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Hey, I'm Georgie ep of Mamma MIA's brand new podcast, Diary of a Birth. I'm dropping into your feed today to share with you the very first episode. Childbirth is absolutely amazing and no two births are the same. Diary of a Birth is women sharing their incredible stories. You will not believe some of the tales we have for you. This first episode features entrepreneur and marketing guru Michelle Battersby. I'll give you one little clue, her baby gets stuck.
We hope you enjoy this title. Make sure you follow along Diary of a Birth for more birth stories.
Hi. I'm Kaseenya Lukisch and this is Diary of a Birth. I'm a mom to two kids and both my births were very different. Mimi, who is my first There was a lot of this fear of the unknown, and she ended up coming out with forceps and then with Max. I felt more prepared, but still the unexpected happened. He came out. Posterior birth is an experience shared by around one hundred and forty million women a year, yet this common practice can be completely unique and life transforming. This
is diary of a birth. Today's story is one of a mum with a bit of a birth plan and a baby with a very different idea.
I was like, break my waters, I'm not leaving without a baby. Like I came here to have a baby, I'm leaving with a baby.
Her birth was long, her baby got stuck, and she tried all the options and pivoted to a birth that she'd never considered.
Back when I was pregnant, if I was to write down on a piece of paper how I don't want it to go, I probably would have written, I don't want to go into labor and then have a C section. A.
You won't believe where this story's going to take us.
Mine just gushed and there was so much fluid, and the only thing I could compare it to is the only thing you felt come out of your vagina with a bit of force is your period And so you think, oh my god, am I head bleeding?
Am I bleeding to death?
Because it's just this gush of fluid coming out of there. Then you realize you're sitting in a pool.
Plus we'll be getting expert input from one of Australia's most trusted pediatricians, doctor Gollie.
You know, this is a dance. It's a balance that we strike between making sure that mummy is safe and then also at the same time balancing that with making sure the baby is safe. And when a baby does get stuck, we have options available to us to try to improve that delivery process.
So let's meet the mom telling today's birth story.
I'm Michelle Battersby and this is the diary of my birth with Alphie.
Michelle Badtersby is one of Australia's most exciting entrepreneurs. She launched Bumble in this country and is founder of Sunroom, a company the champions female and non binary content creators.
So I have been living in the US, living in LA for the past four years with my fiance Bill. Bill is a professional rugby player. So when we first met, he was actually living in the UK and he came over to Australia to sign a new rugby contract and I just happened to meet him and we hung out for probably four weeks.
Went to lunch one day and.
He said, so, I'm moving to Perth on Sunday, and I thought.
Okay, guess that's the end of this. That was fun, see you later.
But the thing with a long distance relationship is you really have to cut the shit and there's no game playing, and it just meant we both had to be quite upfront about the fact that we liked each other, and it was always long distance. At first it was Sydney to Perth, then it was Sydney to Melbourne for two years, then it was Melbourne to London. Then it was Sydney to LA and so he'd moved to LA and I thought, okay, this is just another couple of years we'll have to
do long distance. But as things turned out, a job opportunity came up for me to start my own company, and the woman I was going to do it with was like, how would you feel about doing this in LA And I thought that's absolutely perfect.
So it felt like for the.
First time stars were aligning, and so Bill and I were then both living in LA. We've been together now for about eight years, but long distance came back to haunt us. Basically, at the moment I fell pregnant, Bill signed with the team in Chicago, we knew it would be difficult that I would be alone for the end of my pregnancy, that I would be alone for the first few months of motherhood.
Michelle is a woman who gets shit done at the office, but going into her birth, she was determined to go with the flow.
So going into this birth, I was feeling confident. I was thinking, I think I've got this. This is going to be a breeze. I was doing a lot of positive self talk, almost preparing like I'm going in for some big athletic event or race that, you know, telling myself I've done it before, I can do it again, to just really put my mind at ease. And I had been having regular checkups with my obstetrician and things
were starting to move on their own. So I was thinking, good, you know, I'm not going to go over I think he's ready.
I'm feeling ready.
So while Michelle was happy for her baby to do his thing, she thought she had when he would grace them with his presence.
