By Casey Neill
“The second she was born, I wanted to do it again.”
It takes most mums a little longer to consider another pregnancy.
But Amanda Colverson’s fourth birth was unlike most births – even her own three previous births.
She welcomed Lana into the world in her Kalorama living room with husband Andrew and children Ava, Téa and Hunter by her side.
“I love that they were able to be there,” she said.
The experience was a far cry from Ava’s entry to the world almost eight years earlier.
“Being our first baby, we thought we’d go private with her,” Amanda said.
“A lot of our friends had gone down the private hospital line.
“We thought ‘that’s what you do’.
“Even during the pregnancy I found the obstetrician didn’t really have a lot of time for my questions and felt a little bit rushed in the appointments sometimes.”
Her waters broke four days before her due date so she went into hospital for a check, then home to wait for labour to start in earnest.
Amanda labouted at home during the night and returned to hospital in the morning about 5 centimetres dilated.
“The midwife I had was an agency midwife that I’d never met before,” she said.
“With going private, you know your obstetrician, but at the end of the day it’s the midwives you have with you.”
She felt like she needed to push but was only 5 or 6 cm dilated – the baby’s position was causing the urge.
Amanda tried ‘the gas’ – nitrous oxide and oxygen gas – and morphine but they did nothing to alleviate the painful pressure, so an epidural was recommended.
“It wasn’t really what I wanted but I was told it’s what I had to have,” she said.
“After a few hours my obstetrician came in and checked on me and left.
“I was told I was 10 cm and to start pushing.
“But I couldn’t feel anything so I really struggled with that.
“I was pushing for 2.5 hours.”
Amanda was told her baby’s head was “coming down a little bit but seeming a bit stuck” and that forceps and an episiotomy were needed.
“I didn’t feel like I had too much of a choice at that point,” she said.
“She came out OK but I felt quite disconnected from the whole experience.
“It was almost a shock once she was out and there.
“The next day it sort of hit me that things maybe hadn’t gone how I thought.
“I think it really affected the first few weeks with my baby, affected my bonding.
“I felt like I couldn’t enjoy those first few weeks because I was in a lot of pain and just processing what was going on.”
The experience left Amanda scared to have another baby.
“I had a friend who had been with the midwifery group practice program and she really recommended her midwife,” she said.
“She actually got me in and had a bit of a debrief about the birth.
“She was so supportive and talked through why things had happened and what things may have helped or not helped.
“That was really helpful and made me feel a lot more confident going into the second birth.
“Having that midwife that I trusted and that I knew – and I knew she was going to be the one there on the day – was really reassuring.”
Téa held out on her arrival until eight days after her due date.
“So it was the longest wait of my life, but her labour was a lot quicker,” Amanda said.
She had “some inklings” in the morning and used techniques she’d read about and learned at a breathing class to manage her pain throughout the day.
About 6pm Amanda felt like she needed to push, and reached the hospital about 6.30pm.
Her waters broke “straight away” and a check by her midwife found she was fully dilated and ready to push.
Téa arrived about 30 minutes later.
“It was, in some ways, healing from that first birth as well, having such a different experience,” she said.
Amanda applied for the midwifery group practice program the day she found out she was pregnant with Hunter.
“I did wonder about home birth for the third one considering the second one had gone so well, and I had a few friends who’d had home births,” she said.
“My husband was very against the idea, worried about how it would go and it not being safe.”
So they stuck with a hospital birth.
Once she hit eight days overdue, she started feeling a lot of pressure for induction.
“That was just the expectation,” she said.
“They wanted me to come in every day for monitoring after the 41-week mark.
“The monitoring was always fine, sometimes the fluid levels were even better than the day before.
“Third birth I felt more empowered to be able to say ‘I don’t want to be induced yet’.
“Being in that midwife program, she understood what I wanted. She was happy to support what I wanted.”
When Amanda hit 14 days overdue, she had to sit down with a doctor, listen to the risks of continuing her pregnancy, and sign forms to confirm she understood them.
“The day of 42 weeks I woke up and had started to lose some of my mucus plug so that was really reassuring,” she said.
She’d had a stretch and sweep at 41 plus six, and had another followed by an acupuncture appointment.
“In the evening I felt like I was having some contractions but then they went away,” she said.
“So I went to sleep, woke up about 7.30am and felt like I was having some contractions.”
Her mum picked up her daughters and Amanda jumped in the shower.
Her contractions were about six minutes apart but the gap quickly shortened to two minutes.
She went to the hospital and her waters broke almost as soon as she reached her room.
“I felt like this was going to be exactly the same as my second birth,” Amanda said.
“I really wanted to have a water birth.”
So the midwife ran a bath for her. She was pushing with every contraction but nothing was happening.
She got out of the bath so her midwife could do a more thorough check, and learned the baby’s head was coming down, then moving back up.
