Jade – Stage four endometriosis, two vastly different births, postural headaches, fear of second birth, dream water birth, PND

Jade was diagnosed with stage four endometriosis at twenty-one, after years of painful periods and symptoms that were thankfully taken seriously by a good GP early on. When she and Matt decided to start trying, she visited her surgeon first, who advised her to begin trying naturally before considering further surgery. “Because it was quite severe, having babies young is obviously the ideal,” she recalls being told at twenty-one. “I was kind of like, my God, like how young are you meant to start trying to have babies? It wasn’t even on my radar.” Nearly ten years later, they conceived on their second month of trying. “You try not to get pregnant for so long and then yeah, when you actually want it, you really want it. It became all-consuming.”

A challenging first pregnancy

Jade’s first pregnancy was defined by hyperemesis that was never formally named until her third trimester. She was taking the wrong medication, pushing through full PPE shifts at RPA during the height of Sydney’s COVID lockdown, and unable to see her family due to the five kilometre radius restrictions. “There were multiple mornings I kind of woke up and it makes me so sad to even think about it, but I just wished that the pregnancy would miscarry because I just couldn’t cope. It was awful.” She stopped exercising, which hit her mental health hard, and carried a persistent fear throughout the pregnancy that she would not connect with her baby. “I was so terrified that I wouldn’t connect with her because I couldn’t connect with the pregnancy at all.” She and Matt found out the gender, hoping it might help her feel closer to the baby. “I don’t think it really helped,” she admits honestly.

Jade booked into the MGP programme at North Shore, using her father-in-law’s address to get into the catchment. She liked her midwife but did not feel a strong click. “I didn’t really find that I could fully relax around her. She was a very quiet midwife.” She reflects now, through the lens of her doula training, that she simply did not know she had options. “I just assumed you kind of get what you get and that’s it.”

Milla’s birth, and what came after

Jade’s waters broke at thirty-nine weeks to the day, at three in the morning, with contractions beginning within the hour. She went into hospital early, partly because of COVID protocols, and found herself labouring in a birth suite with a midwife she describes as very hands off. “What I really needed was a midwife to be like, hey, get up and move. But she just didn’t. I just have no memory of her suggesting anything.” She spent much of the day horizontal, relying on the TENS machine, with large chunks of her labour lost to gas and air. “It has given me these like chunks of complete blackout in my labor. I just have memory loss.”

After trying the bath and finding it deeply uncomfortable, Jade asked for an epidural. What followed was a prolonged and distressing process involving three attempts, a trainee anaesthetist, and ultimately a full spinal block that was not discussed with her beforehand. “She just kind of did it and then said, I’ve just given you a full spinal block because of how long you’ve had to wait.” The block rose higher than intended, causing significant anxiety. A male doctor entered the room at the two-hour pushing mark and, without consent or warning, manually assisted Milla’s birth. “He just put his fingers inside my vagina and pulled down on my perineum. And I screamed.” Matt has never forgotten it either. “It was so aggressive the way he did it.”

The postpartum period brought its own challenges. Jade developed postural headaches, a known complication of epidural placement into the wrong spinal space, caused by spinal fluid leaking into the brain. “The only way to resolve these headaches is to lie horizontally. There is no pain relief that relieves them.” She missed her parents meeting their first grandchild because she was curled in a foetal position with an eye mask on. A blood patch procedure was attempted twice and failed. The headaches lasted two weeks. “I remember trying to search for podcast episodes or anything around postural headaches because I was convinced she had done permanent damage and that I would have lifelong headaches.”

Breastfeeding was hard initially, with nipple damage and no one showing her how to side-lie feed until a nurse spotted her in the waiting room a week later. “I can’t believe no one showed you how to do this,” the nurse said. Once the headaches cleared and feeding settled, Jade’s postpartum improved. “Comparing it to my second postpartum, it was pretty good,” she says.

Preparing differently for Remi

With a three-year age gap and a lot of fear to work through, Jade approached her second pregnancy with intention. She found a GP who immediately recognised and properly managed her hyperemesis, prescribing Restavit and ondansetron from the outset. “The first trimester was definitely hard, but it was so much better than first time around.” She moved to the Northern Beaches and booked into MGP again, this time clicking immediately with her midwife Lana. She also sat with an anaesthetist to review her notes from North Shore, and was told there was no scoliosis, no structural issue with her back. “Maybe it was just human error,” she says quietly.

At twenty-eight weeks, Jade hired a doula, Lauren, who helped her reframe the fear she had been carrying. “There’s no point trying to get rid of it completely. It’s just more about prepping and educating yourself around your options.” Jade also listened to countless birth podcasts, did far more reading, and built what she describes as a solid support team around her. Her birth plan this time was specific: no epidural, no routine monitoring, Doppler only, and a water birth. “It was a firm no on an epidural. It was an absolute non-negotiable.”

Remi’s birth, chalk and cheese

Labour began at forty weeks and three days, at three in the morning, with a contraction that felt unmistakably different to the week of period cramping that had preceded it. Jade came out to the living room, sat on her ball, and laboured quietly for an hour before waking Matt. Her best friend drove up from Wollongong. “Today is literally the only day I could make it in the week,” she said. Jade wanted to feel surrounded by women. “I just wanted to feel really nurtured and kind of held.”

She laboured at home through the morning, with Matt hip squeezing through every contraction for six hours straight. “If he wasn’t doing it hard enough, I would scream at him to do it harder.” Between contractions they talked, had coffee, and moved through the space together. “It was just chalk and cheese compared to the first time. So like off the back it was just such a different experience to begin with.”

They arrived at the Northern Beaches Hospital in the early afternoon. Lana had set the room up beautifully, fairy lights and all. Jade got into the bath at around four o’clock and laboured there, with Matt continuing to hip squeeze from the edge. Labour intensified quickly. She felt a significant shift as Remi moved deep into her pelvis. “I thought contractions were meant to chill out towards the end,” she says, to gentle laughter from the room. Shortly after, with no clear pushing stage and no one quite expecting it, Remi was born in one mighty contraction, head and body together. Jade reached down instinctively and pulled her up herself. “The next thing you know, I’ve just like pulled her up and everyone’s kind of like, oh my God, she’s here.” Remi was two point eight kilos and cried immediately.

A harder postpartum, and finding her calling

Jade is candid about the fact that her second postpartum was more challenging than her first. Remi had a difficult latch, a large letdown, and was an unsettled baby. Breastfeeding challenges tipped Jade into postnatal depression and anxiety. “It sent me a little bit crazy. I don’t know if that’s too strong a word, but I just felt a little bit unhinged.” She took herself to the GP at five weeks and was referred to Gidget House, but the wait time was ten weeks. “When I really needed the support, it wasn’t there.” She persevered with breastfeeding out of sheer stubbornness, rarely left the house for three months, and did not feel that settled, joyful love for Remi until around eight months. “It doesn’t necessarily come immediately and it can feel quite scary when you don’t get that with your baby.”

It was during this time, chipping away during naps and after bedtimes, that Jade completed her doula training through Vicki Hobbs. “It lit this fire in my belly of wanting to support women off the back of these experiences that I had had.” She now takes on one client a month alongside her nursing shifts, and also offers birth photography. “It’s all the best parts of nursing that I love. Building relationships, meeting people, education, nurturing, caring.”

Jade’s story is a powerful reminder that knowledge is everything, that birth experiences can and do change, and that the hardest seasons often carry the seeds of our greatest purpose.