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We’re back for round two, except now there’s three of us. Our first child Eden was born into the world in the wee hours of 15 November at a healthy 3.75kg and a stonking 51cm. Eden continues to grow apace, whilst putting us through our new parent paces to boot.
The irony of the first sentence from our previous (and first!) column for REGGIE is not lost on us, as we find the time to type out our next column between changing nappies, tummy times and contact naps. Eden is a delight. The journey (pronounced “jourrrrrrrrrney”) to meeting our child was less than a delight, and apparently a solid representation of not only country health facilities but maternal healthcare across the board.
And so, immaculate readership, please follow us as we recant this journey so you may know of the trials and tribulations leading to the eventual decision of taking this pregnancy on the road to Sydney.
To begin, we have to tip our hat to the midwives of the Glen Innes Maternal Health unit. They are an experienced, wonderful bunch of legendary midwives who proved to be a collective font of knowledge, wisdom and cool-as-a-cucumber-ness at every appointment. Actually, this was consistent of all the midwives we had the pleasure to visit with. Another doff of the hat to our incredible GP Dr Selvanathan at Ochre Medical in Armidale who, if giving a shit was a crime, would’ve been locked up years ago.
But if they’re such legends, why, you ask, did we need to take our moveable feast to Sydney-town?
It started in week 12. Jamie-Lee, in the throes of what can only be described as ‘apocalyptic morning sickness’ (also, LOL at the misnomer of ‘morning’ because that shit can actually last all day) (and it did!) visited an ultrasound clinic the next town over. I won’t say which clinic, for reasons that will become obvious.
The routine check began jovially, when the vibe suddenly shifted to colder than a New England winter as she took a measurement again, then again, then again. We were late to learn our baby’s nuchal translucency was, apparently, large. Cue several anxious appointments, counselling that termination was the most likely outcome and an arduous NIPT. We were told that it would be a miracle to receive positive news from the NIPT.
Obviously we were beside ourselves. Obviously that was the longest wait for results in our lives. Obviously, we were scared. We waited so long to get here and were facing the devastating possibility of having to start again. At 7.30pm the following Monday night and cloaked in the depths of one of those New England winters, the phone rang. Our GP with the NIPT results. “There’s a 96 per cent chance you’re in the clear!” We welcomed those odds over the seemingly arbitrary table-referenced 1-in-4 chance we’d been given the week prior.
The pregnancy was back on. And we were having a baby girl!
With the results came the designation of our pregnancy as high risk. With no hospitals in the area that could manage such pregnancies, we were told scans at Newcastle’s John Hunter were the go, a mere six-hour jaunt from home, because “that’s where the experts are”. For us, that required a day or two off work once a month, plus the drive, a hotel and the constant looming hope that this scan, the next scan, or the one after that would be the scan which gave us the all clear, that our baby was totally fine, that we had nothing further to worry about beyond squeezing her into this world.
That scan, those fabled results, never came. Not because anything was wrong with Eden – quite the opposite. Every scan was perfectly normal, but the doctors couldn’t bring themselves to say “she’s all sweet, no more worry required”. Unbeknownst to us that level of certainty was, apparently, impossible.
Along the way we believed each scan would be the last, but each time the goal posts were moved to the month after, then the month after that. After many months of contradiction – positive test results mixed with the news that there was some new worry to test for next month – we gave up on the tests altogether. It felt as though the nine-month gestation was spent in a state of waiting to see what was wrong. Turns out it’s awfully challenging to relax and enjoy the beauty of creation with all these looming potentials.
A quick sidebar: doctors should be banned from presenting parents ‘the odds’ of any particular outcome from a negative POV. Why can’t a “1-in-25 chance something is bad” instead be “a 95 percent chance everything’s fine”?
In the background to all of this is Jamie’s sister. An experienced midwife, whose counsel during these scans was priceless. She and her gossip of other experienced Sydney midwives were baffled as to why we hadn’t been relabelled as low risk, given the completely average results we received with each new scan at John Hunter. Our local Glen Innes midwives echoed the same thoughts. (Funnily enough we were also told, behind closed doors and under a cone of silence – a cone which I am now breaking to you – that the clinic which delivered us the original thick NT scan results has delivered such false positives a few times more than the average patient could expect. Which begs a few horrifying questions…
As you can imagine, the monthly trips were taking their toll. Before each trip, the uncertainty rose again – what if this was the scan which reported something as horribly wrong? Jamie, to her credit, was never uncertain and was getting progressively disinterested in continuing with the tests. A mother always knows.
B Day was approaching, and we had a decision to make. Did we want to remain in the country, where our local hospital couldn’t deliver our baby because of the high risk label and the hospital 1.5 hours away (the prospect of driving to which, potentially at midnight and definitely down a highway infested with rogue roos just didn’t appeal) would just chuck Jamie in a helicopter to John Hunter anyway should complications arise, while silly little Jimbo would have to drive himself the long way. Things were looking peachy, but we were still labelled high risk and this hung around like a sticky fly on a hot afternoon.
Or, did we want to make use of the spare room and expertise available at Jamie’s midwife sister’s place in Western Sydney, a mere six-minute drive from the nearest major hospital?
Jamie’s first major solo exhibition was to open in Sydney a few weeks before our due date. The choice became obvious. We’d find some friends to look after the plants and chooks at Byeni, pack up our life temporarily and relocate to the Big Smoke. The next irony of this column came in our first appointment with the midwife at Nepean, who immediately reclassified us as low-risk. All those trips to Newcastle and it seems all we needed was a trip two hours further south.
Fast forward to today, halfway through December, and we’re home amongst the gum trees again. The space here, the air, the birds, the water, all of it breathes with new colour now we’re parents. We have certainly discovered for ourselves the complex tension between the natural process of pregnancy and the medical imperative which aims to predict the outcomes of such a process. These are in complete opposition and extraordinarily difficult to navigate on one’s first go round. At each step a new unknown, a new decision to be made, an endless puzzle of maybes in a process we had never before experienced.
The public health system in Australia is – for all its faults and foibles – fucking incredible. In the end, we walked out of the hospital with our baby girl and all we paid for was parking. We are grateful to have access to this system, and yet… it is difficult to decipher how it could have been without all the additional stress, most of which was unnecessary in the end. Let’s not even start on the birth itself.
Gotta dash, Eden’s calling.
Until next time.
JJExxx
