my life. And if you, like me,
Speaker 3: struggle with falling pregnant, you'll know what a wondrous surprise
Speaker 3: it is to be told that finally you're with child,
Speaker 3: just like today's mum.
Speaker 4: And then she puts on the sound and it's got
Speaker 4: the strong, like the strongest heartbeat ever, and oh, I
Speaker 4: gets emotional because that sound is like it's the heartbeat
Speaker 4: that's coming from inside you, and that's your baby, and
Speaker 4: that's the sound like that you have longed for for
Speaker 4: so long. We're just wailing like we're balley.
Speaker 3: But for the woman telling this birth story, the moment
Speaker 3: was extra surprising. Four times as shocking, you might say.
Speaker 4: So she's put the wand on my belly and I've
Speaker 4: seen like multiple like black circles, and then she's it
Speaker 4: away and I see like the color dropped from her
Speaker 4: face and I've instantly gone and she's gone. She goes,
Speaker 4: this isn't twins, this is she's what even is is
Speaker 4: quads quad quadruplets.
Speaker 3: You won't believe the shocking rollercoaster of emotions she went
Speaker 3: through over an incredible pregnancy.
Speaker 4: I was so scared. There was not an inch of
Speaker 4: excitement in me, to be completely honest, Like, I was
Speaker 4: just so overwhelmed with fear because this was just so
Speaker 4: unknown to me. Like I just didn't know what was happening.
Speaker 4: Four babies, What the hell? Like I can't carry four babies? Like,
Speaker 4: am I gonna die?
Speaker 3: Get ready for the most incredible pregnancy story ever.
Speaker 4: At thirty weeks I think I was measuring it. Fifty
Speaker 4: two weeks pregnant, I was massive and my lungs were
Speaker 4: getting compressed. I couldn't breathe properly because my lungs were
Speaker 4: so squished. I couldn't eat much because my stomach was
Speaker 4: getting squished.
Speaker 3: So let's meet today's mum.
Speaker 4: Hi, my name is Taylor, and this is the diary
Speaker 4: of my birth with my quadruplets, Daisy, Archie, Billy, and Charlie.
Speaker 3: Taylor chewed Hope. Glacken is nothing short of a superwoman.
Speaker 3: Her story is unbelievable and you're in for such a
Speaker 3: treat just to hear her tell it. But let's start
Speaker 3: back before her life took its crazy turn.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so life before the Cords was just very usual.
Speaker 4: Sean and I met in high school, being together now
Speaker 4: for over twelve years. We're very local to where we are,
Speaker 4: we're kind of born and raised in this area, and
Speaker 4: we're very family orientated people, so been together for a while,
Speaker 4: got married back in twenty twenty two, host COVID kind
Speaker 4: of thing, and I have always been very full was
Speaker 4: short about wanting to start a family, So that's something
Speaker 4: that we always knew would come. We just didn't know
Speaker 4: that it would come this quick. But yeah, we're very
Speaker 4: sport orientated people, very social. We love our friends, but
Speaker 4: we're also real home people. We love getting around and
Speaker 4: doing DIY and yeah, that was kind of just us
Speaker 4: go around travel camping, and things have changed very quickly.
Speaker 3: Taylor had endured a lot of health issues in the past.
Speaker 4: So falling pregnant wasn't what I expected. So back when
Speaker 4: I was in my very very early twenties, I was
Speaker 4: told I had pcos so polcistic ovary syndrome and I
Speaker 4: was kind of told, do you want to have babies now?
Speaker 4: And I said no, but I do down the future.
Speaker 4: So we kind of just brushed it to the side
Speaker 4: and I just continued on managing my symptoms. But it
Speaker 4: wasn't until we got engaged, and I knew that we
Speaker 4: wanted to have babies coming up, and so that's when
Speaker 4: I started preparing my body. Went and seeing my doctor
Speaker 4: and said, look, this is what's going to be our
Speaker 4: plan for the next few years. Can you help me
Speaker 4: start getting my body ready. So we started doing a
Speaker 4: bit of investigating and it led me very quickly to
Speaker 4: specialists and surprised to me, I had stage four endometriosis,
Speaker 4: so I didn't necessarily have painful periods or the pain
Speaker 4: as such during a mental cycle. A lot of people
Speaker 4: explain with the edemitriosis, I had other issues bowe issues
Speaker 4: and pain like that because my ovary was attached to
Speaker 4: my bow with enemitriosis. So I was lucky enough to
Speaker 4: have all that removed and keep my ovary intact, which
Speaker 4: was great. And they also seen that, yeah, my ovaries
Speaker 4: were quite enlarged because of the PCOS two, so all
Speaker 4: of that all cleaned up and they were like, Okay,
Speaker 4: you should be really fertile, now go on your way,
Speaker 4: and that most definitely wasn't the case.
