Tag: Barcelona

C: Hi, my name is Charlotte Hornsby, and I’m living currently in Madrid in Spain,

P: and how many kids do you have.

C: We have three children. I’ve got a daughter who is 13 and little boy, two little boys. One who is six, and another one who is seven turning eight in October.

P: before you were on this journey to create a family. I’m sure you’ve had some idea about what pregnancy would be like, how would you imagine it would go?

C: So, I was never somebody that really thought too much about you know the marriage and having babies and having family. I’d always known exactly what I wanted to do as a career. Also, so when I was around 16, I started my period when I was about 14 to an A 13. I had a lot of issues with with periods. I was having you know very long periods, short periods, two in a month, sometimes not one for a while, and I was told that the likelihood was, I would have issues getting pregnant, if I was able to get pregnant. And that was when I was around 16,16 and a half, something like that. So, I think in the back of my head. If it hadn’t happened. You know, it wasn’t something that I dreamed of just in case…. you know? and then, as you know, as often happens, you meet somebody, and it just clicks. You want to have children with these, this person. I’m a very independent person. And I’m also quite laid back so again I wasn’t planning I wasn’t thinking too much about pregnancy, I just presumed, everything would go okay. And finally I, you know, I have quite a strict Catholic upbringing. So, I never talked to my mom about pregnancy. You know, giving birth, nothing. Literally nothing. In fact, when I was asking my mother about childbirth. When I, you know, when I was pregnant and she told me it was like a bad period. That was, you know, and that’s sort of– I can set the scene for how much discussion went on in my household about pregnancy and babies…. it just was…It was just something that happened you didn’t talk about it. The woman dealt with it.  So that was my kind of background to to pregnancy. Yeah.

P: Wow. All I can say is wow. Do you laugh with your mother now about the bad period story or no?

C: After I gave birth, my to my daughter and I did call her on the phone and I said to her, I don’t know what kind of hell of a period you have. And that was nothing like my birth, and she was just like I don’t know what I could have said to you, you know, what am I gonna say it’s really painful. Okay. We do laugh about it now. Yeah. I’ll try to speak more to my daughter about it but then I got…

P: I feel like that’s not much preparation.

C: I know it was no preparation, I moved to Spain when I was 26 . And it was just a few years later that you know I got pregnant for the first time, but no one in my group of friends had had babies yet. So, you know, I was one of the first going through it. I think maybe if you know you’d had a close family member, you know a friend who’d had a baby you might be a bit more aware of everything that goes on. You know, you see the Hollywood movie idea of morning sickness or all of that. But the actual practicalities of getting pregnant and being pregnant. I was pretty. Yeah, pretty naive, let’s say.

P: So, with, with all that preparation Did you get pregnant, easily, the first time?

C:  Yeah, like, so I got pregnant them the first time around, 28, and I was working, we were both working, my husband and I were both working we’re both traveling, and I didn’t really know I was pregnant for probably about eight nine weeks something like that maybe a bit more, because I’ve had such irregular periods.

P: Yeah,

C: so, you know, it didn’t surprise me that, you know, I hadn’t had a period. And then I think probably around six weeks, five weeks, something like that. I had that implement… implementation bleeding I think it’s called. So I presume that had been my period so I really didn’t think anything of it I didn’t have any symptoms let’s say, for a you know for a while, and then around eight nine weeks it was like, Okay, well, still haven’t had a period. I took a pregnancy test, found out we were pregnant. And then, I don’t know why we just sort of carried on, like you know it was okay, there’s nothing we can really do you know like do you okay you know we were happy, but we were both very busy with work. So, and let’s say because it wasn’t something we talked about previously or something we talked about much with my family. Yeah I told them, but then it wasn’t really a discussion, much more after that. And I just presumed everything would go, fine, you know, and, you know, when I needed to worry about it. I would start worrying about it. And then I went for the scan in Spain, it’s, it’s quite a controlled process, you immediately go with a doctor or a gynecologist. It’s, you know it isn’t a midwife led it’s not a, it’s not really a woman controlled thing it’s like, you will go and see a gynecologist. You will go and see them every month, you will see this, and my gynecologist was a man. He was an older man who was probably in his late 60s man, who was considered to be a very experienced gynecologist in in Barcelona, and I would imagine that he has been delivering babies for the same way for 40 years.

P: Yeah.

C: You didn’t ask any question you know it was really yeah just, I’m telling you what to do, I will tell you, everything’s okay. Yeah. I was so around nearly 16 weeks, I had this spotting, you know you read as you do on the internet. Fatal thing to read on the internet. They say, you know, rest. So we did bedrest, but unfortunately, the bleeding got heavier very very quickly, and I miscarried at 16 weeks, and I fully miscarried, I…..ahhhhh….I was in the bathroom in a toilet, you know, and you can feel everything passing. Feels like cramps. I didn’t go to the hospital. We actually. I don’t really know my husband didn’t really know how to cope with it, either. And, yeah, it was such a surprise because you’d never think…no one ever speaks about miscarriages.

