From Miscarriage to Motherhood

In this episode of Touched Out podcast, the host and guest, Michelle, discuss their individual mental health journeys, the lack of support for new parents, and the challenges of parenthood. Michelle shares her personal experience with postpartum depression, birth trauma, and miscarriage.

• Journey to parenthood, traumatic birth, and NICU experience
• Managing life with a newborn and trauma
• Postpartum mental health struggles and finding balance in parenthood
• Self-education, ADHD, and autism diagnosis in adulthood
• Strategies for managing anxiety and depression while parenting and maintaining a relationship
• Self-care and mental health balance for working parents
• Parenting realities and postpartum health journeys

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Transcript

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Trigger warning. The following podcast contains explicit language and discussions of sensitive topics that some listeners may find distressing, including miscarriage, child abuse, mental health issues and birth trauma. Listener discretion is advised. If you feel triggered or overwhelmed at any point, we encourage you to pause the episode and take care of yourself. Hello everyone and welcome to episode two of the Touched Out podcast. Today we have Michelle. Michelle is from Canada. She's married with one child and two cats. Today's episode is a little chaotic. I have the kids home with me. It was a public holiday in Australia, therefore daycare was closed and I being the person I am, completely forgot about it. So there is a little bit of. Background noise and the kids do pop in to say a quick hello at various stages of the podcast. So I do apologise in advance for that. Apart from that, Michelle and I do discuss quite a number of topics. Today we get into our own individual mental health journeys, including her husband's ADHD diagnosis. We discuss seasonal depression, postpartum depression, the lack of support for new parents and their mental health. We share our birth stories and NICU journeys with our kids. We also discuss birth trauma and miscarriage. So there was a trigger warning at the beginning of the episode, so please do be mindful of that. Apart from that, I had an amazing time at recording this conversation with Michelle. She was a wealth of knowledge and can't wait for you to hear it. So without further ado, please enjoy episode two of the Touched Out podcast. Okay, so we are live with Michelle from Canada. How are you, Michelle? I'm good, thanks. That's good. Thank you so much for being here. We were just having a quick chat before the recording started and I was just saying my kids aren't playing the game today. I unfortunately booked this podcast thinking that they would be in daycare. But it is a public holiday in Australia today and my wife is working. So I've got one of three down, seven month old watching Miss Rachel and another one in the theatre room watching Willy Wonka for the fourth time today. We'll see how we go. It's going to be a bit of a wild ride, but thank you so much for being here. Why don't you start off by telling us a little bit about yourself and your family. So my name is Michelle. I live in Saskatchewan, Canada. The one that all the movies make fun of. The name for. It's my partner and I and our one year old son. And then we have two cats as well. I don't know, I guess a brief overview really quickly about how we became a family. So me and my partner have been together for eleven years. We have been trying to get pregnant for about two years. And then we had our first pregnancy, which ended in a miscarriage and then a pretty traumatic miscarriage, and then the second one was also a miscarriage. And then we got pregnant with our third and we had him. And I mean, birth is, for some people, very beautiful. Not for us. That was also very traumatic. But we have him, and he's now 16 months old as yesterday. Beautiful. First of all, I'm incredibly sorry to hear about the journey to get to where you are. I can't even begin to imagine how traumatic that must have been as far as the birth of your son goes. Do you want to talk to me a little bit about that and how that all kind of went down? And we'll go from there? Sure. So I'm super type A I am very type A I'm very planner type person So I had planned to take a month off of work before he was supposed to come. I had a feeling in my guts that he was going to be early. So I was like, I'm just going to take a month off before he's supposed to come. So then that way when he's early, not a problem, I'll be ready. My water broke this day before I was supposed to be on my last day of work. So Tuesday my water broke. Wednesday was supposed to be my last day of work, but it wasn't like the movies where water just burst everywhere, and I knew it was very different than that. So went into the hospital, did some googling, and then I called the hospital and they were like, yeah, you should probably come in. My partner wasn't even home. He was still working late, and he was supposed to go to an event of his that night. So I called him. I was like, don't worry about it. It's not a big deal. I'll call you from the hospital when I find out what's happening. So I went to the hospital, and we live about 30 minutes, well, 15 minutes out of the city, so it's about a 30 minutes drive to the hospital. And they finally determined after some testing, that my water had broke. They wanted because I was early, I was about four weeks early at that point. They were just going to put me on bed rest, but they decided I was early enough to just induce me and have him come out and he'd be healthy and fine. We wanted to come home because we didn't even have the car seat in the car yet. My partner did eventually meet me at the hospital, so we had two vehicles there. We were paying for parking for both. Thankfully, our medical care here in Canada is free, but the parking for the hospital is not. And after some convincing, they finally agreed that we were good enough to go home and then come back in the morning to do the inducing. So we were there for we went back Wednesday