'Weeks after giving birth, all I wanted to do was blow up my perfect life.'

When Alicia Woodfield discovered she was pregnant after four months of trying, she was over the moon.

"We were really lucky that it happened relatively quickly for us," the 31-year-old mother of two told Mamamia. 

"But it was during COVID, and being pregnant during lockdowns was weird and isolating," she said. 

"I wanted to do birthing classes but they were all either cancelled or being held online, and even the online classes were all filling up really quickly, so I didn’t feel like I had the same level of care throughout my pregnancy."

One thing Alicia, who has a pre-existing heart condition that is controlled by a healthy lifestyle, wanted to be sure of was that she was fine to try for a vaginal birth if possible.

"I wanted to try for a vaginal birth if I could. I went and saw my cardiologist, who told me early on that I'd be fine to push, and it was all cleared. Because of the heart condition I was still considered 'high risk', but I was assured it wouldn't be a problem."

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After an uneventful, if isolated pregnancy, Alicia soon found herself at 40 weeks.

"I went in for my last antenatal appointment at 40 weeks and three days gestation," says Alicia. 

"And they basically said to me, 'OK, we need to get this baby born, we should have booked you into being induced already.' I didn't know anything about the inducement process, or anything like that, but the midwife sort of made me stress, because she said, 'You need to have this baby on a weekday because of your heart condition.' This was the first I'd ever heard of that."

After phoning the birthing unit with Alicia sitting there, only to be told they could not fit her in, the midwife sent the worried expectant mum home.

"I just went into overdrive stress mode," she recalls.

"I was like, what's happening? I've just been told I have to have this baby on a weekday, and they've told me they can't fit me in. Am I maybe not going to have care? Am I going to die? All those things are running through my head."

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After Alicia complained to her local health district about the lack of clear communication, the hospital phoned her back to explain the induction process.

"I was already so stressed out that I wasn't absorbing it, but basically I trusted that it was going to be the correct thing to do, and be the best thing for the baby."

Alicia presented to hospital on a Thursday, where staff began the induction process using a foley balloon. 

"It was horrendous," recalls Alicia.

By the time Friday morning had arrived, midwives explained that they were going to break Alicia's waters. 

"At this point, I was excited. I thought: I'm going to meet my baby today," says Alicia. She was put on a drug called syntocinon to help stimulate labour, but after four hours, a doctor came in with news that derailed all of Alicia’s plans.

"She said ‘you can't be on this drug for very long because of your heart condition. You're not progressing, and you have to have a caesarian.' I was hysterical. I was crying. I just was distraught because I didn't want a caesarean, I was bad with needles, let alone having surgery while being awake."

A few hours later, Alicia found herself in the operating room, and says she was "an absolute mess".

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"I'd had no sleep, the whole caesarian experience was horrible," she says sadly.

"I remember them pulling my son up and showing me, and then he was crying, and I was so happy, but then they took him away for five or ten minutes to clean him up and I didn't get that immediate skin on skin contact, which is what I'd wanted."

In the aftermath of giving birth to her son, who she named Archie, Alica struggled to overcome the feelings of distress and sadness that lingered after the birth. 

"I was a mess, I couldn't stop crying, and I kept having these dark thoughts that I just needed to leave my husband and my baby, even though I loved them more than anything," she says. 

"There had been this acoustic music playing in the birthing suite, and every time I heard acoustic music, it was like I was right back there — the trauma just crept back up on me and I couldn't stop shaking."

While at first friends and family kept assuring Alicia that she was just in the 'baby blues' stage of early motherhood, it was at a maternal health checkup, after hearing her symptoms, that a nurse recommended Alicia see a counsellor. 

"I began to get support through the maternal health counsellors, and they arranged a birth debrief at the hospital, in the hope of getting some closure," she says.

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"That was at four months postpartum, and I met with a midwife who explained that the c-section was a result of the cord being wrapped around Archie’s neck twice and him not descending. I think if I had been told those reasons at the time, I perhaps would have been able to move past it more easily."

While the debrief had provided Alicia with some more peace, as the months progressed she occasionally found herself having flashbacks to her traumatic birth experience, as well as thoughts and feelings she was still having trouble understanding.

Then, when Archie was a year old, she fell pregnant again. 

"I thought to myself, wow, this pregnancy is going to be so different, not being in lockdown," she says.

At 24 weeks, doctors discovered Alica was low in iron, and sent her to hospital for a transfusion.

"They sent me to have that in the maternity ward at the hospital I'd given birth in," she explains, "and I walked in there, and I was laying there, and I just couldn't stop shaking. I kept thinking, what is happening to me? I could hear all these newborn babies, I could see dads walking around with newborns, and it just sent me straight back to that dark place."

Realising that she still had significant trauma to process before the birth of her second baby, Alicia was referred to the Gidget Foundation, where she received one-on-one counselling.

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"The clinician — her name was Brooke — she was incredible. Even if I just went in there and cried every week, it helped."

"I saw the counsellor either once a week or once a fortnight until the birth, and she really helped me," says Alicia. 

At the same time, the NSW Parliamentary Inquiry into Birth Trauma was taking place, and Alicia found herself devouring news about the process.

"It was really helpful to discover that I was not the only one experiencing this," she says.

"Brooke had explained to me that what I was experiencing was PTSD as a result of the trauma I’d experienced during my birth. I was encouraged to make a submission to the Inquiry, which I did."

Alicia says the recommendations to come out of the Inquiry — particularly those around better antenatal education and communication - need to be upheld by health providers across the country, and could greatly impact women's birthing experience. 

"If they had told me I could only be on that inducement drug for a certain period of time because of my heart, I would have never agreed to it," says Alicia. 

"I wasn't given all the information up-front. No one had told me that. I think they need to be transparent with things like medical interventions in particular."

Alicia says she is relieved that her story had a happy resolution. During the birth of her daughter, Cleo, she advocated hard for the opportunity to have a VBAC (vaginal birth after caesarean) and was able to do so. 

"I had five days of stop-start labour, and then 12 hours of active labour, but Cleo’s birth really healed me," she says. 

"After she was born, I knew there was a risk I could experience symptoms of postnatal depression again, but I haven't. It’s been such a different experience."

As for women who may be struggling to process their own birth trauma, or wondering if what they are feeling is normal, Alicia has this advice:

"Seek help. It's one thing talking to your family, but actually, a psychologist like the ones from Gidget, can really help you process it, and it makes you feel like you're being heard. Particularly if you're keen to have another pregnancy, it can really help you prepare for that as well."

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