42-Ashley Winning-3 Births-Cesarean & Vaginal-Rosie,Annie & Millie

December 13, 2023Posted inCesarean Section, Home Birth, Hospital Birth, Stillbirth, Unassisted/Free Birth, Vaginal Birth
42-Ashley Winning-3 Births-Cesarean & Vaginal-Rosie,Annie & Millie

Description:

In this episode, Ashley shares how being a bigger woman in the Australian healthcare system led to both births ending in a cesarean. For her third pregnancy, she felt safest having an unassisted free birth at home. Throughout the episode, she dives into deep detail as to why she made the decisions she did and how her experiences flourished into a business supporting other women in her community. 

Disclaimer: This podcast is intended for educational purposes only with no intention of giving or replacing any medical advice. I, Kiona Nessenbaum, am not a licensed medical professional. All advice that is given on the podcast is from the personal experience of the storytellers. All medical or health-related questions should be directed to your licensed provider. 

I also want to mention and give a gentle trigger warning that there is mention of stillbirth in this episode when Ashley is referring to her mother’s experiences. It does come up multiple times in the episode. So just keep an ear out. If that’s something that is sensitive to you. 

Resources:

Definitions:

Thank you so much for tuning in to this episode! If you liked this podcast episode, don’t hesitate to share it and leave a review. It really helps bring the podcast up for others to find and listen to as well. 

If you want to share your birth story or experience on the Birth As We Know It™️ Podcast, fill out this Guest Request Form. 

Support the podcast and become a part of the BAWKI™️ Community by becoming a Patron on the Birth As We Know It™️ Patreon Page!

Transcription of Episode 42:

[00:00:00] Kiona: Hello, and welcome to Birth As We Know It. I am your podcast host, Kiona Nessenbaum. I have experienced birth as a doula, a student midwife, and as a mother of three amazing children with my husband and high school sweetheart by my side. After attending over 130 births, including my own, I’ve realized that each birth experience is truly unique.

So make sure you subscribe and join me every week as we are guided through many different birth experiences through the lens of the storyteller. Please be aware that some of the stories can be triggering to hear, so feel free to pause, take a breath, and come back and listen whenever you’re ready. With that said, let’s prep ourselves to dive deep and get detailed about what really happens in the birth space.

As a reminder, this podcast is intended for educational purposes only, and has no intention of giving or replacing any medical advice. All advice that is given on the podcast is from the personal experiences of the storytellers. All medical or health related questions should be directed to your licensed provider. I also want to mention and give a gentle trigger warning that there is mention of stillbirth in this episode, when Ashley is referring to her mother’s experiences. It does come up multiple times in the episode. So just keep an ear out. If that’s something that is sensitive to you. 

 Before we dive into this episode today. This is the area in which I would usually read a review. But since I’ve read all the reviews that have been left on the podcast thus far, I’m going to ask a small favor of you. As you listened to this episode today, I ask that you listen with the intention of finding a moment that makes you really want to share it with someone. And then share it so that that person can listen to the episode and find something that they can relate to as well. And if they don’t connect with this particular episode, that’s okay. 

 Because you have given them the opportunity to listen to all of the other amazing stories on this podcast, by sharing just this one episode. So I strongly encourage you to accept this challenge. And with that said, let’s go ahead and dive into today’s episode.

Hello everybody and welcome back to the Birth As We Know It podcast. Today, I am super excited to have on Ashley Winning and she is all the way in Australia. She is a mom of three and she is an individual who supports women as they are preparing for a VBAC, whether that is in the hospital or at home.

So welcome, Ashley. Thank you for coming on.

[00:02:44] Ashley: Thank you for having me. Super excited to be here.

[00:02:47] Kiona: Awesome. I’m super excited to have you on. Let’s go ahead and start off with you just telling us a little bit about yourself, who’s in your family and what it is that you do.

[00:02:55] Ashley: Sure. So I live on the Gold Coast in Australia. I have three beautiful daughters. they are about to turn nine, seven, and three. And I really loved being a mum. Moving into motherhood, it completely changed my whole world. It started off with a C section and then another C section. And so I’ve learned all of these new skills as mums.

I talk. to my clients all the time about the changes of who you were before and who you are now and all the challenges we go through. But I work with women. I have a podcast called the VBAC podcast. So I’ve been predominantly working with women to have home births and free births for the last couple of years.

And now I’m opening up to work with women who are planning hospital births and birth center births in the whole VBAC umbrella, because I see that so many more women need support. I have women come to me who want to have hospital baths and I’m like, I don’t work in that arena. So I’m creating a gorgeous membership for VBAC women.

And then I have a gorgeous membership for home birth women. And so I’m just expanding and growing and. And enjoying the ride because it’s been a real journey. I started off working in 2017 in postpartum. And that was because I wasn’t in a space of being able to support women. I was working through my own trauma.

So I showed up and shared my voice in a space that I felt safe to. And from integrity where I felt like it was appropriate. And as soon as I had my free birth in 2020, I shifted and started working with women who had been through a similar journey as me. And so it’s just been of a change of growth and expansion for last, well, since I became a mother, but yes, my whole life, of course, but I’m here to basically raise the vibration and, and help other women on the journey.

[00:04:49] Kiona: Oh, I love all of that so much. I really do. And I love how it started with you becoming a mother and The reason why I love that so much is because there are some people that get into birth work that have not yet had children of their own. And even though they have this really strong passion for birth work, there’s a different understanding when you’re a mother yourself.

So,

[00:05:12] Ashley: I have heard that from midwives who have been working in the system and they thought that they knew everything. So when they had their own baby or when they had their own birth, they thought, I’ve got this covered. I know everything. And they share their stories of, I didn’t know anything because it’s a completely shift dynamic, the way they have to experience the whole thing and the journey.

And I’ve had midwives say to me, I’ve ended up on the OR table. and I don’t even know how I got there to this day. And these are experienced trained professionals and they’re saying, I don’t even know what happened. It was just a whirlwind. And so that gave me a lot of peace in my journey to know that even trained professionals are struggling when, when it comes to birth, because it’s such an insidious system for a lot of us women going through that system.

but yeah, it’s completely a different thing. I personally think that lived experience is one of the best. things and then growing and expanding through knowledge as you grow as a professional and a practitioner, but having that empathy and that compassion because you’ve been through the situation and you can put yourself in other people’s shoes.

I think makes the best. You know, a lot of the time I think it’s, it’s the human led experience. You’re able to put yourself in the other person’s shoes as much as possible.

[00:06:34] Kiona: Yeah, I 100 percent agree with that. And I also had somebody that was on the podcast who’s a really, really well known midwife. Her name is Jenny Joseph for episode 33. And she talks about how she was a midwife before she had her own son. And she said that exact same thing. She said her labor and birth was something she completely did not expect.

You know, like, the way that it just panned out, she’s like, I thought I knew everything. And then when she was getting into labor herself, she’s like, what is this? You know? And so it really does change the way you look at things, and I really do think that, having the experience yourself first definitely puts a different view.

And then also going back to what you mentioned on how trained professionals still end up on the OR table. It also goes to show one, yes, like you mentioned, our system is so, so hard to work through. Like it’s not actually. I personally feel like the system is not built, well we’re also talking slightly about two different systems because you’re in Australia and I’m in the U. S., but at least in the U. S. and from the sounds of it of what you said so far is the system isn’t really built for the people, it’s built for the money. 

[00:07:48] Ashley: Here in Australia we have Medicare and so a lot of us birth publicly. There is the option to go private the way that that you have in America. The system here I wouldn’t say, well some people are in minds of it’s built for money. In in America I definitely think it’s built for money. In Australia it’s a system that’s struggling.

They don’t have the funds to pay for all the things. that they need at the moment and but the system is an institution and an institution is always going to put itself first above people. It’s a business, they get funding, they get money, they have to put their employees first, they have to continue to make that system work.

And the system works by Having all the cogs in the machine working and I think of it as like a sausage factory. You have a sausage factory and they make chicken sausages and they treat it all the same and the chicken sausages go through and that’s, you mix a special sauce and it all goes through.

Then you get a pork sausage and this is what we do with pork sausages, you know, and this is women, right? You’re a high risk so this is how we treat you because we, we’re not going to individualize your treatment because that’s just. We see so many people, and we’re a factory, we see thousands of people.

If I was to sit down and individualize your care, that would slow the conveyor belt up, and it would stop everything. And then I have to think, but I, I can’t think. I need, I need a guideline or a program to show me what to do so I can’t get in trouble, because then on top of it, you’ve got the insurance companies, and a lot of the time, they’ve got their obstetricians.

I, I want to say, I don’t want to say it too crudely, but they’ve got them right. And they hold them and, and it’s like that, what exactly? And they go into there and they’re like, well, what’s going to get me the least trouble here? Because I’ve worked 10, 15 years to get this qualification and get where I have.

I’ve had to like work hours upon hours and I have got a livelihood, I’ve got a family. And so what’s the safest thing for me? And so they’re thinking about the safest thing for their registration, their livelihood, their career, their job. What’s going to get me in the least trouble? And the insurance companies come in and they say, look, we’re going to insure you if you do this, we’re going to insure you if you do that, because you’ve got these machines, even though they’re not evidence based.

And we’re telling you what is safe, even though they’re not the experts, right? It’s some guy sitting behind a desk. Trying to understand how the system works and then making up this mumbo jumbo. I’ve had friends who’ve done underwriting for insurance companies. It’s just some person sitting behind a desk.

They might have experience in the system but they’re not a birthing woman who’s been through the system. And they’re not caring about the birthing woman who’s been through the system. They’re worried about how much premiums they’ll have to pay out and how do I avoid paying people out. So I’m going to put all these stipulations onto that, so that if they try to come after us for millions of dollars, we’re going to say, Oh, well, you didn’t do this, so we’re not going to pay that out.

You’re on your own. And so it’s a very intricate and, and complex system that we’re talking about. And that’s something I didn’t know when I first went in, I just thought, I’m a human, you’re a doctor, you care about people, I’m going to be fine. But I did not understand the complexity of it all.

[00:11:21] Kiona: Yeah, and your explanation that you just gave, that’s a really phenomenal explanation because I love the factory analogy and the cogs of the machine needing to work smoothly because once you pause and take that individual as they are as an individual and trying to cater to their specific needs.

The cogs slow down. The cogs get jammed, you know? And so That analogy is very, very good. I really like that because as you were saying it, I was like, oh my god, yeah, like that’s such a, it’s, it’s a machine. And people have talked about, healthcare systems or any political kind of system being a machine that needs to work a certain way.

And so, I, I really appreciate you bringing that analogy onto the podcast in the form of birth and birth work with the health system because it’s so true. And as you had mentioned, I’m the same way that as a birth professional, I want to encourage people to have the agency and their voices to be individuals and to push against that machine and to slow that machine down because each individual person has individual needs, and the umbrella of birth does not work the same for everybody. And that’s one of the reasons why I created this podcast, is because hearing these birth stories, and hearing about how policies and procedures are impacting the things and the ways that people birth, completely changes the outcome .

And for those that advocate strongly for themselves, usually tend to have a better outcome because they know themselves, they’re the experts in their body and they know what they’re capable of and even what they’re at least capable of trying to be able to accomplish. But yeah, I totally hear where you’re coming from with that. And. I, I appreciate that analogy.

[00:13:10] Ashley: Of course. I’m glad you enjoyed it. It’s something I’ve been playing with the last couple of months to formulate in my mind how I see it and how I can explain it to people.

[00:13:22] Kiona: I think it’s a great way to explain it because that’s something that’s so relatable because everybody is a consumer of something. And so we know that what we consume is made in some way, most of the time in a factory. So, 

[00:13:37] Ashley: yeah. And you know, if you think of yourself as a consumer, you think of yourself as somebody who has a voice. We all, if we don’t get, if we get a packet of chips and they’re not full or you get ripped off, you’re going to complain about your $2 packet of chips. Or if you get a cheeseburger from Macca’s that doesn’t have any meat, you’re going to go back and complain about that probably.

Now, when it comes to you going into the birth system and your insurance. That you’re covered for, that you’re workplace or you’re paying for, or you are a consumer. So you should have a voice, whether it’s publicly funded or not. We should all have a voice. They’re getting tens of thousands of dollars. So we should have a voice as consumers and feel comfortable voicing and demanding and asking for the things that we want.

Because without a group of people, like thousands of us rising and asking that. It will never change. It’s only going to change when we demand for change ourselves. And we can’t just demand that unless we understand what our rights are as people. What the actual rights are when it comes to birth.

Because in different states, in different countries, there are different rights. In here in Australia, we have, the child has no rights until the child’s born. So. The mother is the one with the rights. So even though they try to force you into certain procedures because of the baby, that’s legally unlawful.

And so if women knew that their rights, they could advocate for themselves, that would feel better. And so it really starts, I think, at like a really young level. Because there’s so much to learn. As a pregnant woman, you don’t need to get pregnant, you need to learn all these things like what are my human rights, what are my, what are the guidelines, you know, can I have your resume and your reference to the obstetricians that you’re interviewing?

