# Hayley’s story - twin challenges after a Covid baby

An episode of [Makes Milk with Emma Pickett: breastfeeding from the beginning to the end](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1697865705), 19 Oct 2026, 1 h 15 min.

Audio: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2214940/episodes/19971530-hayley-s-story-twin-challenges-after-a-covid-baby.mp3

Today, I’m talking to Hayley, a midwife and IBCLC from Queensland’s Sunshine Coast in Australia. Hayley’s first baby, Isla was conceived in Scotland in March 2020. Her return to Australia at 30 weeks with her husband Rob involved costly flights, and a two week hotel quarantine stay. After having an induction at 42+2, Hayley describes returning to on-call night work when Isla was 14 months and how Rob settled their breastfeeding toddler without bottles. Breastfeeding Isla was smooth and she later weaned gradually around age three using boundaries like “booby when the sun’s up.” Hayley then recounts an unexpected twin pregnancy, induction at 38 weeks due to growth restriction and preeclampsia. Twins Magnus and Oscar had a difficult early feeding period with pain and weeks of triple feeding, until an IBCLC advised stopping pumping. Breastfeeding then settled, and she is now exclusively breastfeeding the seven-month-old twins alongside solids while balancing family life and planning a part-time return to work. My picture book on how breastfeeding journeys end, The Story of Jessie’s Milkies, is available from Amazon here - The Story of Jessie's Milkies. In the UK, you can also buy it from The Children’s Bookshop in Muswell Hill, London. Other book shops and libraries can source a copy from Ingram Spark publishing. You can also get 10% off my books on supporting breastfeeding beyond six months and supporting the transition from breastfeeding at the Jessica Kingsley press website, by going to https://bit.ly/JKPbooks and using the code MMPE10 at checkout. Follow me on Instagram @emmapickettibclc or find out more on my website www.emmapickettbreastfeedingsupport.com Resources mentioned - Kathryn Stagg IBCLC https://kathrynstaggibclc.com/ Breastfeeding Twins and Triplets https://breastfeedingtwinsandtriplets.co.uk/ This podcast is presented by Emma Pickett IBCLC, and produced by Emily Crosby Media.

## Transcript

This transcript is AI generated.
\[00:00:00\] Emma Pickett: I'm Emma Pickett, and I'm a lactation consultant from London. When I first started calling myself Makes Milk, that was my superpower at the time because I was breastfeeding my own two children, and now I'm helping families on their journey. I want your feeding journey to work for you from the very beginning to the very end, and I'm big on making sure parents get support at the end, too.
Join me for conversations on how breastfeeding is amazing, and also sometimes really, really hard. We'll look honestly and openly at that process of making milk, and of course, breastfeeding and chest feeding are a lot more than just making milk
Thank you very much for joining me for today's episode. Today I'm talking to Hayley from the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. I'm just looking out my window at my gray London sky and thinking that's probably not the case for you because you're, you're heading for summer, aren't you? So it's, it's getting crazy hot- We are
I'd imagine.
\[00:01:02\] Hayley: It's really hot.
\[00:01:03\] Emma Pickett: Tell me a little bit about your family, Hayley.
\[00:01:05\] Hayley: I live on the Sunshine Coast in Queensland. I live with my wonderful husband, Rob, and we've got three beautiful children. I've got Isla, who's five and a half, and I've got twins who are seven months old. I've got, uh, Magnus and Oscar.
\[00:01:18\] Emma Pickett: Okay. And you are exclusively breastfeeding Magnus and Oscar. They started solids, but you're- Yeah ... breastfeeding them.
\[00:01:24\] Hayley: That's
\[00:01:24\] Emma Pickett: right. And we'll talk a little bit about your journey with them, and if it's okay, we'll talk a little bit about your journey with Isla, particularly how you brought her breastfeeding to an end, 'cause I'm always keen to talk about that.
And also, I think it would be great just to talk about what it's like to have twins when you have an older child. How do you look after the needs of your older child? How do you balance your family? What's daily life like? What's it like having newborn twins when you have a little person that also needs you?
And thank you very much for being willing to share all that today. So just professionally, you're a midwife, Hayley, aren't you? Yep. Tell us a little bit about your, your work role and, and what you do for, for your job.
\[00:02:01\] Hayley: Yeah. So I'm a, I'm a clinical midwife within a midwifery group practice here on the Sunshine Coast, so that's public maternity care, and I look after a caseload of women from when they find out they're pregnant through to six weeks after they give birth.
My model of care is mainly focused around what we call the birth center, and then, um, the publicly funded home birth. So I, you know, my career specialty, I suppose, has been looking after what we call low-risk women. You know, women having home births. Um, yeah, and, and just getting to know the families rather than sort of working shift work where you come in and out three times a day, or you might have that many midwives looking after you.
It's a really wonderful way to work, and it's really informed a lot of my, um, my parenting decisions along the way as well.
\[00:02:42\] Emma Pickett: Yeah. Okay. So in a birth center, presumably you're obviously doing night shifts and night work and- Mm ... and, and I'll ask you a bit more about what's gonna happen when you go back to work.
