53. It took a year of trying and a devastating loss to conceive at 35, so Heather assumed her journey to baby number three at 41 would be even more uphill. Instead, a spontaneous “holiday baby” proved that when it comes to fertility, statistics aren’t always destiny.
On episode 53, When it comes to fertility in your 40s, we are often met with a wall of clinical data and fear-based warnings. But for Heather, a veterinarian used to a “watch and wait” approach, the reality of conceiving at 41 was a surprising departure from her struggles in her mid-30s. After experiencing a year of negatives and a miscarriage at age 35, Heather shares how her third pregnancy came naturally and spontaneously, reminding us that there is always room for hope and self-compassion.
In this episode, we peel back the layers of the “Advanced Maternal Age” narrative. Heather discusses the mental shift from the obsession of “trying” to the surprise of a holiday conception, the role of midwifery-led care, and why she chose to keep the gender a secret—even with the results hidden in her bedroom for 30 weeks. This is a conversation about trusting your body, advocating for the birth you want, and embracing the magic that happens when you stop looking at the clock.
About the Guest
Heather Lance is a veterinarian and mother of three based in Canberra, Australia. After navigating the highs and lows of building a family in both her 30s and 40s, Heather has become a passionate advocate for midwifery-led care and evidence-based birth. Combining her medical background with a deeply personal belief in the body’s natural capabilities, she offers a grounded, hopeful perspective for women navigating “advanced maternal age.”
Connect with Heather:
- Instagram: @heather.shortridge
Key Topics
- The Fertility Paradox: Why it took a year to conceive at 35, but happened spontaneously at 41.
- Managing the “Mind Trip”: Dealing with the obsession of negatives and the grief of early miscarriage.
- Veterinary Perspective vs. Obstetric Care: How working with animals influenced Heather’s desire for a low-intervention, holistic approach.
- The Gender Secret: Stashing the NIPT results for 30 weeks to preserve one of life’s “great surprises.”
- Self-Compassion & Hope: Moving away from self-blame and the “fear-based” culture of modern pregnancy.
Resources & Links
Note: Some of the links below are affiliate links, which means I may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you if you make a purchase. I only recommend products our guests truly love!
Instagram: Follow Over 40 Fabulous and Pregnant
YouTube: Watch Episodes HERE
Recommended Products: Real Food for Pregnancy
Shop More: See ALL products recommended by our guests!
Support the Podcast: Donate to the Podcast
Community: Join the Over 40 Fabulous Facebook Group or get on the Waitlist to Know When the next TTC Sisterhood Circle meets on Zoom.
Heather’s Instagram Recommendations:
- @downtobirthshow
- @lilynicholsrdn
- @drsarawickham
- @coreandfloorrestore
- @melaniethemidwife
- @theserenitydoula
Heather’s Podcast Recommendations:
- The great birth Rebellion podcast
- The Midwives Cauldron podcast
- Australian Birth stories podcast
- Down to Birth Show podcast
- Evidence Based Birth
Transcript
Jamie: Heather, welcome to the show!
Heather: Thank you so much for having me on.
Jamie: Heather is here to share her pregnancy at 41. You were telling me earlier that at 35 it took you a year to get pregnant.
Heather: Yeah, so that’s right. I think it is such an interesting thing about fertility, it’s like throwing a dart at a dart board, so for our first, we really tried for over a year and we had a, an early miscarriage, which was just devastating at the time because we’d already been trying for a year.
And so I just thought really, it might not happen every month was negatives and it was really so distressing. My heart goes out to everybody who’s struggling to conceive because it’s such a. It’s such a mind trip every day. It’s an obsession to think about it. And yeah, for our first, it took so long and we had the miscarriage and then I think just one more cycle and then we conceived her.
Pretty much after she was born, I just wanted to try for a second straight away. And so still, after my period came back, that took a full seven months. And so then I think it’s amazing that like at nearly 41, it really just took one little holiday and, yeah, bam, baby. So I think it it’s always good to keep having hope because these things can happen and you can just get lucky.
I think it’s one of those things where people blame themselves when it doesn’t happen too. And so much about parenting, conceiving children, having children, how children behave, it’s all beyond our control. And so you’ve just really gotta have some self-compassion as well, that if it’s not happening, it’s not your fault. And some hope that it still can happen as well.
Jamie: Were you doing anything like with a diet? Did you change anything? Do you think anything helped you?
Heather: You Oh no. Nothing. No. Just ticking along living normal life. I think that it is funny people do say about going on holidays and conceiving holiday babies, right?
I’m a veterinarian and so I just decided to start doing a bit more career wise and I’d reached out to our local emergency center to say, oh, I’m interested in coming and doing some work with you guys. I didn’t start working because I didn’t wanna catch COVID before going to this veterinary conference. Then we went to the veterinary conference and had a holiday in Darwin in Northern Australia. That’s where Leo was made.
Jamie: How did you find out you were pregnant? What happened?
Heather: I’d had my second baby three years, three and a half years before, I had not really felt like I was done having kids. The older girls were three and five when we found out. I think that she was just getting old enough and the other one was already in school in kindergarten that I was starting to think, oh, we probably won’t have any more kids. We had just gone on a holiday and Leo was like a surprise holiday baby.
I initially thought I wasn’t pregnant. ’cause I had what must have been implantation bleeding. I thought that I was just having my period. And then I, then it only lasted like a day and I was like, Ooh, that doesn’t, that’s not like a normal period. A couple of weeks later, I just took a test and yeah, that was the sign that Leo was on the way.
Jamie: That’s amazing. How was your pregnancy?
Heather: So my pregnancy was really good. I was tired, but I don’t think I was tired because of my age. I think I was tired because I had really low iron and pregnancy is just really tiring. My experience all three times has been that the first trimester is just so exhausting. I feel like when you haven’t been pregnant before and you’re in the first trimester, and it is so exhausting, you might be apt to think, how am I gonna cope with this? But I think for most people it does get heaps better after that.