There’s a lot to have to consider if you’re going to be, and I say Rhea Dempsey here in Australia, she’s a birth educator, she talks about a savvy or a willing woman. And I think it’s important for us to be open to wanting to be, you know, willing and to learn. To want to learn about these things.

[00:15:51] Kiona: Yeah, and I think, there’s a couple of things I want to touch on with what you said. So what you had just mentioned, being willing to learn is so important. It is the foundation of being able to have a voice, because if you don’t have some, at least some kind of educational background , even if that education is you knowing that how you respond to medication because you had it one time before, or how you react to pain, or you know, you took this one childbirth education class.

All of those things, like you had said, lived experience, is 100 percent education and 100 percent evidence for yourself. Meaning it makes it true to who you are, you know, because we’re all individuals. And so, yeah, I appreciate that. You had briefly mentioned, interviewing OBs. So I was wondering if, how, what the process of obtaining or choosing a provider looks like in Australia, where you’re located.

Because here in the U. S., it’s kind of, some people, that are a little bit more educated will be like, Oh, I heard that this provider is good, whether it’s an OB or a midwife. But most of the time, I feel like people are like, Okay, who is my insurance covered by? Let me just find the nearest hospital.

 and that’s the route they tend to go. So, how does that look in Australia?

[00:17:11] Ashley: It’s very similar when you’re in the public system, it’s who will take me? So where I’m located, you go to a GP. a doctor when you first get pregnant . Most mainstream people will, if you’ve got private health insurance, a lot of people have the mindset of, well, I’m paying for this private health, I may as well get my money’s worth.

And they might go and seek out a private obstetrician, where they’ll still have to pay extra money on top of that, so that, that mindset kind of goes out the wayside, but they get the continuity of care. So you get to see the one person and I think that sometimes the idea of this complex, you know, I’ve got this, it’s like this superior complex, you think, Oh, I’ve got private health and I’m getting better care than other people going through the public system.

And I can pick who I want and I suppose they go and pick who they want through the public system. You. You basically can go to the hospital that will accept you in your location. So for me, it’s my local hospital and you go to the GP and they say, Oh, okay, this is where you’re going. So my first conversation was, you’re pregnant, so you’re going to go to this hospital.

And it was, it was never, do you want to have a home birth? Do you want to go to a birth center? Do you want to go with midwife? It was never a conversation. It was just, do you have private insurance or otherwise you’re going to this hospital basically.

[00:18:34] Kiona: Hmm. So, does that mean in order to obtain midwifery care, You have to have private insurance or pay out of pocket.

[00:18:43] Ashley: To obtain midwifery care, you go to the public hospital and most women will obtain midwifery care unless they’re deemed high risk. So if you are high BMI or a bigger person, you might fall into the category of getting swooped up by the obstetricians. Their nets have gotten wider and wider. As the years have gone on, so we had this change in GD diagnoses, gestational diabetes.

And just as I fell pregnant with my first, they had significantly reduced the numbers. And in the hospital where I was captured into, they had significantly reduced the numbers, but if I was to go in the suburb over, which is where I actually worked, so I was seeing a doctor in Brisbane, I didn’t have gestational diabetes.

So, me having gestational diabetes meant that I was stuck with obstetrician care, which I thought was the best care you could get. I was, they’re doctors, they know the best, this is going to be the best for me. You know, they’re way more superior than midwives. Now that I’m educated, I understand that midwives are the experts in physiological or vaginal birth and the obstetricians are experts in medicalized or surgical birth.

Because they’re surgeons at the end of the day and they’re trained to deal with high risk situations. Now their idea of high risk is very different to my idea of high risk. They will capture a lot of people into their high risk category. Whereas I think a high risk person is somebody who needs to be medicated.

Somebody who needs to be monitored, somebody who might have heart problems, somebody who has blood pressure problems. Someone who is at truly high risk and needs medicines or medical intervention throughout pregnancy or through birth. And sometimes I think that can still be managed with a midwife because the midwife has the understanding of medications.

She can always consult with an obstetrician team. You don’t necessarily need to be seeing an obstetrician or have an obstetrician. They could kind of overlook some of those women as well. And that’s mostly because my philosophy around, I know that women who birth with midwives on overall, have better birth outcomes.

They have higher increased rates of vaginal birth, less medication, all those sorts of things. But we don’t get continuity of care in the public system. you only get, continuity of care in the private system if you, you can hire a midwife or you can hire a obstetrician. It’s just that most women don’t realize that hiring a midwife is an option and the insurance companies won’t pay as much as they will an obstetrician.

So it’s, I don’t think that the private actually covers anything for midwives. So the, the insurance companies, because there’s only. There’s less than, there’s a few hundred midwives privately practicing in Australia. It’s not worth it for them. It’s not that it’s more inherently dangerous, which a lot of people would perceive.

It’s the fact that there’s no money in it for them. So they’re going where the money is and that’s where they’re put, you know, that’s where they’re putting the effort and time and what they know and what they can do. So. Again, we’re running under the insurance system and a lot of midwives in Australia who practice home births, they’re not covered by insurance for the, the birth.

So they’re putting themselves, their livelihood on the line to support women at home and they’re not covered. And doulas in Australia cannot find insurance coverage at the moment because they’ve just taken away the insurance for doulas. So there’s a bit of an insidious game and a monopoly. That we’re facing here in Australia, which I think is very similar to in America and and in the UK.

It’s very similar as well

[00:22:43] Kiona: Yeah, I, so, first and foremost, thank you for reminding me that midwifery care is the primary provider of care in Australia because here in the U. S. it’s opposite, you know. OBs are the primary care, which I honestly think is bonkers. 

I think it’s absolutely crazy because of what you had mentioned is OBs are professionally trained and experts in surgical births and high risk cases with medication.

And low risk is, the physiological aspects of birth that everybody should have the right to prior to being deemed high risk, if that makes

sense. and, yeah, so, thank you for that explanation because it, like, as soon as you started saying in the beginning that people, everybody gets midwifery care, I was like, oh, yeah, it’s different in other places. 

[00:23:35] Ashley: They do but they’re very much Overseen by obstetricians and it’s very much forced. They go to university and they learn how to be midwives They learn about physiological birth and vaginal birth and how amazing women’s bodies are. And then they get put into the system and they’re, they’re like, we’re inducing all of these women.

We’re doing this to all of these women. And the, and the midwives are like, what is happening? Everything that they’ve learned has been stripped away and then they can’t practice. They don’t get the skills that they need to. I spoke with a student midwife who’s doing her prac at the moment. She said, I haven’t even seen a vaginal birth.

They’re all ending up in surgeries. Or because of the roster, you can only stay for whatever it is, 8 or 10 hours, she’s having to go home before the births actually happening for the rare few that are having vaginal births. And that just breaks my heart. We have a 34 percent c section rate here in Australia and you know, you guys have got the highest obstetrician rate and the highest mortality rate for women.

So, how does that lead to better care? You’ve got more interventions, more medicines, more drugs, more hand holding, more forcing, more stopping the natural process, and you’ve got worse outcomes. And I think that paints a really bleak picture, but this is the truth of the fact. And so, Why do we believe that obstetricians are the best?

And, a lot of people are like, Oh, let’s go against the trained professionals. They know everything. And I’m like, it couldn’t be further from the truth. It honestly couldn’t. But this is the perceived idea. And it’s because we see it in movies. We see the doctor there. We see them telling the woman how to push.

Women don’t need to be coached, pushed, unless they’re having an epidural and they can’t feel anything. But when a woman goes into labor in the movies, her waters break, and then straight away she’s rushed to the hospital, and then she’s put in stirrups, and then she’s told to push, and then the doctor catches the baby, and he delivered the baby, and he’s the hero.

And also, it’s a man who doesn’t have the lived experience of having pregnancy or birth or anything like that again. So, everything’s been taken out of the hands of women. And put into the hands of people who are not experts, who have no lived experience and are calling the shots for women’s births.

[00:26:04] Kiona: Yeah, and that’s, yeah, there, that’s the fact. That’s the truth. And even here in the U. S., there are multiple kinds of midwives, and it sounds like there are also multiple midwives there, so the primary midwives that, actually, the only midwives that are allowed to work in hospital here in the U. S. are certified midwives. nurse midwives. We also have midwives that are trained to become a certified professional midwives who specialize in out of hospital births, whether that’s birth center or home births. And the way that insurance covers both of those different kind of midwives is drastically different because of the in hospital setting and the codes that are easy to process versus the out of hospital birth where things are very physiological and A lot of the time, there’s not any extra that’s needed, you know, like, you’re not getting the code for an epidural, you’re not getting the code for a surgical birth, you’re potentially getting the code for nitrous, you know, but that’s about it.

Like, you’re not gonna code them for using a birth tub, you know, or for using their own shower, or something like that. So, I feel like insurance companies are all about the money, because they want to be able to get as much money as they can from each individual, which is crazy because I remember seeing this thing online where someone received an itemized bill from the hospital and they got charged $30 for skin to skin contact with their baby. Yeah. And so it’s like, 

[00:27:40] Ashley: I’ve seen something like that before for something silly like that. Yeah.

[00:27:45] Kiona: Yeah, and so they will charge for anything that they can.

[00:27:48] Ashley: That’s the hospital charging the patient, right? The woman. 

That’s ridiculous. That is so cheeky as well.

[00:27:56] Kiona: mm hmm, because they’re like, we can, so why not, you know,

[00:27:59] Ashley: Or you wouldn’t want to fart in there. They might charge you for gas emissions or something. Goodness me. Ridiculous.

[00:28:06] Kiona: yeah, so it’s definitely, it’s definitely very interesting to hear how there are similarities but also differences between how the system is in Australia versus here.

[00:28:17] Ashley: Yeah, our system is based off your model. So, the, the UK model is a little bit different. And our system is kind of like half the UK model and half the American model, but they’re trying to privatize health here. They’re trying to make it all insurance like you guys. I personally really do like the public health system because it’s free.

And as long as we can get the right resources and things like that, it works well. Obviously having private means you can get into the hospital and choose different things. But. It’s really good for people who can’t afford insurance or people who can’t, you know, it just makes it hard. I’ve seen so many stories in America where if you’re not insured, you just, you can’t even get health.

It doesn’t make any sense.

[00:29:04] Kiona: It’s crazy, yeah, I was just about to mention, or ask, do you all have universal health care? Is that what the public system is?

Is where everybody, 

[00:29:15] Ashley: We do. So, certain things will be covered. There’s other things that won’t be covered that you’ll have to either pay for yourself or have insurance for. Especially a lot of elective things. So And there’s also, we have, like it’s in certain areas it’s free to go to the doctor, but other areas you have to pay a gap fee.

So the government will pay a certain amount and then you pay a gap fee on top. It’s it’s a changing system, but it, it makes me really grateful that I have this system in comparison to, you know, the system that you’re faced with. And then NHS, I think is. They’re covered again, but my sister’s in the UK at the moment working in the NHS system and she reckons that our system’s far more superior and they do, they do a lot, a thorough job here.

It’s very rushed and everything, but it’s, it’s better than nothing. I think, you know, having that to fall back on is just, it’s amazing. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:30:14] Kiona: yeah, here if you do not have insurance. It’s you don’t get care or you get care and you’re charged for every single thing, which is absolutely insane. But I’m sure we can dive way deep into this system thing because we’re already 30 minutes in and going deep. So let’s go ahead and start talking about how your pregnancies and labors and births were impacted by your system.

So let’s go ahead and start with your first birth or first pregnancy. How was your conception journey with Rosie?

[00:30:44] Ashley: Yeah, so I was getting married in April and I had said to my husband, I want to start trying as soon as possible. I had the implanon in my arm, the rod, and I went to the doctor, got it all removed, got my bloods checked. I wanted to make sure I was in optimal health and he said everything was pretty much fine.

Checked my iron and he said, I just recommend you lose some weight because you could struggle to fall pregnant. And I couldn’t lose weight for my wedding. I’d been trying to lose weight my whole life. And I said, okay, fine, cool. Maybe a little bit harder to get pregnant. I got pregnant in the first month of trying and that pregnancy was Rosie and I had HD until I was 20 weeks.

I had HD with all of my pregnancies. That was a very challenging experience. I also was very, very exhausted. It felt like they were sucking off the life form from my body. So I go into sloth mode when I’m pregnant and I

[00:31:45] Kiona: Can you say what HD is? I’m sorry.

Just for the listeners as well. 

[00:31:49] Ashley: So let me just, I don’t know how to pronounce it. Do you know how to

pronounce it 

Hyper

[00:31:57] Kiona: oh, hyper emesis gravidarum?

[00:32:01] Ashley: Yes, I have, yeah. hd So. Basically, I was vomiting multiple times a day. So from the moment I woke up I was dry reaching or vomiting. I couldn’t, the smell of perfume, the smell of smoke, the smell of petrol, fumes. When I was driving down there to work, everything made me feel sick.