Speaker 3: Like so many women, Taylor realized that while she knew
Speaker 3: how babies were made, she didn't really know how to
Speaker 3: fall pregnant.
Speaker 4: Just kept going with trying. Was kind of a bit
Speaker 4: naive in the situation. I was studying to be a
Speaker 4: primary teacher, and I still didn't know that much about
Speaker 4: the female body. Like I just I was really naive.
Speaker 4: It was amazing how much I didn't know. And here
Speaker 4: I am being a woman for what I was twenty
Speaker 4: seven I think at the time, and I didn't even
Speaker 4: know these things on how to get But anyways, we
Speaker 4: kept trying, and yeah, didn't work. I was then put
Speaker 4: on it's called lectrosol, so it encourages ovulation. Because I
Speaker 4: wasn't ovulating. I wasn't having a period, So I was
Speaker 4: put on medication to enforce a period, to enforce ovulation,
Speaker 4: and still nothing was happening, no ovulation. I got put
Speaker 4: to a fertility specialist. She goes, you're not getting pregnant
Speaker 4: in any way, shape or form on this medication at
Speaker 4: the moment. So in order to get me just to ovulate,
Speaker 4: she had to triple my dose for double the time
Speaker 4: with this lectrosol. And we're tracking. I was getting blood
Speaker 4: tests tracking when I'm ovulating. Here we are trying to
Speaker 4: have sex every second day, like it's just ridiculous. It
Speaker 4: just makes everything feel so procedural, and it just takes
Speaker 4: the fun out of everything, and it's just not the
Speaker 4: way that you plan to get pregnant. It takes a
Speaker 4: surprise out of it, It takes the joy out of Yeah,
Speaker 4: it just it just made everything feel really medical. But
Speaker 4: that's what we had to do, and so be it
Speaker 4: will do it.
Speaker 3: After a year of tracking ovulation and not falling pregnant,
Speaker 3: Taylor's next step was IVF, but the doctors warned her
Speaker 3: that it wasn't going to be straightforward for her.
Speaker 4: So my ovar is with chocolate block with follicles, which
Speaker 4: I was like, oh, that's great. Doesn't that mean I
Speaker 4: have this really high chance? But how she explained it
Speaker 4: to me was they're so full. Nothing can reach its
Speaker 4: full maturity inside your ovaries, and so you have these
Speaker 4: really immature follicles. But with IVF, their job is to
Speaker 4: stimulate those follicles and then they give you this drug
Speaker 4: that gets you to release those follicles. And naturally you
Speaker 4: only normally release one or two follicles here and there.
Speaker 4: But here I am with chocol block over eaes. I
Speaker 4: think there's upwards of maybe even sixty and per overary
Speaker 4: there was a stupid number. So I was given like
Speaker 4: a really really low dose. And it came to the
Speaker 4: collection phase and I remember them going, Taylor, did you
Speaker 4: hear that we've got your first egg? We've got your
Speaker 4: first egg? And then the rest was a blur and
Speaker 4: I remember them coming in and saying, Taylor, we got
Speaker 4: thirty and I was like, thirty eggs? What?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 4: I know friends and family that have had IVF and
Speaker 4: they're getting four. I'm long thirty.
Speaker 3: Five days after Taylor's collection, an incredible fourteen embryos had
Speaker 3: survived to the blastocyst stage, but then she fell ill
Speaker 3: and was hospitalized with ovarian hyperstimulation, which took a few
Speaker 3: months to recover from, meaning a delay in transferring any
Speaker 3: of the embryos into her. So remember that Taylor was
Speaker 3: still on letrosola this stage, as her PCOS meant she
Speaker 3: didn't naturally ovulate, but she was three months off the
Speaker 3: IVF stimulation. Finally, three months after the retrieval date, it
Speaker 3: was time to implant the most viable embryo.
Speaker 4: When you're going for your transfer, you have regular blood
Speaker 4: test to catch when you're ovulating, so as soon as
Speaker 4: you're ovulate five days later. You must have that transfer.
Speaker 4: The need to catch that ovulation window very carefully, and
Speaker 4: we go for the embryo transfer. It's just a wild experience.
Speaker 4: I was just reading through my journal notes about it.