Did you go back to work in between Isla and the boys?
\[00:02:54\] Hayley: I did, yep. So I've done, I've done an iteration of this job for probably close to 10 years now. And, uh, after I had Isla I did go back part-time. Uh, so that meant that I was, I was still on call, uh, but like in a part-time capacity. I job shared with another midwife, and that actually worked really well.
Uh, the other midwife happened to have a child around the same age as Isla, um, and we were both breastfeeding and, um, you know, fairly sort of similar parenting philosophy, so the job share worked really, really well with on-call. It was definitely hard leaving her in the middle of the night when you get a phone call and, um, some of the oth- other challenges like triaging in the middle of the night.
You know, you've got women calling you and you're trying not to wake your toddler, but also you're trying to give the women the best possible care. That was definitely hard. Uh, but yeah, went to go back part-time for, I think I did that for maybe two years, and then I went back full-time, uh, for a couple of years before I became pregnant with the twins.
\[00:03:48\] Emma Pickett: Just taking you back to those nights when you are on call and you've got a little sleeping, breastfeeding Isla next to you, and the phone call comes through and you know you're gonna be going in and Rob is gonna be taking over. Yeah. So, so one of the things that people often say is, "Oh my goodness, when I'm breastfeeding a toddler, I'm the only one that can do nights.
I feel, you know, I'm the only one that can settle them to sleep. I've just got..." And obviously in your case, that wasn't an option. As a couple, you had to work out- Mm-hmm ... that Rob was gonna be taking over as well. How did he find that and how did you get on with that as a, as a couple?
\[00:04:22\] Hayley: Our parenting philosophy pretty much from day dot has been let's wing it, and we did wing it.
Uh, and well, I think with Isla as well, he always found that he was able to comfort her when I was away at night. We didn't do anything to prepare. We didn't do-- We didn't really talk to her about it. We didn't try to transition her to bottles or night wean or anything like that. But he just found that he was able to comfort her with some cuddles and, um, you know, "Mummy's, mummy's gone to work.
Mummy's gonna be home in the morning, and you'll see Mummy then." And then for days, like weekends when I was away were a little bit more challenging, and that's where he would give her... Like, I would do some pumping when I was away, and he would give her some expressed milk in like a straw cup. Um, she never, never took a bottle.
Um, we never really tried a bottle. It was always just through a straw cup. Uh, but he nev- I don't think he ever gave her milk overnight when I was away. He was able to just like resettle her with cuddles. So we w- honestly, we just tried not to think about it too much, and we tried to just sort of say, "Let's give it a shot, see what happens, and then troubleshoot as things come up."
And, and it actually worked out really well.
\[00:05:25\] Emma Pickett: Okay. I ki- I kind of love that. I love that, the idea that everything's got to be meticulously planned. Thank you for presenting the alternative- Yeah ... and just going with your gut and seeing what happens, and if something arises, you will deal with it in the moment.
So how old was Isla when you would be leaving her at night sometimes?
\[00:05:41\] Hayley: She would've been probably about 14 months to start with. Uh, and then that's all she knew, like as in one- once mom went back to work, this was what mom's job was, so she didn't have anything to compare it to. It's not like I was working during the day and then suddenly doing nights.
Uh, and yeah, and that role, like I've been doing an iteration of that job, um, right up until I went on maternity leave with the twins. So it's kind of all she's ever known, like that's just what her mom does, and that's how her, that's how her family operates.
\[00:06:10\] Emma Pickett: Yeah, and kind of all that Rob has ever known as well, if you like.
That's his norm too. Pretty much, yeah. And, and, and so sometimes you obviously then weren't there at bedtime, and he was having to do bedtimes, and he was just doing his own thing.
\[00:06:22\] Hayley: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
\[00:06:23\] Emma Pickett: Is he a s- is he a singer? Is he a storyteller? What does he tend to do? Do you know?
\[00:06:28\] Hayley: Um, I think, yeah, I think he used to cuddle her and read her stories.
Um, and with me, she would always feed to sleep, uh, even right up until when we weaned, she would feed to sleep. But she was absolutely fine being put to bed with somebody else, like once she was sort of, I would say like, you know, one and a half, two, roughly.
\[00:06:44\] Emma Pickett: Yeah.
\[00:06:44\] Hayley: Yeah, he would just, he would cuddle her, or it might have been grandma, um, you know, would cuddle her and read her a story, and she'd be, and she'd be happy to go to sleep.
It's, I think she just understood that mom's not here, and-
\[00:06:55\] Emma Pickett: Yeah ...
\[00:06:55\] Hayley: this is what we're gonna have to do.
\[00:06:57\] Emma Pickett: Yeah, and I think a lot of it comes down to the personalities of the adults as well- Yeah ... um, that they're just willing to do it, and give it a go, and not overthink it. And obviously, if it's your job, you know, there's not really an alternative anyway.