P: Yeah.

C: And, you know, even if you know everything about it you only speak about pregnancy and babies and, you know, breastfeeding and. So, after it happened. Well, you know i. It was very it was very upsetting. But we didn’t really get we never really talked about it as a couple, too much. And what we did do is try and get pregnant very quickly afterwards. And I wanted to get pregnant very quickly afterwards.  And I decided to change my doctor, as well, because I had, you know, after I miscarried obviously we did go to the doctor and I did go and see him. And yeah, I mean he is. There’s nothing there you know there’s nothing we can do. So, I don’t think doctors either are trained to know what to do, or to say, with a miscarriage, like it was very much and you haven’t had to go to hospital you haven’t had to you know it was even though it was quite late, 16 weeks or,

P: Yeah, that is late.

C:I didn’t have to deliver I didn’t have like contraction pain.

P: I checked in with an OB doctor Nicole Wilcox to ask about the medical training doctors receive to manage news of a miscarriage. Hi doctor Welcome to the show.

Dr. Wilcox: Hi, thank you for having me.

P: I’m assuming doctors are trained to talk about miscarriage or what’s your experience.

Dr. Wilcox: Yes, you know, I think we all, you know in training experience having to break that news to a patient. Of course it’s a devastating thing. And it’s uncomfortable, but at least at this you know at this point in time, I think you can’t go into the field of Obstetrics without, you know, knowing that this is part of the job you know and you know it’s it’s not so much book learning as on the job learning how to, you know, gently break news. You know, prepare somebody give them time, you know, to let the information sink in and watching other people. You know what, you know, watching your, your teachers and your attendings sort of model that for you. Yeah,

P: yeah, that sounds it’s hard on all ends.

Dr. Wilcox: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.

C: And I think also I probably gave the impression of I’m fine. You know, I’m coping with it. Let’s move on. So we did, and I got pregnant again. I think I took a test when I was about six weeks, because I think I was more conscious about it this time I probably was a little bit more on it. We went to do the scan at around 10 weeks which is a little bit early, you know they say really you go to do a proper scan to see the heartbeat and everything around 12 weeks here. But I think I was probably a little bit more keen, and I know that miscarriage in my head this time was really yeah it was in my head.

P: Yeah,

C: that it never had been before. So actually the pregnancy wasn’t too bad. I had a bit of morning sickness…You know nothing, nothing really terrible. I followed on this book. What to Expect When You’re Expecting which I hadn’t done the first time.

P: Yeah,

C: so as you can see I was really on top of it. I think I probably was killing Nuno with. Oh the baby is now this size and that size. Now, you have a bit of like a probably in my head I had a bit of a worry when I was getting past that 16 weeks stage.

P: Yeah,

C: But I was going to a female gynecologist. She would be scanning and weighing, which is very important in Spain, they like to weigh you every time to make sure you’re not gaining too much weight. Again, very different from the UK, like you’re really only allowed to gain, no weight in the first trimester a few kilos in the second and a few kilos in the third, and they’re really on top of weight gain in Spain…

P:  because it’s not healthy for the baby or ?

C: not healthy for the baby not healthy for the mother. So really are it’s very much like control, I think that’s what I remember more than anything is being weighed a lot. And so, then we just everything was seemed to be going fine didn’t have any real problems. We’re still playing squash at around 24 weeks…. that my husband and did say no, no more, you’re, you are very competitive so he banned squash at that time, and then we decided to go for a weekend last weekend as a couple by ourselves we flew into Paris and midway through dinner, you know, instead of sort of complaining that some pain in my stomach, we got home, we see a large red lump hot right on my side, right side my body, and we call the doctor in Paris. The doctor came, so they came to the hotel, as opposed to us going to the hospital. And then I actually got taken in an ambulance to the American Hospital in Paris, and they said it’s your appendix. I was now 28 weeks pregnant.

P: Wow….

C: you can’t have the same anesthetization that you would do it just everything is is a lot more complicated also apparently if you, if you do too much the body begins to make the contraction to start expel it you know, just,

P: yeah.

C: I remember it.  You have local.

P: That means you’re awake.

C: You’re, you’re awake. You’re awake, which is you can’t feel anything. You can’t feel anything. But yeah you’re awake through it because they’re really monitoring, everything. I think it went fine. But yeah, I started contracting, which is quite painful, on an open wound.