Speaker 4: And you work so hard for this day, and you
Speaker 4: think about getting pregnant, and you work so hard to
Speaker 4: get these eggs and get them to blastises, to get
Speaker 4: them to be an embryo, and you go in for
Speaker 4: this transfer appointment and it's five minutes, it's done and dusted.
Speaker 4: It's just like you're going in to get your eyebrows done.
Speaker 4: To these ladies, they're just so good at it. They're like,
Speaker 4: we've picked out your embryo, number five. Here it is.
Speaker 4: We're about to transfer. It's just one embryo. It's just
Speaker 4: one embryo. And so they transfer it. We see the
Speaker 4: little light flash those that do if no. Apparently you
Speaker 4: look for the flash on the ultrasound machine. It's apparently
Speaker 4: a telltale signed to see if the embryo has gone through.
Speaker 4: And they're like, okay, off you go. We'll give you
Speaker 4: a call in two weeks to let you know if
Speaker 4: that's happened. So then you go on this two week
Speaker 4: dreaded weight. It is the longest two weeks of your life.
Speaker 4: Like as soon as you walk out that appointment, first
Speaker 4: of all, you're like, I don't want to pooh because
Speaker 4: you're scared youre going to push this little embryo out.
Speaker 4: But they're like, don't worry, it won't happen. It's not
Speaker 4: going to fall out. But you're walking around with your
Speaker 4: legs held tired, like something's going to fall out of you.
Speaker 4: But yeah, two weeks we waited and it was so
Speaker 4: so stressful. But I instantly felt my boobs were getting bigger.
Speaker 4: I was feeling a bit different, but I was way
Speaker 4: too scared to verbalize any of this because I didn't
Speaker 4: want to put any bad voodoo out there. I just was, Okay,
Speaker 4: let's just pray to the gods, because statistically, your first
Speaker 4: embryo transferred normally isn't that successful.
Speaker 3: As someone who's gone through IVF, let me tell you,
Speaker 3: the waiting periods are absolute torture. It is a constant cycle.
Speaker 3: It's two weeks of hope, excitement. It's did this injection work?
Speaker 3: It's my eggs in the right place, Is my body
Speaker 3: do the right thing? Are my hormones doing the right thing.
Speaker 3: You feel like a pincushion. Waiting for phone calls from
Speaker 3: embryologists is another certain kind of hell because you're constantly
Speaker 3: waiting for the phone call. You're staring at your phone
Speaker 3: waiting to see what's happening, and you do not want
Speaker 3: to miss that phone call. It is excruciating. The day
Speaker 3: that Taylor was due to receive her blood test results,
Speaker 3: the call came through at eleven am, but she torturously
Speaker 3: left the voicemail unheard so she could get the news
Speaker 3: with Sean that evening.
Speaker 4: Before we listen to it, we both said, okay, all right,
Speaker 4: if this doesn't work, and we're pretty sure it hasn't worked,
Speaker 4: because we're looking at statistics here, we have another thirteen goes.
Speaker 4: This isn't give up stage. We need to stay positive
Speaker 4: in this journey because this journey can go on quite
Speaker 4: a long time. And anyways, we press play and she says,
Speaker 4: congratulations still wakes me so emotional because that's the day
Speaker 4: you hope and you pray for, and oh, like we
Speaker 4: had wished of that day for so long and it
Speaker 4: was there and we were just like, oh, we just
Speaker 4: couldn't grasp what was happening. Around us, and we just
Speaker 4: held each other for so long, and we were just like,
Speaker 4: oh my God, like it's happened. We're pregnant. At that point,
Speaker 4: we're going, oh my god, we're pregnant with one baby,
Speaker 4: and gosh, things.
Speaker 3: Changed coming up.
Speaker 4: And then we walk out the door and then the
Speaker 4: weight just crushes me and I'm just in Shan's arms
Speaker 4: and We're just trying to get back to the car
Speaker 4: and I'm just hysterical, and we don't speak, like we
Speaker 4: don't even know what to say to each other.
Speaker 3: Every mom waits with baited breath for the all important
Speaker 3: dating scan, when you find out how many weeks pregnant
Speaker 3: you're measuring and the approximate date that you'll be blowing
Speaker 3: out those birthday candles each year. It made me the
Speaker 3: day you see their first tiny realms and hear their strong,
Speaker 3: healthy heartbeats. Eight weeks later, Taylor and Sean returned to
Speaker 3: their IVF clinic to have their scan, and Taylor's account
Speaker 3: of finding out just how many bubs were in her
Speaker 3: stomach is stunningly vulnerable and honest.