It’s just incredible because you haven’t told anyone that you’re pregnant. You don’t look pregnant, and yet you feel like you’ve been hit by a bus in terms of everything is just so tiring. I definitely had that experience again. And then, I just vomited a lot more this pregnancy as well, so I was just sick all the way through.
Listening to some of your episodes about people with like hyperemesis and just vomiting all day. That just sounds atrocious and I didn’t have anything like that, but I did like vomit probably at least once a day and usually every morning. So just tired and a bit sick, but like physically. Felt fine every time. So I’ve been really lucky in that regard.
Jamie: How did you decide on your doctor? Did you just use the same doctors that you used for your previous pre pregnancies?
Heather: Yeah, so doctors is one of my strong points of opinion about pregnancy. Increasingly, each time, my whole aspiration for the pregnancy was never ever to see a doctor at all, ever. Each time I feel like I’ve made a bit of a sport of like arguing with doctors at the end of pregnancy.
This time, just midwife led care. I had my first appointment at 16 weeks with the intake midwife and I said, what are my chances of getting into the birth center program again. The birth center’s at the hospital, but you see the same midwife every time. And she said, oh yeah, I think your chances are good, I think, ’cause you’ve been in there before.
And then I didn’t get into it and I was so upset about it. And then I was quite stressed because the first two times that I was pregnant, I also got diagnosed with gestational diabetes. And that’s another point of strong opinion for me because you really do wanna know what your blood sugar’s doing in pregnancy. But in Australia, apparently one in six women are diagnosed with gestational diabetes, which is really high. And so for the first and second pregnancy, I like technically had gestational diabetes, but my blood sugar was always fine unless I did something silly. I didn’t really want this time to be officially diagnosed, and I just decided to manage that myself.
But I thought that would be easier if I had my own midwife. And so I thought, oh no, I’m gonna have to explain every appointment to a different person. Why I don’t wanna do a glucose tolerance test and all this, like staff, like it’s definitely easier if you care, provider knows you, right? I think I was about 20 weeks and I got a call from Nicole, who is one of the wonderful birth center midwives, and she said she just joined the program and was I still interested in going to the birth center?
And I was like, yes, of course. And so I have to give a shout out for Nicole because she’s absolutely wonderful midwife, and she looked after me for the rest of the pregnancy and I didn’t have to interact with doctors much. So that was good.
Jamie: Could you actually help explain to us, ’cause in the US we almost have only one. We have either a, like an OB usually, or we only see a midwife. Yeah. Could you kind help explain that a little bit?
Heather: Yeah. So our system here in Canberra at least, is that within the public hospital system, there are different streams of maternity care. And so most people are in what at my hospital is called the birth suite, where each time you see a midwife for your checkups, and if there’s a problem, then you’ll have an appointment with obstetricians as well. There’s also like a high risk at the other local hospital’s a bit bigger, and there’s like a high risk stream where. You mostly get looked after by obstetricians.
If you’re lucky, there’s the birth center program, which is public, and then you see the same midwife every time. And hopefully that midwife will be at the birth as well. And then they follow you up for the first couple of weeks after you have your baby and they actually come and do your appointments at home. And that’s all funded by the taxpayer.
Some people have private midwives as well. And then there’s a really, like a lot of people also do choose going private. So there’s like a private hospital. And private hospital care is usually led by an obstetrician. So then you choose an obstetrician, like a known obstetrician. And so I guess then you have the continuity of care with the obstetrician instead of with the midwives.
Jamie: Gotcha.
Heather: A reasonable proportion of people do go private, but our public maternity care is pretty good here. I just decided to go public every time cause yeah, it’s, it’s thousands of dollars out of pocket if you go private, even if you’ve got private health insurance it wasn’t really any reason to do that here. The other thing is, I think there’s pretty good evidence that going private, having obstetrician led care leads to higher rates of intervention, I feel like if you want low intervention, like the midwife led approach is good.
One of the podcasts that I listen to a lot, which I would really recommend the Great Birth Rebellion, one of the things they said was, when you’re choosing a provider, you should always ask them questions like, what is your cesarean rate? Because what their cesarean rate is, that’s your chance of having a cesarean, right? In the birth center, I think they have a 15% cesarean rate compared to 35% in the rest of the public health system. So like you do, decrease your chances of interventions if you go with midwifery led care.
In my in my opinion and experience.
Jamie: Yeah. And that was important to you? You wanted less intervention?
Heather: I really just wanted like a hands off kind of approach. I feel like maybe, ’cause I’m a vet as well in animals, like we don’t do as much. I feel like we do a bit more like watching and waiting with things and I just like having kind of a medical sciencey background myself. I was like, I’m just not sure that all of the things they suggest are necessary.
When I was having my first baby and they wanted to do like a 40 week induction, it’s based on statistics, but it’s not based on you. And so this time they. My midwife said to me, look, the hospital suggests if you’re over 40, a 39 week induction. And I said, yeah, I don’t really wanna do that. And she said, yeah, I’ll talk to the doctors. And so she actually went and spoke to the head obstetrician for me and he was like, no, that’s fine. But like their policy is if you’re 40 or over, they induce you at 39 weeks. And it’s like they’re looking at a number, not looking at the patient. So I think that. Maybe midwifery led care is more like holistic care. And yeah, for me, having that kind of care was great.
Jamie: Good. Did you find out the gender during pregnancy?
Heather: No. And so I did do the NIPT, the non-invasive prenatal testing. And so I think you’ve had people talk about that before.
I reckon that is miraculous like science, don’t get me wrong. I love science. Science is amazing. And the fact that they can take your blood when you’re 10 weeks pregnant and get the baby’s blood out and then work out so much about the chromosomes of the baby and the gender of the baby and everything is amazing.