I was vomiting in the toilet, I was vomiting in my work bin. I was like, I had a bag with me, a sick bag on the way to work. It’s the most horrible experience and I was surrounded by people who had never really been sick in pregnancy. My mother had never been sick. My mother in law, my mom got sick once through four pregnancies.

My just everyone around me had never really been sick and I just felt like the biggest drama queen because I was so sick. But also because I’m bigger, I definitely had a lot of shame around like blaming everything on being bigger, everything, you know what I mean? And so I just. I suffered through the first 20 weeks.

I went to a doctor and asked for help and it was just a random doctor that I didn’t, I didn’t see a regular doctor. I didn’t really need to. I just, and I was bawling my eyes out like, can you help me? And he’s like, no, there’s not. He did not care about me at all. He was just like, there’s nothing you can do.

And I said, well, is there anything I can eat like to make it better? He’s like, no. It was the worst doctor. He had no compassion and I found out that there were medications and things you could take and I tried all of those and nothing helped me, at all. I just got to 20 weeks and it died down.

I had a few weeks of wonderfulness in the second trimester and then it goes to the third trimester of being huge and uncomfortable and just wishing this baby would come out. I had gestational diabetes, as I mentioned. In one suburb I had it, in another suburb I didn’t have it.

So I thought, okay, we’re up with the times, these people know what they’re doing, I’m getting the best care I possibly can with obstetricians. But I felt like it was really cold and clinical. I couldn’t put words to it. I just felt that this was supposed to be a really exciting time in my life. And the people that I was meeting with just.

They weren’t excited about their job. It was a very cold, sterile place. We never talked about birth. I got random people. In the public system you get junior obstetricians who are training and learning and they’re kind of just going through the Going through the paces. They were often running behind so I’d often leave work.

I’d panic, leave work, get down there. I was having to take time off work and you know it was stressful at work having to do that and then I get to the Hospital and then you’re waiting an hour because they’re running behind and it was just the whole process was just not a very positive one. I was told very early on that I was going to be induced and I thought that was amazing.

I met a lady who said don’t worry like she had GD as well she’s like it’s all good I had my baby in four hours and I was like okay. Cool, like I get to meet my baby sooner, get out of this pregnancy, have my baby, it’s going to be good. My mum had me in 8 hours, vaginally she had me with forceps, no drugs and she just said it’s just like something that all women do and you just suck it up.

And she was always like, no one has medication. You only do that if you’re, you know, a wimp or something. And I was like, mom, some women have 24 hour labors. Like you only had eight hours. If you’re in labor for 24 hours, maybe you’d have a different idea. She’s like, no, no, you just go through it. And I was like, Hey, so I just thought I was going to have my baby vaginally, maybe some forceps, no drugs, because that’s how my mom did it.

And then I went through the induction process and it was two or three days and there was no baby. We went through the three set of gels. We went through getting the balloon catheter put in to try to stretch my cervix open. That was one of the most excruciating things I’d ever experienced. And I thought, if I can’t get through this, how am I going to get through labor?

And they put it in overnight to try to stretch the cervix and then they can go and break the waters as their next approach. I didn’t really understand the process. Nobody had thoroughly explained the process. Nobody had explained that there was a chance that the induction wouldn’t work. And I wake up in the morning and the balloon was still there and they said, Okay, well, what we’re going to do is you’re going to come back tomorrow for more monitoring.

And then we’re going to start this process again on Monday. So this was Saturday. And I said, well, if it hasn’t worked, why will it work on Monday? And this is the most painful experience. I don’t want to do this again. Can I just come back when I’m in labor? Like I’ll wait till I’m 40 weeks or so, and then I’ll just go into labor and have the baby.

And they said, no, no, you can’t do that. You can’t do that. We’re going to go and have a meeting like their morning meeting. And I’ll come back and talk to you after I’ve discussed it. And she came back and said, we’ve bumped all of the surgeries up and you’re going to be the first one for the day. Are you, will you do that?

And I was like, well, if that’s what you think I should do, I suppose I will do that. You know, at this point, my husband only had three more days at work. My in laws were at my house babysitting my dog. I was tired and I did not want to come back on Monday and go through this grueling process. I never wanted to have a c section throughout my pregnancy.

I kept saying to them, I know I’m at higher risk because I had known that I was at higher risk, but I didn’t know why. But I don’t want to have a c section. I want to have like, I’m happy for you to do forceps. Can you just do that if it needs to happen? And she’s like, I don’t, I don’t know how to do forceps.

My preferred is vacuum. And I was like, okay, well, I guess that’s okay. Just like whatever you want to do. I just want to have a vaginal birth. Like. Who thinks that having these huge salad tongs in your vagina is normal? But I know that that’s the story that was told to me, so I just thought it was, I needed help to be born, like my mother still thinks that I needed help to be born.

And I think it was a pretty, a bit of a trend in the 80s, for women. because a lot of stories that I’ve heard, that’s how women are being born. I think the obstetricians were starting to experiment and get, getting their groove and get really involved. so yeah, I went through the process. of a c section.

My sister was a surgical nurse and she had been telling me the whole time all these horror stories and she was saying when I have a baby I’m just going to have a c section because I see all of the women come in. She was seeing all of the women come in after vaginal births and the prolapses and she because she’s working in surgery so she’s seeing all of that but she didn’t have the knowledge of physiological birth or what actually happens or how those things eventuate.

And I’m not saying that that doesn’t happen in a physiological birth because of course it does. It’s just that I believe and evidence shows that a lot of the interventions, a lot of the coach pushing, a lot of the forceps and a lot of the things that happen in medicalised birth increase those chances to happen.

So when you are listening to advice from people, it’s important to understand. Where they stand, what their experience, what their knowledge is, what their expertise are, and their bias as well. But I was completely, the whole time, no I don’t want to have a c section. Only people who really need c sections have c sections.

Like either it’s that you’re a celebrity and you want to have a c section, because celebrities were all doing it back then. It was like, this popular thing for celebrities. Or you have one because you really need to have one and no women in my family had ever needed to have one. So that wasn’t going to happen to me.

So I came out of that experience feeling like a failure because I had this c section that I never wanted to have. And I felt like I failed my child. I felt like I failed myself. I even had a friend say to me that I didn’t fight hard enough. I should have fought hard enough for But I I was completely, under the belief that the obstetricians knew what was best for me.

And I completely handed over my power to them to, Decide what was the right thing for me. And back in those days we didn’t have Facebook groups. It was all just pages. So that I would follow a lot of like mum’s pages. And there wasn’t a lot of, there was no community. You couldn’t get information from mums.

There was no podcast. There was no information. It was just pages. And then everyone would put their opinion on the pages. And so you’d just get like thousands of unsolicited, no filtered. Like information from people, opinions, and there was a lot of people in those times that were Anyone who has a c sections like a bad mom and she didn’t do you know all of that sort of was happening in those times.

I think now we’re in a time where this empowering powerful groups and women can share resources, and there’s so much more available But I definitely fell through the time where it was highly medicalized. Lowering rates and lack of information for sure. And that’s where my first birth story with Rosie started out.

[00:41:38] Kiona: Wow, yeah, that’s a journey and I will say there are a lot of people out there that can relate to what you did of like kind of handing over your trust into your provider because coming from a place with not having any knowledge or background outside of the experiences that people decide to tell you that are like in your life, like your parents or friends or sisters or something like that, to be able to know exactly what to do in those kinds of situations, This is very rare, you know, like the amount of stories that you’ll hear around you just naturally in your day to day, they’re not going to have, they’re, it’s, it’s not going to tell you exactly how your birth is going to end up.

So I think that from the sounds of it, you were doing what you felt was best, right? And I think that’s also really hard to make that decision and then to have people around you or the society around you, or these groups or whatever, just saying C sections equals bad mom. That is so negative, and you are already feeling down on yourself about it, and you’re like, what the heck?

Because it wasn’t the, it sounds like you were the first person to have a cesarean in your family, or

[00:42:54] Ashley: I was the first, my mom did have a cesarean, but it, it was a, it was a different situation. It was, my mom had a stillbirth with her third child at 38, and so before she went into labor and everything, he just passed away. And so, when she went to have my sister, my third sister, my second sister, her third child, they recommended cesarean at 37 or something like that.

I understand when you’ve lost a child, I mean plenty of women go on to have vaginal births because the chance of that happening again is, really low. But I understand why my mum chose to have a c section to try to ensure. That her child would be born, but she vaginally delivered my brother and me and my other sister.

And so I never, the C section was never something that she needed to have in an emergency or wasn’t because she couldn’t birth vaginally or anything. It was purely because of that tragic loss. So through that story with Rosie, I carried that story of my brother and the story was that he died from the cord being wrapped around his neck.

And I know that that’s not true now because I know about umbilical cords and it’s really unlikely. They couldn’t tell my parents the reason why. A lot of the time they can’t tell parents the reason why babies are born still or babies pass away just before they’re born. And, I carried that around because that was, that was like a dirty secret in my family of this is what happened.

But we don’t talk about it, but we know about it. And I would always think about my brother up in heaven with my uncle and when I was becoming a mom for the first time, I was petrified that my baby would have the cord wrapped around her neck. And I would always ask at every appointment that I had a scan because I had a lot of scans the wrapper is the cord around the neck and the ultrasound person’s like, it doesn’t matter.

Just don’t worry about it. I was like, you don’t understand. My brother died from that. I really need to know, you know, and like, they know now that the information doesn’t matter because that’s not how. Babies die, but I didn’t know that information and so it was a stressful time. On top of that, when you have gestational diabetes, they talk about the dead baby all the time.

You’re at risk for this and your baby’s at risk for that. There’s so much fear mongering that goes on. For you to check your sugars, take this medication, do this, eat well, all these extra appointments. I was a nervous wreck. I was so concerned about my baby who I loved more than anything, who I had conceived intentionally, who was my first born, who I loved more than anything in the world.

All I wanted was for her to be born healthy. And so the choice that I made to have her through C section was a choice of love because, and I, basically punished myself for years thinking I was a failure. How can you think you’re a failure when everything that you’ve done is out of love? I had sacrificed everything going to all these appointments, listening, reading, learning, all this stuff, jabbing myself with insulin, all these things because I love my child so much.

But all of those things made me an anxiety nervous wreck. Like honestly, it was not a positive experience. And to know that If I had gone to a different hospital just up the road, I wouldn’t have even had that experience. I wouldn’t have had the stamp on my book. I wouldn’t have been with obstetricians. I probably would have ended up having, I mean I don’t know, because maybe they would have treated me differently because of my size, but there was nothing else in my pregnancy.

I may have just been left to go into spontaneous labour. And nothing would have happened. It would have been, or maybe I got induced at 39 or 40 weeks. And I was ready then. You know what I mean? It’s, something as little as that can change the trajectory of your birth outcome. Or what happens. And it really matters when they’re looking at tiny little numbers to make choices that aren’t even evidence based.

That can have detrimental effects for you and your baby.

[00:47:07] Kiona: It really can. And so, with making the decision to have a c section, how did that impact your emotions and your feeding choices postpartum? 

[00:47:17] Ashley: I was always going to breastfeed. I told everyone I’m going to breastfeed and then people started saying to me through pregnancy, well, if you care, because breastfeeding is like really challenging and lots of women have milk supply issues. So by the end of my pregnancy, I was saying, I’m going to breastfeed if I can, because I was preempting people saying that to me and telling me there’s no shame in formula feeding.

Which was fine because I was like, I’m not formally feeding my child. So I’d already set myself up for, it was because my expectations weren’t being met. I had an expectation of, because my mother had done these things, that that’s how these things would go for me. And I had some challenges in the hospital with one of the midwives who was on call at night time.

She just She was just not coming to get my baby quick enough or She had to keep coming to get my baby and I couldn’t get out of bed and she would just say I’m just gonna leave the baby on you to sleep at nighttime and I was freaking out because I know that that’s like especially for bigger people not safe and I was really afraid And my husband couldn’t stay in the hospital.

So I basically avoid, I found out she was coming the next night and I hid from her with my baby and I had no sleep. I was so exhausted. I mean, I’d just gone through three days of induction with no sleep. They come in at five o’clock in the morning in the induction. We’re here for our shift.

We’ve had a well rested night. Too bad that you haven’t. We’re here to talk business. That’s how they run in the hospital. They run on their time. It’s not, We’re not taking any consideration into what you’ve been through. I’m here to talk, and this is the time that I’m allocated, so we’re going to do it on my time.

I hid from this woman, she wanted to try to take the baby from me so I could get some sleep, and I was a very strong mama bear, and I was trying to figure out what was wrong with my baby, because she’d cried every time she went in her, her little cot. And I was trying to figure out what was happening, and I, I’m trying to be a mum.