Speaker 4: As much as it's incredible, I need to be honest
Speaker 4: about how I felt in that situation. Because there's a
Speaker 4: lot of emotions that come with this. So we're waiting
Speaker 4: in the waiting room and aha, imagine if it's twins,
Speaker 4: La la la. So we go in, we sit down,
Speaker 4: We're in a room, Sean's beside me, We've got masks on,
Speaker 4: and there's a big TV in front of us, and
Speaker 4: the sonographers are my right. Sean's on my left shoulder,
Speaker 4: and she's lovely. And I've seen a fair few ultra
Speaker 4: sounds in my times with my pcos and my adometriosis
Speaker 4: and getting ready to have this baby, so I kind
Speaker 4: of have gotten a grasp about what a belly should
Speaker 4: look like on an ultrasow machine. Sean doesn't know what
Speaker 4: he's looking at it. He could be looking at a
Speaker 4: PlayStation screen, for early knows. And so she's put the
Speaker 4: wand on my belly and I've seen like multiple like
Speaker 4: black circles, and then she's ripped it away and I
Speaker 4: see like the color drop from her face and I've
Speaker 4: instantly gone, and she's gone. Sean's going, why is everyone?
Speaker 4: And like, what's going on here? Like I'm trying to
Speaker 4: say things, nothing's really coming out, And she just put
Speaker 4: her hand on my leg and she said, Taylor, you
Speaker 4: have multiple pregnancies in here. I have to count to
Speaker 4: know how many you have in here. I can't even
Speaker 4: like fear. It was just fear. And so she started
Speaker 4: counting and she's put the warmth on. She's gone, okay, one,
Speaker 4: all right, two, and I'm like, holy crap. And she's
Speaker 4: gone three and I'm like, oh my god. Three, and
Speaker 4: then she's gone four. Oh, oh my god. For I'm
Speaker 4: instantly hysteric cool, like I can't breathe. I'm like I
Speaker 4: could feel my heart coming out of my chest. I
Speaker 4: like was trying to hold back that big like cry,
Speaker 4: like I'm trying to regulate my breathing. And I remember
Speaker 4: like consciously thinking, Taylor, catch your breath, Catch your breath.
Speaker 4: You're gonna faint. Catch your breath. And she said, did
Speaker 4: you guys have sex after the trance plant? And we
Speaker 4: said no, no, no, not after no, like you told us,
Speaker 4: not too after. She's gone, okay, let me just count again.
Speaker 4: Sean and I trying to breathe and I've just grabbed
Speaker 4: Sean's hands. I'm squeezing it for life on my shoulder
Speaker 4: and I was so scared, like there was not an
Speaker 4: inch of excitement in me, to be completely honest, like
Speaker 4: I was just so overwhelmed with fear because I didn't know.
Speaker 4: This was just so unknown to me, Like I just
Speaker 4: didn't know what was happening. And to me, instantly, I thought,
Speaker 4: this pregnancy is scrapped, Like this is not a viable pregnancy.
Speaker 4: Four babies? What the hell? Like I can't carry four babies?
Speaker 4: Like am I gonna die? Like I literally thought like
Speaker 4: could I die because of this? And so the next
Speaker 4: part was to go check what was viable and she said, Okay, well,
Speaker 4: I guess we start this kind of the way we
Speaker 4: do a twins, and I'll start at the cervix. Looks
Speaker 4: at the first sack. Yep, there's a baby, and there
Speaker 4: was a yoke sack in there as well. And then
Speaker 4: she puts on the sound and it's got the strong,
Speaker 4: like the strongest heartbeat ever. And oh, it gets emotional
Speaker 4: because that sound is like you see everybody's videos of
Speaker 4: like this heartbeat sound. You're like, oh, that's nice, But
Speaker 4: then it's the heartbeat that's coming from inside you, and
Speaker 4: that's your baby, and that's the sound like that you
Speaker 4: have longed for for so long. We're just wailing like
Speaker 4: we're balling, and I was like, oh my god, I
Speaker 4: hadn't even heard the word quadruplet. Like all three of
Speaker 4: us just stop and go, oh my god. The Scenariopa
Speaker 4: said she's been doing this for over thirty years and
Speaker 4: she's never seen it before. She goes, hah, get in
Speaker 4: touch with your doctor quick. And the realistic side of
Speaker 4: it all starts really really becoming quite heavy. You struggle
Speaker 4: to not let your mind go there about is this viable?