Sorted from about halfway through my pregnancy, around twenty weeks I would have been My partner left the state and we were doing long distance for our careers, so I had always known that was going to happen, So I had been doing quite a lot of prep mentally, to be honest, and really focusing on how I was going to survive the tail end of my pregnancy without him, but also the first few months of becoming a mum without him, because he wasn't going to be returning to
the same city as me until our soon to be son was three months old. So I had been doing a lot of focusing on accepting that being okay with whatever outcome might happen around the birth. Maybe he would make it, maybe he wouldn't. What members of my family were going to come and support me through those first few periods, so I'd probably had a lot of other
little things on my mind than just the birth. But I was feeling really confident because I would have been around thirty six weeks when my obstetrician said she just didn't think I was going to make it to forty weeks.
My cervix was.
Already softening, so I was thinking, hell, yeah, that's good. That made things a little easier for my partner to get back to the same city as me. And as things kept getting closer to forty weeks, I was probably about thirty seven weeks, maybe thirty seven thirty eight, I was a centimeter dilated, and so that's when my confidence really started to kick up a notch. I was thinking, great, you know, this could happen any day. It's going to
be smooth sailing. The baby's moving, I'm moving, It's all good. And my obstetrician said I was looking like a good candidate for induction. So I spoke to my partner and we decided that I would get induced because that would just mean and he could jump on a flight and be there for the birth.
Michelle had researched inductions and thought she had a pretty good idea about what would happen once she was induced, but of course her body had a different plan.
So what I thought would happen when I got induced was I expected I would arrive at the hospital a week or so later and they would say, your four centimeters dilated.
You know.
I just thought things would have started to happen, and.
I felt like it could be really fast because my obstetution was also saying like, I think this is going to be fast for you. Your baby's got a really big head. Once you get the big head out, they just slide on out. So I'm thinking, great, you know
this is going to be good. But I arrived at the hospital and I was still a centimeter dilated, and I would say, in hindsight, even just that news was just the start of my confidence being a little bit rattled and me starting to get a little bit in my head around how it was going to play out. And I then got given the pill thattens your cervix, and from the moment I took the first dose, my baby just.
Really wasn't agreeing with what was going on.
So his heart rate started dipping quite a lot, and it just became a bit of a balancing act around how much they could push me and push him without becoming a bit more of an emergency situation. I was still pretty calm, to be honest, I felt like I was in really good hands. I had my mum and dad there for the first part. My partner actually flew in at like two am that night when I was being induced, so I had great people around me. Felt like I was in really good hands. I was sitting
in the hospital playing Monopoly Deal with my parents. I also did manage to get through a whole series of selling OC. I was chill, I was doing a little bit of work, chatting to people. I was calm, like I was feeling good, and I felt like, even though things were maybe not totally going to plan with my baby, people were checking on us. Everything was being monitored, and I felt like it was kind of slow and steady. Physically, I wasn't feeling anything. I could see on the monitor
that I was having contractions. They were telling me, you know those yellow lines and contractions, and I couldn't feel it. I think I'd been having mild contractions honestly for about a week, and so it just felt like this tensing of my uterus and my stomach would kind of cramp, but it wasn't painful at all.
Michelle's partner, Bill's arrival meant she was keen to put down the Monopoly Deal cards and get this labor happening.
Bill was playing a rugby game. They're not very lenient with professional athletes around taking time off, and I do get it, like they're paid to play, so he finished playing the game, got straight on a flight from Boston to LA and got to the hospital at about two am or my partner will in. I felt extremely relieved, like he's not going to miss the birth. He's here now,
this is good, this baby can come. And perhaps there was a little bit of my body as well, not really wanting to relax and like let things happen straight away, waiting for my partner to get there. But once he walked in, I thought, yeah, let's get this moving. But it ended up being the next morning and they weren't able to give me any more doses because of what was happening with my baby's heart rates. We were just letting the clock tick by. It was probably twelve hours later.
I had my servix checked and I'd got to three centimeters dilated. I was hoping, you know, i'd be further along than that, and I am an aries. Patience is not something that I understand, and I think that's one thing I would have liked to bear in mind a little bit more going into it, is telling myself you might have to be patient here, like don't get worked up if things aren't happening quickly. I just hadn't had
that converse with myself. So I was starting to get a bit frustrated with the pace at which things were going and just that I couldn't have more doses of anything to speed things up after nothing was really happening, and I couldn't have more doses. My obstetrician actually came in and said, you can either go home or I can break your waters. But from the moment I break your waters, there's no return. And I was like, break my waters. I'm not leaving without a baby, like I
came here to have a baby. I'm leaving with a baby, So break them. And so she broke my waters, and that just was the strangest sensation on the planet. Mine just gushed and there was so much fluid, And the only thing I could compare it to is the only thing you felt come out of your vagina with a bit of force is your period. And so you think, oh my god, am I bleeding to death because it's just this gush of fluid coming out of there, and
you realize you're sitting in a pool. But after she broke my waters, I got to five centimeters dilated within an hour, and I'm back on track, thinking, fuck, yeah, here we go. Now, it's going to be fast. And I did start feeling the contractions. Then I think four centimeters is you're in active labor. Yeah, So got to five centimeters and started thinking, Okay, if this continues at this pace, I don't really know how I'm going to go with this pain, and I think I just want
to get an epidural. The pain wasn't excruciating. It wasn't like this, oh my god, I can't cope. It was okay, that feels different. It felt very different to the other contractions I was having, and I could understand how it may become quite unbearable. And they do tell you that maybe the anethetist isn't going to be available at the moment you want the epidural. Maybe it'll take an hour
for the epidural to kick in. So I thought, I'm just going to call it now, and I want to get the epidural because if this can news to go this quickly, I might be in a bit of strife.