Um, and I We’re sitting in the this bathing area away from everyone and all they could hear was when they were coming down was this baby crying and me sitting there staring at this baby. So they’re probably looking at me like this woman is like she needs a rest like she’s not responding to her baby.

She’s but for me, I was trying to work out what was happening. And I figured out that actually what was happening is her arms were getting out of the little blankets that they were wrapping her in and that would startle her and that’s what was waking her. So I put her into this little swaddle, I love to dream swaddle, and she slept all night peacefully.

But I had this like, Run-irun-in these women and they tried to take the baby off me and, and then they tried to like give me, I think they were, they were, they sent another one through and tried to take, They, she sent a friend over and said, Oh, come on, let’s, I’ll look after the baby for you. I was like, I don’t want her to have bottle.

I’m going to look after her. I was really like, this was me taking back my control and my power. And my husband came in the next morning because I freaked out the morning that he came after and I was a wreck. I didn’t get any sleep. The midwife was mean to me. I thought my marriage was over because I was like this crazy lady.

He’s like, what is happening? I’m like, everything’s falling apart. So the next morning he came first thing in the morning. I’d already had a shower. The baby was sleeping. He’s like, where’s the baby? And I was like, she’s there. She’s sleeping. Everything’s under control. I’ve got this covered. And I discharged myself from the hospital the next day because I didn’t want to have to be subjected to any more of their stuff.

She was unsupportive, unhelpful, not compassionate, or I just needed someone nurturing. And what had happened was when I went home, the breastfeeding I didn’t know what I was doing because they always helped me and I didn’t know how to get her attached. She didn’t know how to get her attached. So we struggled all night, the first night.

And I planned to go in to see a midwife, in the morning. But I also knew there was a midwife coming to my home because I had these programs where they come. But they, it’s ambiguous on when they’re coming. So we’re kind of just like wondering when’s she going to show up? When she’s not going to show up and then she finally came but she heard the baby screaming at the top of her lungs after I changed her, she hated being, changed.

She had a really, she still does, has a big set of lungs on her. And the midwife was an older midwife who was like a very anxious midwife and she’s like, I’ve got to weigh the baby. Oh my goodness. The baby’s lost too much weight. Oh, we’ve got to put the baby on formula she sends my husband out to go get formula and then Does what she has to do tick tick tick and then leaves us and then I said to my husband Okay, so what we’re feeding her bottles now, you know, I don’t know how to breastfeed her But my milk came in that night.

So I ended up expressing for about six weeks And then about six weeks, I said, Oh God, I can’t be bothered doing this anymore. I’m just going to breastfeed her. But she was too lazy by the time that that came because she was so used to just getting the milk. She wasn’t. And my firstborn, she is a very impatient person.

She’s very similar to me. She wants it now. She doesn’t want to work for it. She would go red in the face. And as a first time mom, I didn’t know any of that. So. I felt like I failed. I breastfed her for 6 months but it was mixed feeding with formula and breastfeeding. She would breastfeed until, to get to the let down.

And as soon as the let down stopped and she had to work for it, she would, she would basically give up. And I didn’t know that if I, I could have encouraged her and we could have worked through it but I didn’t know what I didn’t know. And I stopped feeding at 6 months. So I felt like a double failure with that, I’ll be honest with you.

And that was a real challenge. I didn’t meet my expectations. So I was an anxious, over the top, giving everything to my baby. I’m going to be the perfect mum. She’s going to eat organic this. Everything’s from scratch. She’s, everything is all about her. I’m not even going to bother looking after myself or my husband.

It’s just, my whole life is about her. And that’s where we went for the first 15 months until I conceived Annie, our second child.

[00:53:42] Kiona: Yeah, so in that span of constantly giving to others and not yourself as much, did you experience any kind of, like, depression, or did you not have any of those, like, postpartum mood disorders?

[00:53:54] Ashley: No, I was absolutely obsessed and in love with my child. I had a mission and she was my mission and she kept me, I had a purpose. I think when you’re so devoted and you’re so, you have a purpose, you, it was all about me trying to control. It was all about me trying to stay in control, trying to. Do you know, make up for the things that I hadn’t achieved?

so I was not depressed. I was struggling with, at the same time I’d started working with a counsellor, a psychologist, so I was really struggling with like past childhood trauma, relationships with dysfunctional parents. It’s trying to integrate how much I love my child feeling abandoned by my family.

There was a huge integration for the first few years of motherhood into fearing that I’ll become my mother and not wanting to be anything like her and really navigating. It was a huge integration and I’m learning to be a stay at home mom, a housewife. Because I’d always worked, so then on top of it, and I’m, I’m no domestic goddess, and I don’t like doing domestic stuff.

[00:55:08] Kiona: That’s me.

[00:55:10] Ashley: it was hard in that sense, is that being a mother was super natural and easy. I, you know, that was fine. But all the other stuff, you’re sat at home all by yourself, unless you’ve got friends. I had friends, but they continued to work. I fell for the trap of thinking that a baby would Bring my family together closer that the people in my family would completely change to functional people and that I would be surrounded by love. This child was going to change everything because I’d seen it in other families, but that didn’t happen for me So I felt really isolated, lonely, resentful, angry.

I Did have those things that you’re talking about that that were faced towards my family and Then I had so much overwhelming love for this child that it was a very, very challenging time. And just as teenagehood was a really challenging time, this is another rite of passage that women, we birth into this new role and this new person.

And that’s why having a guide or a mentor or someone to tell you that these things are normal is really helpful. And I just didn’t have that.

[00:56:23] Kiona: Yeah, and I think that everything you just said makes so much sense, because you were saying that, yes, you did have some. of, like, postpartum depression but it was not aimed towards your baby. It was more aimed towards what you had expected from your family around you that didn’t get met and just kind of being sad about that.

[00:56:42] Ashley: Yeah. 

[00:56:44] Kiona: and that’s 100 percent valid and I think that that’s important to recognize and, like, bring light to because it kind of puts a different perspective on what postpartum depression can look like or what postpartum mood disorders or anything emotionally challenging postpartum can be because of like where those emotions stem from.

It wasn’t like toward, because when you look up postpartum depression, anxiety, or mood disorders, postpartum psychosis and things like that, a lot of it is like, I feel like harming myself. I feel like harming the baby 

when really you can still be. Sad, and down, and depressed, and experienced those things, and not necessarily saying that you wanted to harm your family, but like, you know, saying you had sadness around what your family didn’t necessarily provide based on your expectations of what you saw around you.

[00:57:36] Ashley: Yeah. And like, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t connect it with postpartum depression or postpartum necessarily. I would say that those are reasonable emotions when you’re dealing with alcoholic parents and family members and dysfunctional toxic people. And when I don’t use the word lightly of toxic people, we’re talking about dysfunctional alcoholic.

Sick people, you know, with addiction. So, anyone that is dealing with that severity of dysfunction is going to feel depressed or feel negative or have the weight of the world on their shoulders. And so, the last 10 years of that experience of my life has really been me learning boundaries, learning to respect and love myself. 

To grow as a person to untangle all of that and really become the mother and person that I want to be. And that’s been a really challenging, really challenging experience for me but it’s been one of growth and exploration and that’s where I moved into the postpartum work after I had my second child , because I had experienced it being so isolating alone.

I didn’t have a mother who was coming over and showing me the ropes as they do in the movies. I think a lot of movies have a lot to, you know. Everything’s like amazing, and you know, you have all these things. That’s not reality for a lot of people. Some people’s parents live ages away, so they don’t have that support, or they don’t get along super well, or they’re bossy and overbearing, and so it becomes challenging, which is why I then went on to learn how to help women in that area, because I know breastfeeding, and sleeping, and all these things are really challenging, and yeah.

[00:59:26] Kiona: Yeah, I love that that was your kind of push to create your passion of helping and supporting other women and mothers as they went through that postpartum experience. You were kind of creating what you didn’t have, you know, creating that community for others. so let’s go ahead and dive into your pregnancy and birth with Annie.

[00:59:45] Ashley: Yes, Annie was a planned baby. Again, I got to 14 months and I started getting clucky for another baby. This is around the time where my daughter had just started walking and she was lovely and cute and I had started a family daycare because I didn’t want to leave her and I was looking after multiple children at once and I had this in the bag and everything was fine and then I got pregnant and then I was really sick again and I had this child who was a toddler who was, I was highly emotional, having tantrums and I was working, which was better this time because I was working from home so I didn’t have to travel and I was in the comfort of my own home looking after like very small children so if I needed to vomit that was okay.

I think the worst part was having to change their nappies but it was okay because there was no one here and we, we could chill and I just went through that pregnancy again. The reason why I waited for the exact gap, it was 24 months between because that was the Recommended for a VBAC and I was going to have a vaginal birth my next time.

I joined a vaginal birth group on Facebook in Australia And I was learning all the things that I needed to know and I was going to have a vaginal birth and this time I just wasn’t having an induction I wasn’t being induced because that was the reason I had a c section. I never labored. So we’re just going to avoid that, the baby, I’m going to go into labor and I’m going to have this baby.

So I focused a lot around avoiding an induction and a repeat cesarean. And every time I went to the hospital, I went to the same hospital because that was my option. And I had a student doula. I had a student midwife. I had the head of midwifery would attend some of my appointments. I had met multiple obstetricians and eventually she’d put me in with this, the most supportive obstetrician in the whole hospital.

If anyone was going to do it, it was going to be him. And I went back and forth, back and forth with them on my plans, and they’d said to me, We think a vaginal birth is the safest, but for you, we don’t recommend it. We repeat, we recommend a repeat cesarean. Because of your size, I had some very, I had lots and lots of deep conversations with them.

I asked them lots of questions. Essentially, it was that they, they didn’t have senior obstetricians working at night time. So they didn’t feel comfortable working on a bigger person like myself. And when I identified that, I said, well, why don’t you just send me to the Brisbane hospital where they’ve got obstetricians working all night.

They laughed at me and said, ha ha ha. And I thought, well, mustn’t be a big deal then, because I’ve told them I’m not being induced. I’m not having growth scans. I am going to have spontaneous labour. I was diet controlled, gestational diabetes. The diabetes didn’t get picked up until 28 weeks this time, which was the first time it was at 14 weeks.

They want you to do an early test and then if you don’t, they make you do a later test. I could have declined all of those things, but I didn’t know at the time. And I’d only just failed, like there’s three tests for the GTT. It was 0. 01 for one of those tests. So I, it was super borderline. And that captured me with the obstetricians again, because I, I advocated for midwives, but they decided, no, I’m definitely going to get GD, so you’re going to be stuck with us.

And I went through the rest of the pregnancy with them. And every single appointment that I met with a junior obstetrician, they said to me, so you’re having a repeat C section. I said, no, if you read the notes and they said, would you know the risks? I said, yes, I know the risks, blah, blah, blah. Oh, you do know.

Okay, that’s good. Okay. And, it was just, I was just wasting my time. I was going in to have appointments with random people, having random conversations. I was anxiety driven. I was trying to get them to see me as a person and believe in me, trust in me, support me. I wanted them to say, we’re going to support you to have a spontaneous birth and we’ll be there.

You’re right. This is the safest, best way for you to birth your baby. But eventually the doctor said to me that I said, look, if this is a legal thing, I’ll sign some paper to say that I waive my rights or whatever. And he said, your signature is not worth the paper it’s written on. And so basically he’s saying that legally it doesn’t matter.

Like all he cares about is legal legalities, what’s going to happen to him potentially because that’s what they’re worried about. So. I just went through, and every time, it was just this horrible conversation. I was fearful every time. They made me feel like, being a bigger person, I wouldn’t be able to vaginally birth.

There was all these extra risks, or dead baby, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And at 37 weeks, I got a phone call from the obstetrician, and he said, I remember him like having this big smile on his face. I could feel it through the phone and he’s like, yeah, we’ve decided that your risk is too much for us to take on.

So you can choose from going to this hospital or this hospital. So just have a think and get back to me. And I was just beside myself. I had been kicked out of hospital at 37 weeks with potentially weeks to go. to birthing. I didn’t know any of those people. I had to go to extra appointments to get booked in.

It was a really frightening experience. They waited to the very last moment they could to transfer my care. My health, my baby, nothing had changed. My desires, I had been very clear and honest with them and transparent about what I wanted from DayDot and they Basically, fear mongered me, tried to push me into what they wanted and I suppose the majority of women, they would submit.

They would falter and they would say, fine, when you get to the end of it, we’ll, I’ll do what you want me to do. But I didn’t. And so they had to kick me out.

So, I mean, I feel really proud of myself, but also it just goes to show the insidious behavior. and the manipulation and coercion that they participate in.

I had been transparent from day one. So at that point, as a reasonable woman, as a, as a person, they should have just transferred me to somebody who could help me. Like I said, at 20 weeks when I had identified their issue and, They hadn’t because they obviously have success rates in forcing women down their path and that’s, that’s a really sad thing.