P: Ah, God, wow

C: so that was that was quite painful. and in hospital for around 10 days afterwards, just because I was contracting so much I couldn’t be moved, they were giving me injections to try and stop my body from from contracting from the body from contracting. Then, we, we had to fly back to Barcelona.

P: So the drugs they gave you stop and contractions?

C: Yeah, they do, they stop. So, but you have to take them, I can’t remember how many times but I know I was injecting myself, my leg probably twice a day I think I, you know, I can’t remember exactly but I remember it was a couple of times a day that I would have to give myself an injection in my leg, and I was in bed rest, essentially, I didn’t go back to work in the office, just because I could not be walking around. After you know after this operation, they gave me steroids for the baby’s lungs. I think at around 33 weeks, something like that.

P: Breathing problems are the main cause of death and serious health problems for preemies and here’s why. The lungs are still maturing in the third trimester. In the last few weeks of pregnancy, alveoli–the tiny air sacs that fill with air when we breathe– are forming.  To work efficiently these air sacs need a chemical called surfactant, and they don’t have enough of it until around 36 weeks. This is where steroids come in, they can help fetal lungs make surfactant so the preemie can breath more easily when it’s born.  Steroids also reduce the chances of the premature baby will encounter bleeding in the brain and serious bowel complications.

C: And they said that they were going to stop it at 34 weeks, and two days, because at 35 weeks she would have been okay for delivery but they were hoping that maybe after that period of time, my body might, you know, hang on a little bit longer, so I stopped the injections, literally within two days my waters broke in the morning, so I immediately started. So my waters, my waters broke middle of the night…

P: You knew what it was at this point? we’re on top of things….

C: yeah, now I’m okay with pregnancy. my waters broke, I called my sister, sister and I had always agreed that we would be each other’s birth partners.

P: That’s awesome.

C: So, yeah, it was, you know, it was a really sort of we’re very close. We’re just two years apart you know she was, she sort of gets me like very well. So we had agreed this. However, I had found the pregnancy process in Spain very different to how I had heard about it in the UK. So in the UK you’re encouraged to write a birth plan, and you know it has this idea of whether you want music, or the lights, or, you know, do you want your partner there? you know just has this whole scene setting idea so.

P: Yeah

C: Because I know my Spanish was okay, but it wasn’t fantastic, I probably been reading more from the NHS than I had been from Spanish sites, so I had actually said to my doctor. Oh, when do you, you know, when do you want my birth plan. And she said to me, Well, the plan is that you give birth. And I was like…

P: Ha, ha, oh you read it!

C: Exactly. Thanks, You skipped to the good the part. There was no birth plan in Spain, they don’t care. The, the plan is that the baby gets out safely. That’s it. So I insisted that I wanted a doula, because my doctor had warned me that Alistair my daughter was likely to come early, I knew it was going to have to be more medically controlled, then I would have liked you know I had a bit more of an idea, because I knew she was very little. So I worried about if I was taking drugs, what effect that would have on her. And I worried that it had been quite a stressful pregnancy, so I had tried, as much as I could, in a pregnancy that wasn’t going perfectly, had had a lot of medical intervention to, to bring in some more natural kind of support. So my doctor reluctantly agreed to have her there. She came to my house, my husband was traveling. So, you know yeah it was something…. I hadn’t really wanted him at the actual birth like I expected him to be there to get us to the hospital. My sister to be in the room and for him to be there once the baby was born, but I hadn’t really wanted him there at the actual birth, and he was fine with it. He was not fighting to be in the room, but they did presume he would be in the country. Ha, ha…

P: ha, ha…

C: The doula, she came, and I had gone back to sleep after waters breaking. I’d had a shower. You know I’ve been eating, relaxing. Thinking everything was going pretty well. And then at some point we went to the hospital and it does change everything. You go from feeling very much that you’re in control and in and relaxed, to feeling. Yeah, this, you know, this is serious now this is, I don’t know it it just takes you out of your control zone your into someone else’s place.

P: Yeah, it feels like something’s being done to you.

C: And it was, for sure, it was right get onto the bed you know I luckily had the doula that we were both saying, No, she wants to move around. She wants to go on the ball you know this.

P: Yeah, yeah,

C: that you can sit on…and I I locked myself in a toilet at one point, there’s you know I went through I’m sure what every woman giving birth goes through it’s coming out the wrong way. You know it’s breaking my body, and I’m sure it’s going through a bone or, you know, a little bit of the plug or something comes out, I think I’ve done it now you look in the toilet to see if you’ve given birth,

P:….or a very bad period,

C: or very bad period yes stinging. It was stinging…. I didn’t have an epidural I had some painkiller, put in the nurses were pushing and pushing me to have some painkiller. What they want is the woman to be in bed with an epidural. And, and to get the baby out.