morning at around nine ish. And then I was in labour until Thursday night and I got an infection due to my water breaking. And then jeven's heart ended up heart rate and escalating. He had a cardic and my infection ended up giving me a fever. So it ended up in an emergency C section. And as a result of that he was taken up to NICU and I had to do 6 hours of recovery before I was able to go see him. Once I was able to stand and walk around a little bit, I was able to go see him up in NICU. And we have a beautiful new hospital here where it's maternity and then Paediatric emergency and then Neonatal emergency. So it was all in one building. It was really nice that way. So I could go back and forth to my room, of course during COVID and of course during the highest of delta variants going around. So all the precautions were in. Thankfully the vaccines were already implemented at that point, so that was a little bit helpful. So he was in NICU for four days. They kicked me out in about 36 hours after my C section. But then we were able to go back and see him. And I think we were only home for two nights without him. And then we got to take it off. So it was only four days in NICU, which we are very grateful for because the NICU nurses were phenomenal. Without them, I don't know how we would have even begin to have started as new parents. But yeah, so that was our initial journey with the pregnancy and birth sort of thing. Wow, quite a story. I, myself, my wife and I, we've got three kids. Our first one was all three of them have been vastly traumatic births for all different reasons. My second one, my son, he was a NICU baby. He had to be rushed to a different hospital at 16 hours old and undergo surgery for a bowel mal rotation. So it was pretty touch and go. He spent two weeks in NICU. It was horrible. And those two weeks felt like a lifetime. Just like I'm sure those four days felt like a lifetime for you guys. Looking back now though, perfectly happy and healthy and all you can do is just be super thankful for the NICU nurses. They are absolutely great. They really are. It really puts a little bit of faith in humanity as far as their sacrifices and expertise goes. What were some of the biggest challenges you faced during your journey to becoming a parent and how did you navigate those challenges? I would say at the very beginning was my partner has autism and ADHD. And like I said, I'm type A and it's a good thing on some days and it's not a good thing on other days. And I'm fully aware of my weaknesses with that, so with having a C section and then I unfortunately ended up having severe high blood pressure after the pregnancy. So I was on medications, I wasn't able to drive or go downstairs or lift anything heavy, so I felt very useless. I could hold a baby and that was pretty much it. And I'm the housekeeper, I'm the cook, I'm the planner and all that stuff. So all of a sudden, having this creature that I have to keep alive, that just screams at me and the pressure of this thing needs to gain weight and then I struggle with breastfeeding and all of that that came with it was very difficult. It was just so much so the lack of sleep, the emotional, the trauma. I hadn't dealt with my trauma from the birth and everything like that. And then just learning how to change my expectations, that took months, it took genuinely months for me to learn how to change my expectations of how my new life is, because we're older. I had Jeven when I was 32. Sorry, I can't remember how old I am, 32, and my partner was 36 at the time, so we had gone a long time without kids in our lives and we had ten years together of an established life. So throwing this screaming baby into our life and I'm not a touchy feely person, I don't like people in my bubble. All of a sudden, there's this thing that's literally glued to me, 24/7 that I love to death and I want to be on me all the time, but also don't, so it was a lot, it was very hard. After the first four weeks, he became colic and we had to go through getting a lip and tongue tie cut and we had to take him to Cairo because we had sort of colis, gas issues, medication and all that kind of stuff. Once we did get that dealt with and done, he slept better. He didn't scream as much in our faces and all that kind of stuff, but I mean, as much as a baby is already hard for everybody, I'm never going to say mine's harder because of X-Y-Z-I would never say that a baby alone period is hard. And then you tack on a bum rash, even, and it just is like your whole day crumbles and it's tears. And I'm not a crier and I have never cried so much my entire life than I did in those first six months. Yeah, I always liken being a new parent to everyone gets a different sized bucket and that bucket gets filled no matter what. And some people may be able to handle 100 mil and some people's buckets may be able to handle two litres. It doesn't matter how big the bucket is, eventually that bucket will overflow and the stress will get to you, especially being sleep deprived and everything else that you've just described. On top of that, you really have run the gauntlet. So the fact that you are here with a loving partner and a happy, healthy baby is truly inspiring, probably to a lot of people, including myself. So, when we first started talking, you had advised me that you previously suffered from anxiety and depression. Yeah. So post birth, did you find that your anxiety and depression worsened? To an extreme extent. Were you diagnosed with postpartum or anything like that? Same goes with your husband with his ADHD and autism. I'm also ADHD and autistic. I was diagnosed after our third baby was born because my bucket overflowed and I actually learned from TikTok all the ADHD symptoms. I'm sure that there's millions of people out there that are the same. It seems like the new trend that's going on with the 30 to 40 year olds that slip through the cracks. So why don't you talk to me a little bit about your mental health and your partner's mental health, if you're comfortable talking about that and how that changed and how you both tried to find balance post parenthood, I'll start with