It’s a really sad thing. But I, I ended up going to this other hospital. They’re a lot more professional. They spoke really kindly. There was a lot of women obstetricians. They agreed with me that a spontaneous labour was the best for me. That vaginal birth was the safest for me because they had obstetricians working through.

So they could allow, they could give that, that response to me. And it wasn’t that anything had changed, it’s just that they were set up for it, you know what I mean? So it’s really important when you’re looking at a hospital and team, who you’re going to go with. I did have to, you know, compromise and get a growth scan and do these things because I was frightened.

I was afraid that I was going to get kicked out and I wanted to be seen as a reasonable person, not, you know. So I’m doing all of these things to submit to them and having to have induction talks again because I’m having a big baby. And I’m like, nah, it’s all good. I’m just Then the junior doctor goes and speaks to the senior doctor and they say well, yeah, Ashley’s right.

She doesn’t need to. So I had to push against the junior doctors because they weren’t experienced and they just were following the path, but then when I pushed them a little bit and they spoke to someone more senior they would come back to me and say, okay, that’s fine. But if I hadn’t pushed I would have had an induction.

[01:08:10] Kiona: Yeah, so what did end up happening then? Because with this birth you still did end up with a cesarean, correct?

[01:08:17] Ashley: yeah, so I went into spontaneous labour. And I was going to stay home as long as possible. But as soon as I went to labor, I convinced myself I need to get straight to the hospital. And so within five hours or something, I was at the hospital and I was five centimeters dilated. And I was really proud of myself because they had made me feel like I would never go into spontaneous labor.

And I was so proud that I went into spontaneous labor for the first time. I’m in labor. My body’s doing all these amazing things. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it was going to be. Cause when you’re going for a V back, you’re like, you know what a C section is like. You have already had the lived experience.

So you, that’s in some way safe for you because you’ve done that. Whereas a vaginal birth, there’s so many different things that could happen. Like what if I tear, what if this is super painful and I don’t, I can’t handle it. What if this is like the worst decision? So. It was really cool to go through that experience and I was super proud of myself just breathing through the contractions.

I got into the shower and. I denied the doctors to come into the suite with me for a few hours and I had a midwife I gave her my birth plan and she was all like, yeah, that’s cool. There’s no problems there. And, I just slaved and then I, after a couple of hours, I noticed that there was like some waters coming out and I told the midwife and she said, Oh, do you want me to check?

And I said, yeah, okay. She said, yep, your waters have gone, but there’s some four waters there. So let me just. It’s like I can break them if you want and I said, okay, fine. My water’s already gone. It’s just the four waters. So she broke them and they were actually my entire waters. I’d only had a little leak.

So it’s like a tsunami of warm water. It was clear. but then it was like excruciatingly painful. I just went from in this lovely little bubble to, Oh my goodness, this is really painful. So my body started pushing and then she used the. opportunity to put the screw or the electrode scalp monitor on the baby because I had been convinced to allow that option over because of my bigger body it’s easier and I thought I’ve had the experience of having monitoring and this would be so less so much less intrusive.

And so they put that on the head. They said that I could still walk around, but I was actually hooked up to a monitor. And when I got off the bed, the baby had a decel that took a while to recover from. So then all the obstetricians had to come in, and we had this big conversation. It was all, you should have a C section, because babies, asynclitic, and babies in this position, you’ve got a swollen lip. And at that time I was 10 centimeters one side, eight centimeters another side with an ROT baby that was asynclitic.

And I was thinking, I don’t know anything about this because I’d spent my whole time advocating for a spontaneous labor. I’d spent all my time. This is another one. I, I definitely am an optimist because I was like. You just go in and have the baby and it just comes out. You get to 10 centimeters and the baby comes out.

I just, breastfeeding’s easy. No, I just thought all these things because no one around me understood birth. All the women who, all my friends had had babies before me and they’d all had vaginal births by the way. But they all had children very young at like 18, 19.

And so no, I was not surrounded by anyone who had had a C section. So. This was, I’m just going to have a vaginal birth. I’m 10, almost 10 centimeters. Doesn’t the baby just come out, is what I’m saying to them. And they’re looking at me like, I don’t know, there’s a lady who’s been in labor for 24 hours upstairs, and I was like, well, why can’t I just do that?

Like, can’t I just do that? Like, I’m looking at them like, why are you trying to get me into a C section? And they just kept saying that the longer, I wait the higher the risk of something happening in the c section. So they, it wasn’t that I needed to have a c section or my baby needed to be born that way.

It was more that they had decided that this is going to be the path for me. And so because they had decided that path, they were trying to mitigate the risk that they were going to have to face when they eventually got me in a c section rather than we support you to have a vaginal birth and we’re going to do everything in our power to help you.

Then we wouldn’t be talking about a C section. But they had come in with a different attitude. And I just felt, at that point I asked for an epidural straight away, which came because they had actually said to me, we recommend that you get an epidural on arrival, um, because of my size. And, and so I knew that as soon as I wanted an epidural, it was going to come straight away.

And it came straight away. And that was the most excruciating thing, having contractions, getting an epidural in my back, but as soon as it worked, it was gone and I, but then I was sat there, I was stuck and trapped, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t do anything and then I had cleverly, not really, negotiated vaginal examinations every hour.

So it’s usually policy that they do them every four hours. And I was negotiating for them to do every hour to give myself more time. And I didn’t realize that it was. I could have had four hours without worrying about it. I think I had a couple of, decels in that time frame. And every single time they came in, they checked, they did a vaginal examination, they told me nothing had changed, that they recommend me having a C section.

And so they just, every time that happened, it just, they were saying my baby was up high and I just, I just couldn’t understand. I didn’t know what was happening. I just, Was like, I don’t trust them and I don’t even believe what they’re saying to me about what’s happening down there. I just wish they would leave me alone.

So I was really trapped in this situation. And then I think after about six hours of sat there kind of having these conversations, another decel happened and I just said, because those D cells were scary because their whole team of obstetricians rush in and then it’s like, Oh my goodness, the baby hasn’t recovered.

As soon as she recovers, everything’s fine. It’s not an emergency at that point, it’s just that she took longer to recover than their guidelines. So I think I had about four of those. There were decels all along the way, so there was those decels. It is really scary being hooked up to a machine and having things beeping off and you’re just sat there doing nothing and then it’s like beep beep beep beep beep, okay, everything’s fine.

And then you’re like, you know, it’s, it’s really scary. And they’re looking at these machines like it’s giving them all the information and I’m just like I just want my baby to be healthy, you know And I never thought there was anything wrong, but I just I just caved in the end and I said well fine I’ll just go I’ll just go and The midwife as I was being wheeled off.

She’s like it’s okay love. I Had a home birth that ended up in a transfer c section. It’s all good And I was like, I hate you. Like, who are you? I wish I had a midwife who had a vaginal birth who actually understood what I want and didn’t say something like that to me. I felt really betrayed by her.

And I just, I think that she obviously meant it in a comforting way. I still don’t understand why she would say that to me. I think maybe she was trying to connect with the sadness of it happening or something, but I just felt really betrayed by her. And I went into this surgery and it was, it was more positive than my first one because my husband got to cut the fake cord and I mean, it was already cut, but we had music and I had a video camera that I could see it all happening.

So I was more involved, but it became a very emergent situation. a very emergency situation. My husband and baby got wheel taken out of the room and. They were you could tell like it was just a really scary time and they had to call in another team and the thing that they were trying to stop from happening which is my uterus being torn because when a baby goes down the canal too deeply they can tear the uterus either the doctor will tear them from trying to get the baby out or the baby will tear the uterus when the baby’s coming out.

And so they said, and I don’t know if it’s true, they said my baby flung her arm around as they pulled her out and she tore my uterus from the C section right the way down into my cervix. So I was hemorrhaging on the table and it was just a very scary situation. I was on there for four hours and I had, you know, just listening to them bickering the whole time and I thought I was going to die.

I, said to my husband, like, I’m either going to die or I’m going to lose my uterus. And my husband and baby were put into this black room and left there for hours with no one even checking on them. And I came out of that experience and they said to me, You know, you can have two more caesarean sections, but never labor ever again.

And I said, yeah, no, no problems. I’ll do whatever you say. Like, I’m just so grateful to be alive and that I can have more children because I wanted to have four children. Yeah, I got out of there and I was just like so grateful I was alive, but as soon as I got out of there, I was asking like random midwives, like, why did this happen?

Why did my baby not come out? Like, I don’t understand. And the first midwife said to me, when the waters are broken, it can be harder for a baby that’s not in a great position to come down. And so my first key was that midwife stitched me up, like, straight away I was onto it. the next three years was about me learning about birth, understanding what had happened to me and trying to plan a way forward because I definitely had postpartum, had PTSD.

I had flashbacks of the, surgery. I used to go into my shower and I would just cry and my arms were bruised and black and The whole experience was very traumatizing for me. I was deeply traumatized. I had birth trauma. I was depressed. I was in hell. I was just, it was six months of hell trying to recover from that experience.

And when I spoke to my doctor, they always said to me things like, well, you just, it could be worse. You know, just be grateful you’ve got a healthy baby. And they have no trauma training. They don’t understand. I just want to push you to move forward, which is the worst thing you can do to somebody who’s experienced, not acknowledge and hear them and show compassionate love to a person.

So every time I tried to seek help, I was basically told that my feelings were invalid and that I just needed to get on with life and just move on like everyone else. And I was a knowledge seeker and I was trying to figure out what happened and so I did that for the next three or four years.

[01:19:33] Kiona: Wow. Yeah, that is That Birth story definitely has lots of ups and downs because there’s the positive parts of like you actually spontaneously starting labor and then being able to advocate for the providers to not come in the room in the beginning and then it sounds like once the intervention started, it was a snowball of, oh, let’s go ahead and break this four bag of water when really it was all of your water.

And from there is when everything kind of changed. 

yeah. And I will say that those contractions after your water breaking are absolutely insane.

I can attest to the intensity of those. but I just want to say, like, how awesome of you to still advocate so strongly for yourself with how strongly they were pushing against you.

Because it was you against the world at that point. 

And your drive and passion to truly try so strongly to have a vaginal birth, you were pushing for that and that’s amazing. I’m proud of you for doing that because 

[01:20:42] Ashley: I’m proud of me too. 

[01:20:43] Kiona: that’s, yeah, you definitely should be. That, that takes a lot and it’s exhausting and so for you to reach that point and just say, fine, you know, like you can only fight for so long, 

[01:20:56] Ashley: Yeah.

[01:20:57] Kiona: and yeah and then to experience the type of cesarean that you had is very traumatizing with it turning into an emergent situation. I would be curious to hear how your husband felt at that moment, probably shocked and confused and sad and not sure what the heck is going on because not getting any updates, you know?

[01:21:19] Ashley: Yeah, my husband’s an interesting person in that he’s not very connected to his feelings and emotions. So he can’t articulate how he feels. And I’ve asked him many, many times and he just, I said, were you worried about me? Like your wife, the love of your life could have died. And we, like I’ve heard men that they’re panicked.

He’s like, I was just sitting in the room with the baby. He doesn’t even know what he was thinking. He’d like, he would have been, he can’t articulate it. He would have been so stressed. Like, but I think he’s I am such a feeling person. My husband and I are on complete opposite ends of the spectrum. I’m such a feeler, like over feeler, like I feel things so deeply.

And then my husband’s like the complete opposite. So he’s a really calm and placid person. I’m like a highly excitable, love life, living life to the fullest. And together we like make this perfect because we pull each other into like the perfect person.

[01:22:21] Kiona: Mm

[01:22:21] Ashley: And like, so. He actually, he wasn’t able to articulate how he felt until after, a couple years after our free birth because it was, and even after, it was a couple years after that that he was actually able to articulate how healed he had felt, but he wasn’t able to put it into the words of feeling healed.

It was, it was, he felt like he had a better connection and bond with our child after that experience. And so. I think maybe in 10 years time, or if he learns how to communicate a little bit more of his emotions, that’ll be interesting. But, for me, I think it, I, it would be, it would be scary, right? You’re left in this room, nobody tells you what’s happening, you don’t even know what’s happening with your wife.

And it was four hours that he was in there with this baby. The only time they came in was to try to give the baby formula. And I’m really proud of my husband, he advocated and said my wife’s breastfeeding because I took breastfeeding classes , when I was pregnant and I was like, I’m breastfeeding, she’s never having a bottle, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And he said my wife’s breastfeeding and they said, well, she’s got, your wife had GD, so can we check the baby’s blood glucose and if she’s fine, then that’s fine. And he, and that everything was fine, so he just used his pinky and she sucked on that the whole time and they just sat in this dark room.

Together and that was it. It’s weird, right?

[01:23:49] Kiona: That is weird, but also At the same time, I understand the priority, like, who was the priority in the situation, you know? Like, you were on the table at risk of your life, and so they’re more worried about you in that instance, which makes sense. 

[01:24:04] Ashley: yeah, 

[01:24:05] Kiona: so, you did mention breastfeeding. Let’s briefly chat about how your breastfeeding was with Annie.