And I hadn't done any.
Of the birthing courses, so I hadn't practiced the breathing. I had gone in with not much preparation. I'd always felt like this isn't really in my control, Like, my baby is going to decide how they want to come and I just need to facilitate that and try to stay.
As calm as possible.
So I'd never gone in there with like and it must happen this way. And I think for me that was a really good way to go into it because I ended up having to really roll with the punches, and I wasn't upset or distressed by the way things ended up going for me. I was just open minded and it was whatever my baby needed. At that point, I've probably been in the hospital for like twenty hours
coming up to a day. The decision to have an epidural was something that I had discussed with my partner in the sense that I'd told him I'll be having this, and Tea was like, and I had spoken to my obstetrition about it, just because you hear certain things like should you do it, should you not? And my obstetrician said, and epi dural is the second best thing about giving birth, the first being you get a baby, the second being
you can get an epidurol. So that was endorsement for me and I thought, yeah, I'll be doing this, so I wasn't scared to get the epi durol because I've actually had lumber puncher in the past, so I've had the big needle into your back and I recalled it being okay. And I was much younger, so I wasn't scared of the needle injection side of things. And I honestly didn't feel a thing with the epidural.
The only thing.
I felt was a rush of cold come down my back and that was it. And I've got videos on my phone from the moment that I think kicked in, being like, yeah, I feel nothing.
This is gonna be great.
My god, this is taking fucking forever.
Got the epi durolo.
It's pretty good knowing your body is absolutely throwing them back and you can't feel it.
The every dural was good, and from the moment I had that, I thought, Okay, Yeah, these contractions can ramp up and I'm gonna be okay here. But I forgot that and every dural can slow things down, and so my contractions went nowhere and I didn't dilate any further for what would have been about ten hours, so it'd been over a day in hospital. Now again that frustration was coming back, and my lack of patience was.
Really starting to kick in.
There had also just been a couple of things said along the way which made me lose my confidence again and made me lose my head a little bit. So my obstecration was amazing. I had some great nurses and some great cares, but I had a nurse that was a little bit flappy, it is probably the best way to describe her. And she would say things like his umbilical cord might be tied in a not like as to why things weren't moving. She thought he was in
a weird position in my stomach. So I started saying things like is he breach, and my obstetriction would phone up and be like, he's absolutely not breach, Like, don't say that, and my obstrition actually ended up asking her to not look after me anymore. But hearing those little things of his umbelic cord might be in a nod, he's stuck, he might be breach started making me a bit scared to actually give birth.
Coming up.
I just violently shook for about three hours, and so I couldn't hold him like, I felt a bit helpless.
So after Michelle had been in hospital for over a day. It was time to turn to oxytocin, one of the happy hormones like orphins or serotonin. This is an option offered synthetically if your waters have broken but contractions don't start.
So after she broke my waters, I got put on like a synthetic version of oxytocin, which brings on contractions, and the exact same thing started happening with my baby's heart rate, just constantly, his heart rate dropping and a lot of people would rush into the room and I would have to move positions and they were trying to work out why he wasn't comfortable. So again it was just this constant game of how far can we push
this baby without him really becoming distressed. And so after about thirty hours of that whole game, and never really being able to get a solid dose of much and having had a NEPU dural and how being stuck at five centimeters for ten hours, I just asked, can I
please have a C section? I just need this to end my obstetrition had been confident the whole way through that we could get him out, but I also felt like she was starting to think maybe we won't, and I just had a feeling that we would keep going and keep going. And maybe it was because of the things I'd heard along the way from nurses on my
own doubts, but I just had this feeling. I felt like it would end up in a more of an emergency cesarean anyway, So I just almost wanted to call it on my own terms and like stop him being pushed so much in this constant fluctuating of his heart rate so called to sea section.