my partner. He tried everything in his power just to make sure that we were safe, because, like I said, my first miscarriage was traumatic. I haemorrhaged so he was terrified that he was going to lose me. And then again during his birth, he was terrified he was going to lose me because of the infection and having to go through C section. So his mental health there, I will be very honest, he hid a lot for me. He thankfully had my best friend to reach out to, who had already had two kids, so he communicated with her and thankfully she supported him better than I could have, honestly. I know he struggled probably up until about when I did, because he fed off of me, because he wanted to protect me and he wanted to make me okay until I was okay. Then he could start to heal himself. But short fuse. I would say his biggest thing was a short fuse. So he was very easily triggered and very easily would snap and he would run away. So he likes video games and stuff like that, and he would just disappear and try to, as an introvert, try to build that battery back up. But as somebody who needed him, it would cause a fight between us, because I needed him there, and he was trying to be there for me, but trying to refill his battery first. So that caused issues in his own way. I was actually recommended a book by a friend about something about ADHD and marriage, and that really helped me. So I learned how when he does things that piss me off, they're not intentionally trying to piss me off. So that was very helpful for myself. My mental health was a lot worse in hindsight than I realised. People would offer help and I would just straight up tell them no, because I'm strong enough, I can do this. Which was the worst thing I could have ever done. And again, then that pissed my partner off. Fair. I can apologise to him that now, because that wasn't fair to him. People were offering help and I was saying no. And that was very selfish. I don't really actually know why. I think it was about six months along. We were going for a doctor appointment for Jeven and my family doctor as well. And I just said, hey, I'm struggling. Those anxiety meds you had me on a few years ago, they were great for me. Let's get back on them, no questions asked. You prescribed them for me. Unfortunately, through pregnancy, my hormones and my chemistry balance changed and they didn't work for me this time around. But my partner and I use CBD oil, so I was still breastfeeding at the time. No, I apologise. I was not breastfeeding anymore at that time because this was a little bit later. I tried the meds for a couple of months and they were keeping me up at night. Then I ended up getting COVID and the breastfeeding stopped. So I was able to take CBD oil and that has worked wonders for me. It's helped me sleep at night. It's helped calm my nerves during the day. I still have bad days, especially. I've only been back to work for just over a month now, so this past week was very difficult. Just being away from my kid for so long has been very hard. So now I'm adjusting to the things that cause anxiety, such as a stranger taking care of my baby and not me. Yeah, definitely. And was your husband diagnosed in adulthood with ADHD autism, or is this something he was diagnosed with earlier in age? Adulthood. Yeah, adulthood. Did he first get diagnosed with ADHD and then put on meds and then autism? Or was it the two for one special? He knew he had ADHD before. Well, he thought he had ADHD before, and then when he met me, I was like, no, that's autism. We were both right. So it was autism first, then ADHD, no meds. He is not on any meds. He actually bought a book called Why Is My Daddy So Sad? And it's about a man wrote it who's a dad who has autism. And it talks about that. So I have full intentions of reading it. I haven't had a chance yet because I prefer audiobooks and it's just not yet. But he does that kind of stuff. He self educates. That's how he prefers. It doesn't always work, but it definitely has improved his ability to understand and cope in certain situations. For sure. Yeah. Awesome. As far as self educating goes, it's an amazing tool and it is one of those tools. Oh, my third is up now. All three babies are awake that's so cool. I'm so sorry. Wow. This could go really badly very soon. Come here, buddy. Hey, you can sit and watch, but you need to be very quiet. What's that say? Hello. This is Daddy's friend, Michelle. Can you be quiet? Or you can go watch shows with your sister now. You want to stay here? Okay, cool. All right. Now I have to try to regain my train of thought. Self education. I, too, was the same after my ADHD diagnosis. I was put on medication, quite high medication, which helped vastly. Yeah. Come on, you can come in too. Come here, babe. Okay, just stand there, then. Come here, then. Quick. I'm so sorry. Okay, look, it sums up the podcast perfectly. It really does. This is the absolute shit show of parenting. I won't tell you their name. Sorry. Just for anonymity. My wife didn't want me to reveal anything like that. But this is my three year old and my two year old self education after my ADHD diagnosis, put on the heavy meds and from there, my ADHD levelled out and I had a great couple of weeks. I was able to do everything that I planned on doing and get a whole bunch of backlog tasks around the house done and everything was great. And then slowly but surely, all of these autistic traits came to the surface because the ADHD was level and I was having full meltdowns. I was getting touched out, hence the podcast name, just with three kids hanging off me constantly. Dad. Dad. Dad, I'm hungry. I'm thirsty. Can we watch this? No, I want to watch this. Dad, she's playing with my toy. He's playing with my it was so much and I was like, these meds aren't doing the job. It's not something that I want to be on anymore. So I talked to my psychiatrist and from there we learned you've got the autism. And since then, the unmasking has really continued. And I'm still finding out new things about myself every day, things that I've done my whole life that I've realised that it was masking and I was doing purely because I was