P: Yeah,

C: well they don’t want is the woman to be walking around taking a long time to have a baby.

P: Yeah,

C: so, you know, I really can’t stress enough how many times we had to say, No, we’re fine. No, I’m okay. No, I don’t want the lights turned on, no I don’t need that, you know, so now it progressed, it wasn’t that long…she took a couple of hours from waters breaking from when the contractions really started my sister was there. Yeah, and she came out she was very little. She was very little she you know she was under a kilo and a half. I think it’s like….

P: It’s like two pounds and change or something…

C: Yeah, I think it’s under three pounds, which is tiny. You know when my husband saw her he kind of freaked out a little bit we have a photo of her next to the old Nokia phone.

P: Oh wow.

C: She really is. She’s, and she, she looked very alien. She looked as if she wasn’t ready to come out you know her eyes were still very pulled she didn’t have any fat buildup on her body, and she didn’t have a suckling motion.

P: Yeah

C: so they tried to put you in, put the baby to the breast, because I had said and luckily the doula again. And I was like, No, she wants to breastfeed because they were very keen to get her feeding with a bottle.

P: Yeah.

C: And we were like, No, no, we would be trying to work her jaw. We express milk and pipetted it in… in Spain they take the baby away, you’re in your room, they take the baby away they bring her back. When she cries, and then they take her away again. And you have to insist that you don’t want cologne on the baby.

P: Oh my god.

C: Yeah. And they were very concerned that she wasn’t having her ears pierced despite being so tiny, because otherwise how would anyone know that she was a girl.

P: Also funny

C: It’s a really, really strange. You know, but in the end, she had a lot of good care, I have to say and I did feel very secure that if anything had gone wrong, we would definitely be in the right place. And considering her weight considering you know how early it had been considering the drugs that had to be taken I think all of those obviously had an impact on her for how much she’d grown. You know, we came out of the hospital, were able to take her home. And she would sleep a lot. We had to like wake her up to try and feed. But, yeah, I mean it, it went pretty well considering first baby, and that you know we were by ourselves. touchwood. She’s a very healthy very strong 13 year old. Now,

P: that’s a very good ending.

C: That is a good ending!

P: How old does she get before you get pregnant again?

C: So I wanted this two year gap that I had had. So probably yeah she was about 17,18 months when we started trying again. And it just didn’t happen, for whatever reason, wasn’t happening and it was probably it was like four years down the line, it’s still not happening. The doctor you know we were still seeing the same gynecologist and didn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason for it. I did have my mother telling me, you know like, as mothers like to do. It’s really strange because you know I just had three babies every two years and no problem and if I’d wanted to have more then…..thanks for that ever so helpful. Yeah, great advice. Don’t make me feel bad, you know, I think, I think, in a way, my husband probably would have been okay with just one child, like, you know, He may have wanted a boy, but she was such a good child, like she really, you know, she didn’t cry she did everything you would still she was just so easy and so nice that we weren’t maybe stressing as much as if she’d been really difficult and us thinking oh my god we really need to have another one now otherwise we’re never going to do it. So around. Now you get four and a half years. I got pregnant again. I didn’t feel anything. Didn’t have morning sickness didn’t have issues, was going to the same doctor. Everything seemed fine around February. We went to ski, well I wasn’t skiing, but you know, and I was 17 and a half, nearly 18 weeks, just here just in Andorra, and I began to get cramps, and no spotting at that time but yeah the cramps were bad so it was it was weird. Again, weirdly after having a successful pregnancy hadn’t been thinking of miscarriage, like, just didn’t come into my head began to get some spotting. There was spotting. And it got pretty bad. So we decided to go to the hospital because it wasn’t progressing like it had the first time, I think we actually called the hospital and they said to come in and Nuno couldn’t come into the room with me. It was a public hospital because we weren’t in Barcelona with my doctor there were two, two nurses there, and I you know I knew something was wrong, because I had, you know, when you read on the internet, tells you about spotting.

P: Yeah,

C: and it’s about the color of the blood, and you know, this is red blood. This isn’t old.

P: Right. Right.

C: You know something’s wrong. And they decided to do the scan, like as if you were having a scan. You know, like a pregnancy scan, and there was no sound like no heartbeat. And then they turned. No, you can see on the screen, and that they you know they turned the screen away afterwards, and the doctor said “No hay nada”, there’s nothing there.  I had to have a DNC, which I use the term as if I know exactly what they do, I don’t know, I decided never to look too much, what they do. I know it’s used when you miscarry but you don’t have a complete miscarriage, right, I, I found this miscarriage, even though it was a very. It was a similar time to the other one maybe a little bit later. Very difficult, very difficult, because, because I had to go to hospital.

