Tori – Nutritionist turned midwife, breastfeeding challenges, EMDR, pregnancy anxiety, emergency caesarean, home VBAC

Tori’s Journey to Motherhood

Tori, a nutritionist working in women’s health research, always knew she wanted children but couldn’t quite envision it until she met her partner Jamie. “I’ve always loved the idea of family and I have always thought that I would have babies, but it hasn’t been something that I’ve been super focused on. I think I found it really hard to imagine until I actually met the right person.”

After a year together, they began trying to conceive. Tori threw herself into preparation: “I just delved into everything. So I already have a bit of a background in women’s health… I was really excited to do all the prep. So we planned ahead a little bit. We knew when we wanted to start trying and I just started reading the books, listening to all the podcasts, researching my options for care providers.”

Early Loss and Its Impact

Their first pregnancy came after three months of trying, but ended in a missed miscarriage discovered at 10 weeks. “Unfortunately that ended in a missed miscarriage… I had a real suspicion that I might’ve had quite low progesterone. I’d done a bit of research. I had quite a short luteal phase.”

The experience of waiting for confirmation was particularly challenging: “I had a few different scans just to see, is it a miscarriage? Have we just got the dates wrong? Because on the early scan you could see the gestational sack and you could see the yolk sack, but it just wasn’t a heartbeat… I think I knew that it wasn’t, but that waiting period’s hard because you’re just in limbo.”

Despite the difficulty, Tori found strength in sharing her experience: “The day of the D&C I popped a text in my family group chat… and just let them know I was going in for this day procedure… The next day when I got home from that procedure, I got three beautiful bouquets of flowers delivered… I felt so loved and supported.”

Soul’s Complicated Pregnancy

After one cycle, they conceived Soul, but this pregnancy was marked by anxiety and complications. “I think I was happy to see it, but I was just terrified. It was just so much anxiety… I just felt like I couldn’t relax until I had him in my arms.”

Early complications included a subchorionic haematoma: “Around the 10 week mark, I had a big gush of blood… It just ended up being that I had a subchorionic haematoma… I was told… just take it really easy. Don’t exercise, don’t do too much vigorous movement.”

Care Provider Challenges

Tori’s journey through different care models highlights the importance of finding the right fit. Initially accepted into a birth centre, she was later excluded due to fibroids: “Unfortunately, looking at my scans, they saw that I had a couple of fibroids… I was risked out. So based on these fibroids, I wasn’t eligible to have care at the birth centre.”

This led to uncertainty about her birth options: “One of these fibroids is quite close to your cervix. And what that might mean is that the baby’s head may not be able descend down and have a vaginal birth. So it might need to be a caesarean… I had this whole pregnancy up until 36 weeks. I didn’t know if I could even have a vaginal birth.”

Emergency Caesarean

At 40 weeks, a routine scan revealed serious complications: “We had static growth, so no growth whatsoever. So he was exactly the same size as he had been four weeks earlier. And oligohydramnios. So absolutely no amniotic fluid at all… suspected placental insufficiency. So essentially my placenta really wasn’t functioning very well anymore.”

The induction process was challenging, with Soul showing signs of distress: “His CTG wasn’t great… terrible trace lots and lots of decelerations. I think about two in the morning, the doctor popped in and was like, I think we have to call it. I think it needs to be a caesarean. And I was like, I completely agree.”

Breastfeeding Struggles and Healing

Tori’s breastfeeding journey with Sol was difficult: “I had not known until that time that I had quite flat nipples… we just couldn’t get him to latch in recovery… That was the beginning of really difficult breastfeeding journey for us.”

She ended up triple feeding for six months: “I would pump and hand express and we just ended up in that triple feeding… after a while we didn’t, I didn’t even offer the breast. I just would give any express milk I had and then I would pump myself.”

Recognising the need for healing, Tori sought EMDR therapy: “I had a lot of grief around the breastfeeding not working out, and that’s when I saw a local psychologist and did some EMDR therapy around the breastfeeding grief. And that was amazingly helpful.”

She explains the process: “The idea of EMDR is that you work on the memory and you desensitise it, so you strip back the emotion and then you reprocess it and you file it away, back in the back of your memories… I could think about that experience I’d had and I felt less emotion around it.”

Surprise Second Pregnancy

While studying midwifery full-time, Tori discovered she was pregnant again: “She was a complete surprise. And a big shock… I was really upset, to be honest. I thought, oh no, because the exact timing meant that I would graduate uni in December, I would become a midwife… and she was gonna be born in April. So the timing was just terrible.”

However, she quickly took action: “Even though I was upset… I walked out the door… and I sent an email to a beautiful private midwife here in Perth. And I was like, if we’re doing this, I want a private midwife.”

A Different Pregnancy Experience

This pregnancy was markedly different: “I don’t know, I didn’t have the fear of miscarriage… I could hold these two. It was a good outcome either way, if I could frame it like that… I didn’t have the anxiety over miscarriage. I had this beautiful relationship with Vanessa where I could tell her there were things I was worried about, but she just, we just talked through them.”

The Perfect Birth

Juno’s birth began with early labour lasting three days: “That was absolutely the first sign of labour. And that was the Tuesday night. And it was a good three days… it was this sort of slow onset of labour, lots of early contractions… I had really prepped myself mentally for early labour, going for ages because I just didn’t wanna get to the point where it was just, it felt too much or too long.”

The birth itself was everything Tori had hoped for: “Pretty much she’d only been here a few minutes and that’s when I just complete involuntary urge to push. And I wouldn’t even describe it as pushing. It was just this baby was just coming… I just birthed her in the pool, just on my knees and pulled her up to me and yeah, it was incredible.”

Successful Breastfeeding

The contrast in breastfeeding experiences was remarkable: “I had this beautiful alert baby, hadn’t needed any resuscitation… came into the world in such a calm way… When you get those babies and they’re just really alert and they just want to feed and they open their mouth wide and they make it so easy for you.”

Tori continues to breastfeed Juno at 18 months: “I’m still feeding her now, so she’s 18 months and we’re still feeding, which is so nice… it’s really special to have that bond with her. And nice to have that experience.”

Professional Growth

Tori’s personal experiences have informed her professional practice: “I feel like it’s such a privilege to listen to women talk about their experiences because I took all of that… I really took that into my training as a midwife, and it’s really helped just to think about everything from the woman’s point of view.”

She now works as both an agency midwife and continues her nutrition practice: “I work on the postnatal ward mostly… it’s really nice to be able to work as a midwife, consolidate my skills. I’m still learning so much. And then the other thing I do still work as a nutritionist in the pregnancy space.”

Key Takeaways:

• Early pregnancy loss can create lasting anxiety that affects subsequent pregnancies
• The importance of finding care providers who align with your values and support your choices
• EMDR therapy can be highly effective for processing birth and feeding trauma
• Breastfeeding difficulties don’t define your ability to feed future babies successfully
• Sometimes the most unexpected pregnancies lead to the most healing experiences
• Professional training combined with personal experience creates compassionate, informed care providers

Tori’s story is a powerful reminder that healing is possible, that our bodies are capable of different experiences, and that with the right support, subsequent births can be profoundly transformative.  You can connect with Tori at Pregnancy Nutrition Simplified