But I think when you have an adult who's just like, "Yeah, we're gonna be okay. We're gonna be good"- Yeah ... that, that kind of, that co-regulation, that rubs off on the child. They f- have that sense as well, and it, and it works. And I think I really appreciate you describing all that because I think so many people have this impression that it, it's just not possible for another adult to settle a breastfeeding toddler- Mm
and I really think it's so important to understand that all around the world, people are working different shifts and working night shifts, and there's healthcare professionals or weather presenters or whatever it might be, and it's, I think it's really important to describe that model. So thank you for starting in the middle of your story.
\[00:07:41\] Hayley: No, yeah, we, we just made sure that we were always really responsive with her and always really honest about things as well. Um, and we didn't wanna, we didn't wanna create more problems by- Preempting something that may not have actually come to pass. So that's, yeah, I, I think that's probably been our philosophy the whole time.
\[00:07:59\] Emma Pickett: Yeah.
\[00:07:59\] Hayley: But yeah, it alwa- we always just ca- bring everything back to just trying to be responsive and kind and trying to see things through our kids' eyes.
\[00:08:06\] Emma Pickett: Yeah. Do you mind me asking what does, what does Rob do for work? He's obviously not night shift 'cause then you'd be in trouble.
\[00:08:11\] Hayley: Uh, he works in IT, and he just works 9:00 to 5:00 essentially.
So yeah, one parent's business hours, one parent is all over the shop 24/7 getting called out. Yeah, you definitely couldn't have two parents working on call or two parents doing shifts.
\[00:08:25\] Emma Pickett: Yeah. And you've got a, a granny nearby as well. Is that, is that your mum?
\[00:08:28\] Hayley: No. So Rob's family is, um, close to us in Brisbane, which is the nearest big city.
It's about an hour and a half. Um, we did move from, uh, from Melbourne up to the Sunshine Coast about two years ago, and part of that was to be closer to family so that Isla would have, you know, would have her cousins close by and, um, we'd have a little bit more family support. But I, I have to say, like, it hasn't changed a great deal in terms of how we manage the, the work life or the family and work balance side of things.
\[00:08:52\] Emma Pickett: Okay. So coming back to the very beginning then, just before you had Isla. I guess obviously as a midwife you've ... Were you an IBCLC before you had Isla?
\[00:09:02\] Hayley: No, no. So I was, um, I worked in the caseload, um, midwifery group practice model. Um, and I actually was working in the UK at the time that we conceived Isla and, um, for the majority of my pregnancy I was in the UK.
\[00:09:12\] Emma Pickett: Oh, right. Whereabouts?
\[00:09:14\] Hayley: Yeah. Uh, in Aberdeen in, in Scotland.
\[00:09:16\] Emma Pickett: Cool, cool.
\[00:09:17\] Hayley: Yeah. So I was working in labor ward there.
\[00:09:19\] Emma Pickett: And then w- at what point did you, did, did... Obviously Isla is, is planned, I'm guessing, and you, you knew that was- Yeah ... gonna, I mean, this is guess, always get bits, bit, bit- ... private issues when I ask p- people about their conception.
But, um, so you knew you were going to have her, you knew you were going to prepare. Were you expecting to Give birth in the UK? What were your plans?
\[00:09:40\] Hayley: No. So we were-- The reason why we were in the UK is we'd, uh, s- taken some time off, um, our jobs to travel and, um, we both of us, my husband and I both really wanted to, to experience living in another country, and we both happened to get jobs in Scotland.
Um, like I was able to get midwifery registration, which worked out, and, um, he got a, um, got an IT job there. We weren't planning-- Like we, we knew that we wanted to have a child, um, and all of our friends had taken, you know, some of them had taken years to conceive and had infertility issues. So we just sort of thought, "Well, why not we give it a try?"
And of course, what happens? You fall pregnant straight away. And this was in March of 2020, just to add an extra little, um-
\[00:10:20\] Emma Pickett: Oh my goodness ...
\[00:10:20\] Hayley: adding factor into it.
\[00:10:21\] Emma Pickett: Okay. So you are s- stuck in the UK-
\[00:10:23\] Hayley: Yeah, yeah ...
\[00:10:25\] Emma Pickett: in March 2020. Uh, are you even allowed to go to Australia at any point in the, for the next few months?
\[00:10:30\] Hayley: It kept chopping and changing. So initially, um, initially I, I think I found out I was pregnant maybe the second week of lockdown in Scotland. Um, and Scotland went into a really hard lockdown. I think the only thing that was open was grocery stores. And the advice from the High Commission, the Australian High Commission at that point was, uh, "Look, you could come home on a repatriation flight, um, but both of you are employed in the UK.
You know, you've got a primary residence there. Um, stay put. This'll, you know, we can't, we don't know what's gonna happen, but essentially like, you know, you're not, uh, you're not a holiday maker, so you don't really qualify for the repatriation flights back to Australia." Uh, and we both had incomes and, you know, as I think most people sort of thought in March of 2020, "Look, we're just gonna be in lockdown for maybe two months or something like that.