P: Yeah,

C: because I had to have intervention.

P: Yeah,

C: to finish the process. It felt a lot more like my fault, like a choice I had made, even though it wasn’t. It felt like I had intervened in the pregnancy. And, which is crazy because, you know, I had done the same as I’d done with the other two, but I found it really tough. I found it really, really tough.

P: I checked in with Dr. Wilcox again, to find out how patients commonly respond to miscarriage.

Dr. Wilcox: First thing patients want to know is what they did to cause it. Yeah. And they essentially it’s hardly ever the case that they’ve caused it. So I always make sure to review that with them to say it’s not because you exercised, it’s not because you had sex it’s not because you ate sushi. Yeah, you know, or you took Tylenol or whatever it is, that, That, that, you know, we know that this is just, you know, one in five pregnancies this happens. And you have to empathize, you often have to go over that several times for them to really hear it it’s just like hearing you have cancer, you know that, you know, very often everything else, after that, you know, they’re there you know you’re not hearing it.

C: And I had contractions with it, I, I didn’t have to deliver like you know these horror stories. I didn’t have any of that.

P: Yeah,

C: I just do remember that I remember having having this scan, which you associate with a good thing because it’s when you find out you’re pregnant. When you first hear the heartbeat.

P: Yeah,

C: you know, all of those positive things them doing a scan, and not turning the screen away and not being trained to turn the screen away.

P: Yeah.

C: That’s something…..

P: Right. Yeah, it is super hard. Yeah, I feel like we would all be a little bit better served, obviously if people spoke about miscarriage but also if you knew that the miscarriage rate was relatively high it would be hard to blame yourself for the outcome. Because …

C: exactly because you would understand that this happens so much.

P: Yeah, it’s so frequent that that are like the implementation isn’t quite right or the or the cell division isn’t quite right…

C: and that you know and you can read about, you know the fact that it’s nearly always fetal abnormality that has caused, you know, the miscarriage and, you know, after having one, you obviously do read a lot. But, yeah, having having to go through a procedure to clear things up to, to finish the pregnancy was just a very different, a very, very different experience, and I don’t blame the nurses because they are in just a general Ward, you know, they weren’t…

P: They weren’t ob nurses yeah

C: you know it’s it’s literally just a woman comes in, far along in the pregnancy business, and they knew I mean I guess they knew from what you know what was happening. Yeah. Pregnancy had already completed as I think. So, we didn’t get pregnant immediately after that, again, we didn’t really speak about it, we don’t speak about miscarriage. And it’s funny, even after going through two I don’t think it’s something I would probably tell my daughter that it happened to me, but I’m not sure I would go into too much detail about it because, much like pregnancy, I do feel it’s something very personal. For each woman and just presuming that something that’s happened to you, how it’s going to be for someone else maybe, you know I would tell her it’s happened so she’s aware.

P: Yeah.

C: But I think it. You know, maybe it will be really tough for her and the fact that the first one I coped with okay you know wouldn’t help or the fact that the second one was only bad because of that. So, you know, so it’s a hard subject. It’s a very hard subject and yeah I don’t, we don’t speak about it really ever. Anyway, I did get pregnant again, we’re still in Barcelona, same doctor, a lot of intervention, a lot of I had terrible morning sickness. You know I’d be sitting on a sofa, turn my head and vomit, like for nothing. So, I had to go into hospital because I was so dehydrated. It was the middle of summer in Barcelona and it’s really hot.

P: Yeah.

C: And you know, this time you have a child, so you don’t rest as much, but the difference in insane in a good way, maybe, is that they also don’t think women should suffer because you’re pregnant. Yeah, so they will give you medicine to help with morning sickness, which I found out later in the UK, they do not do, it’s this stupid idea that I think it’s only because women are pregnant, that you get told Well, a healthy pregnancy will have morning sickness, which is rubbish, that you were getting sickness and have a, you know, an issue. Yeah. Absolutely none but you know it’s some of these ideas that woman need to suffer and it’s just part of this natural process that we have to go through, but I had various minerals or whatever that were low so I had to take more medicine. I was being monitored, a lot I was being monitored on a monthly basis, but I actually often have morning sickness was under control which I think I suffered for until I was about 16 weeks. When I went to hospital, probably till about 24 weeks, I was having to take medicine to stop myself vomiting. But after 24 weeks. It was okay. And we were quite excited, we didn’t know what it was going to be, which we had known with Alicai because the doctor in France had just said, Oh, she let go. And I knew, because of what happened with Alicai think that the likelihood was you know it was going to be medical controlled throughout. And so, and when that started two weeks before. Just a checkup. I felt fine been working, and the doctor said okay, you know you feel like okay, well, fine. Okay. Yeah, the heartbeats pretty weak. Okay. Have you noticed the baby moving. No, but, you know, very busy and working full time child, you know, traveling, and nothing. So they gave me a juice drink baby didn’t respond. They did this a Doppler where they see the oxygen and, and she said okay baby needs to come out. I’m like 32 weeks. So no, she needs to come out a he and the baby needs to come out to this, so I’m like, Okay, let me call my husband and I will go get my bag you know that I’ll be whatever I’m thinking, can’t be that I don’t know I just didn’t really hit me what she was saying, you know, so she could no, it needs to come out now. So, I had gone to the hospital with a girl from the office, who was my assistant. Who’d never had a baby, who wasn’t married, who knew nothing.