They send you the results redacted with the no gender on it. I had the those results in my email. I think I went and saw my gp. She said, I’ve put your results at the front desk with colorful glitter with the gender. I felt like I had to pick it up, right? I picked up this envelope and then I hid it in my room for the whole pregnancy. My husband didn’t know where it was. So we had the results of the gender hidden in our room on a high, ’cause a few people said, what if the kids find it? But it was hidden in a high place so the kids couldn’t find it.
And then after he was born, we got the envelope out and had a look, and sure enough it had a list. I’ll send you a picture of it, like baby boy blue glitter and stuff in it. So for about like 30 weeks, I could have known the gender. And just unreasonably much having two girls already. I just thought, we’ve got two girls. We just make girls. It’ll be a girl. And so I was incredibly surprised when he was a boy.
And so I’d said to my midwife, and I had a wonderful midwifery student too, Rachel, I’d said to them, they both have two girls each as well. And then we already had two girls. And I said, if this baby’s a boy, none of us will know what to do because none of us have boys. And then when he was born, I was like, it’s a boy. And Nicole, my boom wife said, is it really a boy? Yes, it’s a boy. So it was a real surprise.
Jamie: That’s fun. So what was your thoughts? Why you didn’t want to know?
Heather: Oh, we had a surprise every time. And I just think it’s one of life’s great surprises really
Jamie: too.
Heather: It’s awesome to just find out at the moment .
Jamie: do you think it helped with birth?
Heather: Because you were anticipating big surprise?
Jamie: Yeah.
Heather: I dunno if it really helped with birth. I just think it’s a really cool thing to find out when the baby’s born.
Jamie: You went the whole pregnancy without knowing it.
Heather: Yeah,
Jamie: yeah.
Heather: Total. Yeah.
Jamie: And having those results had would be so hard for me.
Heather: Yeah. That’s what lots of people said, but I think I was just really committed to the surprise and yeah, my hubby just didn’t know where the envelope was, so he couldn’t, he, I don’t, he wouldn’t have opened it anyway without my permission. But yeah, it just stashed away in our room.
Jamie: Oh, fun. Was there any product that you couldn’t live without that helped with pregnancy?
Heather: So I feel like all of my recommendations are more for information. So I think Jamie, I messaged you about Lily Nichols who wrote Real Food for Pregnancy. And so how I found her is she wrote Real Food for Gestational Diabetes and she wrote that first, and she does a course for people with gestational diabetes. And for anyone who gets diagnosed with gestational diabetes, I would definitely recommend. Reading her book and definitely like doing her course if you want extra support with that as well.
And then Real Food for Pregnancy. I think it’s basically a similar kind of approach and I think that like the way you eat is super important. So I feel like she’s my top, top reference. And then in terms of for having babies, I reckon that listening to podcasts beforehand was helpful for me, so I really liked listening to your podcast. Of course. And yeah, also the Great Birth Rebellion and the midwives cauldron and there’s lots of great. I think evidence-based birth, I’m not sure if anyone’s spoken about them, but that’s so good because the lady who runs that has done so many really great summaries of things to consider if you’re told you might be having a big baby.
So like my first baby I was told was 50th percentile and she was six pounds, 12. And then my second baby I was told was gonna be big and she was also like, she was 10 grams bigger. She was also six pounds, 12. Having the backup of things like evidence-based births. If you do wanna discuss things with your medical team is helpful.
And then like prenatal vitamins. I probably should have got onto like iron supplements earlier. I don’t have a specific recommendation, but I feel like taking prenatals is obviously a good idea. And other than that I didn’t really use anything particularly.
I never used one of those pillows or anything. I’ve got a huge super long torso.
Jamie: And
Heather: so I think that meant that like I don’t get a bump that goes out very far, which meant that I didn’t get like back pain or anything, which is very lucky for me.
Jamie: Yeah. That is nice.
Heather: Yeah.
Jamie: So this is your third baby. How did you prepare for this one?
Heather: Yeah, so it’s funny, I feel like life’s so busy with the two little girls, so the the last two times I was really good on like making sure I got 10,000 steps every day and doing all this stuff. And this time I was just working a lot. ’cause I thought, oh, I should try and get some work in before before I have the baby. So like we set up the bed and we eventually set up a car seat in the car, but we didn’t do a lot of preparation really.
In terms of preparing for the birth. I definitely would recommend doing like childbirth education. And we, before my first, we did the hospital had some, and also we did something called calm birth, which I think is just in Australia. I looked it up. Before chatting to you, but I think it’s just Australia and New Zealand, but I think it’s similar to hypnobirthing. That sort of like dealing with the pain.
And after my second was born, I thought maybe we should have done a refresher. ’cause I remember thinking clearly with my first that the pain got to a maximum of eight out of 10. I remember thinking, yes, this is an eight, this is eight out of 10. And that’s as bad as it got even with Pitocin and even with everything else. And with my second, I was like, this is definitely 10. And I feel again, with my third, it definitely did get to 10 and I’m like, maybe I should have done calm birth again. And that would’ve helped. But I’m not sure. Maybe it just gets more painful, I can’t say.
Jamie: Interesting.
Heather: Yeah. There’s so many good birth courses now too. I know there’s Cora and Flo Restore, who’s one of the other Instagram people I follow. She’s one of the midwives on the Great Birth Rebellion. She has birth classes on her website, so you can do them from anywhere too.
Jamie: Nice. I guess at home you didn’t have any boy clothes, but you didn’t even know no’s. So what do you do there? No, that’s right.
Heather: Yeah he has been rocking some fairly like feminine stuff and I feel like we had given away quite a bit of our small stuff, but also we have been quite blessed to be given lots of clothes from people.
I guess some of the stuff from the girls too, like I. Never knew I was having girls either. And I really Scandy clothes, which is like really brightly colored. I’m totally not the like beige Instagram kind of mom. I definitely like to have them as bright as possible.