told that it's polite to look people in the eyes when you're having a conversation with them. So I forced myself to do that to the point where it just became a part of me. And all these little pieces of my personality were formed from people that I admired or was inspired by growing up. And all of a sudden, I have three kids and a wife and a house and a job and I don't know who I am. I had to start from scratch and figure out who I am. So this podcast is a massive, massive part of my journey in mental health and my wanting to share my experiences and hear your experiences and put all of them together. And hopefully I'll be able to come out on the other side a lot more. Educated a lot more able to parent in my own way. That works for us. As far as the podcasts go, I started listening sorry, not podcast, audiobooks and self help books. I started listening to an audiobook called How Not to Lose Your Shit at Your Kids. I think that's the title. It might not be verbatim. I got three chapters in and there wasn't enough dopamine, so I haven't listened to anymore and I still lose my shit a little bit, but every day is a learning curve and we'll get there. So, as someone who has experienced anxiety and depression, how have you managed those conditions while also caring for your baby and being in a cohesive relationship? And do you have any tips or strategies that you have found helpful? We talked about watching Tiktoks and stuff like that. I think social media can, A, be extremely toxic and horrible and destroy your mental health, but if you use it properly, I think it can be the complete opposite. So when I was at my lowest, I did unfollow specific people in my life that were causing my mental health to be worse off. And I followed platforms like, I don't know if you know, them big little ceilings that they teach you that it is okay to lose your shit because we're all human, but I'm so sorry. I'll just go grab my baby real quick. 2 seconds. That's not where I left you. All right. Meeting the whole family. Where are we? Miss Rachel did her job for 21 minutes. That's actually really good. All right. Yes. Sorry. Please continue. Yeah. So following those big platforms that are not just teaching them how to parent or whatever, but being that more realistic, like, I just snapped on my kids today. I might be a child therapist, but I still have my weaknesses. I still have this. And just showing the strong reality of what parenting is, instead of just hearing from your parents that haven't parented for 30 plus years and going, well, why are you mad at my grandbaby having a friend that I could message and say I want to throw my child out the window? And them going, okay, cool. So what's going right? Just being able to communicate with people was huge. Somebody that could meet me where I was at on my level and then bring me down, calm me down, whatever. Before I got pregnant, I was on a really big health journey. I'd lost a lot of weight. It was really hard to get back into it with a baby that napped for 15 minutes at a time and clung to me every second otherwise, as you're experiencing right now. Yeah. My girlfriend got me back into spin classes at seven months postpartum, and they have this amazing mom and baby workout group that you can bring your baby with you when you're on maternity leave and work out with your child, which was huge for me. Because that got my dopamine going and all of that and all my brain chemicals that needed to get going to get back on my health journeys. And any time that time that I needed for me, my partner supports that. Every Sunday morning at 930, I've gone to spin. That is my dedicated time during the week, and otherwise my spin classes are before baby gets up. And I make that work for our family sort of thing. But definitely health eating healthy. And I know these are just like the things that everybody says. For me, it works for me, it works. If I'm eating like junk, my depression and my anxiety creep up. If I'm not moving my body, I feel like I'm not doing enough and my depression, anxiety creep up. So for me, those things genuinely work, but also filling my cup up with friends going out, not often. I like being a homebody, too, with my family, but if I don't get to see my friends and communicate with them and enjoy some out time, then I feel lonely and alone and I need to fill my cup up that way. But then I also need my home time with my family as well. So that's what works for me. I think, specifically for my partner, he's still trying to find a balance because of his autism. He tried masking really hard and he still does, mind you, but he met me when he was trying to mask really hard and I've kind of accepted a lot of his perks over the years and have allowed him to not mask as much. But as a result, he is a strong introvert and a lot of his friends are online people and people that are not here in the presence and physical. So he unfortunately doesn't have that opportunity. He had a really good organisation he was a part of before COVID but unfortunately, he was on the board and the board didn't follow a lot of the COVID protocols. And as a result, he had to leave because we had a cranky baby at home and it was just too high of a risk. So he lost that community, which is really unfortunate. So for him, specifically, we're still working on it. We're still trying to figure out a balance that he can be present for me and our baby, but also fill his cup up how he needs to. Yeah, definitely. I too have been on a weight loss journey for several years. I think I'm a little over £100 down. It was up and down. I started the journey before baby number one. Baby number one came and I packed all of it, plus ten on baby number two came. It was the same thing. I'd gotten down 15 and then packed on 30 or this is Kilogrammes, by the way. Sorry to oh, gosh. I'm not sure what the conversion is. And then baby number three, I was like, I am determined to not let this happen again. So once my paternity leave started and I took all of my banked hours on annual leave and everything, so I ended up with about three months off work. And in that three months, yeah, I smashed it out. I