“Isaac and I had been together for a year when I realised my period was six days late. We were scared at the start…we were the first of our friends and siblings to have a baby.”

Her cousin and a few of her friends are midwives at Geelong Hospital so she enrolled with the Midwifery Group Practice (MGP) there and felt in particularly safe hands. Apart from mild nausea in her first trimester she sailed through her pregnancy and, towards the end, tried every old wives tale to get labour going. The pineapple, sex, hot curries, dates, clary sage and curb walking didn’t work immediately but, of course, her labour started eventually.

“I just felt so large and heavy at the end; that feeling like you’ve eaten too much – it was constant. I thought I had wet my pants one night but it was my waters….the next morning my midwife did a home visit and told me to wait a few hours and then make my way to hospital.”

When she arrived her blood pressure was high and after an internal examination the midwife whisked her straight to the birthing suite. Georgia admits that she really internalised in the depths of her labour; went deep into a zone that she imagines is what hypnobirthing is like.

“I remember asking Issac for lip gloss over and over and afterwards when I asked him; he told me I never actually said the words…it was all in my head. Isn’t that fascinating!

“I was swaying and trying to feel comfortable and I was so hot which is related to high blood pressure (which just came on during labour)…I was sitting on the toilet and I felt like the head was coming and I got Isaac to look and he saw the baby’s hair so he hit the emergency button and the midwives came and helped me onto the bed and Tex was born after a few more pushes.

“We were both a bit in shock; we were looking at him and commenting on his little cauliflower ears and bum chin. We did delayed cord clamping but I asked for the syntocinon injection because I just wanted to placenta out of me…I really didn’t like the feeling of it coming out.”

“Breastfeeding felt quite weird and foreign at the start but the midwives really helped me, specifically with latching him and getting the angles right. We only stayed in the hospital for 4 hours and we must have looked like deers in headlights walking out of the hospital because a midwife stopped us and said: remember to look both ways before you cross the road.”

Georgia decided to get her placenta encapsulated both times and admits she felt incredibly level headed and normal and hasn’t once had the baby blues.

“For the first few days of taking them I had a significant burst of energy… I’d take them in the afternoon for a little pick-me-up and honestly, I would do it for every pregnancy I have. It is so worth the money.”

Tex had his last breastfeed on his first birthday and coincidentally, Georgia fell pregnant again that night. She had more pain in her pelvis during Ivy’s pregnancy and while she was convinced she was having a boy as everything felt so similar to her first pregnancy, she was shocked and elated when she discovered she was having a girl.

“I was on a zoom call with my girlfriends during lockdown when one of my friends asked if I was in labour and a couple of hours later I felt some mild contractions but I slept during the night. The next morning I called the midwife and told her that I was close; I had some toast and got in the shower and they got so much more intense so I called the midwife again and told her I was coming in. We got there about 10am; the midwife dimmed the lights and had a salt lamp on and I laboured and had a sudden urge to go to the toilet so the midwife put a towel over the toilet in case I did birth there.

“And then I heard this big splash and it was really dramatic and I looked down and the water was really dark so we knew we had to get the baby out. I stood up and I said: the baby is coming now! and the midwife told me that was wonderful but I refused to have my baby in the toilet.

“I was standing and leaning against the sink…I really didn’t have to push; my body did the work for me. She fed straight away and I had a good look at Ivy’s placenta; it was much bigger than Tex’s. We had to stay for six hours because they wanted to monitor Ivy in case there were any issues with there being meconium in the waters.

“It was so lovely to spend the first few weeks as a family together without interruptions from visitors.”