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Lorna is a South African photographer, content creator, foodie, and now mama to a sweet baby girl. She reveals her journey as a new mama on her Instagram page @life.with.lorna as well as shares delicious recipes, local products she loves, and just life in general as a mum juggling it all.
Lorna lovingly shared her birth and postpartum story with us as we explore more and more women's true experience and the nuances of birthing and nurturing a baby. Have a read!
My birthing journey has been a really interesting one, but beautiful, nonetheless. When we were living in Ireland I fell pregnant. It happened during COVID and we had only been living in Ireland for just short of a year. However, finding out that I was pregnant changed everything. We had moved there with all our furniture and our two dogs with the idea of starting a family. I had dreams of travelling Europe and getting to see so much of the world…then, well, COVID.
I looked into options of birthing clinics there, because I knew from day one that I didn't want a hospital birth. I did a hypnobirthing course online, but I was still unsure about my birthing options in Ireland and had no recommendations of midwives or doulas. So, I told my husband that I couldn't give birth in Ireland! I felt as if I was not going to be in a good place, and that mentally, I wasn't going to cope alone without much support. So, I booked a flight and came back home.
I flew home on my own without my husband and I went to my first 12 week appointment with my mom. Little did I know, my OBGYN messed the whole entire 12 week test up and wrote something down incorrectly. My test came back with a strange result of high Down Syndrome possibility, but it had turned out to be an error. And when I picked it up, she said I was too late to do the DS test. I was so upset that I ended up changing my OBGYN.
I told my new OBGYN I wanted a natural unmedicated vaginal birth. I could see he was not really buying into what I wanted. At the follow-up appointments, he would try to sway me and said things like, "Oh, your placenta is a little bit low, we should probably just keep an eye on that". I knew that it was way too early to tell if it was a low-lying placenta or not. And then he insisted I pay for a high risk test. But I knew that you're only supposed to get one if you’re over a certain age or your previous test showed complications – so I refused. This was a big red flag. Something just didn't feel right.
Eventually I got in touch with Genesis and we went to the open day where I met a great midwife I really liked and my doula. I had a beautiful pregnancy without any complications. I had the usual aches and pains of course, but other than that, I didn't feel sick or have heartburn. I felt healthy and prepared for having a natural unmedicated vaginal birth.
As my due date approached, my husband got a strange phone call from the mediclinic confirming my administration the next day. My OBGYN had pre-booked me for a Cesarean without my consent! I was shocked that this doctor had gone and booked me in. That's when I knew my instincts were right that he was trying to push me into have a C-section, regardless of my birthing preference.
With Genesis Birthing centre, I envisioned a water birth with pregnancy yoga, meditations and visualisations. I wanted to connect with my body and my baby. When I got to 10 days over what is considered ‘full-term’ (40 weeks), my midwife suggested an induction as she didn't want to risk going over 11 days. I was not happy – I really didn't want to be induced. She put me on natural homeopathic drops to try and get things going. I was eating curry, pineapple and I frantically searched online for natural 'induction' methods (It's mostly all old wives tales). There was no way I could eat that much pineapple!
My midwife wanted to see me every day after that to do some stretch and sweeps to get the membrane moving. Nothing was happening, so she said, "Look, we're gonna just have to put you in for a medicated induction tomorrow. Go home, have a bath, rest, and we'll see you in the morning". So I did just that. I went home and had a warm bubble bath. When I got into bed I had some annoying cramps but didn’t really think much of them.
We had planned a home-birth and the pool was already set up. However, luck was not on our side and Joburg had four or five days of water outages. I felt I really needed water to birth so we decided to birth at the Birthing Clinic. The next morning my midwife did an internal check and I was in labour! I was already three centimetres dilated!
It was just amazing to know that I had gone into labour naturally, I had a wonderfully smooth labour at the birth centre. Luckily, they took me in because I was only three centimetres, but because we were booked in for the induction, they didn't send me home. It had all worked out perfectly.
During my labour I had quite a high fever, so my midwife had to give me some antibiotics, which I was devastated about. I had wanted to be completely unmedicated. I wanted my baby to get all the good natural gut microbiome passing through the birth canal. Due to my fever, I was only allowed to get in the pool for half an hour. But after 20 minutes of pushing, my daughter, Lucie, was born.
We had a beautiful night together. Initially I struggled with getting her to latch, so she didn't feed much that night. The nurses came in and tried to help her latch, but nothing was really working. The next day, the Pead came to check up on Lucie and noticed that she was looking a little bit off-colour. They were a bit worried and wanted to do some tests on her.
They ran a lot of blood tests on her and stuck so many needles into her little arms. Her CRP levels were extremely high, and she had unfortunately gotten an infection through my fever. Whatever I had gotten sick from, she picked the infection up. I was absolutely devastated. She was transferred in an ambulance to the NICU where she stayed for five nights. This was not the dream day I had planned of her arriving home and introducing her to our dogs and family and just having close connection and precious breastfeeding moments.
There I was, standing in Dis-chem the very next day buying a breast pump to get enough milk to take to the hospital as soon as possible. Our breastfeeding journey was off to a really rocky start. Lucie had a bit of formula here and there in hospital, but I was able to pump colostrum and give it to her in a syringe. They would feed her in the hospital, and I would take as much milk as I could as well as pump while I was there and let her breastfeed with skin to skin.
Eventually she got discharged and she was healthy enough to come home. But breastfeeding was still just really, really challenging. I would say, probably, until three months. I battled for three whole months having to do breastmilk top-ups, because she wasn't staying on the breast for long enough or she was getting too tired. I was pumping after every feed (even early hours in the morning) just to keep my milk supply up and then ended up with an oversupply, which led to a lot of black ducts which I still get from time to time.
Nearly seven months later, here we are, and we've honestly never looked back. It's just the most beautiful thing I've ever, ever done. And it's so rewarding given that we went through a really hard start. I’m just so grateful for my beautiful birth and to be back home enjoying the sun with my family.