Things will open up." We also had flights booked, um, home in July of 2020 to come back to Melbourne. So yeah, we were reasonably confident that, you know, the world wouldn't do what it eventually did. And yeah, we had solid plans to be back that didn't eventuate. Our flights got canceled, I think maybe a week out.
I think it was in-- I think we were supposed to be back mid-July, um, and early July our flights home got canceled because of-- It's a very long story, but essentially the Australian, uh- Government kind of brought in these like flight caps because they had to put everyone in hotel quarantine in Australia. Oh, blimey.
So you're supposed to do two weeks of quarantine, and that meant that they could only have a certain number of people on each flight home. Um, so the, the long and short of it was that our flights got canceled, um, and the advice at that point from the Australian High Commission was that if you wanted to get home, you essentially had to buy a business class or first class flights, because if the flights are only running with 10% of the passengers, they're not gonna fly those 10% in economy.
So that is thousands and thousands of dollars presumably. Yeah, that was, it was 20, $20,000, so about, yeah, about £10,000 that we just had to make a spur of the moment decision 'cause the alternative was staying and giving birth in the UK away from our family, away from our support networks. Yeah, certainly, certainly worse places in the world to give birth.
Um, but-
\[00:12:30\] Emma Pickett: Yeah, but still it's not, if you're not prepared for that, if that's not mentally- Yeah ... what you're expecting. So you had to make that huge investment to leave. And how pregnant were you when you finally got back to Australia?
\[00:12:42\] Hayley: Yeah, I was about 30 weeks by the time we finally got back. So the flight, we were supposed to come back in, uh, July.
We eventually made it back end of September, and we did our two weeks of hotel quarantine and then drove into Melbourne, uh, like early October 2020. So I was, yeah, I was about 30 weeks pregnant at that point.
\[00:12:57\] Emma Pickett: Okay. Blimey. Gosh, uh, um, this is where it's a bit of a blessing that you're a midwife because- Mm.
Yeah ... you presumably had a slightly more confident approach thinking, you know, you knew what was going on, you would understand any symptoms, you knew about whether you're safe to fly, you kind of understood the game and that, that, that has to help, I'm guessing.
\[00:13:15\] Hayley: Yeah.
\[00:13:15\] Emma Pickett: This is completely off-topic, but hotel quarantine, I've obviously heard about it.
I saw it happening. Yeah. I saw, you know, Hollywood actors doing it. You're literally not leaving your room, and what, food's on a tray outside. You can't even have exercise. You can't leave the room at all?
\[00:13:29\] Hayley: No. And you know what? I'm gonna have a very unpopular opinion. It was probably two of the best weeks of my life.
\[00:13:36\] Emma Pickett: Oh, my goodness. I guess the quality of the food in the hotel's gonna depend, gonna affect that a little bit, but-
\[00:13:41\] Hayley: Absolutely.
\[00:13:42\] Emma Pickett: Yeah ... I mean, you, you must like Rob then. I mean, that's, that's gotta be a sign. We were
\[00:13:45\] Hayley: put up in a five-star hotel in Adelaide, uh, in South Australia with two king-size beds, this massive room.
Um, they brought us meals probably every two hours. Like, it was more food than what we could actually eat. Um, and they found this way of making this really lovely community in the hotel as well. Like, they had this Facebook group, and they had these competitions, and we did yoga together, and- Oh,
\[00:14:07\] Emma Pickett: that's
\[00:14:07\] Hayley: so cute
it, it actually-- Like I've-- I got very stir crazy by the end of it, um, particularly 'cause, you know, you could see, uh, everything happening outside the hotel room and you, like you, we didn't even have a balcony. Like, we didn't see fresh air or sunlight or anything really for two weeks. But I l- actually look back on it quite fondly, bizarrely.
\[00:14:24\] Emma Pickett: Okay. No, I guess you're forced to be slow. There's nothing else you can do.
\[00:14:29\] Hayley: Exactly.
\[00:14:29\] Emma Pickett: Yeah. And at that point in your pregnancy, that's not necessarily the end of the world. I guess the lack of exercise probably didn't do your ankles any favors. And who pays for all that? Who pays for all the, the food and everything?
\[00:14:39\] Hayley: Uh, the government paid at that point. They did bring in paid quarantine at, at one point, uh, where people, like people were billed for it. Uh, but at that point, uh, it was relatively early days of it. Um, yeah, the government paid for it.
\[00:14:51\] Emma Pickett: Thank you for allowing me to be nosy. I mean, I guess as a midwife, you already knew the basics about breastfeeding.
I mean, I, I'm gonna be super honest, in the UK, not all midwives get all the training in breastfeeding that we might want. What was your training like in A- in Australia?
\[00:15:06\] Hayley: Yeah, very, I would say very similar to, um, the level of knowledge that the midwives that I worked with in the UK seem to have. Um, it's very much glossed over in Australia.