was looking after myself, I was eating healthy, I was working out, going for walks, my 10,000 steps a day, calorie deficit, everything like that. And my mental health was just perfect. I felt great. This is before my diagnosis, mind you, so my bucket hadn't been overflowed that badly as of yet. Once the three children hit and we were outnumbered, that's when I truly started struggling. Since then, I have managed to maintain, but I definitely feel your husband, as far as being an introvert goes, I work night shift. I see like two or three people per night on a twelve hour shift, and I love it that way. I love not having to be a part of a team. I was a part of a team in my previous employment for 15 years and I've since come to realise that I just lived in a constant state of burnout. And I don't know how I continued without having a full blown mentee b, but, yeah, somehow I did it. And now that I'm on night shift, I realise I just don't like people that much. I have a very small social battery that needs to be recharged regularly. Before I was diagnosed, I thought, is this agoraphobia? This isn't normal, this isn't how a normal person lives. I always knew that there was something different going on, but I also suffer from the executive dysfunction, so I never had that kind of get up and go to get it checked out. So I tipped my hat to my wife that she put up with that for five years before I finally was like, enough is enough, it's time to get some answers, and went there and did it. But, yeah, I definitely 100% am on your side as far as healthy eating and exercise goes and just self care in general. Take the time to have your shower in the morning or have a quiet coffee by yourself and reflect on your thoughts or journal or you need to find that at least one thing that's just yours and yours alone. And I sit there and preach. That when I'm two days from having a shower and I'm covered in vomit on my shirt and I've got one baby on the left with pink eye at the moment and one baby on the right that's teething and refusing to sleep more than half an hour at a time. And the other one that just wants to argue with everything. So right now, I am a little bit touched out and a little bit heightened, but we do the best we can with what we're given. And here she is. Come here. Look how happy baby is. She is the. Smileiest baby. And that really is a Godsend. Even though she doesn't sleep, she smiles at us and it makes everything somehow okay and manageable. And to add on to the depression talk, we had talked a little bit before the mics came on here about me living in Canada and the snow that we have. So we have six plus months worth of winter and I don't know if you've heard the term seasonal depression, but a lot of us have it and a lot of us get it specifically around January, February because October gets colder. Then November, the winter really hits and then December is like well it's Christmas so we can at least be happy and then January hits and it is -45 like -40 -45. And the winter storms. That we get are crazy and January is really long. And then February is really cold this year I will knock on wood. It was actually not as bad as it normally can be. But now we're at the tail end of like okay, we've hit March, we're mid March, we're done, everybody's done. But you can't go for walks because it's a skating rink out there. It is so icy and this is typically a time of year because it's heating up that we start to get some insane winter storms. So going for walks outside is not ideal. My child hates wearing coats and stuff, so taking him outside is not in his daily book. So I'm not getting any vitamin D in me. I'm not getting that sunshine, that fresh air sort of thing. So winter Canada, especially with a baby, is very challenging. Yeah, definitely. As we did previously discuss, it's not something that I can relate with. Seasonal depression is a thing here because while it doesn't snow, our winters can be pretty hectic. It rains for weeks on end and we do get into the negatives, especially with me working night shift. That's when it's the coldest and the place where I work is quite remote and the winds are frosty, very frosty. So I definitely understand to an extent that probably not to the full extent that you're describing, but yeah, that would be hard. My experience with snow is very minimal for the most part. When I think of snow, I think of the white Christmas and the beautiful pillowy fluffiness and it looks absolutely magical and that's only through a TV. So I don't feel the cold, I don't feel anything. All I have is the visual and how beautiful it looks. But I feel like regardless of how beautiful something is, when you deal with it for months and have to walk through it and you're constantly wet and you're constantly cold, I wouldn't be able to do it mate. So I tip my hat to you to deal with all of the kind of internal family things and then deal with the external weather and everything on top of that is definitely something special. One thing that I'll add that I'll talk about is everybody talks about with having kids and a family. Like you need that community. And one thing that my girlfriend taught me, community doesn't necessarily mean your next door neighbour coming over with a big casserole. Like, yes, don't get me wrong, that helps and that's lovely, but a community is something that you need to seek out on your own. And that could be for us, it was a speech pathologist because of the lip and the tongue tie, so we had to go and do stretches for him. Then we had to go and get to a dentist, a specialised dentist, to get it cut. But then also because of the lip and the tongue tie and the cut, the breastfeeding is difficult. So I had the speech pathologist for that. But just having that community of professionals for you is so huge. And I don't know about your guys'maternity board there, but we don't have like a pamphlet board on your way out being like, hey, if you're curious about breastfeeding or if your child is a lip or tongue tire, this and this and this here are some professionals in the city here that can help you. We don't have that. And I live in a province that's