Carla Hackett – Three Births, Three Different Journeys

Carla’s journey to motherhood began in her mid-thirties after she and her partner Tim had been together for over a decade. “We went from wanting to have no kids to like, oh, all the kids, let’s have a tribe,” she recalls. After conceiving within three months, Carla prepared thoroughly for her first birth, attending yoga classes at Kundalini House and completing a Calm Birth course with Tim, who she affectionately calls her “mandula” (man doula).

“I was trying for a physiological birth. And I feel like trying to pull that off in a hospital setting, you kind of have to put in a lot of work,” Carla explains. She went into spontaneous labor at 40+5 days, laboring at home with her TENS machine before heading to the hospital fully dilated. Though she had hoped for a water birth, after pushing for over an hour, she ended up standing in the bath when her son was born.

“I stood up and I put my leg up on the side of the bath. And he just sort of like, came quite quickly,” she shares. However, what followed was challenging – Carla had sustained a vaginal wall tear that required surgery under spinal anesthesia. “I just lay there and I tried to do some breathing and just close my eyes, but I could just overhear their morning conversation because it was 5am. And they were just talking about other stuff and I’m just trying to stay calm.”

This experience, combined with developing a hematoma and having a catheter, led to significant postpartum anxiety. “By the time I got home, I was just really catatonic,” Carla recalls. “I felt quite disconnected from my body. I didn’t want to touch or look down at my vagina at all. I just felt really traumatized.”

When planning for her second birth during the COVID-19 pandemic, Carla chose private midwifery care for a home birth. “I was wanting to avoid that whole getting in the car situation again, because I feel like I probably could have just had Raph at home if I wasn’t forced to kind of get in a car and go and push for over an hour.”

Carla candidly discusses experiencing gender disappointment when learning her second baby was another boy. “I was just blindsided by how upset I was,” she admits. “I think I always knew I wanted a girl, but I was like, is this the end? I’m going to be a boy mum, two boys.” She worked through these feelings with a therapist before welcoming Noah in a birth that couldn’t have been more different from her first.

“I went down the hallway and I just all of a sudden just huge contractions and they were back to back, just no break,” she describes. The birth progressed so quickly that Tim barely had time to call the midwives. “I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and my face was just like in shock… I was frozen standing up. I just put my hand down like, ‘Tim, the head’s coming, the head’s coming.’ And then he just sort of like, and that was really cool. I felt him turn and then just slide out.”

The entire labor lasted just 30 minutes, with the midwives arriving moments after Noah was born. “I was hyperventilating. I was in shock,” Carla remembers. “People have said like, ‘oh, that’s great. You got it all done with quickly.’ I’m like, but it was the shock, the shock.”

After two boys, Carla still felt strongly about having a daughter. “After Noah was two or three, I’m like, ‘Tim, this is really not going away for me. We really need to try for another baby,'” she shares. The journey wasn’t straightforward – at 40, Carla experienced a chemical pregnancy and then a miscarriage at eight weeks. After an unsuccessful round of fertility treatment, she tried the “sperm meets egg plan” suggested by her birth photographer friend.

“I fell pregnant. I couldn’t believe it,” she says. When they learned they were having a girl, “Tim came in and he just opened the email and he put the phone in my face and it said ‘it’s a girl’ and we both just like laugh-crying just hysterically.”

For her third birth, Carla again chose home birth with private midwives. After laboring through the night, she experienced a lull at 6am and made the decision to send everyone home. “I’m just worried that I’ve called everyone here and they’ve been here all night,” she told her midwife Hannah. “We can either get you some intervention or you can have a panadol and go have a bath and we’ll all go home.” Carla chose the latter, and after a few hours of rest, labor intensified again.

When the midwives returned, Carla got into the birth pool and delivered her daughter in just 15 minutes – with a unique twist. “Hannah just goes ‘membranes intact, membranes intact’ and the membranes were coming out and I was giving birth to like a balloon,” she describes. “I was just like grunting and it was full on.” Baby Maeve was born in her caul (amniotic sac), a rare occurrence often considered lucky.

“We call her mermaid Maeve because it was like, made birth in the water,” Carla says. “I definitely checked between her legs. Yep. Definitely a girl. I could not believe it.”

Throughout her journey, Carla navigated anxiety, physical recovery challenges including a bladder prolapse, and even pneumonia when Maeve was 11 weeks old. Her story beautifully illustrates how each birth experience can be dramatically different, and how preparation, support, and trusting your instincts can help navigate whatever path your birth takes.