Now that I have a boy, I am like, I want him to have colors because so many clothes are just like. Beige and gray and black, and I’m like, oh, why should he wear those things just because he is a little boy, like it’s a bit rough. So he’s probably gonna be dressed in rainbows and butterflies and all the bright things.
Jamie: Perfect. What about cravings? Tell us about that.
Heather: So I don’t think I really have ever had any cravings. So I think for me, with just like winding back to the gestational diabetes thing. Knowing that I had to monitor my blood sugar, I’ve just always been really mindful of my carb intakes. I’ve eaten more mindfully in pregnancy than I normally would, just to make sure that I don’t eat too many, like not too much sugar. Not too much simple carbs and following the principles of like real food and low GI food. It was interesting with my first, I think I didn’t, there was nothing particularly I drank coffee all the way through. Then with my second I went off coffee and so I was like, maybe I’m having a boy because I’ve gone off coffee. But then she was a girl anyway. And then with Leo, I think I still ate everything and yeah, I still drank coffee. There was no real kind of clear thing I think.
The super smell that you get because you get this incredible sense of smell. I’m not sure I had that as much with him, even though I was more nauseous all the time. But with the girls, I remember like smelling things and just being like, oh, that’s disgusting. But with him, I think. Although I was vomiting more and feeling sick more, I don’t remember smells being such a big part of it as it was with the other two. But smells can be so triggering when you’re pregnant. ’cause Yeah. Can be. So your sense of smell is just so much better I think, as a rule.
Jamie: So where would you rate this pregnancy? Was it your hardest or easiest? Where does it fall?
Heather: Yeah, I think that it was my tired, which I think maybe due to my having diagnosed low iron and like I was working at night and I had other kids to look after. But I don’t think it was any harder than the others really. Like I was more tired. It was more hard for my husband, I think because like in the mornings I’d just be totally useless with things like getting the kids off to school ’cause I’d just be sleeping a lot.
Like physically, I felt fine. And it was interesting because I did put such an effort in and maybe like I, if I had more time in the day, I would’ve put more effort into going for more walks and stuff. But still that actually didn’t, doing a bit less exercise than I had the previous two times didn’t seem to make much difference to my like blood sugar or anything like that, which was weird but good.
If I had any problems, I would’ve had to change my approach, but it always seemed to be fine
Jamie: Okay. Now for the birth, will you tell us like, what was the plan, what’s important to you.
Heather: Yeah, so as I yeah with my first, as I said, I’d had this had a bit of a, so I’d gone into spontaneous labor, but then I’d had a bit of a cascade of interventions and.
And so then for my second, my waters broke early and I stayed at the hospital. But I ended up having like just a water birth with her. And so my hope for this time was to have another water birth because my, all three times my pain relief has been the water. And so I really was hoping to do that again and just have a water birth with minimal interventions.
And so that was the plan. And you’ve obviously gotta be flexible because you never know what’s gonna happen in birth but I hope that would happen.
Jamie: Now, what about you don’t want an epidural? Is there anything like in the room, music, any other kind of rules?
Heather: I never did like a music. I do like music, but I never had like music for my. Deliveries or anything. And at the birth center, and in fact, even in the birth suite, I thought the hospital actually did a really good job of having in the birth center they have fairy lights and they put on I think lavender, mister and stuff for you. And like they keep it nice and dark and leave you to it. And I think that’s you just want it to be like a safe and quiet space.
Jamie: Okay. Take us back to the day that labor started.
Heather: I had been thinking that baby would probably arrive early because I think my first was at 39 and two, and then my second was at 38 and five. So once I got to 39 weeks and knowing that because of my age they would encourage me to have an induction and I really didn’t wanna have an induction as the pregnancy just kept going on day by day. I feel like I started to feel a bit a anxious about it all. Will this baby ever arrive?
And I guess I’ve heard things since saying if you’re pregnant, like the baby will come eventually. I got to 39 and four or something. Had an appointment with my midwife and she works the start of the week and then has Thursday, Friday her days off.
And so she, and if your midwife’s not available, then you get, get the buddy. So I had her talk to her and she’s look, if you haven’t had baby by the weekend, then maybe we’ll have another appointment and see how you’re going. This pregnancy my blood pressure crept up just a little bit towards the end.
So not so that they had to do anything, but just so they were keeping an eye on it. Anyway, she went onto her days off, and then on the Thursday night at about 11 o’clock, I had the spectacular breaking of waters. So I was just in bed and just suddenly was like the, flood gates opened and it was pretty spectacular.
This is the second time this has happened to me. The first time it happened, I was at an appointment for my second baby and my waters broke while I was in the doctor’s appointment. I think I was saying like that I, was a bit worried about seeing the doctor’s. And then with my second I had one doctor’s appointment at the end, but while I was at the appointment, my waters broke. Spectacular.
And so anyway, this time I was just in bed and my water’s broken. Flooded the bed and flooded the room. I didn’t text the midwife, I texted my student midwife and said, I think my understanding of this is that I don’t need to tell anyone now, but just come in the morning if I haven’t had the baby and my student said yeah, that sounds right. That’s what Nicole would say. That was about 11 o’clock.
And then I was having like mild kind of contractions and then they picked up a bit and I was having two in five minutes. And one thing I would say, my midwife did say, you’ll know. You’ll know when it’s time to come into hospital. But I think the thing with birth is even if you’ve done it lots of times, you still haven’t done it that many times, right?
Like when you get up in the morning and you have a cup of coffee, you do that every day. So you’re doing that 365 times a year. But even though I’m like an experienced mom, like it’s still only the third time for me.
So this time at 4:00 AM we rang my wonderful friend Sarah to come and get the kids. ’cause I was having two contractions in five minutes. I rang up the midwife and I rang up my midwife’s buddy ’cause she was the one that was working and said what was happening? She said, okay, come in. Anyway, we went into hospital and I think as often happens when you go into hospital, you’ve bundled the kids out to your friend’s place and then driven into the hospital and it’s bright in the hospital and the lights are on and then you go in and my labor just stopped basically.