Speaker 4: Is this safe? Is everything going to be okay? And
Speaker 4: then we walk out the door and then the weight
Speaker 4: just crushes me and I'm just in Shawn's arms and
Speaker 4: We're just trying to get back to the car and
Speaker 4: I'm just hysterical, and we don't speak, like we don't
Speaker 4: even know what to say to each other. We're just
Speaker 4: not speaking, but we're just we're just in that moment
Speaker 4: right then and there, and we're just driving along. It's
Speaker 4: about an hour drive to get home, and we had
Speaker 4: to stop at Macis because I started getting hungry. I
Speaker 4: needed a six pack of nuggets asap. And we've gone
Speaker 4: through McDonald's and I've just said, Sean, what is this?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 4: We were hoping to get three kids across our lifetime, like,
Speaker 4: what are we going to do? And on the way home,
Speaker 4: we pretty much just ended up saying that, Okay, if
Speaker 4: I'm well and the babies are well, we'll continue with
Speaker 4: what we have to do. And we're going We're in
Speaker 4: a very amazing country with an incredible healthcare system, and
Speaker 4: we're going to follow the guidance of our doctors. And
Speaker 4: as much as the baby's health is important, so is mine,
Speaker 4: and we're going to find this medium between both and
Speaker 4: keep everybody safe.
Speaker 3: I'll never forget the moment when I told my parents
Speaker 3: that we were pregnant. It happened straight after I found
Speaker 3: out with Dan, and it was one of the best
Speaker 3: moments of our life. But the reactions of Taylor's family
Speaker 3: and friends was utter disbelief.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we went home, we told our families, and it
Speaker 4: was weird. It was how do you tell your family
Speaker 4: that you're pregnant with quadruplets? Like we just walked in
Speaker 4: and we just handed them the photo and we're like,
Speaker 4: we're having quadruplets, and no one believed us, and then
Speaker 4: they're like, oh my god.
Speaker 3: So one of the biggest questions I have about having
Speaker 3: cords is what was your pregnancy.
Speaker 4: Like, yeah, So my pregnancy was actually hey, not much
Speaker 4: morning sickness, lots of headaches, lots of back pain. I
Speaker 4: started growing very quickly and my eight week skin I
Speaker 4: had a bump. By twelve weeks, I've got a belly
Speaker 4: like it was. It progressed very quickly. The babies all
Speaker 4: also had their own placentas, so I was growing rapidly.
Speaker 4: I was having fortnightly appointments down at Raynal Shore. They
Speaker 4: were doing cervical checks checking on all the babies. These
Speaker 4: ultra sounds would go over two hours. Suddenly, on my
Speaker 4: twenty fourth week appointment, my cervix had dropped drastically and
Speaker 4: it was because I was pushing myself way too hard.
Speaker 4: I was just trying to do way too much. It
Speaker 4: was just silly. So I ended up in hospital. And
Speaker 4: while I was in hospital, they did like a rested
Speaker 4: test on me where when I woke up in the morning,
Speaker 4: I wasn't allowed to move and they wheeled me to
Speaker 4: this like science lab and they put this big mask
Speaker 4: on my face and I had to sit still and
Speaker 4: just breathe into it for fifteen minutes. And anybody that
Speaker 4: has been pregnant before like sitting like I was in
Speaker 4: a wheelchair for fifteen minutes, not moving with a big
Speaker 4: mask on your face.
Speaker 5: I was.
Speaker 4: It was ridiculous. But this was all to calculate how
Speaker 4: much energy I was burning at a rested heart rate,
Speaker 4: to see how much food I had to eat. So
Speaker 4: this test ended up telling them that I needed to
Speaker 4: eat three thousand calories a day. Three thousand calories on
Speaker 4: a gestational diabetes hospital diet was foul like, and I
Speaker 4: was in hospital for two months. They're like on a
Speaker 4: two week menu rotation in the hospital. I had gone
Speaker 4: through everything it was, and I was so full, Like
Speaker 4: I was so big at thirty weeks I think I
Speaker 4: was measuring it. Fifty two weeks pregnant. I was massive,
Speaker 4: and my lungs were getting compressed. I couldn't breathe properly
Speaker 4: because my lungs were so squished. I couldn't eat much
Speaker 4: because my stomach was getting squished so pretty much. I
Speaker 4: couldn't have big meals. They were just loading me up
Speaker 4: on milk, this particular milk they had like in a
Speaker 4: little cardon, and like crackers and cheese and their fruit,
Speaker 4: And I was trying my best to eat as much
Speaker 4: as I could, But I just did what I could.