I was very lucky because, uh, when I was a graduate midwife, uh, the, our graduate support midwife was an IBCLC, and so when she worked one-on-one with me on my shifts in my grad year, um, I was able to soak up all of her wisdom. And she came out and did home visits with me when I did the postnatal home visit service, uh, side of, um, my grad year.
So I, I got so much more, like, one-on-one education and support, and that's what really spurred me to go and do further, like, further education before I did my IBCLC credential. Uh, but no, by and large, uh, midwives in Australia, we d- we really don't get much as part of our university degrees. And I, and I have to say, most of us do graduate not skilled in supporting breastfeeding even in those early days, unfortunately.
\[00:15:56\] Emma Pickett: Yeah. It's just bananas, isn't it? It's still-
\[00:15:59\] Hayley: It really is, yeah.
\[00:16:00\] Emma Pickett: Obviously, there's so much you have to know as a midwife. I mean, that's, that's the reality. But you'd think lactation would be high on the priorities.
\[00:16:06\] Hayley: It's a huge part of what we do. Like, it's- Yeah ... it's a massive thing, and yeah, it's a constant bugbear that we do have around, um, yeah, the lack of training that midwives have because, um, it really It doesn't set them up well to be able to support women.
And then- Yeah ... you know, women w- run into problems and r- uh, you know, we tell them, "Just give us a call. We're, we're here to help." Uh, but actually we don't have the training and skills to help.
\[00:16:26\] Emma Pickett: Yeah. And you get readmissions, and obviously the massive mental health impact of people not meeting their breastfeeding goals.
You don't need me to tell you it's a, it's a crisis. How old was Isla when you did do your IBCLC?
\[00:16:37\] Hayley: Uh, she would've been, I think she would've been about three when I started, and I think sh- I think she was about four when I sat the exam.
\[00:16:44\] Emma Pickett: Okay. So let's go back to you're, you're leaving a hotel room in Adelaide, you're going back to Melbourne.
Melbourne, Melbourne. I can't say it right. Melbourne. Um, and you knew the setup there, you knew how you were gonna give birth, you, you knew the team. Thank goodness, 'cause someone else arriving on a plane and turning up in a city wouldn't have had a flipping clue. Um, tell us a little bit about Isla's birth and early breastfeeding.
\[00:17:06\] Hayley: Yeah, I was, I was very lucky to have, uh, friends who were independently or privately practicing midwives, so I had all of my care sort of remotely with them from the UK. And then once we landed in Melbourne, um, because of course there was face-to-face care restrictions, you know, most people were receiving telehealth care, uh, whereas, um, with my privately practicing midwives, I was able to get that face-to-face care straight off.
Uh, and we were planning a home birth with Isla, with my privately practicing midwives, and we booked a private obstetrician as a, um, a backup because I didn't feel safe birthing, uh, in the hospital that I worked at at the time. I didn't, you know, in the event that we needed to transfer or in the event that she was, I don't know, breech or something like that, I just really wanted to know that I was gonna be somewhere with, um, trusted care providers.
And in the end, um, 42 weeks came and went with no sign of baby. And I did- Oh, okay I, I c- completely lost faith in everything. You know, I'd, um, I felt like I'd worked so hard to, you know, get us back to Australia and get us back to a place of safety. Uh, and then I sort of, I, you know, I felt that I was failing my baby before she was even born because I wasn't able to go into labor, which is, I would, you know, never, never in a million years as a midwife would I ever sort of project that onto a woman or ever, um, uh, you know, place those sorts of expectations on someone.
Um, but it was, I guess, the model of care that I worked in at the time was, was quite fear mongery, you know, and women were told once they got to 41 weeks that, you know, there's an increased chance of stillbirth and, um, you know, every day that you go over that risk goes up. And, you know, those were the messages that I was absorbing just because of where I was working.
\[00:18:44\] Emma Pickett: And that was your daily life, I guess. And, and as a midwife, it, it reminds me of, I'm sure I've said this before on the podcast, it reminds me, I once met, met a paramedic who said elderly people for her are people who lie on the kitchen floor. Yeah. Because that's what- Yeah ... as a paramedic, she meets 80 plus people lying on kitchen floors, and that's her life.
She doesn't meet the healthy ex- you know, people who go out for massive walks and do exercise. And I guess as a midwife, you're often meeting a lot of people who do have difficult birth experiences, who are-
\[00:19:12\] Hayley: Yeah ...
\[00:19:12\] Emma Pickett: you know, in being induced, who are having that cascade of intervention. So I guess it's both a huge positive as a midwife, but also the fear is there possibly from experiences or even traumas, I guess, of some of the people- Yep
you may have supported- Absolutely, yeah ... in some really difficult, difficult situations and difficult births. So it sounds like you were feeling a bit wobbly at this point.
\[00:19:33\] Hayley: Oh, very wobbly. Yeah, I would say that 40, 41 weeks pregnant with Isla was probably the hardest, like until we get to talking about the twins, was probably the hardest time mentally, yeah, of, of any part of becoming a mum.