When my my friend picked the kids up. She said, gee, you look like you’re coping it with you really well. And I was like, oh, maybe I’m like calling this too early. So off we went to hospital and they had the fairy lights on and the bath running and everything for me. And my student midwife was there and Jessie, the other midwife was there.
And I said, oh yeah, I don’t know. Like I feel like less is happening now. And so they said, oh, look. We’ll just see how you go. So I think we got there at four or five in the morning, and then we were there for a few hours and nothing really picked up. And so then I did, this was the one time that I did see a doctor at the hospital.
So a doctor came in to tell me about the risks of getting infection if you are, if your waters are broken. And so he came and said, you can get infection. And so you’ve got the options of we can induce you now or we can offer you antibiotics. You can have IV antibiotics or I think they would give me antibiotics I could take by mouth. And I was like I don’t really know if I need that. And so then they also did a CTG. I’m not sure if people have talked about CTG, but it’s where they put the monitor on your belly.
And see what the baby’s doing. And they’re like you are having contractions and if you weren’t having contractions, we’d just say, suggest that you could just go home. But because you are having contractions, you can go home if you want or stay if you want. And I said look, let’s just go home. Because with my second, we’d stayed overnight in the hospital. And I feel like actually if we’d gone home and come back, like your home is a safer space to labor really.
So we went home, about nine o’clock in the morning and I just felt a bit downcast about it all. ’cause I was like, oh, like I’ve woken my friend up in the middle of the night and palmed off the kids and nothing’s happening. And is this baby ever gonna be born? And like labor had really settled down.
The midwife Jessie, who was on, she said, look, go home. Just take it easy. Watch a romantic movie, go for a walk. Just have a quiet day and just see how you go. So we went home and nothing was really happening all day. And then my midwife was back on from seven o’clock on the Friday night, which was great.
So she gave me a call at about seven and she said, look, if you’re not in labor by tomorrow, then they’d recommend inducing, I think was gonna be the next step, but just see how you go. And she talked to me about the antibiotics and I said what’s the risk if I don’t take the antibiotics?
And she said, a 1% risk of infection, right? And then if you get an infection, then you can deal with it. So I was like I’m happy to like decline antibiotics at the moment and see how I go. And so then. The good thing I think was because my kids were at my friend’s place, bless her for taking them for a couple of days in the end because they were at my friend’s place, then I didn’t have to worry about them because they were safe and somewhere else. And Labor started again, started having more serious contractions, probably about nine o’clock at night. And then then rang the midwife, I think about 10 30 or maybe 10 o’clock, and she said, look, I think you should stay home a bit longer.
They built up a lot more over the next few hours. And one of the midwives who was the same age as us, she’d given us the hot tip of that. What all the cool young folk do is use a contraction app, which we’d never done before. But, so my husband was like doing timing my contractions on the app, which was cool.
And it was eventually saying you should go to hospital now. When we did go to hospital, we definitely did need to go to hospital, so I was like in enough pain that I was like vocalizing at home and every contraction really hurt. So we went into hospital and met my midwife there, which was so nice ’cause she was back on from her after her days off for the week.
And my poor student midwife who we’d got out of bed for two nights in a row. We got there at one 30 and when we got there I was a bit panicky and teary and I think that’s probably ’cause I was in transition. So once your waters break as well, they don’t like to do like exams of you anymore. With my second, I feel like they did do exams, but every time you have a vaginal examination, it increases your risk of infection quite a bit. So I didn’t end up having any exams at all with him. I got there and they had the baths running and I pretty much got in the bath and I think we got there about one 30 and he was born at two fifty nine.
But when I got there I was definitely like, I feel really panicked and I’m not sure how this is gonna, I just feel really panicked about it. And I was a bit teary and she’s that’s okay, you’re just in labor. And so then I was laboring in the bath and like my midwife is just amazing. She’s such a wonderful midwife. And so I just pretty much swim about in the bath was just looking at my husband, but I was listening to my midwife saying It’s okay I’ve I’d be crying out ’cause it is very painful. And at one point I was saying it just hurts so much. And she’s like, where does it hurt?
And I said, it just hurts everywhere. But I just was like listening to her and focusing on her encouragement and, at first, I couldn’t feel like, I tried to feel if I could feel the baby and I couldn’t. And then I was like, oh, I can feel ahead. And then I was saying, please come down, baby.
And my midwife was saying, it’s okay. The baby is coming down, it’ll be okay. And then, yeah, then he, when he was born, his head came out and then it took a while for his chin to be born. And she was like, okay, you’ve really gotta, she suggested I like push slowly to get his head out because that’s, I think when tearing can happen.
But then his head came out except his chin hadn’t come out, and then she was a bit worried about that and had softer midwives. It must be such an incredibly stressful job, right? Because if it all goes to plan. Beautiful. But if it’s not going to plan and like you’ve got a laboring woman in the water, it must be very stressful part of the job for them.
So she was kinda like, okay, we need to get his head out. And they have a mirror in the bath so they can see what’s happening and you are in the water and bless them for the wonderful job that they do. His shin was born, but then she’d said once his head’s born, then you can just get his body out quickly.
And his body was born really quickly after that. And then he, she scooped him up and put him on the surface and I said. It’s a boy, and she said, is it really a boy? And we were all very shocked that he was a boy. So once he was born pretty quickly, which was great.
Jamie: And what were you feeling and thinking whenever he came?
