Sarah's Story

Oh hi! I’m Sarah. Wife, mother to four incredibly cute kiddos, daughter, sister, aunty and loyal friend. I enjoy wining, dining and all things humorous.

My motherhood journey began pretty quickly after meeting my husband to be. We met at work. I spotted him over the partition and went home to tell mum that I’d met the man I was going to marry. Did he know it? Not yet. But heck, he was about to. In the wee hours of the night at the Christmas party I declared love at first sight. It was damn lucky it was reciprocated or the Monday morning staff meeting would’ve been totes awks.

Fast forward 12 months and it occurred to me that I hadn’t had a period in a little while. I was too busy spending my disposable income to notice. The good old days, ya know. We did a test. It was positive. I was 24.

The reaction from our family and friends was so positive. The pregnancy was easy, I wasn’t sick, wasn’t overly tired, the labour was short, the epidural was magic. Cue perfectly healthy baby boy.

Have a second they said. He needs a sibling they said. It’ll be fun they said. It was not fun. At all.

From the minute I found out I was pregnant I was sick. So sick. It started at about 3am when I’d grapple for the bucket beside the bed and end briefly when I hit the pillow at night. I was diagnosed with Hyperemesis Gravidarum, lost a bunch of weight, nibbled on granny smith apples and parented our 15 month old whilst being permanently horizontal.

The details are sketchy, but in a nutshell, here is what happened. I went into labour late into the evening with contractions spaced regularly.  I called my dad and asked him to come around to mind our then two-year-old. I felt a pop, similar to that when my waters broke the first time around. Only this time, it was blood. Bright red blood. I called the hospital to be told that I should put a pad on (sorry - TMI) and to manage it at home. It didn't feel right, and after a little while we decided to head straight to the hospital.

Over the next 12 hours I laboured with regular contractions and constant blood loss. To be honest, I don't remember all the details of that time as I was pretty out of it. I remember feeling nervous, the whispered conversations by midwives and a stressed husband. By the time I had delivered our baby girl, I had lost over three litres of blood (you have approximately six in your body in total), my stomach was being pummelled in order for my uterus to contract and it wasn't cooperating. It was horrendous. I was rushed off to theatre, the first face I saw when I woke was Lachlan's. I'll save you the details this time #gushy.

You would think after this ordeal we would’ve been gifted an angel baby. Sure she had the face of an angel, but the lungs of a banshee. She yelled from dawn until dusk for approximately two years. Alas, no more babies. Ever. Or so we thought.

After a particularly chaotic 2017, and even a couple of challenging years prior to that, we found ourselves coming back to the conversation of a third and re-assessing our goals and purpose. From a crazy obsessed baby lady and a ticking biological clock (husbands, not mine #teenmom) we came to a realisation that perhaps the timing will never be right. You will never have enough money, a big enough house or have had enough holidays.
We decided to give it a crack. I’ll spare you the details. But those two little lines showed up and we were stoked.

I was about eight weeks pregnant and holidaying in South Australia for the first time with a friend and our kiddos when I took myself off to the hospital with some cramping and bleeding (soz). As I lay there in emergency with this American ER doctor and 27 trainees, they casually brought to my attention there were TWO sacs. Ummmmmm OKAY. There were tears (not me) and swearing (ME!). I was texting hubs frantically at this point, his response via text was the wide eyed emoji 😳 HA.

Upon returning the next day for an internal scan, they confirmed TWO SACS, TWO BABIES, TWO HEARTBEATS. I had my big boy with me, we had happy tears. After a crappy year, this seemed like a miracle. And TWO NEWBORNS? Heaven on earth.

My friends response? THE MORE THE MERRIER. Never underestimate your response to a woman who was about to double her kid count and carry multiples. Don’t be a Debbie downer and never ever ever show her your fear.

After what felt like an elephant pregnancy (literally) our beautiful boy/girl twinnies were born at 34 weeks gestation via planned c-section (I went in to labour early naturally) and they spent three weeks in the NICU and Special Care Nursery. Call me naïve, but I never really thought about what a premature baby/ies would mean. One of the hardest things I have ever had to do was leave that hospital without my babies.

The juggle over the next three weeks of recovering from the cesarean, managing two big kids, spending all day at the hospital with our two premature babies, milking my norgs three hourly day and night was quite the ordeal. But it was nothing in comparison to twin pregnancy, because that was ROUGH.

Our gorgeous babies are now nine months old (don’t ask me their corrected age, because ain’t nobody got time for that), our bigs are 10 and 8. Every day is different, every day is busy and every day is all loved up. The babies are doted on and adored, the bigs fight like cat and dog, but are my biggest helpers. Hubs and I are sleep deprived, stretched and just trying our best to raise our little humans right.

My biggest fear as a mother? That they are happy, that they make good choices and they grow up to nice people. Oh, and they look after their mother!

And in spite of how much sleep I’ve missed out on, I will be forever grateful that our four chose us.

Thanks for reading xx

You can follow Sarah's Journey over at @the.everyday.ohana