And a lot of it was the vicarious trauma that I carry from work. But interestingly, a lot of it was also because I, you know, working, uh, as a home birth midwife, I saw spontaneous labor day in, day out, you know, women going into labor and having these beautiful home births, and I was like, "Why isn't this happening for me?
Like, why is my body broken?" And my body wasn't broken, um, but it was these artificial timelines that we put on it. You know, we say that 42 weeks is that upper end of normal. Well, who decided that? Um, 'cause, you know, now, uh, working where I work now, I see loads of women that do go past that time, um, and that make informed decisions to remain pregnant.
Um, and whatever decisions women make is, is totally fine. But at that time, um, I was 42 weeks and two days pregnant with Isla, and I was actually the most pregnant woman that I'd ever looked after as a midwife, um, purely because of the model of care that I worked in and, and the approach that that institution took.
So it was really, it was really, really hard to make safe decisions. My, you know, my head and my heart were very much at war. Uh, and in the end, we did decide to have an induction of labor, b- um, based on, you know, being post dates. So we did transfer to our care, uh, at that point to our private obstetrician and, um, our private midwife did come with us and was with us for the induction.
It all went really, really smoothly. Labor was in- incredibly difficult, a million times harder than I ever could have possibly imagined. I think a, a part of me was like, well, women do this all day, every day. You know, I've been with, you know, countless women, um, and women are powerful and strong and, you know, I believed all those positive messages.
But for me, I think it was a lot of like self-preservation maybe, or a lot of wanting to protect myself if things didn't go well. Um, but it meant that mentally I'd sort of lost, yeah, like lost all trust, and I just sort of thought it was all gonna go to shit, for lack of a better word. So when it wasn't, I couldn't believe it.
Like, I couldn't, I couldn't actually sort of be in that moment and be really proud of what I'd done, um, you know, giving birth to Isla, um, an induction of labor without any sort of, you know, pain relief.
\[00:21:47\] Emma Pickett: Blimey. That's intense.
\[00:21:47\] Hayley: Yeah, I was bracing myself for it to all go poorly, and in the end it meant I couldn't enjoy the achievement.
\[00:21:54\] Emma Pickett: Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. That's rough. Okay, so Isla's in the world, and it wasn't- Mm ... necessarily what you might have hoped for. How about early breastfeeding? How did that go?
\[00:22:04\] Hayley: It was wonderful, and so smooth- Phew ... and so easy.
\[00:22:08\] Emma Pickett: I'm glad to hear that. That is good. That's good. So she knew what she was doing, you knew what you were doing.
\[00:22:14\] Hayley: Yeah. Yeah, it was honestly, like, s- the, the most satisfying... I, I think, I think when I, like, close my eyes and think about, you know, the happiest times of my life, I would probably say it's that first week with, with newborn Isla, and just this little person that, uh, I was in awe of. Um, you know, this little person who just came into the world and knew exactly what she needed to do.
Um, and feeding was really blissfully uneventful with her. Um, just a little bit clunky trying to figure out positioning, but I never had any pain. I never had any issues with supply. My milk came in on day two. She stacked on the weight. I think she was over her birth weight by day five. Um, and we just built this wonderful, like, trusting relationship where I could just trust her to tell me what she needed, and that I always felt this sense of safety when we'd go through a rocky patch because, like, I felt like she just knew what she needed at all times, and if I followed her lead, then everything would find its way, and it did.
\[00:23:13\] Emma Pickett: Oh, that's so great to hear. I wish, I wish... I don't hear those stories. Just like, you know, midwives- Yeah ... hear the high-risk stuff. Not many people who've had the best week tell, tell a lactation consultant about it, 'cause they don't need us. Um, that's great to hear. Okay, so I'm gonna be a bit cheeky and say let's fast-forward to the end- Mm
of the journey so we've got time- Yeah ... to talk about the twins. Tell me about when you knew things were coming to an end. Was the journey parent-led at the end? What was happening?
\[00:23:38\] Hayley: Yeah, it was a bit more parent-led. I think if I didn't put some more boundaries in place, she would've been breastfeeding beyond a point that I would've enjoyed.
Um, and I was starting to just want my body back, and, um, also would just wanna be enjoy being with her in a different way. Um, and it was very gradual. I was... Before I came on, I was actually talking to my husband trying to sort of say, "Did this happen? Did that happen?" 'Cause I can't really remember exactly how we did it.
Um, but I think we were down to just having a breastfeed when she would get home from daycare, and then, um, having a pre- like a, um, feeding to sleep and then, like, an early morning breastfeed. Okay. And I think we got rid of the breastfeeding to sleep first, uh, and then I think we sort of said, "We're only gonna have booby," as we called it, um, "when the sun's up."