Heather: Oh as soon as he was born, I was like, oh, I feel so much better now. Because it was pretty painful, like up to him being born and then, yeah, then it’s really such a magical moment just being there in the bath with your new little baby. And he didn’t cry. I think he cried a little bit, but my experience of the two babies being born in the water, neither of them have cried as much as their sister that was rudely suctioned into the world so maybe it’s a more, I feel like it probably is a nicer way for babies to be born too. ’cause they’re in a warm, wet environment and then they’re born into a warm, wet environment as well.
Jamie: Yeah,
Heather: I was just, yeah, looking at him and. Taking in his features and marveling that he was a boy to buy utmost surprise.
Jamie: Yeah. So when he came out, did he come all the way out and then the midwife picked him up? Or did she pull him out at all?
Heather: No. He came out by himself. Okay. So I pushed him out and then into the water and she scooped him up. She sounded like mildly worried when, ’cause he was wrapped in the cord.
She’s oh, cord’s tangled. So she had to. So once they come out of the water, once they touch the air with their skin, that’s when they start breathing. So once you have a baby in the water, you can’t like take them right out of the water and then put them back right in the water. But he was a bit wrapped in the cord, so I think she had to like slightly submerge him, but not like his head to untangle him.
And so interesting they’re tangled in the cord thing. ’cause I think like all three of mine have been tangled in their cords my personal experience is that they’ve all been tangled in their. But in the water, I guess it made a particular difference because she did have to like slightly lower him, untangle him, and then bring him up to me,
yeah.
Jamie: And what was important to you in those moments? Like skin to skin or using the placental later, anything like that?
Heather: Yeah, so skin to skin was definitely very important to me. And delayed cord clamping for sure. Delayed cord clamping is so interesting because it just seems like the more they look into it, the more benefit there is for babies of having delayed cord clamping.
And for some reason, with my first, I think because. Because she’d had the meconium, I guess they wanted to take her and check her or something for a minute, although I still had skin to skin really quickly with her, so I’m not sure. But they didn’t do delayed cord clamping with her and I still feel a bit bad about it ’cause apparently can be up to a third of their blood volume, less really, that they get if you don’t clamp so delayed and they’ve done studies on premi babies and delayed cord clamping is like actually can be lifesaving for premi babies in particular because so much of their blood is in the cord. And so I think things that kind of rationally make sense like that will become, should become standard of practices.
Time goes on, but still aren’t in lots of places. Like I think it takes a lot of time for things to catch up, being in the birth center, they were really happy to do delayed cord clamping and there was no reason not to. I think it just took a few minutes. And then then I actually cut the cord, so I didn’t do anything with the placenta.
I like to have a look at it ’cause I’m a scientist, so I like had a bit of a look at it and but I didn’t do anything with it. One of the things to look into, if you’re thinking about ingesting it, is one of the podcasts I listened to was saying that because the placenta’s kind of potentially the hormones in the placenta could interrupt like breastfeeding hormones. So it’s definitely worth researching that because it would be annoying if consuming placenta meant bad things for breastfeeding.
Jamie: Yeah.
Heather: Which potentially I think it could. So I didn’t have any plans to do anything like that. And then this time I just had the placenta naturally as well, so the usual practices, they’ll give you a shot of Pitocin, even if you haven’t had any other, like Pitocin. But this time it just like the, I birthed the placenta really quickly so that was good as well. Yeah.
Jamie: What did it look like?
Heather: It’s so like a medium dinner plate sized. It looks like, I guess it’s just an organ. So like a liver or, yeah. Yeah. It’s really interesting to have a look if you’re not squeamish.
Jamie: Did the midwife describe it? Make it like, oh, this is a good one. Like that sort of thing?
Heather: Yeah. So she was talking because I had my student midwife, so she was talking to the student midwife about it and yeah, all looked healthy. ’cause I think that’s the thing that sometimes placenta function is one of the reasons they sometimes like to induce people if they think your placenta function’s declining.
And so sometimes people will say that the placenta was like gritty or, but it was in a good condition, but the membranes were a bit ragged. So I think if you have retained membranes that you don’t pass and that can cause issues. But it wasn’t ragged enough that like the midwife didn’t say there was any problem with it.
She was just describing it to the student and it, yeah, I think it was fine.
Jamie: Interesting.
Heather: I said. Big, but he was so much bigger than the girls were. So the girls were both six pounds, 12, and then he was like eight pounds three. So he was heaps bigger. So 600 grams bigger now in our language. I said, gee, I didn’t expect baby to be so big, which I didn’t really, they’re like, they still look small, even if they’re bigger.
Now that he’s nearly four months old, he’s so much bigger than his sisters, and I feel like he’s teasing me because I’m sure that my first was in like four zero clothes till she was this age and he’s like going into zero, which is for kids like six to 12 months, which is
Jamie: he’s growing fast.
Heather: Yeah, he’s so big.
And it was a different, I feel like something always comes up and it’s good to be flexible. When he was born, he didn’t latch like the girls. I have been so lucky, and again, like huge, like condolences to anyone that has trouble with breastfeeding because people obviously work so hard at it.
And then if you’re lucky, it can just be easy. And so with my girls. They were pretty much born and latched and like I fed my oldest till she was three and my second one self weaned just after two and like never had any dramas. And so when I was having my like, prenatal care for my third, I feel like you get a lot of congratulations on that. Well done on such a great breastfeeding journey. I appreciate you saying these nice things to me, but actually it, it wasn’t like I’d had to put in a huge effort to do that. I was just lucky enough that it was easy, right? Like it wasn’t some big it wasn’t like a really courageous thing I’d done.
It had just been easy for me, and I think that anyone that some people work so hard at it and like kudos to those people who’ve, been pumping and doing all this extra hard stuff, but he wouldn’t latch straight away and then he wouldn’t latch for a few hours. And so my midwife helped express some colostrum for me ’cause I was not very good at expressing it.
So she helped me express some colostrum and we gave him some colostrum and like I had skin to skin and the underserved ’cause they say it’s really good idea to leave baby underserved with mom for three hours or so after birth. And we had all that. And I just couldn’t get him to feed. And my midwife said, look, I’m just a bit worried about his little chin and so we’ll get the pediatrician to check him in the morning.