Speaker 4: I soon figured out how to work out uber eats
Speaker 4: down there, and I'm just quickly going outside for some
Speaker 4: fresh air and mc donald's would arrive and I'd scoff
Speaker 4: it down and then walk back in. And I had
Speaker 4: to keep a close eye with sugars and things like that.
Speaker 4: But the hospital food got real old, real quick when
Speaker 4: I was on Yeah, that many calories a day.
Speaker 3: So Taylor was in hospital almost two months before her birth,
Speaker 3: a huge amount of time to be away from home.
Speaker 3: So how did she keep persanity?
Speaker 4: But I just made sure I had a routine. I
Speaker 4: wasn't on full bed rest. I was still allowed to
Speaker 4: get up and walk around, so I tried to have
Speaker 4: a routine of get up, have a shower, make my bed.
Speaker 4: I bought all my own bedding in the room was
Speaker 4: very much my room. I had photo frames, I had
Speaker 4: artwork like, I had my own fan. It was my room.
Speaker 4: One of my girlfriends bought me like a really nice
Speaker 4: haircare routine, so I always get excited for my hair
Speaker 4: washing days, even though I'd have to sit down to
Speaker 4: wash my hair cause I'd get so puffed I would
Speaker 4: do that, I'd go for a walk outside come back in.
Speaker 4: So in the hospital, the TV was like I think
Speaker 4: I've seen iPads bigger than the TV that was in
Speaker 4: my room. I remember the Jilarus were playing, and when
Speaker 4: my friends plays and the Jilrees and I really wanted
Speaker 4: to watch their game. I would just watch Tipping Point
Speaker 4: like Deal, like all those little shows. I felt like
Speaker 4: my nan like I had scheduled times to watch TV.
Speaker 4: I think I read maybe two three books. I wasn't
Speaker 4: that big of a reader, but sudoku, like I was
Speaker 4: a Sudoku queen. When Sean would come down and I
Speaker 4: was like, right, we're having a cop because I knew
Speaker 4: that I was better than him at sadoku, so I
Speaker 4: was like, right, we're versing each other in sadoku. And
Speaker 4: a lot of you know, Sean and I are very competitive,
Speaker 4: so any game that came out with a winner, we
Speaker 4: would be playing that, and the nurses would come in
Speaker 4: to do my blood pressure and stuff and like, hold on,
Speaker 4: it's going to be high at the moment because I'm
Speaker 4: about to smash him in un so, just give us five.
Speaker 3: Minutes and come back coming up.
Speaker 4: I definitely had some times where it was rough, and
Speaker 4: I remember just bawling my eyes out, going like I
Speaker 4: just I'm gassed, Like I'm mentally exhausted. You want to
Speaker 4: go as far as you can for your babies, and
Speaker 4: you feel guilty for thinking like I can't keep going anymore.
Speaker 3: For those of us who have only ever had one
Speaker 3: baby in our time is at a time it's not
Speaker 3: easy to comprehend how they all actually fit in there,
Speaker 3: Like can you feel each baby individually move?
Speaker 4: Yeah? So while I was in the hospital, they were
Speaker 4: only doing an ultrasound on me once a week and
Speaker 4: then a full anatomy scan every fortnight. And during the
Speaker 4: time of having ultrasounds, the way we monitor the babies
Speaker 4: was all through me. I was in tune with each baby.
Speaker 4: They all had their own placenta, so they were all
Speaker 4: in a fixed position, and I could tell when it
Speaker 4: was baby one, or baby two, baby three, or baby four.
Speaker 4: And they would just say to me every day, have
Speaker 4: you felt baby one, two, three, and four? And I'd go, yep,
Speaker 4: I can feel yep, yep, yep. They're all doing this,
Speaker 4: that and the other. I could tell from their movements
Speaker 4: who was who, and it has transferred across They're very
Speaker 4: similar now to what they were in the womb. It's
Speaker 4: very weird. Yeah, I was very in tuned with all
Speaker 4: of them.
Speaker 3: Taylor's resilience and positivity during the epic job of growing
Speaker 3: four babies is really incredible, but she admits it wasn't
Speaker 3: always an easy slog. She relied on an excellent support
Speaker 3: system to get her through.
