Elise Two births, HG, DCDA twins, induced labour, special care nursery, TFMR

Elise fell pregnant with Delilah not long after her permanent residency came through, following what she calls “a not so careful night” while away in Bali. “I remember being like, that’s funny, we might be onto something here,” she says. A test confirmed it before the trip was even over, though she puts the nausea she felt at the time down to hyperemesis gravidarum rather than a big night out. “I’ve had hyperemesis in all three of my pregnancies,” Elise explains. “I was throwing up seven times a day. It was so intense.”

She credits her GP and a dedicated hyperemesis clinic for getting her through it. “Even the system has changed so much. There’s a hyperemesis clinic, they’d send nurses to my house rather than me having to go into hospital. Doctors would call me every day.” Despite the severity of her symptoms, Elise found herself having to justify how unwell she was. “My GP wrote a letter to my work. They could see when I’d go on calls that I was grey. They couldn’t really say I was taking the mick.”

For her first pregnancy, Elise chose to birth at her local hospital, hoping for a water birth. “I really wanted a water birth and they had the facilities.” She spent her pregnancy doing daily visualisation and hypnobirthing, and credits her practitioner Emma with shaping how she approached labour. “The birth I pictured for my daughter was the exact birth that I had, which really was just so special.”

Labour progressed remarkably fast. “My contractions were three and a half to one and a half minutes apart, which was very confusing because they tell you when it’s five minutes apart, go to the hospital.” From the first contraction to Delilah’s birth took just six hours, most of it spent labouring in the bath with her partner Dan applying hip pressure throughout. “That was the best thing. Hips were just the biggest saviour.” Delilah was born into the water and Elise caught her herself. “We both just held her and cried and it was so nice.”

After a strong breastfeeding journey with Delilah and roughly a year of trying for a second baby while breastfeeding, Elise fell pregnant again in Fiji. This pregnancy brought a devastating turn. At her eleven week scan, sonographers identified a significantly enlarged nuchal fold. “They said there’s signs in this scan that don’t look like a healthy baby. There’s an incredibly high chance of the baby having Down syndrome or trisomy eighteen or trisomy thirteen.” Further testing confirmed trisomy 18, a condition not compatible with life.

Elise and Dan made the decision to pursue a termination for medical reasons. “The main reason being how much I was just not coping with the sickness and my body, and I couldn’t imagine having to give birth to the baby in that way. It just felt really hard for me to deal with.” She speaks with deep gratitude for her obstetrician, Dr Andy Pickering of Manly Beach Babies, who supported her through the procedure without charge. “I asked him how much it was going to cost and he said, I would never charge you for bad news. He held my hand as I got taken in. From that moment he was just someone I look up to massively.”

Two months later, Elise fell pregnant again, and this time a vivid dream about boy girl twins turned out to be prophetic. A scan at eight weeks confirmed DCDA (dichorionic diamniotic) twins. “I was more like, oh my God, Dan, I called this. This is amazing.” Hyperemesis returned with full force, compounded by caring for a toddler and working part time, but Elise again found comfort in a hyperemesis clinic and community support.

By 32 weeks, growth scans and Doppler monitoring flagged concerns for twin B. “Twin B’s dopplers, the blood flow from the cord to the placenta, was getting higher until it went abnormal at 35 weeks.” With a very short cervix from early pregnancy and using vaginal progesterone throughout, Elise made it to 36 weeks before her obstetrician recommended induction to give both twins the best chance at a vaginal birth. “Andy said twin B’s not going to have the same reserve twin A’s going to have, and they’ll struggle in labour. If you want a vaginal birth, you want to give them the best chance.”

The induction moved quickly. Her waters were broken at 7:40am and contractions started almost immediately. “By eight thirty I was in labour and it was getting pretty intense. By ten forty Posey was born.” Elise used a TENS machine and laboured on her hands and knees with Dan supporting her hips, just as she had with Delilah. “It was different this time. I knew what was happening. Dan said I was roaring my head off. He called it primal.”

After Posie’s birth, contractions paused for ten minutes before pushing resumed for Ziggy. Partway through, his heart rate dropped significantly. “It dropped to seventy, which is not good. They kept the room so calm.” With Elise’s consent, her obstetrician used a vacuum for a single push to help Ziggy be born quickly. He arrived floppy, with his cord wrapped twice around his neck, and needed brief resuscitation before recovering well. “His Apgar was one at birth, but by ten minutes it was eight.” Because Elise had no epidural, she was able to get up within fifteen minutes and go straight to special care with her son. Both twins spent several nights in the special care nursery for prematurity related jaundice before coming home.

Reflecting on the birth itself, Elise says she has been able to separate the labour, which felt calm, empowering and exactly as she’d hoped, from the frightening moments immediately afterwards. “I never got stitches and I could feel good in my body at least.” She’s now navigating breastfeeding twins, toddler adjustment, and the practicalities of three children under three in a two bedroom apartment, supported by her mother visiting from Scotland, a strong local friendship network including several midwives and doulas, and a postpartum doula of her own. “I feel very held and loved right now.”