He was born at three and then we moved to postnatal at nine. And then the pediatrician, I was really glad that this wasn’t my first baby, ’cause hubby and I were like passed out because we’d been awake all night, had a baby. And she came in and works up, which is fine ’cause she’s a busy woman. And, but she just said. Oh yeah, I think he’s got this syndrome where they have a small jaw and he might not be able to feed, he might have to have a feeding tube. He might not be able to maintain oxygen saturation in his back. So we’re just gonna take him to special care for 24 hours. And I was like, oh, can we just monitor his oxygen saturation here?
And she’s no. And no one here will have time to help you to feed him so he is gonna go to special care. And I think because I was my third baby, so the, for my second baby, I left the hospital, just went home after six hours, which was great. But this time, ’cause I’d had the prolonged, by the time he was born, it was like 27 hours, I think after my membranes are broken.
And my midwife said, look, I think because you had prolonged like rupture of membranes, they’ll probably wanna keep you in for 24 hours to monitor your temperature. And I was, do you know what I thought? I thought if I’m here for 24 hours, someone’s gonna bring me food and let’s take, it’s says crummy hospital food. But just the idea that I would be somewhere where somebody else would just bring me food for 24 hours, I was like, yeah, I’m okay with that. We’ll just stay in for 24 hours. So at least when the pediatrician came, I was expecting to stay for 24 hours anyway, but I really wasn’t expecting him to be in special care for those 24 hours.
And I think the delivery of it all. Like it was such a like snap. Yeah. I think he’s got this issue and he is gonna have to go to special care and it was really sudden but I think because he was my third baby and like I was just bemused about it, I was like, okay, and so off he went to special care.
I just had 24 hours there by myself essentially getting woken up every once in a while to go and attempt to feed him. And that was so frustrating and this really made me reflect on, I feel like anyone who’s had a real NICU baby and has managed to establish breastfeeding is some kind of hero. ’cause he just had one little sensor on his foot to monitor his oxygen saturation and oh, they were trying to get me to use nipple shields and it was all such a faf.
So he went in at 9:00 AM. They were quite busy there, right? ’cause it’s a special care. So someone did help me, but they helped me at one in the morning the following morning. So he just had some express colostrum between like when he was born and one o’clock the following morning. Then I managed to latch him with a nipple shield and then fortunately I managed to latch him without a nipple shield.
But I just can’t imagine how hard it would be if you had a teeny baby or a baby with lots of like leads and things on them, and even just the COVID stuff. In our hospital at the time, we didn’t have to wear a mask if we were a patient, but we did in special care. At one in the morning, I said to the nurse, it’s even just hard trying to feed with a mask on because it’s just more stuff getting in the way of you and the baby.
And she was like, it’s okay. Like just take it off. It’s fine. Just take it off and try and feed him. So we did manage to feed him, but it just was a slightly disrupted. Journey compared to with the girls. The following morning, I went in and the oxygen saturation monitor was off and the pediatrician said, yeah, you are discharged. I don’t even think I need to follow up with you. And I was a bit like either tell me you do or you don’t, but that’s fine. We’ll just take him. The 24 hours in special care was just a strange little interlude in our lives. But but he was fine. And so that was all good. And it wasn’t too stressful for me, I think, ’cause it wasn’t my first Bubba.
Jamie: Yeah. And what do you think was a trick to get him to latch?
Heather: I don’t even know. Maybe he was just a bit, the midwife said when he was born, she thought he seemed a bit dazed from the experience, which I guess can happen. I think if you have a baby and you’re having trouble with breastfeeding, I’m sure that the best thing to do is go see like a lactation consultant, but this. Yeah, I don’t know. Eventually he just did it and then he’s been doing it fine. Since I still think he’s not as good at it as his sisters, but like he’s growing a lot, so I guess he’s doing it adequately. But yeah, sometimes he’ll be trying to feed and you’ll hear like a clicking noise or whatever, and that means the latch isn’t that good. Would, I’ll just re readjust him. But I, yeah, he eventually just got the hang of it.
Jamie: Okay. And what’s the deal with his chin?
Heather: I think it’s fine. Really. So there can, there’s the thing that she thought he might have was a thing called, oh no, I’m having a mental blank just because we’re recording. Pierre Rob sequence, which is where they can have an underdeveloped lower jaw because of things like a virus during pregnancy potentially. But usually that’s also combined with things like a cleft palate. And there can be other issues too, but I just think maybe he just has a little chin, or maybe it was to do with the way he was born as well, because it did take a while for his chin to be born.
So maybe he was just a bit squashed outta shape. I’m not sure. But it seems to be okay now. When I saw my GP at six weeks, she was like, yeah, I think just don’t worry about it. I think it’s fine.
Jamie: Tell us about your recovery.
Heather: Yeah. And so I, when he was born. I like it felt fine and then I did have like second degree tearing, so they stitched it and then actually that was fine as well.
So like at the time they gave me, I think some paracetamol and some ibuprofen. And then acetaminophen, I think is what you guys call paracetamol, acetaminophen and ibuprofen, and that was all the I didn’t take any more pain relief. I was fine and special care was quite far away and I had to like tra up and down to special care and it was fine.
My recovery was really good. I think pretty like back to normal quite quickly. With my first, with the having a episiotomy and the tearing. I don’t know if maybe after you’ve had one baby, your perineum is just more used to being battered around or something. But after my first, I remember being uncomfortable for a couple of weeks, but with my second I didn’t have any tearing and so just left the hospital six hours later and was completely normal and fine.
And this time, even though I did have stitches, I really felt pretty good. Like I think that’s another real advantage if you are lucky enough to be able to do it, of having a natural birth without things like an epidural because once the baby’s out Yeah. It’s your body can recover the way it should, yeah.