 And I’m like, oh, okay, so I’m there writing an email to China, which is my job. And, while they and I think I just got into the zone of this can’t be happening it’s not, it’s not real, because they broke my waters, because she wanted to see if he was the baby was actually quite a good size, like, you know, for the 32 weeks he was quite.

P: Yeah,

C: good considering very early. So, waters broken, and she said to me, you know like, you need to take this a bit more seriously. You’re about to have a baby. I don’t know why I, you know, it just wasn’t computing. Anyway, I had to go into another room, they prepped me for cesarean, because there was something wrong with the baby’s heartbeat and there was something wrong with the placenta. And again, because I don’t have that much knowledge and I still didn’t have that much knowledge, you trusted I just trusted the doctor I just did what they’re telling me I had the epidural. And they began to take oxygen levels, from the baby’s head, but they did say that he you know he was progressing down there, because he wasn’t in place to come out,

P:  right, right

C:  but once the waters broke. Luckily probably because he was so small. You know, he was moving down. So they said okay looks good, but there is this time, where it’s. If you go too late and you have an emergency scenario, it is more complicated because the baby is too far down the channel, you know, so they wanted to see his oxygen levels his oxygen levels were not great, but you know manageable. And I think, I don’t know how long but it was a couple of, you know, it wasn’t love between waters breaking, him being born and coming out, blue, and I mean really, blue, and I was because of the epidural I think I was in this weird, you know, place I didn’t really know, but I just can see a baby who’s really he really was. He didn’t make any noise, and they take him…I’m laying in a bed like this.

P: Yeah, horizontal…

C:  and they took him across the corridor, and I can see loads of medical staff with their, you know PPE, as we all call it now would have medical clothes, all around this table I can’t, you know he’s gone. He’s just in a swarm of bodies, the placenta came out, and the doctor showed me, and I hadn’t really….No idea what a placenta looks like, like, like a sheet of paper with a hole in it. And so this is not normal, you know something, there was something wrong with the placenta. Did you have a trauma. No, you know, like a car accident, as if you wouldn’t mention your doctor physical trauma, no nothing, they presume that I had been hit. And because of, you know, there had been some kind of in their head, there’d been some damage to the placenta because everything had been progressing. Okay,

P: Yeah.

C: So when my husband arrived at the hospital he wasn’t able to come in, immediately because they wanted to ask questions to him and to me to try and, you know, make sure I guess that everything was safe and secure. We managed to convince them it was my placenta got sent to Germany, because it was so unusual. What they had seen but the, the placenta had failed, basically, for whatever reason, it had failed and Byron my, my son had had oxygen depletion at some level. I don’t know how much I don’t know for how long. But he had, he was a similar size, to his sister, you know, more or less, again under the two kilos, very small baby, but he was in an incubator, because they were worried about other you know complications with his lungs he hadn’t had steroids, which is something that they would have given you know if they’d known he was coming early to get his lungs up.

P: If you’d had time, Yeah,

C: with the eyes as well so he would have patches over his eyes. And again, he had no fat, like that. It’s weird to see but it’s what for me it wasn’t because of both babies looked the same, but it’s like a baby but shrunken because you’re used to seeing chubby arms or a big tummy. And it’s not like that they’ve got the skin. But you can you can almost see through it and you can’t see there’s no fat.

P: Yeah.

C: They look like so they’re their faces look very pulled. They look very pulled. Again we stayed in hospital, it’s obviously more complicated because we had my daughter at home, but I know that if we’d been in England, having Byron, he wouldn’t have survived. It was only…

P: Wow, why do you say that?

C: because you don’t have the same interventionist idea and follow on, and I know this because obviously I had a baby afterward in England that they would have been monitoring and checking, so much, and if he hadn’t come out that day. If I hadn’t have gone to the hospital. I’m 100% sure that we would have been looking at a very different result. For sure, I feel this really strongly that, you know, as much as I probably lean towards the natural birthing—even though my first two weren’t, I do thank God for the fact that the doctors were able to do this monitoring, you know, get him out. Give him everything he needed. Afterwards, monitoring me able to be looking at just, you know, all the different, you know, I had the blood flow or the oxygen flow into the placenta all of those things, and now he’s, again, he’s turning eight in a few weeks, very big, strong boy. He’s on the autistic spectrum. I don’t know whether that has maybe been linked to because of the birth I’m not sure. And I did have to take quite a lot of medication, with him, and you know, obviously, whatever had happened with the placenta.