Was it different than with Rosie?

[01:24:13] Ashley: Annie’s a very different person to Rosie she’s much more patient and calm and I Knew what I was doing this time. So I knew all the mistakes I’d made so We breastfed, and she breastfed for 12 months until she decided she didn’t want to breastfeed anymore. And she had some lip and tie issues that I went and got sorted because that was a very challenging situation.

There was some slipping and clicking and all this sort of stuff. So we ended up getting those lasered. That was a very challenging time to try to then get support and assistance. I had some terrible support going on there, but we eventually got that going. The breastfeeding was fine. That was just a little hiccup in the breastfeeding journey.

And when I knew what I was doing and all the information I’d been provided that had sabotaged me last time, then it was fine. I definitely was very anxious and it was hard breastfeeding exclusively when I was bottle feeding, my husband could bottle feed on the weekends and, you know, give me a break, whereas I had no break.

I had trauma. I had a toddler who was awake in the day, so I couldn’t sleep again. So I had sleep deprivation, trauma, PTSD, exclusively breastfeeding. So I was in all sorts of pain for the first couple of years with those. With that situation happening, so that was a very challenging time and the way that I pulled myself out of that because I wanted to pack my bags and never come home, like I was in my mind, the piece for me was packing a suitcase, getting in my car and never coming home.

Because I just wanted to escape this. I had times where I thought I’d made a mistake having another child. I felt terrible that I was having those thoughts and feelings because I love my baby and she was the best baby in the world. She was such an easier baby than my first child who was an easy baby anyways.

She, like, I say to her now, you were my easiest baby. Even though they were all three easy she was just so much more chill and placid and and I was saying, like, she didn’t deserve, that she didn’t get the same from me as what Rosie got. Rosie got, Rosie would wake me up at 4 o’clock in the morning and I’d be like, the birds were singing, you know, Hello darling, let’s watch TV together and, you know, let’s wave daddy off at 7am, and we’ll go back to bed and snuggle, and everything’s like, amazing.

And with, with Annie it was like, I’ve got this toddler that’s screaming and I can barely survive mysefl let alone looking after two children who needed me so intensely, And again, I had no villlage around me. I hadn’t learned this skillset yet . So this is where I trained as a postpartum doula and I started to learn all of the things. And this is where I started to teach other women. So the way that I learn the best is through teaching. So I get the information and then I teach.

So as I’m teaching women to be in a space of integrity, I’m also doing the things that I’m telling them to do. So we’re doing these things together.

[01:27:21] Kiona: You’re in it together, yeah. 

[01:27:23] Ashley: In it together. Creating the village and growing as a person. Yeah.

[01:27:28] Kiona: Oh, wow, yeah. I commend you for that because it’s hard to do alongside others that are doing because you’re giving to support them as well. Does that make sense? 

So like giving, knowing that you have to work on it yourself while teaching others and bringing them up. is also bringing you up, but it’s hard to give while doing that. So I commend you for that.

[01:27:56] Ashley: It’s easy for me to give because I have a story that working hard, is admirable and makes you a valued person. So I’ve done a lot of work over the last few years. I understand my push was, I got validation from helping other people and supporting other people. And even if it was my own detriment, so I was up to midnight, one o’clock, three o’clock doing my website, doing, doing all this stuff because I had to help other people because they couldn’t go through what I went through because I would never want any other woman to suffer like I did and I want to just share all my wisdom so that women know so they don’t get fooled like me.

That was my driving force and that filled me up so much and kept me alive. But I understand that that was a story that I’d grown up with as well. And I’ve been a rescuer my whole life growing up with alcoholic parents. It was my responsibility to look after my sisters. So there’s, there’s a whole complex thing that was happening there that I have reined in and, working towards looking after myself now and not sacrificing myself to the detriment because I want to be able to continue giving for the rest of my life in a safe and, you know, nurturing way.

[01:29:14] Kiona: Yeah. I can actually relate to that because I am also very much a giver in that way and I’m just happy to give because I don’t know, it does make you feel good and it makes you feel, or I can’t say you, I will say for myself, it makes me feel empowered in a way or just connected. Connected to community, even if it’s someone that’s like distant. You know what I mean? Like, there’s connection from being far away as well. So,

[01:29:44] Ashley: I, find, eventually the resentment comes in what came in for me though, uh, because you give so much and you feel like you’re not getting back in return, people will take everything from you if they can, if you have no boundaries. And so what I was finding is I was giving everything, at my detriment or my children’s detriment.

So I could probably let it go but I can’t really do it when it comes to my children because that then crosses my being a good mother role, you know, my story. So that’s where I was definitely. Giving way too much and now it’s all about boundaries and having healthy boundaries for me And that’s what I teach women to do because women are over givers.

We are naturally a lot of the time. We’ve been raised to give give give that’s our role. We’re here to serve. We’re here to please we’re here to be there for a man we’re here to do that, but we matter and we’re important and so we have to give to ourselves before we can give to anyone else and so now my philosophy is I have to fill myself up so everything else will spill out of me will land on my children all the love that I have to give because what was happening I was getting angry and I was getting resentful and so the bad emotions were coming out at my children and I say bad emotions, but you know, it was coming out in ways that wasn’t fair for them.

And so there’s been a huge process and that’s because I’ve been doing this for a while now and I’ve learned from so many amazing women who have taught me a different way. And now I’m finally getting to a space of, I’ve got clear boundaries with my clients. I give so much to my community. Like I have a free podcast like you.

Anyone who has a podcast knows that it takes time, like four or five hours for a podcast episode. And that’s free. You know, you’re giving that to your community for free, but that’s five hours that is taken from your family or taken from your life. So I look at the things that I’m giving for free and the value that I give for free.

I’ve got a community group for free. My social media is full of information, my website, my blog, all these things. And I’m like so much free stuff. And then if you want like one on one, you want me to be your person. You can call whatever time, you know what I mean? Like within this time that I set, this is how much, this is the energy exchange.

And that’s the love and, respect that you do, in exchange.

[01:32:19] Kiona: Yeah. Yeah. And I, yeah. everything you just said is so true. I don’t even know how I can elaborate on that because it, it is what it is, you know, like we do give all the time we’re raised to be doers and givers and goers, which means we’re just raised to go, go, go, go, go, figure it out, get it done. And express all of the energy that you have to make sure everybody else is set and okay. so I can relate to that and I feel that as well. And yeah. Podcast definitely takes some time.

[01:32:48] Ashley: It does, and I realised this when my kids were a couple years old and my husband started taking the kids to the shop on the weekend. So I had them all through the week. And when we went to the shops. Little old grannies and that would say, Oh, how cute your child is. That sort of thing.

But I would hear things from like my father in law who would say, Oh, I saw this lady at the shop and she was giving a child the phone or the chips or whatever it was that he disagreed with my husband. When he took out my children, he would get ladies saying, Oh, you’re such a great dad. You’re such a great dad.

So our running joke is. You’re such a great dad because you took your children out to the shops, but I take them out to the shops all time and you just get glares like, Oh my God, your child’s like playing up. You’re a bad mom.

[01:33:33] Kiona: So much more judgment. 

[01:33:35] Ashley: Women get so much judgment because we’re the mothers. We should be having all under control, but if a dad takes his child out, he’s a great dad or if he changes the nappy, Oh my God, what an amazing man he is because past generations didn’t have that.

And it’s ridiculous. That is not a great dad. That is a dad and so now I’ve been able to reign my husband in and show him the differences and how Because we’ve chosen to not live that traditional You know, I’m sure he would who wouldn’t love like having some I would love to have a wife or a husband to come home to cook me dinner all these things, but That is not what I am, or who I am, and my husband, that is the reality, but there are other things about us, so, you know, it, we’re having to overcome so much in this space, and This, as I say, it’s not something that we learn overnight.

It’s something that, like, we have to work through and learn from other women and, and implement because the husband, we don’t just have one conversation with our husband. He’s like, sure, I hear you. I’m going to change every way that I thought this was going to go down because my husband probably had an idea of the housewife.

And I had this idea that I was going to be the housewife and then when it happened, I was like, hell no, that’s not for me. I want to, I’m passionate about doing this other stuff and I’ll, I’ll be with the kids and play with them, but we’re going to do everything else together. And that’s life.

[01:35:07] Kiona: Yeah. I love it. Yeah, it’s exactly my mindset, as well. yeah. So let’s talk about how, cause you were just saying that you and your husband aren’t necessarily following the traditional, roles that people kind of expected it to be. Let’s talk about how free birth actually isn’t, as common or following, like, the tradition of what birth can be.

So let’s go ahead and lead into, your birth with Millie, your pregnancy and birth with Millie. 

[01:35:30] Ashley: Hmm. So with Millie, I had done lots of birth classes by this point. I was a postpartum doula. I was working in that. area, that world. I was constantly bombarded with resources, information. I had doula friends. My whole life was birth and postpartum. I was going to like doula conferences with expert birth people.

I was listening to podcasts. I was reading all the books. I was, I was just overflowing my cup with as much birth knowledge as I could. And eventually I found out about free birth and home birth and I wanted to have a home birth with a midwife and in my area, no midwife would support me to have a home birth.

A lot of it was to do with being multiple VBAC in, in those, it was only a few years ago, but COVID has completely changed the game like overnight. And also, I don’t think of it like this, but the universe really has a funny way of doing things because if I’d fallen pregnant a year later, maybe things would have been different for me and just recently where I live they now have just said that they’re gonna do publicly funded home births in my state and it’s like I Could never be like I could never go through that program because they won’t support VBACs But if that was like, I’m having my first child now, I probably could have, it could have been an option.

I think of my sister who hasn’t had a child yet. If she was to go in that program, she could have a completely different outcome. And I just think how life changing that is for those women. And I used to be really resentful at the fact that I couldn’t get a midwife and other women could have this perfect, amazing experience with a midwife who was like doting on her.

But I was very, very vulnerable. I was very broken and sore and the whole world had turned their back against me. I had nobody, really, who was willing to stick by me. So the birth community was all like, home birth’s amazing, midwives are amazing. If you get a midwife, you get this, you know, continuity of care, they’re amazing, they care about you.

They believe in physiological birth. And I couldn’t get that. In fact, when I decided I was free birthing because that was my safest choice in my mind, I think it was the safest and best choice for me based on my experiences. I’d made a choice not out of fear of birthing in the system, out of complete logic of I’ve been through this path before, look what happened, they’re never going to support me.

I now have two caesareans and a special scar. So, if they were petrified of me having a VBAC, which is ridiculous, it’s a VBAC and I’m just, there was nothing special or, there was nothing special about me. Now, I was told by some of the midwives I’d met in the community, like, they’re going to be petrified of you.

And I thought, that’s not a great way, you don’t want to birth with people who are petrified. Also, I’d be birthing with people who don’t understand physiological birth and I wanted to have a physiological birth. I also wanted to birth in a birthing pool and they wouldn’t let me in the birth pool because I was over a hundred kilos which is ridiculous, so Free birth was the thing that I was planning for, and my husband was actually the one who kind of, I’d been listening to podcasts and I, he learns a lot through me telling him I’m a talker.

So he, last night he quoted something to me and I said, I was about finance. I’ve read like over 25 finance books last year. And he’s like, and I was like, you only know that because I’ve told you everything I know. And he’s like, yes, that’s true. And I was like, don’t you try to be all like smart to me. I’m the one who taught you that.

And. He, he listens to me at least. It gets into his subconscious mind. So he would listen to me listening to birth stuff and he’d be in the kitchen cooking and he’d say, Well, if they just let her go longer, then she would just have that baby or if they didn’t do this. And so he was becoming an expert and, you know, knowing this information without actually sitting down and listening to it like I was.

And I would just tell him everything I learned. There’s this lady and she had C7, C section since she, you know, and just, I guess, because that’s my excited side coming out and he’s like, Oh God, here we go again. It’s been since 2017 and I will not shut up. He comes home. I’m like, I’m going to do this VBAC membership and I’m doing it.

And he’s just like, and then the other day he said to me, I’m thinking about for my shed and I’m like, is this what it’s like? When I talked to you all the time about birth because you’re talking to me about this shed and it’s really boring. It’s like Yes But he believed in me he believed even though I had “proved” that I wasn’t able to vaginally birth You know to the world they a lot of the time they saw that as proof that I was the problem and so I had to prove to the world or anyone who was going to take me on that actually I wasn’t the problem and how do you prove that to a system or people who work in a system that think that they’re infallible. And he believed in me. He believed that they had failed me. He always believed that I could do it because I was a woman. And of course I could because his mother had vaginally birthed and all the women in his line had and that really gave me strength. To be able to choose to free birth. I mean, it was scary.

I had decided before I conceived Annie that that’s what we were doing. That’s what we had decided. But because my husband is a calm person and because he’s an intuitive person, I am an I am more of a intellectual processor. So my intuitive nature was stripped away as a child and I was told that I had to prove everything.