Jamie: And how does this recovery rank?
Heather: I think about the same. Really? Like I just felt really good straight away. I had heaps more energy straight away. So I don’t know the, like the low iron thing’s. So interesting. ’cause I haven’t done anything special since he was born. And my iron’s fine now and yeah, I just think it’s really tiring being pregnant.
I would say that I think my sleep was worse before he was born than since he’s been born. ’cause I think it’s just hard to sleep when you’re pregnant as well. So I’ve just had heaps more energy and that’s been good.
Jamie: Yeah, really good. What about mentally? How were you?
Heather: Yeah, really good. So my whole strategy for, I thought, okay, if I’m having a third baby, I’m just gonna wear the baby and carry on. Fortunately he likes to be worn, so a lot of the time he is just in the baby carrier all day. Actually, that’s one of my top tips, is the mar soy baby carrier. So someone recommended that to me when I had my first, and it’s just Velcro, so it’s really easy to put on.
He just spends a lot of his days in the Mar soupy, and as soon as he’s in there, he just goes to sleep. He loves it. I feel like being in a carrier must remind babies of before they were born. And so he’s super happy when he is in there. Just been dragging him along to all the girls’ activities.
Jamie: And how long do you get from maternity leave?
Heather: So we have government maternity leave that’s like paid at minimum wage for 18 weeks, which is great. And then you can take as long as you like. I think I’ll probably start doing some work a bit later this year. But probably just short shifts to start with. Some jobs pay maternity leave as well, but everyone’s entitled who’s been working to the government mat leave.
I’ll probably go back very part-time, maybe next month or the month after and then pick up a bit just depending how he’s going. The good thing about veterinary work is it’s pretty flexible ’cause you can go in for three hours and still be really useful.
Jamie: Is there anything else you wanna add to your pregnancy or birth?
Heather: I guess I just would like to reiterate what I think a few people have said, which is that your body can do it and like it’s a normal thing to have babies in your forties. It’s not like an abnormal or weird thing. Globally, our western obstetric systems are quite fear-based and they’re all about warning you about the dangers of things that can happen to your baby. And it’s all about what can go wrong, but actually like we have evolved pretty well to do it.
So you just gotta believe that you can do it and just choose a really good supportive team that will back you basically.
Jamie: I love it. Do you have any more plans to have kids in your forties?
Heather: I don’t think so. ’cause we’ve maxed out the Yaris. So a few people said that there was no way to fit three kids in a Yaris, but we have managed to fit three kids in the Yaris. But yeah, probably he is probably the last one, I think. Okay.
But I feel I feel like if I wanted to, that there would be no physical reason not to, I feel like I could, but I feel like practically three kids is probably about the max.
Jamie: Okay. And what has been your biggest challenge being pregnant in your forties?
Heather: I think there hasn’t been any particular challenge, any different to being pregnant in my thirties. And so I think just being informed and like backing myself to be able to do it has been the main thing. So I think yeah, like I was more tired, but that, that was tiring, but not really like a mental challenge.
Basically it’s been fine and I would encourage others to expect that it can be fine for them as well.
Jamie: Awesome. Is there anything you’d recommend that would help prepare someone for pregnancy and birth?
Heather: One thing I would say that I had thought about is when I did calm birth, I remember the teacher saying people love to tell you horror stories about birth and if you’re pregnant. It’s really important to listen to positive birth stories and talking to people about positive birth stories is really helpful. I think podcasts like yours are amazing. If you wanna hear more people who sound like me talking about birth stories, Australian birth stories is just the one I know ’cause I’m Australian, but it has lots of birth stories and it has all different kinds of. You can listen to cesarean births and natural births and water births and home births and all the different things. And so I think like I think you really wanna be in a good head space for giving birth and just having people say, oh, this happened and this happened at a bad thing. It’s really good to be aware of the fact that most birth does go well and listening to those stories I think can be really helpful for sure.
Jamie: Good. And what advice would you give yourself when you were pregnant, if you could go back?
Heather: Oh, the big regret I have is not taking photos. Really. I’ve never done maternity photos, but I didn’t even really take many photos of like my mour, I wish I’d taken, it sounds really superficial, but once he was born I was like, I wish I’d taken a photo of my bare tummy and I just didn’t do it at all.
So just make sure you take the photos and I think I was so busy kind of thinking how are we gonna manage the logistics of this? And like I was doing these different like night shifts and working on the weekends and stuff, and I probably wish I’d just taken a bit more time to appreciate the wonderfulness of the pregnancy really, I think it’s always worth in life, probably slowing down and enjoying the moment and I think pregnancy’s a really good time to do that.
It’s such an amazing experience. When he was about two days old, I was at the local park and I saw a pregnant woman. I was like, it is the most weird mind blowing thing that like two days earlier I’d been a pregnant woman and then you’re like a person with a baby. It’s magical. Really?
Jamie: Yeah. Really.
Heather: And it’s just taking a moment to. Appreciate the magic as much as you can.
Jamie: And what would you say to that woman who is trying to conceive in her forties?
Heather: I would just wish them all the very best and just send Love. Really, I don’t think I have any great words of advice. I think working on like being as fit and healthy as you can and eating a good diet is great, but I think also just the self-compassion is the most important thing. You can do all those things and it might not work for you. You can do none of those things and you might be pregnant straight away. So trying to just let go to whatever the universe is bringing you, I guess is always good advice for everyone. But yeah, I don’t have any kind of expert tips, but just sending love and best wishes to all those people. Obviously it can be such a challenging journey. And then I just hope that everyone gets their wonderful outcomes.
Jamie: I love it. Heather is, thank you so much for sharing your story.
Heather: Thank you so much for having me on. And thank you for the podcast. I found it really helpful listening to it during my own pregnancy and sending best wishes to everyone who’s still pregnant or planning to be.