very rural, so there's a lot of farms and small communities. Thankfully, we live close to the biggest centre, so we have a lot of those options. But the majority of my province does not. They don't have parenting support, they don't have medical supports. Majority of the towns don't even have hospitals and they have to drive two to 3 hours just to get to a hospital. So learning when you're having your first child, especially you're thinking, oh, I'm going to go into the hospital and I'm going to tell them I don't want to give birth on my back, I don't want an epidural, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Then when you get there and it's like, we're going to give this baby out, however, we're going to get this baby out and you're just going to have to accept it, right? And if we choose to have a second child, which we're not quite sure if we are at this point, our postnatal plan, we would just walk in the hospital and be like, get this baby out. How you're going to get the baby out? What we care about is how we're going to survive the next six months and that's going to be probably hiring a postpartum doula and noise cancelling headphones when we have a call of baby and we need to rock that baby, right? Things like that, that those prenatal classes don't teach you. They don't teach you that, they teach you how to breastfeed and how you should plan for your birth and stuff like that, but they don't teach you the big things that really drain your mental health and what's going to kick you when you're down sort of thing, right? And I know we are getting more of that. We are getting more people who are being more honest about their experience, like this podcast, and more supports out there that are going birth is not fun for the majority of people, postpartum is not fun for the majority of people, but it doesn't mean you can't do it. Here's ways that you can get through it. Right? So I think that's why I want to take part in this podcast is because I'm very passionate about it. I plan to expand my career by getting some doula training and some counselling training, because I want to be able to help families that were in the thick of it, like me, and just felt I'm an educated person. I work with children and parents for a living and I still did not have a clue what I was walking into until it happened. Yeah, definitely. I mean, you yourself said that you're a planner and before being a parent, I think any person who is now a parent can definitely agree that there's no amount of planning or any pamphlets or books or anything that you can read that will truly prepare you for it. You really are going in blind. And everyone's experience is different and every baby is different. And you get some parents that are like, my baby was perfect and slept 12 hours from three weeks old and latched perfectly and everything like that. As I said, my wife had three very different births. I do plan on having my wife on the podcast to discuss her experiences and how both our mental health played a part in where we are today. I'll touch really quickly on the three births. Our first baby was shoulder dystopia. My wife had preclampsia. She was born unresponsive. So my first kind of step into the parenting pool is watching my child be revived in front of me, while my wife, she had a haemorrhage as well. So they're calling codes on her and stabbing her with needles and she's projectile vomiting everywhere and bleeding. And it was there's no amount of reading or movies or anything that you can do to prepare yourself for that kind of full blown trauma straight in front of your face. Everyone says it's this beautiful, perfect moment and you're going to hold your baby and you're going to cut the cord. And I was like, oh, my God. Which way do I look? My wife's dying, my kids dying. It was truly terrifying. So after that, I was like, I don't want any more kids. This was horrible. I got hit with the postpartum depression. My wife was an absolute rock. But yeah, that was the first kind of step into parenting. Then the second kid came along, nicky baby, emergency surgery with a twisted gut. It was like a 90% probability that he would have partially his bowel would be dead and he would live with a colostomy bag and a stoma for his entire life. We were really, really extremely lucky in which his bowel was still very viable and still very healthy. And they caught the mal rotation quickly. So he has made a full recovery. He's just got a cool scar to show for it. He was born via an emergency C section and our third, we were like, we're going into this with all the education we can. My wife was trying for a VBAC. She'd done a whole heap of educating herself on VBACS and the risks versus the rewards and all of the different techniques and core floor and restore and everything like that. So we went into that really kind of positive and we were excited to have this birth that we had been wanting for the first two. And even that just still ended in an emergency C section. They went to put the epidural in. The epidural was tried, I think seven times. They pumped her back so full of the drugs that there was a team of like ten doctors standing around in this ward looking at me, looking at each other, going, I don't know what's going on. Because she kept being able to just lift her legs. She still had feeling the spinal blocks just weren't working. We had told them that she does have a twisted spine, a curved spine, but this anesthesiologist had 25 plus years experience. He was like, we'll be able to do this, we'll be able to do this. And by the 7th they were like, I'm sorry, you're a freak of nature. I can't put any more drugs in your spine because we don't know what will happen, so we're going to have to knock you out. So I then had to leave my wife, gave her a kiss goodbye. I was taken up to the birth ward and put in a room by myself while my wife was put to sleep and had the emergency C section. I waited in that room for 4 hours. The surgery itself was supposed to take 40 minutes, 45 minutes. I waited for 4 hours with no word by around about an hour and a half. Me being the person I am, I catastrophize everything. I'm