P: I don’t think the medical community has nailed down definitive answer yet on what causes autism, but I asked Dr. Wilcox just from her experience about births like that of Charlotte son. I include this because I think as moms we feel responsible for everything our children encounter.  Can you talk for a minute about autism, what are the current ideas about its origin and do you think oxygen deprivation, can lead to autism.

Dr. Wilcox: Yeah you know it’s not, not necessarily an area of my expertise, but that. I think the most current thoughts are it is a combination of genetic and environmental factors, certainly not typically oxygen deprivation oxygen deprivation during during labor, and during the delivery, certainly can cause brain injury. But that’s more of an acute presentation. That can lead to seizures that can lead to really significant physical and mental issues, but different from autism.

P: Okay. That’s useful.

C: he’s a very bright and quite energetic boy, but he does have some challenges now…so then when Byron was 10 months old we moved to England and I will still breastfeeding and around a month later I think, I found out I was pregnant again. And this one was a surprise where as the other two had you know pretty much been planned… this third one was a surprise and having morning sickness and breastfeeding is tough…is tough…so I would be breastfeeding, put the baby down, be sick, pick the baby up, breastfeed…

P: Wow, that sound like a lot

C: It was a lot but the English experience is completely different. You normally would not go with a doctor, you’d go with a midwife. They don’t just scan, they actually feel where the baby is, they’re measuring you, they ask you how you’re feeling, you know, just how you’re coping, they’re not like are you losing weight or are you gaining weight, but how you are actually feeling about this. In Spain, you go with a gynecologist obstetrician and and it’s very medical. Whereas in the UK, it’s obviously seen…it’s not medical because you’re not sick

P: right

C: so you don’t need to control it as much as you need to monitor and support it. In England you have only a scan at 12 weeks 26 + 38 that would be the norm. Everything had gone well, 38 weeks, about to take my daughter to school, had the baby in the pushchair, and my waters broke. I wasn’t really ready, which is ridiculous because you would’ve thought I would be, but I was not. Didn’t have a bag packed, so I call a friend. Nuno was in London, so I call him, I was like, you are in the country, we’re doing this…we can do this! Yeah. She took my daughter to the school. Fifteen minutes later I’m like wow, the contractions are heavy here and she’s like you need to go to the hospital now. And I was thinking, this is crazy, you know, it’s fifteen minutes….

P: yeah

C: And it’s only 20 minutes to the hospital. So I’m thinking, okay, it was an hour from where my husband was in the center of London to where we lived in Richmond and I had planned on staying home until he could…but no, I had to call a taxi, or she had called a taxi, and towel on the back, going through Richmond Park thinking oh my goodness I’m going to be having a baby in the middle of a park.  Anyway, I get out of the taxi, waddle, waddle into the hospital reception..

P: yeah

C: and in a very English way, rather than screaming “I’m having a baby” I just went, “um, Excuse me?” like this…luckily the receptionist looked at me and obviously thought  “woah, somethings going on there”.  Nurse came over, went, Okay, immediately got a trolley, and I was on my knees, holding onto the trolley, scooted up  an upstairs room. And it had been 35 minutes from waters breaking to now…

P: Wow

C: so she looked, and I was already fully dilated, or not fully but pretty much. A poor poor midwife, junior midwife came in and asked if I wanted a bath, she obviously hadn’t been told…I will always regret being so mean to her….and saying “no”, but not that nicely…I really wanted an epidural because the pain was horrendous, it was horrendous. I had a little bit of gas and air but I think I chewed the nozzle off.  And I was on my all fours and yeah Elliot was born in less than an hour from what. Yeah. And it was horrendous. It was horrendous.

P: What Charlotte just described is known as precipitous labor, which is defined as a birth that takes place less than three hours after regular contractions have started as she knows a fast delivery while nice on paper is no picnic, a labor for someone who’s had kids before can last on average anywhere from three to 15 hours, and that time was well spent by your body, which uses it to slowly stretch a fast labor can lead to tears, it can be extremely painful as there’s very little break between contractions and hormones like oxytocin which decreases feelings of pain and promotes bonding are slowly released as the body progresses through various stages of labor. This release may not be well synced we’re rapidly we’re back to the interview.