Speaker 4: And I was progressing really well. So our goal was
Speaker 4: to get me to thirty two weeks. And they even
Speaker 4: had like a little betting chart in their office about
Speaker 4: how far do we reckon Taylor's going to get And
Speaker 4: we all had bets, and I had a white board
Speaker 4: up in my room and I had like a tally
Speaker 4: going of how many days I'd get to. And that
Speaker 4: was what helped me get through a lot too. Was Okay,
Speaker 4: I need to get to this next mile soon, because
Speaker 4: the statistics the serious effects that babies can have from
Speaker 4: being born early are very very serious. But there's like
Speaker 4: a turning point at like twenty eight thirty weeks, Like
Speaker 4: once you get to that milestone, you're coming into a
Speaker 4: safety area. So I definitely had some times where it
Speaker 4: was rough. I remember my social worker coming in and
Speaker 4: just bawling my eyes out, going like I just I'm gassed,
Speaker 4: like I'm mentally exhausted. You want to go as far
Speaker 4: as you can for your babies, and you feel guilty
Speaker 4: for thinking like I can't keep going anymore. So I
Speaker 4: was really really battling in my mind some days, and
Speaker 4: there was days where they would come in and go,
Speaker 4: how you doing today, and I was just a blubbering mess.
Speaker 4: So I really had to have a strong support team
Speaker 4: around me. And Sean was just like, full credit to
Speaker 4: the man. He was amazing. He wasn't like I get
Speaker 4: emotional talking about it because he was like a lot
Speaker 4: of people talk about my efforts in this pregnancy, but
Speaker 4: he made just as much of an effort and a
Speaker 4: sacrifice for our family too, because he was still working
Speaker 4: full time. He's a high school teacher, and he continued
Speaker 4: and after work he'd go home and he was working
Speaker 4: on renovations in the house, and then he would finish
Speaker 4: those at like eight o'clock at night, and then drive
Speaker 4: an hour and a half down to sleep the night
Speaker 4: on a lounge chair in the hospital, and then would
Speaker 4: get up at five o'clock and drive back straight into
Speaker 4: work and do all that every single day for two months.
Speaker 4: He didn't skip a day, and the only reason for
Speaker 4: him to come down on those days was to be
Speaker 4: my support, Like there was no other purpose for him
Speaker 4: to be there other than to be my support. So
Speaker 4: he played a big role in keeping my mental well
Speaker 4: being positive in that really long time.
Speaker 3: So after Taylor got to thirty weeks, D day or
Speaker 3: Q day loomed, but she still had a definite goal.
Speaker 3: For a funny reason, my.
Speaker 4: Doctor had a holiday booked in just before that, so
Speaker 4: she's like, Taylor, we're getting you to thirty two weeks.
Speaker 4: And so I'm holding on for dear life. But I'm
Speaker 4: starting to get headaches and starting to get a bit
Speaker 4: of blurry as my blood pressure is starting to come up,
Speaker 4: which I had nothing this entire time while I was
Speaker 4: in there, and the Braxton Hicks was getting hectic, Like
Speaker 4: my stomach was morphing in all different shapes, and like
Speaker 4: my stomach would be pushed over to one side and
Speaker 4: then it'd be pushed and stuck in this other side.
Speaker 4: And then I was having like contractions and I was
Speaker 4: timing them, and doctors were coming down and feeling my
Speaker 4: belly and they're like, it feels like you having contractions,
Speaker 4: and like you're telling me like, yeah, it does feel
Speaker 4: like that. So I'm getting cervical examinations like every night
Speaker 4: for a few nights and they're not fun. And then
Speaker 4: it was like, okay, you're looking like you're potentially getting clancier. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So I was like, look, I want to be proactive.
Speaker 4: Let's not wait till something gets bad and do something.
Speaker 4: The babies are healthy, I'm ready, let's go. Let's get
Speaker 4: the show on the road. And the nick you needed
Speaker 4: to have extra staff on. They had done practice rehearsals
Speaker 4: of the cesarean and there was over forty people in
Speaker 4: the room that took two hours to go through a
Speaker 4: practice rehearsal. They had thought of everything. I had got
Speaker 4: special approved rule to get a photographer in the room,
Speaker 4: which I was really excited about. They come in and
Speaker 4: they're like, all right, Taylor, we've come up with a decision.
Speaker 4: Let's be proactive, and you're gonna give birth in forty
Speaker 4: eight hours. And I was like, oh my god, Okay,
Speaker 4: Like this is what we've been waiting for. I guess
Speaker 4: this is what I've been in here preparing for. It's
Speaker 4: going to happen. And the whole time I've just been
Speaker 4: focused so much on getting further and getting further. I
Speaker 4: hadn't thought about the birth yet because I was like, no,
Speaker 4: I'm not thinking about the birth. I need to just
Speaker 4: focus on staying pregnant.