like, cool, I'm going to have to raise two kids by myself because my wife and baby are dead. And I was buzzing nurses being like, can I please get an update? This is too much. And they're like, you know, she's still in surgery, that's all we know. And I was like, okay, well, obviously something has gone wrong. I think, yeah, it was around about three and a half hours. I hear footsteps and I hear rolling coming down the hallway and I hear some little cries and I'm like, that's my baby. And I have a video of it and her rolling into the room and the nurse being like, here's your baby. And me seeing her for the first time. And I was just so overcome. And I just cried everywhere. And I'm, like, hugging the nurse and snotting all over her. And I'm holding this baby. I've got my shirt off, skin to skin. Straight away, I'm like, Is my wife okay? And they were like, she is. All we know is that there were some complications. The surgeon will come up soon and tell you when your wife's in recovery and explain to you what's happened. That was another 2 hours. I waited and the surgeon finally came up and said your wife had a major haemorrhage and we've had to give her a blood transfusion. She's okay? Yeah, buddy. Yeah. We'll find your bottle soon, okay? We're almost done. I'm sorry, buddy. I'm so sorry. He's put his bottle somewhere. He likes to play hide and seek with things, then completely forget where you put them. I finally got to see my wife after, like, 6 hours, after leaving her, and she got to meet our daughter. And I also have that on film. She was too drugged out to really know what was going on, though. But I was just like you. Okay. She didn't know what was going on. I was like, Meet our daughter. She's beautiful, she's healthy, everything's okay. You're okay. And she was like, I want to feed her, but I can't physically move, I'm so drugged up. So I placed the baby on her chest and supported. Yeah, we're talking about mum's, boobs, your favourite. Placed her on the chest and got her to start latching and feeding and everything like that. Three vastly different births and three vastly different outcomes, but all very traumatising. Oh, horribly traumatising. And I'm lucky enough in the profession I'm in to have a psychologist at my disposal for free whenever I need. So I've definitely utilised that. I don't think I would be where I am today, even though I'm still working a lot of things out without that help. I think therapy before starting your journey to becoming a parent, and definitely after becoming a parent, is absolutely key. The way I see therapy is it's like a gym for your mind. You work out your body to keep your body healthy. Go see a therapist to keep your mind healthy and really workshop all of the thoughts that you're having. No matter how ludicrous you think they are, no matter how minimal you think they are, therapists are there to provide those tools, to fill your toolbox, to help you survive anything and everything, especially parenthood. So I'm definitely eternally thankful to have. That resource available to me. I reckon we might wrap up just before we go, is there anything else you'd like to add or any advice or information that you would like to share for other parents or people becoming parents or wanting to become parents? I do want to add in regards to your wife's horrible experience with the epidural, mine was fantastic. My C section, I was drugged up, so much that I could have slept on the C section table awake. So just if anybody's listening to this and they haven't had kids yet or they're worried about that my personal experience, I had a great anesthesiologist and the drugs were fantastic. I also took away from this because of my haemorrhaging. I learned that I was O negative blood and I've been terrified of needles my whole life. And because of that experience I realised that I needed to figure my shit out. And for the first time ever, I donated blood last week because of my experience with my miscarriages and my own child and everything. And I realised how important it was. So I would say having my children has definitely made me a better person in regards to just something as simple as donating was. Something that I wouldn't have given my time or myself to before. But I guess on a positive note to parents is when you are in the thick of it, reach out, vent to a friend, find a safe person. Find a safe person that you can not that person that had that unicorn baby that sleep for 12 hours and whatever. Find your people that you can vent to that you can find that safe person to say, I've had the worst day ever, I want to throw my baby out a window. And these are the reasons why. And that they'll meet you where you're at and help calm you down. Because without those people, this is why we have those horrible stories of moms having harming their babies right. Or fathers too, but because they're not getting that help that they need. And I think we don't give those parents enough compassion and support. Right? Yeah, definitely. That would be my advice for parents, is don't talk to people that have the unicorn baby because they do exist and bless their souls, I love them for it. But that's not typically the actual experience that people have gone through and there are people out there for you to actually speak to. Definitely. So this is my second podcast recording. My first one actually was with an old acquaintance of mine who she's got a very different situation. She doesn't have biological children, but she has three stepchildren. Her daughter, who is, I believe, twelve off the top of my head, was shaken as a baby as nine months old. So it's a pretty intense podcast. When we first had our first baby and the nurse comes in and says, now don't shake the baby. And you think, Jesus, what a ludicrous thing to say. And almost four years later and three kids deep. I fucking get it. I fucking get it. I think I was a week into parenting and I texted my girlfriend, I said, I get shaken baby syndrome. I totally understand it. And previous to the job that I work in now, that I don't want to talk about. I used to work in child protection. So I have worked with families