And I felt.
Immediate relief in that moment, cride of happiness, was like thank God, I just know he's going to get out. This is all about to end. I think I was feeling like, Yay, maybe this hard work is over. And then laying on the table for the sea section, I just was thinking, oh fuck, Like there, it really is no chill way to navigate this.
This was a big decision for Michelle, who until this point had gone into birth confident of a vaginal delivery.
When I was lying on the table to have the CEA section, I did start to get a little bit scared. To be honest, it's a strange situation. I don't know if there would be any other surgeries like that that you would have and still be awake and conscious and hearing them speak and being spoken through it. And I could kind of feel my upper body moving around, like they tug on you quite a bit and you're like kind of jolting. Your upper half is jolting a little bit.
And I could hear them actually saying pressure, pressure, and I'm thinking, oh my god, you know, is this happening? What's happening? But I couldn't feel any pain, couldn't see anything. I'm literally just looking at the ceiling. I think I was actually like counting the lines on the ceiling to try and just distract myself and just staring at my partner.
I couldn't feel any pain, and I didn't feel anything relating to the cesarean for probably twenty four hours until those drugs started a wear off.
Michelle's partner Bill proved invaluable at this point, coaching her and keeping her as calm as possible.
My partner was up near me, like trying to keep me calm, getting me to breathe because I was also so drugged up at that point, just saying like you've got this, It's gonna be okay. Breathe, and that's all I really needed is to have someone do like he was taking deep breaths with me.
That was the most helpful thing.
Many women describe the process of a cesarean birth as a whirlwind of which they have very few memories, but there is one moment no new mum will ever forget.
Like I can remember so vividly the sounds of Alfie, my son, coming out, and just the relief like it was over.
We had both made.
It, hearing him squeal and knowing that he was okay, because I just felt like it had been such a long time. I'm sure you could go for much longer, but it was thirty or so hours. It had been such a long time, us both trying to get through it. Those first wheels are something that I will never forget. It's bewilderment. I think when you see this little baby brought up to you and you're like kind of in shock.
It didn't hit me through pregnancy. I don't think you know that I had this life inside of me that
was mine to take care of forever. But I think the hardest part is I had really severe You can really get the shakes after all those drugs, and so I just violently shook for about three hours after the surgery, and so I couldn't hold him, and I was just laying in this recovery bay and they were just kind of waiting for me to stop shaking, and I would kind of go to hold him, but I wouldn't be able to hold him, so like I felt a bit helpless, like they were encouraging me to hold him, encouraging me
to feed him. I also had, you know, women on my boobs, like squeezing colostrum out of them, and it's all a bit overwhelming and surreal, but I do try not to get too worked up in those situations. Like I was wanting to hold him, I was feeling a bit frustrated with the fact again that I couldn't.
But then the first moments.
With your baby, I feel like once you get back to your actual room and you have some privacy, it's just astoundman. I guess now I'm six months postpartum, and it's interesting to reflect on the birth now knowing him and knowing who he is becoming, and I feel like he is a stubborn little guy and he just didn't want to come in that way.
So while Michelle went into her labor trying to trust the process and believe that her baby would come out however he wanted, she ended up giving birth in a manner that she never would have chosen for herself.
Back when I was pregnant, if I was to write down on a piece of paper how I don't want it to go, I probably would have written, I don't want to go into labor and then have a C section Like I guess, I don't want to expeperience both those things, and having experienced them now, I would not describe my experience as traumatic or bad.
It was actually beautiful.
And it was how it needed to be for both me and my son, and I honestly wouldn't change I think about it.
Michelle's experience of having her baby be stuck is one that you made dread when you're pregnant. I know I did. So what does a stuck baby actually feel like?
In my body?
I didn't feel like he was stuck necessarily. I didn't feel like things weren't moving. Every time they would come and check on me, I was expecting them to say I was much further along than I was. I think that was the hard part for me is just so many hours passing and you feeling like you're getting somewhere, but you're actually not there.
Actually was no part of my experience where I was in any pain truly.
On Diary of for Birth, we're going to share the most incredible, beautiful, and frankly bizarre births for your education and entertainment. But it's important that we get input from the expert. Doctor Gollie is Mama Maya's in house expert, our go to doctor for everything to do with our babies. He's a pediatrician and father of three and there's nothing
he doesn't know about kids. So while doctor Gollie thinks it's important to consider some key elements of the process before you go into labor, he believes there has to be a degree of flexibility in your birth plan.