Amanda tried some different positions to try to get him moving.
“Nothing was working, he wasn’t progressing down at all,” she said.
“After about two hours, the midwife said she needed to get a doctor to check on me.”
The doctor concluded he “seemed a bit stuck” and Amanda was soon prepped for theatre.
“That was a bit unexpected when the second birth had gone so well,” she said.
“I’d done everything I could but I was still at this point, it was out of my control.
“It was kind of helpful in terms of the first birth. It was helpful to answer those what-ifs.”
She was hooked up to the spinal block and relished the relief from the pain.
Hunter had come down far enough that another forceps birth – including another episiotomy – was recommended.
He weighed about 4.43 kilograms – about a kilo bigger than his siblings.
“I think his size was part of why he wasn’t coming down,” Amanda said.
“They wanted to take him to special care to monitor his breathing.
“They gave me a minute to have a look at him and then took him off, so my husband went with him.
“They stitched me up. So I ended up in recovery all on my own, after I’d been quite confident that this birth was going to go well.
“I didn’t get to see him for a couple of hours.
“Even though in some ways that birth was the hardest, the postpartum was a lot easier and I felt a lot better.”
Amanda fell pregnant with Lana when Hunter was nine months old, “which was a bit of a shock, but I had secretly wanted to have a fourth baby so I was thankful”.
“I really wanted to have a home birth,” she said.
“My husband asked ‘why, after the last one went so badly?’.
“I said ‘I want a home birth because the last one went so badly’.
“I needed to do something differently.
“The private midwives are amazing. They know everything about different positions and different ways to get babies out.”
Yarra Valley Midwives answered all her questions and even met with Andrew to talk through his concerns.
“He felt reassured – it still wasn’t his first choice but he respected that it’s what I wanted to do,” she said.
“It did cost a fair bit of money, but we decided that was something we wanted to do.”
Amanda felt “really terrified” in the weeks leading up to the birth.
“Given what had happened with the third birth, I was really worried about something going wrong,” she said.
“After I said that out loud I felt a bit better.”
About 36 weeks, the midwives came to Amanda’s home with a birth pool and a list of items she would need to make her home birth dream a reality.
“I felt really overwhelmed,” she said.
“Once I had everything sorted I felt a lot better.
“And I knew that on the day if I felt like I needed to go to hospital, I could.
“I was still registered in the hospital system.”
Two days before her due date, she felt Braxton Hicks contractions.
They were 10 minutes apart, but soon went away.
Amanda went to bed and woke to potential contractions at 5am.
“I lay in bed for an hour wondering,” she said.
“I got up and jumped in the bath to see if they’d go away.
“It was getting a little uncomfortable but I didn’t want to wake anyone up.”
About 6.30am she decided it best to text her midwife and doula.
She got out of the bath about 7am and “things jumped up really quickly”.
“All of a sudden the contractions were two minutes apart,” she said.
The kids were just getting out of bed and her husband was trying to fill up the birth pool.
“I had used most of the hot water in the normal bath so the hot water ran out really quick, so he was having to boil the kettle and water on the stove to fill up the birth pool,” Amanda said.
Amanda’s midwife was on her way about 7.15am, and her photographer friend Emily was en route to capture the birth.
Her doula was a couple of hours away.
“Mum was going to come and help with the kids but was 1.5 hours away in Rosebud,” she said.
“I didn’t want anyone to have to hurry.”
She got into the bath about 7.40am.
“I felt like I needed to push but I didn’t want to push without anyone here,” she said.
Emily arrived about 10 minutes later, and 10 minutes after that the midwife pulled into the driveway.
“At that point I let my body just push,” Amanda said.
“I was leaning over the bath and (the midwife) asked me to feel where the baby was.
“I could feel the baby’s head, which was so surreal.
“My little two had come down and were sitting on the couch.
“My eldest daughter was still upstairs. I think she was feeling a bit overwhelmed by everything. Then she came down too.
“Then with the next push I could feel the head coming down and I could feel that ring of fire that everyone talks about.
“Then her head came out into my hand.
“With the next push she came out into my hands and I lifted her out of the water all on my own.
“The kids were all there watching.
“After she’d come out, they gave her a little pat.
“We sat there for about an hour.
“The second midwife arrived just as she was born. Mum arrived after that.
“My doula came a little bit after as well. It was nice for them to be part of that moment.”
They kept the cord connected to Lana for a good few hours.
“After the placenta had come out they got me out of the bath and moved me onto the bed,” she said.
“The kids all got to cuddle the baby, it was really special.
“I felt really lucky to have that experience. It took me four births.”
Before Lana was born, Amanda was feeling “OK that this is the end of my pregnancy journeys”.
“The second that she was born, because it was so incredible, I just thought ‘I would do this again’,” she said.