C: And I had a stupid midwife, she said to me, I’d obviously told her this was my last baby and she goes, as this is your last. Aren’t you glad you did it all by yourself, as opposed to having, you know, an epidural. I you know I can still hear the exact words of it, thinking, hell no. I did all of them by myself.

P: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

C: Are you kidding me you know him but three times, all by myself. I really struggled really really struggled with this third pregnancy my mother arrived, Nuno arrived after an hour, but they were shocked because the baby was already my arms. I didn’t want to Hold baby. I didn’t want to try breastfeeding. I didn’t want to accept that I’d given birth or something anyway I really, really struggled to be bonding with this baby with, you know, with my son, maybe, normally in England they get you out quite quickly. Like sometimes you can give birth in the morning and they get you out by the evening.

P: Wow,

C: Well, it was yeah I mean really, I was in the hospital for a few days because they could see that I was not. I was going through the motions of it because especially as a third time mother, yeah they’re thinking how you know she’s gonna know exactly what to do. No problem. We know she’ll be fine. But I don’t know what I did what I read afterwards, these very fast labor’s, you don’t go through all of the different processes you don’t get the same hormonal release a different hormone release that tells you you know all the different things that you need to bond to you know all of those parts, it needs to be a slow release them to the baby home. Boy, it was a big baby quite, quite a big baby for me. And he had tongue tie quite bad tongue tie which was, you know, quite challenging for him breastfeeding so it’s not painful for me.

P: Yeah,

C: you have somebody come to the house to deal with Tongue Tie because they do it after I think two weeks old or something. And it was just amazing midwife. She obviously knew that something was up, I was having a hard time of it, because she stayed a long time and she talked to me a lot. She. She really understood that thing of women needing women. When you have a baby. Yeah, this my sister, she couldn’t come. For for that for Elliot’s birth or for afterwards, for a few days I mean not long time but I really missed, having her. She. Were you know and so, yeah, I missed that female thing, having that midwife come and just really be able to sit down and talk to me and just keep non judgement of the fact that you’re struggling to bond with your baby which everyone thinks is immediately normal.

P: Well, it’s also driven a lot by chemistry right as you described. And if you don’t, if your chemistry is not driving that it’s not really a choice, right, you know,

C: so but having somebody who sort of understood it, and then the thing about you know the UK, is that once you’ve had the baby. That’s it. You know, there’s a check at six weeks where, you know, they simply ask like are you, you know, are you suicidal. And if you’re not suicidal, then they’ll take drugs, and you’re done. And then after that the only person they care about is baby for vaccinations. Yeah, so there’s no follow up. And with the other two, a hadn’t needed it so much, but strangely with the third one that probably on paper look like an easier. Yeah, is hard time

P: that sounds really challenging, but now you’re now you’re just busy with three busy kids and

C: yeah I mean we deal with Byron’s autism. And, which is challenging but luckily my husband and I are on pretty much on the same page on most things. It’s all good lucky, after you know some challenges ahead. I think I think it’s all been pretty much I look back on it. It’s funny, I, I can see it’s more traumatic than when I was actually going through it. Yeah. But yeah, there we’ll get lucky there okay.

P: That’s awesome. That’s a great story so my last question for you is, if you could give advice to your younger self What would you tell her?

C:  I think I would say, having another woman. Whether it’s a doula or a sister, a mother or a group of females. Yeah, really helps. And even if you’re like me and you’re quite independent, it really does support you in a way that even your closest husband partner, you know, can’t. And I think the other thing I would say is that to remember that when people are giving you advice, they are trying to help. They’re not judging you, but it does feel like it. And, you know, whether that’s why you’ve had a miscarriage, whether it’s breastfeeding, whether it’s. So, let the sort of society around help you. And you don’t have to listen to them all and you can do you know you can say, Yes, thank you. But you don’t have to be this sort of strong, I can do everything. mother is

P: Yeah.

C: And it is such a challenge and I think I’d like to ask for help, maybe a little bit more, tell people that you struggled with it, tell people that you are struggling with it. And whether that’s your husband, whether it’s you know whoever. Just ask for help. I think that’s probably what I would do if I did it differently. I, you know, I wouldn’t keep telling on, I was okay. I’m okay. I’m okay, because yeah it’s worked out in the end but it probably was a bit more difficult, because of doing it that way.

P: Yeah, that sounds like good advice. Charlotte, thanks so much for coming on here and sharing your story I think a lot of people will find it valuable. Thanks so much.

C: Again, you’re welcome.

P: Thanks again to Dr. Wilcox for sharing her medical expertise. Thank you for checking out this episode. An extended version of the show notes can be found on war stories.com. Those include links to medical issues we touched on this episode. If you enjoyed this story, please consider liking and subscribing to the podcast. I’ll be back soon with another inspiring story.