I have to prove everything. The way that I was raised, I was always told that if I felt something and they thought it was wrong, I was told I was wrong unless I could prove it. And often times you can’t prove things until it happens. And so my intuitive nature was stripped away and that’s why I looked at doctors as the experts or everyone else around me as the experts.

So, I would turn to knowledge and look for that, but then I couldn’t surrender to the process. Because I wasn’t intuitive and I didn’t have faith. I was a pusher. I was the person that was trying to control everything in my life. And he was just like this jellyfish in the ocean. I was pulling him along in life and we joked about it.

But I was the, I’m the driver in our relationship and he just gets pulled along for the ride. He will say no if he doesn’t want to do something. And I didn’t understand that at the time. I just thought that he was It’s putting all the responsibility on my shoulders that if something happened, it would be my fault because the world, again, as the mother would deem it my fault.

And he’s just the poor placid guy who’s just been manipulated by this strong woman. This is kind of how I saw our roles and how people perceived us. And they do. A lot of people. perceive me as the more dominant stronger person and they don’t know my husband and if he doesn’t want to do something he’ll say no but nobody knows my husband like that everyone just thinks he’s the easygoing kind of guy. I couldn’t respect him if he didn’t have a bit of backbone so but nobody knows that about him because they don’t truly know him they just it’s It’s interesting anyways.

We talk about it all the time and I’m growing in this relationship with him and learning more about him, the more that I learn about me and the more skills that I learn. And we’re going through this journey together and I get pregnant and the fears come up again. The fears that I had, it’s the fears of taking radical responsibility.

I’m more worried about what society will say if something happens and actually something happening to my child. And it was really about the fear of judgment that was coming up for me. There were fears of, I definitely had fears of like me dying. I had fears of something happening to my child because my brother was a stillbirth.

Uh, you know, he was. He died at 38 weeks, and I thought this would be what would happen my third child just like my mom and I had two two girls first she had two girls and It’ll be this one that something happens, and then it will be blamed if I was in the hospital system That would be all sorry you know these things happen, but because I’m having a free birth.

It would be you’re a Satanic witch you know you’ve made this you’re a selfish woman, so I was grasping as a people pleaser With all of the enormity of the world on my shoulder trying to control as much of the outcome as I could while having no Control of any outcome and having to learn to surrender to the experience.

I did hire a doula to support me and there was only a few doulas available at the time and She was a very confident doula, but I found While I had asked for XYZ support, I need extra appointments, extra mindset support because I knew what my personality’s like, I knew that I needed extra hand holding, I knew that I got really sick through pregnancy.

She didn’t follow through on what was promised and I felt really disconnected, alone. I also practiced in a different way as I give a lot of emotional support to my clients. And she was a different personality type to me as well. So I had picked someone because they were confident because I wanted somebody who was confident in free birth because you want someone confident but I wasn’t getting the emotional support.

So I felt really robbed again. I felt really vulnerable and I spent a lot of that time crying and wondering am I going to call this person to my birth because I’m getting really resentful and angry and I didn’t have the skill set to kind of have a conversation or whatever at this point, but I did end up hiring another doula who was trained under her, to support me.

I think it was more of a, like she, she was getting her training up, so I didn’t hire her. She was a student. So, that felt like, okay, she’s going to provide me the emotional support, she knows all the stuff, she’s learned under her, this is going to be great. She promised me everything was going to be, she’s going to support me, and unfortunately she didn’t have the emotional maturity that I needed as well to be able, the thing is when you, when you have people, you’ve got to, they’ve got to be at the right level for you too, and she was younger than me and she just didn’t have the emotional maturity or she hadn’t traveled the same journey as me.

And I found that there was definitely a breakdown there, whereas I couldn’t rely on her the way that I had hoped. And I think that’s what happens when, we are so passionate about explaining what doula are, but we don’t actually articulate and share that every doula has their own personality.

And you really need to find someone who’s got your personality, who has the experience in the areas that you need. And not all doulas or midwives are equal, just like not every obstetrician is the same. Everyone is unique and different. So when you ask for women’s feedback, like, is this person a good person or is this a good doula?

Someone who doesn’t want support might think, yeah, that’s a really good doula because they’ve got their family, their friends, they’re totally fine. And so I didn’t have the skill set to know how to find the right support team for me. And that’s one of the biggest things that I teach my clients now, to find the right support team.

Because a lot of the time they feel the same as me through their journey. so I just see all of this as a learning opportunity for me to grow skills and learn. But I ended up going into spontaneous labor. Well, my waters broke at 4am. I was 38 weeks, so this is the earliest I’ve ever gone.

I was induced at 38 weeks with my first and they couldn’t pry the baby out of me. I went at 40 weeks with my second, spontaneous. And with my third, I was 38 weeks. And the first time my waters broke. So as we know, the water’s breaking can be very painful, and I went straight into pain, , a lot of pain.

I was expecting that it was gonna, it was gonna be intense, but it would like work up like the f the last time that I had. But this was very painful and I was, I was not coping. I wasn’t, I didn’t know how to, I was on the bed, I was on the. toilet, I was breathing, I was, it was a lot. I called my doula to come down as quickly as possible because I needed that womanly support and I worked through about four hours of really painful contractions where I was just thinking this is insane like what kind of person does not get an epidural or I’m thinking a repeat c section would be Pretty peaceful right now compared to this because this was extreme and I’m deep breathing.

I’m listening to my visualizations. I’ve got my affirmations on the wall. I finally get into the water. Trying to ground my energy my sister came and picked up my kids. Starting to ground and then all of a sudden it just disappears and I’m just in this serene peace and calm And my body starts pushing like every three contractions.

And I’m like, okay, fine. I had this strong belief in physiological, instinctive birth. I’m allowing my body to do what it needs to do. I’m getting into comfortable positions for my body. No one’s coaching me. I’m just doing what needs to be done. This is my birth philosophy. And I went about 10 hours more of labor and I’m doing this huge push of like every three or four contractions, this huge big poop is coming out and I’m thinking oh my god this is huge and it was my baby getting pushed down my back right the way through and I could feel her coming down but at this time I logically don’t know how to make sense of this so I’m like I’ve been pooing the whole time, so I’m just like, this is a huge poo coming.

And eventually I said to my husband, like, Can you feel inside and see what’s going on? And he’s like, Oh, it feels like a kiwi fruit. Do you know what kiwi fruits are?

[01:50:19] Kiona: Yeah.

[01:50:19] Ashley: It’s just like soft and furry, and I’m like, Okay, that’s weird. And then he’s like, Oh, it could be a muscle though. Yeah, I think it could be like tissue or a muscle.

And I’m thinking, Oh great, I’ve prolapsed because I’ve been pushing for so long. And I’m like, Oh, well, I don’t know what’s going on. Like looking back, how stupid’s that? Like a kiwi fruit. Of course, that’s the baby’s head. He has no idea what he’s doing. What kind of midwife are you?

[01:50:46] Kiona: ha. 

[01:50:47] Ashley: was as helpful as nothing.

I should have, it would have been easier not to look, but it’s a funny situation. And then eventually I could feel the baby’s head right there and I knew because the whole time I’m going through this, I have no idea what’s happening. I’m just. floating through the process and trusting and knowing. I can see my baby turning my stomach.

I can feel everything. I’m having contractions. My leg went numb. I was feeling back pressure. I’m feeling all the things, but it’s, I’m laughing in between. I’m making jokes. I’m just, you know, just, when’s this going to happen? I don’t know. I don’t know. And eventually you feel the pushing on the you know, coming out the vagina and the tearing or it feels like paper ripping or something.

The ring of fire people talk about and it, it’s quite, I’m like, okay, this is normal. It’s coming in and out, coming in and out until eventually her head pops through and I’m like, okay, baby’s heads out. Yay. That’s done that part. You know, I knew that was going to be one of the most painful parts and then eventually her shoulders came out and I was like cool And then my doula’s like says to my husband like don’t touch the baby’s head like move away from the baby and don’t touch her and I was like why what’s happening and because of my fight flight Responses I went into like straight away the adrenaline sparked up and I was like what’s happening.

What’s the emergency? every Water birth I’d seen, the mum’s touching the baby’s head, people are touching and all this sort of stuff, so we’d had no conversation about this ever before. And my contractions stopped because my adrenaline kicked in and totally railroaded that, hormone mixture. Which, this is a really good representation of what can happen.

You can have 14 hours of everything working perfectly, working really hard to get that baby into the right position for one thing to be suggested or said and all of those hormones being knocked out of place. And so I go from beautiful contractions, everything working to no contractions, me in a state of like terror, that I can feel the energy of the doula because I’m quite intuitive when it comes to people.

From my childhood, I’ve had to know when it was safe. So anyone that’s feeling like adrenaline or anything, I’m feeling those people’s vibes and she’s in a state of like panic at this point. And then they start yelling at me like push, push, push. And I’m like, but I don’t have a contraction. They’re like, just push, you know, you need to get the baby out.

And I’m like, well, what do I do? Like, can someone pull the baby out? And my doula’s like, I’m not a medical, I’m not doing it. I’m not medical, even though we’ve caused the problem. I’m like, okay, well that’s really helpful. But you know, it was a bit ambiguous as to what she would really do because some free birth doulas are hands on and I never really asked her specifically, what will you do?

What will you not do? I think that’s a really important point. That I think free birth women, it’s like, I’m just, I’m just grateful somebody will support me. So I don’t want to like push the friendship. If you know what I mean, now I definitely push the friendship because you want the right person supporting you.

And I eventually purple push the baby out. So it was, this is only like a minute. It’s a very quick process to the point where my husband doesn’t even remember there being an issue. He just remembers the baby coming out. And I’m like. Were you at the same birth as me? Anyway, she eventually came out and my husband was the first to pick her up because that’s what I wanted He picked her up and put her on my chest and I got to feel she was a girl because we didn’t know I was so excited and so happy and then and then my doula came around and she said I Think there’s a bit of labored breathing So the oxytocin that would have came to me from my baby being born and just being so grateful She was alive and happy has now been removed again because I’m fearful that now she’s got labored breathing and she’s recommended I call an ambulance.

And because I had, I had given my power to her, I’d hired her specifically for a postpartum hemorrhage or for the placenta because I was really unsure about that. I had complete confidence I could birth my baby. But I was a bit unsure because I started my podcast when I was pregnant and all of the women on my podcast had transferred in after for blood loss because, they couldn’t recognize themselves, how much blood loss was normal because they didn’t have the experience.

And when you’re in water, it can look like a lot more than actually is. So I thought, well, she’s going to know. She’s attended heaps of births. She knows what she’s doing. And I, again, transferred the authority over to her. So I want to make that very clear to people because you have a choice. I could have looked at my baby at that point and said, you know what?

I think everything’s okay. We’re just going to see how we go here. But I said immediately, straight away. Yeah, let’s do what you think And so we called the ambulance and within a matter of minutes. He was there she recommended I cut the cord and as soon as my husband cut the cord and took my baby or our baby and held her up.

She just started screaming at the top of her lungs and cleared her right up and The ambulance cleared her but then what happened was It was a it was a worry. There was a lot of blood in the pool Is my placenta come out? The attention’s then on me. And so, three ambulances later, because that was the protocol, by that point I’d lost so much blood.

They needed to get somebody with blood. There was so many people in my space. I was losing blood by the minute. My placenta was stuck there. They’d given me an injection. Nobody, it was just, it was okay. Like, I was just sitting there in this experience. I wasn’t in pain or anything. But I had had an undisturbed birth to now a disturbed birth and I needed to be transferred for a manual removal of the placenta.

I allowed them to try to manually remove it three times and it was just so excruciatingly painful. I, I withdrew my consent and I requested to be put under, to then manually do it in surgery and that’s what happened. And then I woke up in the ICU because I’d lost a bit of blood and my blood pressure went down really low and then I graduated out of there, but my baby had been put in special care because my husband had consented when he’d gone to the hospital, they said, Oh, we better take the baby.

And we went through a bit of fiasco with her being in special care. It’s pretty common for them with home birth babies or free birth babies, especially that they are freaking out that you haven’t had prenatal, care. I had all the prenatal care that you can with the GP, but they don’t acknowledge it unless it’s like in their system.

And they’ve, you know, so they’re freaking out, like anything could be wrong with this baby. And before you know it, she’s got antibiotics in her system. She’s on a CPAP machine, which I think she may, I think it was borderline whether she actually needed that. But with that came the knock on effect of.

Because she’s got the CPAP, they put glucose in her system. So now we’re worried that she, if we take her off the glucose and we don’t See how much formula she’s getting, she could drop in her sugars and so we want you to formula feed her and all of these knockout, not like cascade of interventions. So I feel like I’ve had the full plethora of experiences.

The only thing missing is probably like, breach delivery and twins. I’ve had special care now. I’ve had all of these things happen. And I think, why did you have to do this to me universe? Like, why couldn’t I have just been curled up in bed with my baby, but I use this now to be able to teach people what can happen so they can advocate, they understand what’s happening.