Um, and she took to that really well.
\[00:24:31\] Emma Pickett: Uh, so she's three at this point when you're- Yeah, yeah ... making these final changes. She's, yep,
\[00:24:34\] Hayley: three. Yep.
\[00:24:34\] Emma Pickett: Did you go through-- Obviously, you, you, we've talked a bit about already about when you're working at night and, and she was able to be settled with Rob. When you were at home, was she still feeding a lot during the night when she was a toddler?
\[00:24:46\] Hayley: I don't think so. I don't think she was. I don't ever remember feeling like it was too-- Like she never did that reverse cycling thing that I know a lot of people talk about. Yeah, I never felt like she was sort of glued to me much at that point.
\[00:25:00\] Emma Pickett: Okay.
\[00:25:00\] Hayley: Um, when she was about one, yes, but, um, yeah, when she was three, no.
She, um, uh, I was surprised by how well she took it. Like I was, I was expecting her to say no, or I still, like I still really wanna feed, but she was like, "Okay, okay, that's what we're gonna do."
\[00:25:15\] Emma Pickett: So that natural decline sounds like it had already been happening a little bit, um-
\[00:25:18\] Hayley: Yeah,
\[00:25:18\] Emma Pickett: yeah ... and, and then you'd got down to this morning post-daycare bedtime feed, and then you said you got rid of the feeding to sleep.
I know it's so hard to remember this, not least 'cause you've got all the, the twin memories in the way, but do you remember how you got rid of the feeding to sleep, and what that process was like?
\[00:25:34\] Hayley: I don't really, and I think, I think it was- I think because I don't remember, it probably wasn't that traumatic.
\[00:25:41\] Emma Pickett: Yeah,
\[00:25:42\] Hayley: I was absolutely gonna say that actually-
\[00:25:43\] Emma Pickett: I, ... 'cause you'd have remembered if it
\[00:25:44\] Hayley: was- I'd have remembered, yeah ... hysteri- hysteria
\[00:25:46\] Emma Pickett: for
\[00:25:46\] Hayley: months, so. Yeah, and I wouldn't have persisted with it. Like, if she was really upset by it, I wouldn't have persisted with putting the boundaries in. Like, I would've thought about some other ways that we could do it.
Um, so I wanna say that I, I would've just sorta said to her, "We're gonna do something different. We're gonna have a cuddle," or there would've been something else that we did. I don't remember what it was. Um, but- Yeah ... yeah, she, she, she
\[00:26:06\] Emma Pickett: took it really well. You know, people listen to this going, "Oh my God, how can she not remember?"
This is a sign- Yeah ... when it's pretty peaceful and pretty straightforward, and your child is ready, and your child is accepting, it doesn't stick in the memory because it's not- Yeah ... you're not creating a core memory founded around trauma and, and desperation. Um, so you l- dropped the feed, the bedtime feed, you were down to the morning and the post-daycare.
Yeah. How did it finally wrap up?
\[00:26:29\] Hayley: I think we, yeah, I think we, we said the thing about the daylight, and that sort of hel- helped her to have a visual cue, and then I think she ended up just being really busy f- after the daycare. Like, after coming home from daycare, I think we just sort of didn't offer it.
Like, I didn't offer it to her, and I think she ended up just being really preoccupied and busy and doing all sorts of things. And then, yeah, I think the, the, like, the wake-up, the wake-up milk, I think eventually I just sorta said, "Hey, like, I'm, I'm really tired. I don't wanna, I don't wanna do this anymore."
And she was like, "Okay," and went off and did something else, and yeah.
\[00:27:02\] Emma Pickett: Bit of honesty and a bit of authenticity. I appl- I applaud that. And, and I, I think I know the answer to this already, but you don't have a memory of your last feed. It wasn't da, da, da- No ... this is the last feed. It just
\[00:27:12\] Hayley: sort of- No, I don't
happened. Yeah, it just sorta happened. And interestingly, like, she was very, um, she was very calm about all of this, but then probably about six months later, she just randomly said to me, "You know, I wasn't ready to stop f- to stop having booby." Oh. Which broke my heart a little bit, but- What
\[00:27:29\] Emma Pickett: did you s- what did you say?
\[00:27:31\] Hayley: Oh, I just, I just validated her, and I, I, I said something along the lines of like, "Oh, thank you for telling me. Like, I'm, I'm sorry. Um, I know that you wanted to keep going, but I was really finished, and I was ready to, to stop."
\[00:27:42\] Emma Pickett: Yeah. Perfect answer. She needs to know that your feelings were part of that story.
\[00:27:47\] Hayley: Yeah, yeah.
\[00:27:50\] Emma Pickett: I'd love to tell you about my four most recent books. So we've got The Story of Jesse's Milkies, which is a picture book from two to six-year-olds that really tells the story of little Jesse and how his breastfeeding journey may come to an end in one of three different ways. Maybe there'll be a new baby sister, maybe his mom will need to practice parent-led weaning, maybe he'll have a self weaning ending.
