Birth journeys

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Birth is a unique experience for every parent and child. Liz Thompson followed four couples as they prepared for, experienced, and reflected upon the birth of their first child.

Times have changed, and with them the experiences of and options for birthing. Everyone has very different hopes and expectations prior to the birth of their first child – here, we accompany four couples through the emotional and physical realities of pregnancy and labour.

Caroline Gibbes, 43, and Drew Skinner, 44, have been together for six years. They started trying to conceive five years ago, but had two miscarriages in the first year. Eventually they decided to attempt IVF treatment, but endured six failed procedures before they were told the best option was to try using donor eggs.

Neisha, a close friend of Caroline’s, offered to donate eggs to the couple and after a lengthy process, 22 eggs were harvested and fertilised with Drew’s sperm, from which 12 embryos ultimately resulted. One of these embryos was transferred to Caroline’s womb, while the rest were frozen. It’s not uncommon for embryos to not survive the defrosting process, and six transfers later, Caroline and Drew were down to their last three.
After so much emotional and physical trauma, the couple were close to giving up and starting the adoption process, but eventually made the decision to try one last time, and to transfer two embryos at once. Ten days later, Caroline received the news she was pregnant, and that, judging by certain hormonal levels, it was likely to be a multiple pregnancy.

Because Caroline was 43 and the process of conception had already been so perilous and emotionally draining, she and Drew were advised that it would be best for her health, and the health of their unborn babies, for the twins to be born by caesarean section. The couple readily accepted this advice, but at 33 weeks, Caroline began having contractions. She went straight to hospital, where the staff managed to stop the contractions, then gave her steroid injections to help the babies’ lungs develop. Caroline then returned home, with everyone hoping she would reach 36 weeks before the twins needed to be delivered.

However at 34 weeks exactly, Caroline noticed the leakage of some meconium. She was rushed to hospital, where the doctors decided to perform an emergency caesarean. “We had anticipated that we’d swan in at the appointed hour all fresh and rested,” laughs Caroline now. “We’d have a caesar, Drew would be next to me talking me through it, I wouldn’t feel anything and it would be just gorgeous – well, as gorgeous as it can be when you are having your gut cut open! But it didn’t really go like that… What we have learned from this whole baby experience is you just never know what’s going to happen!”

Caroline was given a spinal block as there wasn’t time for an epidural. (With a spinal block, medication is given only once, whereas with an epidural, a catheter is inserted into the spine so that additional medicine may be dispensed at a later time.) As the procedure begun, Drew was ushered in to hold Caroline’s hand.

“I could feel them cutting through the first two layers of my stomach and I grabbed the anaesthetist and said, ‘Am I supposed to be feeling this?’” Caroline recalls. “He said, ‘No, stop, we’re going to have to go to general’. He slammed this thing over my nose and said, ‘Breathe really deeply – you’ve got to fill your lungs for the babies’. Next thing I knew, I was gone, and that’s all I remember until the next day.”

Caroline was now unconscious and the surgeons were moving quickly. In what seemed like only a matter of minutes, a tiny baby emerged under the bright lights and was quickly whisked away to a humidicrib. Drew stood in the middle of the theatre, camera in hand, eyes moving rapidly from his unconscious wife to his newborn infant, his face travelling through a myriad of emotions in a matter of seconds – joy, disbelief, anxiety, confusion and back to joy as the second tiny baby appeared above the curtain separating those at the ‘top end’ from those at the surgical coalface. It was, he says, an extremely intense experience.

“A lot of people say that as [the baby] comes out you see the most beautiful thing you’ve ever seen and instantly fall in love, but in this case there was just too much going on. There was no instant connection – there was instant amazement, I suppose, but it was all too busy and clinical for me to feel much else.”

The babies were rushed to intensive care, where they had intravenous antibiotics administered. Some time later, Caroline was wheeled in semi-conscious to look at them, but the next day she was unable to remember much as the anaesthetic had left her so groggy. “I have hazy memories of a little foot in the nursery, and of Mum stroking my head, which was beautiful, but that’s all I remember of the whole day,” she says frankly.

It wasn’t until nearly two days later that nurses in the intensive care unit tucked the tiny bundles, now named Jesse and Eve, into the arms of Caroline and Drew, and the moment they had waited for for so many years seemed to fully manifest itself.

“When the love bond did kick in it was just amazing,” says Drew. “It was just such a complete change from this lacking, needing feeling – this hole in our life – to it being so complete...”

“It’s overwhelming,” adds Caroline. “I knew there was this basic need in me, but this has blasted me to another planet.”

Caroline was able to return home after seven days, but Jesse and Eve had to remain in hospital for four weeks. Caroline travelled to visit them each day, along with an esky filled with expressed milk so she could feed her girls. Both she and Drew say the staff at the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital were amazing during this time, looking after both them and their children.

In reflecting upon the birth now, Caroline says it’s become just a distant, relatively unimportant memory. “I didn’t care how it panned out, so long as the girls were safe and well and I survived to look after them… Now they are finally here, there is no greater love in the world,” she smiles.

Natal numbers 

• In 2003 in Australia, 256,925 babies were born to 252,584 mothers.
• The average age of all mothers in this year was 29.5 years, with the average age of first-time mothers 27.6 years. Mothers aged less than 20 years accounted for 4.6 per cent, or 11,617, of all births.
• One in 25 mothers (4 per cent) in 2003 intended prior to the birth of their child to give birth outside of a conventional labour-ward setting, such as in a birth centre or at home. In the event, only 2.8 per cent did so. 
• In 2003, 60.3 per cent of women giving birth had a spontaneous vaginal birth, with 0.4 per cent having a vaginal breech birth. Forceps delivery occurred with 3.9 per cent of mothers, and 6.8 per cent gave birth with the help of vacuum extraction. Meanwhile, 28.5 per cent of mothers had caesarean section deliveries, compared with 19.4 per cent in 1994.

Statistics sourced from a report by the National Perinatal Statistics Unit (www.npsu.unsw.edu.au)

Words: Liz Thompson. Photography: Sam McAdam. Hair & Make-up: David Novak-Piper.