Speaker 3: So at thirty two weeks pregnant, Taylor readied herself for
Speaker 3: the biggest day of her life, while the staff at
Speaker 3: the hospital prepped for a multiple's birth that they hadn't
Speaker 3: had to attempt since nineteen ninety five. In Part two,
Speaker 3: you'll hear how Taylor's mind blowing birth went down.
Speaker 4: It felt like I was walking down the aisle of
Speaker 4: my wedding again, Like I come in and everybody is
Speaker 4: like lining the wall, like everybody's got their back against
Speaker 4: the wall. Everyone's eyes were just on me, and I
Speaker 4: was like, oh my god, this is happening.
Speaker 3: Plus what the first moments of her bub's lives were like.
Speaker 4: And I was a bit worried because I'm like, I'm
Speaker 4: not really feeling much emotion. Is there something wrong with me?
Speaker 4: Like I'm not. Everyone talks about like this, like crazy
Speaker 4: amounts of emotions you feel when you go into birth,
Speaker 4: and God, I'm not feeling anything. Then they just show
Speaker 4: one baby and show and I just burst into tears.
Speaker 4: And we're like, oh my god, there's actually a baby.
Speaker 4: There's babies in there. This is real.
Speaker 3: And what happens when you get four newborn's home.
Speaker 4: I came home and there wasn't a toilet in the house.
Speaker 4: Sean was trying to surprise me with this bathroom, but
Speaker 4: he thought I was going to be in hospital for
Speaker 4: so much longer that we had to get a camping
Speaker 4: toilet out on the deck, like I was postpartum using
Speaker 4: a camping toilet outside. It was wild, absolutely wild.
Speaker 3: But before we hear more of this amazing story, let's
Speaker 3: check in with our wonderful resident pediatrician, doctor Gollie on
Speaker 3: just how likely Taylor's story.
Speaker 5: Is naturally quads. It's close to one and an it's
Speaker 5: basically one in eight hundred thousand pregnancies roughly, and then
Speaker 5: if you're talking identical that's four identical humans. The probability
Speaker 5: extends out to one in fifteen million. When you compare
Speaker 5: that to the incidence of twins naturally, it's roughly one
Speaker 5: in two hundred and fifty pregnancies. But interestingly, the chances
Speaker 5: of multiples like twins, it increases with higher maternal age,
Speaker 5: so it's more common in women over thirty five, but
Speaker 5: it's also more common if there's a family history of
Speaker 5: twins and then there's IVF. So here the chances when
Speaker 5: it comes to IVF pregnancies, the chances of twins is
Speaker 5: as high as thirty percent, so almost one in three,
Speaker 5: and the chances of quads with IVF it's reported differently
Speaker 5: in different centers, but we're probably in the vicinity of
Speaker 5: half to one percent.
Speaker 3: And why is there a higher chance with IVF pregnancies.
Speaker 5: So there are a couple of reasons here. Firstly, traditional
Speaker 5: older IVF used to transfer multiple embryos in the hope
Speaker 5: that one of them sticks, so you're logically increasing the
Speaker 5: chance of more than one implanting. But also before that,
Speaker 5: there's a lot of ovarian stimulation, and when you have
Speaker 5: that involved, it means women might ovulate two eggs instead
Speaker 5: of just one, which increases the chances of die psychotic
Speaker 5: non identical twins. But also this usually happens on the
Speaker 5: background of a longer fertility journey, so we are talking
Speaker 5: about older women on average, and again, as we mentioned before,
Speaker 5: that does increase the chance of twinning.
Speaker 3: Part two of Taylor's utterly Incredible story is available now
Speaker 3: wherever you get your podcasts. You won't believe how much
Speaker 3: weight she lost in the twenty four hours after birth,
Speaker 3: plus the size of her insane placenta when it was removed.
Speaker 3: If you're interested in sharing your birth story with us
Speaker 3: on Diary of a Birth, we'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 3: Details are in the show notes. Diary of a Birth
Speaker 3: was hosted by me Kasanya Lukisch with expert input from
Speaker 3: doctor Golli, audio production by Scott Stronach, and our executive
Speaker 3: producer is Georgie Page.
Speaker 2: And that's not the end of this incredible story. Just
Speaker 2: follow the link in the show notes to hear part two.
Speaker 2: And if you want to hear more of Diary of Birth,
Speaker 2: make sure
Speaker 3: You follow it wherever you get your podcasts.