that have shaken their babies and have had their children apprehended because of that. And I can be very honest, I did not have the compassion for those people that I should have that I do now have. Yeah, I agree with you. I totally get it. It's horrible. It shouldn't have to come to that point, but it does. Yeah, definitely. Before kids, it was something I viewed as just a pure evil and how could you ever do that to someone that you're supposed to love? And in no way, shape or form am I condoning that type of thing. You know, I think there are always, you know, safe places that you can put your kid before you get to that point. But just, you know, after three weeks of having broken sleep and the baby crying from colic and everything, you haven't showered in a week and you're just covered in shit and vomit and you're a shell of a human. I totally get how it can get to that point. If people don't have the emotional intelligence or the self control that I luckily have and a lot of other people luckily have, it's just truly a heartbreaking thing that does happen. You nailed it on the head, though. You said, put your baby in a safe place. Me and my partner literally just talked about this today. Our child is 16 months old now and he went through colic from one month old to four months old and we still talk about it. If we did it over again, he would have spent the majority of his time in his crib and we would have taken 20 minutes out in the garage, whatever we would have needed to do then come back, because he would have been more safe in his crib crying for 20 minutes than he would have been in our arms with us. Escalated over, touched overstimulated because our baby was screaming in pain. And we talk about how your child in a crib is safer than screaming in your arm for 3 hours because you don't know what you're going to do. That immediate reaction. You don't know. People say, don't let your baby cry in the crib. Let your baby cry in the crib. Yeah, 100%. They're not going to be forming core memories at three weeks old, three months old or anything like that. They will be safe. It's horrible at the time, but you need to be the best version of yourself so they turn out the best versions of themselves. That's words to really live by. If you're not going to take anything else away from this podcast, as a new parent or a person that's thinking about becoming a parent or even a parent that's currently in the trenches, you can get touched out and overstimulated by a 16 year old and want to knock them out. Don't do it. Just walk away. Walk away for a little while. Go do what you need to do. Go do your one thing that makes you happy and fills your cup, as we've already talked about. And yeah, I think at the end of the day, everything will be okay. Be kind to yourself. Be kind to your partner. My wife and I, from the get go, even before kids, we have lived by this credo of, if you're only 40%, I'll be the other 60. And that's really key in having this cohesive family. And my wife is just like, hey, I fucking tap out. Get me away from these kids. I'm touched out, slept. I'm going to have to beat that name out. That's all right. My baby hasn't slept. I tap out. I'm like, okay, go to the bedroom, go watch a show, go have a bath, go have a shower, go have a smoke, go for a walk, go for a drive. Whatever you need to do, I am here for you. You go do it. I will lock this down. And then 20 minutes later, I'm like, I tap out. Two. Let's tag team. And it works. Both of us are tired. Both of us are stressed. She's just returned to work. I work night. She works days. It's always going to be a juggling act, but at the end of the day, you look at the smiles on their faces when you get home from work or when you play a silly game with them or give them tickles or anything like that, and my God, it's just so worth it. My two year old also has autism, so he started OT in the last couple of weeks with animals. He was previously very scared of animals. Now he will freely walk up to horses and pat them and pigs and dogs and bunnies and bearded dragons and frogs. Awesome. So just seeing how hard he is coming and getting used to being his own person is amazing. My three year old saying sentences that I wouldn't have been able to say as a three year old, let alone probably now I probably would still struggle with some of the words that she's rocking out. It's truly a blessing. It's a double edged sword. It's beautifully ugly. The best way I can put it. After the first year, all the really, like, the first year so far, I mean, I can't speak to everything has been, for me the hardest just because of all the touching and all the neediness. And I was on maternity leave for 14 months, so I was home all the time, and we tried to get out, and that was I mean, I did my best, but you're still home and you're still locked in with this screaming child that needs you all the time. But like you said, watching them grow and do these things, even just learning how to dip a chicken nugget into ketchup is just like, oh, my gosh, now how did he even learn how to do that. You can find those little joys and things that you never thought you would. Find joy in 100%. And your baby is still relatively young. I guarantee you, in another two years, you will look back on that first twelve months so fondly, because the trauma will have healed to an extent. And rose tinted glasses with the memories. And you'll think, Jeez, that was the best year of my life. I got to spend all this time with my baby. And they were such well behaved babies. But travel back in time. You definitely do block out the trauma. Michelle, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I truly appreciate you sharing your family story and your story. It's been a great chat and I've absolutely loved having you on. I'm sure the kids have loved watching this random person on my computer. They're having a wave. Do you want to wave hello? Good boy. Kiss. Awesome. Good boy. All right, well, I will leave you to your night. I think you said that it was probably bedtime for you. It is my bed. All right. You have a great sleep and thank you again, Michelle. Take care. Bye bye.