And, also I think that my empathy and compassion can, you know, I, I feel what I, I know what it’s like so I can relate to that experience. So that’s my positive spin. But again, it’s like the last birth I had. 14 hours of positive amazingness that then was tacked on with a bit of trauma from, not from the birth, not from the transfer, because they treated me so well, I advocated for myself really well and they respected my wishes, but from, My child be separated and me having to fight to get to see her and all of that sort of stuff plus being like this weirdo free birther in the hospital and everyone doing Chinese whispers about you and Some people like oh my god, you’re so amazing You had this 10 pound baby with no tearing and other people saying you’re lucky.

Nothing bad happened you know like it was a bit of a interesting time and there was a lot of self judgment While I was trying to figure out what had happened because I thought my baby was in there because of my choices to then, after about five days finally getting to speak to, a, Pediatrician and them saying to me like this was all precaution and then me being able to go, okay, phew, I haven’t done anything wrong.

This is just again the cascade of intervention. So it’s an interesting story and, it’s my story and I used to carry a little bit of shame around how it ended, and trying to make sense of it all. I forgive the person who was involved, like she’s a human and we all have our own trauma, our own experiences.

Sometimes the women I work with, you know, they’re so afraid that someone’s going to sabotage their birth, but I want people to know that even having an imperfect person who has good intentions for me, she gave me a shot. If she had said no and everyone said no, I don’t know if I would have had a free birth or I don’t know what would have, maybe I would have had a free birth and it would have been even, it would have been amazing, like even not had all that stuff, but I think that we should have the support that we need even like looking at people as imperfect beings because I know people who have had trauma like me and we’ve been let down and sabotage and people making mistakes.

It’s really hard to trust people, but I believe in trying to build that trust and really just letting go of the control and what will be will be because ultimately. We don’t know what’s going to happen. We just have to trust that people have the right heart space and they’re trying to do the best they can.

[02:01:35] Kiona: Yeah, man, that is a story for sure. And it’s interesting because as you’re telling your story, I can definitely see how what happened during your first birth and your second birth impacted the choices that you’ve made for your third, and knowing that, you know. You know, I was going to ask, but you hadn’t mentioned, I was going to ask, like, since you knew you were having a free birth, did you have any hospital visits during the prenatal time?

And then you had mentioned that you had as much prenatal as you could with your GP, your general practitioner. So that’s awesome. Because there are some people that get pregnant and they’re like, I’m not going to have anything. Like it’s literally like, it’s the universe that’s going to decide what’s happening.

I don’t need any scans. I don’t even know how many babies I have inside me. You know, I’m just going to do it, you know? And to each their own is, how I feel about life, you know? We’re all individuals. Why judge what we do as individuals?

Mine is, like, if you feel safe in the decisions that you’re making, then you do you, boo. Because if you feel like, you’re not safe in the hospital, don’t go. Find your alternatives and, like work with what you have, you know? So, I think it’s awesome that you were able to get a little bit of some prenatal care and, I also think that the fact that you mentioned talking to doulas, like how doulas personalities are different, I think that’s important to mention because as a doula myself and a birth worker in general, I always told my clients, try your best to interview at least three doulas.

Even if we are super connected to you and we really think that you’re super awesome and you really want us to choose, or we really want you to choose us. There is a doula for every person, but not every doula is for everyone. Because every personality is different.

And so, I really like that you brought that up.

[02:03:24] Ashley: Yeah., I recommend the same. I think it’s, I think a lot of my friends who are doulas, they say the same thing. There’s a difference like, People who have confidence and understand that you’re not for everyone. That’s the kind of doula you want to work with. Not the one who’s like will say anything to get you to become a client and promise you the world and then under deliver.

So it’s usually the more experienced or the ones that really understand it that actually want the best for the woman. Rather than, I’ve got to get a client and I’ll do anything to try to get that client in.

[02:03:58] Kiona: Mm hmm. 

Yeah. Yeah, and I think that’s important. That’s an important characteristic that’s actually learned as a doula.

because , of course, everybody in the beginning, they’re so excited, and they want to just work with everybody and help everybody, and then you realize that you support a client, and you’re just like, oh man, like, she was kind of mean, or, oh, like, our personalities are clashing, you know. So… 

[02:04:20] Ashley: Yeah. And that’s all learned. It’s all learned. Yeah. And that’s what I say to new doulas that I meet. I say, what’s your niche? Like, who do you love working with? Because I know my niche. I love working with little Ashleys, you know, people who are going through the same journey. That’s, that’s my niche. My niche isn’t a woman who’s planning to have a C section.

You know, but I know people who work in that niche and they’re wonderful at that, that’s their jam and that’s where we all need to hang out, where we really vibe, yeah, 

[02:04:48] Kiona: I agree 100%. so I think that this is a good time to kind of round out this interview and just ask the last few final questions. there’s three questions that I ask every single person that I interview. The first question is, What is one piece of advice that you would give to all pregnant people as they prepare for labor birth and postpartum? Decide how you want to give birth, like really understand how you want to give birth and why you want to give birth that way. For me, obviously, it was because I thought that, you know, a forceps was normal.

[02:05:23] Ashley: Explore, why do you want to give birth? Do you, like, some women just want to have a c section, that’s totally fine, right?

Make the choices for you and what’s in alignment. Because how you want to give birth is then going to decide where you’re going to give birth. It’s what sort of birth do you want? Then, what’s going to give me the best chance at achieving that? Then Who’s going to be the best team to support me in that, in that birth?

All of those things then carry on to the next decision you make, then you’ve got a plan and you can get the right team and really support yourself through that journey to achieve. If you, like me, go into a space where you’re not going to be supported, there’s less than a 1 percent chance that I’m going to be able to give birth and in that situation with the skill set that I have.

That’s not a high chance of having a vaginal birth, which is what I wanted to achieve. So you want to, having a home birth gave me a much higher chance. Like I think the, the transfer rate for a VBAC home birth is 30%. So that’s before labor, during labor, or after. That means there’s a 70%, maybe even higher percent, chance that I’m gonna have a vaginal birth.

I think I quoted somebody on my My podcast recently saying a 5 to 10 percent chance. If you plan a home birth of having a vaginal birth. So, I mean, if that’s your, your goal, those things are important to consider. 

[02:06:54] Kiona: Mm hmhmm. Yeah, that’s true. And I think that’s a really important thing to remember is that, like, how, how much are you as an individual willing to make the steps that you as an individual need to take. 

[02:07:09] Ashley: What are you willing to do to make your goal come alive? You can’t say, I want to be a millionaire, but I’m just going to work at McDonald’s and I’m not going to. learn anything you’re not going to be a millionaire if you just don’t learn upskill yourself work all these jobs or have a business you know what i mean like if you’ve you’ve got to take Steps for everything you do.

If you want to lose weight, you’ve got to do steps. You can’t just magically expect it to happen. Trust me, I did that. I thought I was going to be having a vaginal birth and a breastfeeding. It was going to be easy and unfortunately there’s obstacles that we have to overcome. It’s just that I didn’t understand that there were obstacles to overcome.

[02:07:53] Kiona: Yeah, because you hadn’t done it yet.

[02:07:55] Ashley: Yeah. And the women listening to this podcast understand that, so. 

[02:07:59] Kiona: Yeah. Yeah for sure. 

 so let’s go ahead and ask the next question, which is what is one resource that I can share with the listeners on your behalf?

[02:08:10] Ashley: I’ve got a, are you talking about something that I can give that they can get from me like a pdf or something?

[02:08:16] Kiona: Anything. Anything that you are willing to share could be, obviously, I’m definitely going to be sharing your podcast out to the listeners. if there’s any kind of PDF or anything that you want to share, I can direct them to you.

[02:08:28] Ashley: Sure. Okay. So I’ve got a pdf, it’s a VBAC home birth pdf. And I was thinking the other day, even if you’re not having a VBAC and you want to have a vaginal birth, you can learn so much from women planning a VBAC. All they’re doing is planning a vaginal birth, but they’re so intent on having a vaginal birth.

They’re hyper focused. They’re following like VBAC accounts and listening to that sort of content because you’re really going to truly learn what is going to help you achieve to have a vaginal birth. So I’ve got a PDF guide that I can give you. that you can include with this. But people that I, books and things like that, that I would recommend.

There’s, Dr. Rachel Reed. She has amazing books, The Rite of Passage. She has a podcast called the Midwives Cauldron Podcast. She shares evidence based information when it comes to vaginal, when it comes to physiological birth. And I think that for our knowledge seekers, we want to get evidence. We want to get information.

that’s a really great, great place to start. It is an Australian podcast, but it’s all relevant. it’s all the same thing.

[02:09:34] Kiona: Yeah, yeah, and I would say just to tack on to that since we do have a lot of U. S. listeners as well is, from the sounds of it, if you’re looking for an evidence based podcast, there is a podcast here called Evidence Based Birth, and so you could tune into that and they’ll touch on those subjects as well. And so my final question for you, Ashley, is if you could describe your births with one word, what would it be? 

[02:09:59] Ashley: Uh, the first one disconnected, uh, the second one. Oh, I just think I was so proud. Like I definitely was proud of that experience of myself. And then the third one. It was, it was still a traumatic, terrible experience, but I’d, I’d choose to think about the first half of that birth. And then the third one is, whole.

Like, freeing and whole. It’s, it’s hard to explain. If you haven’t had a c section, and then you go on to have a vaginal birth, I just felt so whole that I didn’t have a big cut across my stomach. I felt completely whole. Every part of my soul had come back into my body and I just felt, I’ve, this is who I am.

That’s how I felt 

[02:10:46] Kiona: Um. 

[02:10:47] Ashley: Yeah.

[02:10:48] Kiona: I love that. I love that. And I love the reasons behind each of those words, too. And I think that it’s definitely fair, even if your birth didn’t go as planned, to feel proud and to think of the positive aspects of your birth because nobody wants to look back at their birth and be like, Oh, the trauma, even though it was there, you know?

You want to try to find the silver lining or find the positive things that did happen if there are anything that you can pull out and connect with that because it’s a huge, huge, huge life changing experience. And yes, I’m not saying ignore the trauma because the trauma is there and deserves to be worked through and it’s part of your story and it’s part.

of how you parent and how you look at yourself as a parent, and it’s part of the foundation that you create of parenting that individual because it has such an impact on your emotions and hormones postpartum. But I love all of that. I love it all. So thank you, Ashley. Thank you so much for sharing your stories with me and thank you for being flexible and helping us navigate this time zone difference because you’re 17 hours or now 18 hours ahead of me because we have daylight savings and you do not, so there was a little bit of confusion on my part for the start of this interview. So thank you so much for being flexible and sharing your stories with me. I truly, truly, truly appreciate it.

[02:12:06] Ashley: Thank you so much for listening to me, for holding space and for sharing my story on your amazing podcast.

[02:12:12] Kiona: Yeah, absolutely. 

[02:12:22] Kiona: Interviewing Ashley for this episode was truly amazing. And I am thankful that we were able to connect and I was able to share her stories with you. What she experienced as a bigger woman in the system in Australia really impacted how she gave birth. And it really impacts people here in the United States as well. And the fact that Ashley felt that having an unassisted free birth at home was safer for her than being in the hospital was a really brave choice to make. 

With that said, Ashley, I am so excited that you shared your stories with me. And I am so happy that you are thriving while supporting other people in your postpartum time through your postpartum experiences. The fact that you get to connect with others in your community that have gone through similar experiences to you is huge. And I’m so excited to share all of your resources with my listeners.

Speaking of listeners. I hope you all really listened to this episode with the intention of finding something that pulled on your heartstrings and made you want to share it with a friend. That sharing could happen by you simply texting this episode link to someone, sharing it on your social media, sharing it in a car ride with someone as you’re going from point A to point B. Sharing this episode doesn’t just share Ashley’s story, but it connects that person with the podcast so that they can listen to all of the other amazing stories and experiences that have been recorded thus far.

Speaking of amazing stories. Next week I interviewed Alexandria Smith. Alexandra is the founder of mom wife, worship life, which is a public speaking and coaching business. During this episode, Alexandria talks about her two birth experiences and the importance of preparing for postpartum. 

She dives in about how being diagnosed with bipolar disorder at just 21 years old impacted her life, her ability to find a lifelong partner, as well as how that changed some of the things that she had to do through her pregnancies and how she had to prepare for postpartum.

 Even though Alexandria did prepare for postpartum. She still experienced postpartum psychosis both times. So tune in next week to hear Alexandria’s story and what steps she took to get through those hard times. And don’t forget to follow me on Instagram @birthasweknowitpodcast all right, bye for now.

Do you have a birth story or experience you would like to share on the podcast?

Fill out the Guest Request Form below to put in your inquiry! I would love to hear from you!

Guest Request Form
Last updated on September 18, 2024