Well, look, I'm enormously supportive of birth plans, but the intention should not be to exert control over the process because you can't control the birth process. There are just too many variables, too many things out of your control, out of our control. A birth plan is not about trying to decide what you want and then rigidly stick to it. It's about being informed It's about being aware
of all the possible ways this could go. It's also about being empowered to ask questions, to ask why certain decisions are being made, because the reality is you don't want to hear these terms for the first time. When you're exhausted, or when you're in that state, when you're sleep deprived, when you're stressed, you can't process them. So
the more you know beforehand, the better. We have a birth plan, an ideal way that we would like things to go, but at the same time, you have to have flexibility and you have to understand that certain things may not be possible at the time when you thought that you wanted it. How do you start writing a birth plan? You just start finding out what things are possible, what terms mean. Keep reading, keep listening us, friends, family, listen to more podcasts. Speak with your GP, your obstetrician,
your sister, your mother. Don't use that information to script your birthing process. It's just not possible. Use that information as your power, but not as your curse.
We've now heard Michelle's story about what it's like when your baby gets stuck. But what does this medically mean?
Well, there are many different medical forms of getting stuck. But essentially it's a failure to progress in the delivery process. I don't like the term failure because it implies that someone has done wrong. It's not that at all. We need to protect the mum, We need to protect the baby. You know, this is a dance. It's a balance that we strike between making sure that mummy is safe and then also at the same time balancing that with making
sure the baby is safe. And when a baby does get stuck, we have options available to us to try to improve that delivery process, whether we're talking about the contraction of the uterus or we're talking about the dilation of the cervix, And sometimes getting stuck means that we don't have an option but to change our plans entirely. An example of which is, as we've heard, moving to
an unplanned we call it an emergency caesar. But emergency doesn't necessarily mean lights and sirens and running down the corridor. Sometimes an emergency caesar can just mean that it wasn't elective, it wasn't planned, but we've had to change our approach and deliver this way in order to maximize the baby's outcome.
While Diary of a birth is here to hold your hand as you grow your baby. We want to help you. Take one key piece of advice from all our new mums about how best to survive the fourth trimester.
I think one amazing thing I did do for myself for that fourth trimester that I would really recommend to anyone about to enter it is I knew there would be again very limited things that I could control, but one thing I would be able to control is what I consume. And I've never been someone to really focus on nutrition and nourishing my body, but once your body becomes the sole source of food for your baby, it actually does motivate you to really look after yourself in
a way I'd never been motivated to before. And so I actually started researching the first forty days just as I was coming up to my birth, and I would really recommend this. In Chinese culture, they spend the first forty days locked in their houses basically, and they are cared for solely by their families, and they don't consume
any cold food, not even cold water. They drink teas. Specifically, this red date tea, which is really good for replenishing your blood supply, has all these antioxidants and so I just started looking into the first forty days and passed the cookbook onto my mum, who was going to be staying with me and looking after me, and I just said, you know, if you could make things from this recipe book, I think it would be really great for me. And so she was just making batches of red date tea,
cooking congies. And that was something that whilst my mind was honestly in a whirlwind and I was in such a haze, it felt so good knowing that I had kind of committed myself to just nourishing my body for my baby. I didn't pressure myself to see anyone. There's a Western take on the first forty days, which is called the five five five, which is five days in the bed, five days on the bed, five days around the bed, And if you do end up having a c section, it's very easy to do that because you
can't really go anywhere. So I did just stay indoors and I didn't put pressure on myself, and I just only saw my family, and I only consumed things from this cookbook, and I found that really helpful. So I think again, it can be overwhelming to think about this fourth trimester but one pretty simple, easy thing.
You could do is look at this cookbook.
And potentially do that one thing for yourself, and it made a difference for me.
Thank you for joining us on the first episode of Diary of a Birth, where we celebrate all the amazing ways that we as women bring life into the world. Join me next week for the most incredible story from Casey, who home birthed with Brodie in the most beautiful way.
I would describe my birth as healing, magical. It was everything that I had hoped that it would be and more.
If you're interested in sharing your birth story with us on Diary of a Birth, we'd love to hear from you. Details are in the show notes. Diary of a Birth was hosted by me Kasanu Lukitch with expert input from doctor Golly, Audio production by Scott Stronik, and our executive producer is Georgie Page.
We hope you enjoyed the very first episode of Diary of a Birth. If you'd like to follow along, there is a link in the show notes.