It's a book that helps your little people understand that there are lots of different ways breastfeeding journeys might end, that we're there to support them through all of them, and also, we sometimes have needs too. Also on endings, we have Supporting the Transition from Breastfeeding, which is a guide to weaning that really talks through how to bring breastfeeding to a close in a way that protects your emotional connection with your child.
There are also chapters on different individual situations, like weaning an older child when there's still a baby feeding, weaning in an emergency, weaning in a special needs situation. Then we have Supporting Breastfeeding Past the First Six Months and Beyond, that's really a companion to sit alongside you as you carry on breastfeeding through babyhood and beyond.
What are the common challenges, and how can we overcome them? And let's hear some stories about other people who've had a natural term breastfeeding journey. Then we have The Breast Book, which is a puberty guide for nine to 14-year-olds. It talks about how breasts grow. It answers common questions. It talks about what breastfeeding is.
I talk about bras. I really want to leave a little person feeling confident and well-informed as breasts enter their lives. So if you want to buy any of those books, I am eternally grateful. If you want to buy one of the supporting books, you can go to the Jessica Kingsley Press website. That's uk.jkp.com.
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So twins are gonna come along soon. How old was Isla when you got pregnant with twins, and did you have a family history of twins? What was, what was the story there?
\[00:30:05\] Hayley: No, no family history whatsoever. So we decided that we were ready to have another baby. We'd moved up to the Sunshine Coast probably a year prior to having the twins.
Um, we were really settled here. Um, my job was fantastic. Um, and we just sort of thought, you know, um, Isla's settled in this new place. It's, it's, you know, we're in the right place to start trying for a second baby. And, you know, did some preconception work in terms of, like, nutrition and, um, you know, had bloods checked and all that sort of thing.
Um, and yeah. And then fell pregnant again the first time. I'm sorry for anyone listening to this that's experienced fertility issues. This would probably be quite difficult to hear. But, um, yeah, we both times have fallen pregnant with the first try. And, um, I actually felt, uh, symptoms quite quickly this time, but didn't think much of it because I was, um, still working on-call.
I had a four-year-old. Um, and I was, you know, had a very active lifestyle, and I just thought I was really in tune with my body and really noticing all the different changes, you know, straight away. And yeah, I was really sure of my dates, so I didn't do a dating scan, which is quite common here in Australia.
I know that they don't really do that in the NHS. Um, and I felt really confident that, um, you know, if the pregnancy didn't proceed, that we would have really good care and support, so I just didn't feel the need to sort of have any extra investigations in that first trimester. Okay. Um, and other than really, you know, unpleasant nausea, vomiting, and food aversions, honestly, it was easier than the first trimester with Isla.
\[00:31:34\] Emma Pickett: Okay. So you're going through the whole first trimester thinking you have a singleton. Yeah. Okay.
\[00:31:38\] Hayley: Exactly, yeah. Yeah. And
\[00:31:40\] Emma Pickett: waiting for the sh- for the shock news. Um-
\[00:31:42\] Hayley: The only other sign in hindsight, and hindsight is the key word here, was that when I did that early pregnancy test, the line was really, really dark.
But I just went, "Oh, great, I'm pregnant. Amazing," you know, and sort of went on with it. I didn't give it a second thought. Um, like I said, we've got zero family history on either side of, of multiples anywhere, and we can go back five generations on both sides of our family. So yeah. So given that I actually felt- Okay.
Like, you know, my first trimester was easier than Isla's. Um, and yeah, all of that. I, uh, never in a million years did it cross our mind that we'd be having twins. And I'd started to feel some fetal movements, and I'd had a cheeky little listen in with, um, my Doppler and had heard a heartbeat and, you know, went into that 12-week nuchal scan feeling really confident and really like, "Oh, you know, this is all gonna be great."
And the, uh, the obstetrician doing the scan, um, was like, "Oh, okay, like is this your first scan for this pregnancy?" And I was like, "Yep, yep, yep." And she said, "Well, some big news. There's two of them." Um, and if I couldn't see those two little sacs up on the screen, I would've thought it was a joke. But, um, there they were.
There was two- Okay ... there was two babies.
\[00:32:51\] Emma Pickett: Wow. And was Rob in there as well with you?
\[00:32:53\] Hayley: Thankfully, yes, Rob was there as well. Um, and he was w- much calmer about it than I was, even though he was very much of the, you know, "I only wanna have two children. That's all I have capacity for." Uh, and I really wanted to have three kids, so given that, um, y- we were getting our three kids, um, I, my first sort of, you know, the place that my head went to was that that means I can't have a home birth this time, and- I was just gonna
\[00:33:17\] Emma Pickett: ask you about that.
That's- Yeah ... immediately a different kind of birth, isn't it?
\[00:33:21\] Hayley: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I
\[00:33:22\] Emma Pickett: mean, realistically, in the modern world, it means a different kind of care and a different kind of birth and, and maybe saying goodbye to what you thought you, was gonna be happening. How did that feel? That's
\[00:33:30\] Hayley: it, yeah. Yeah. It was, um, that was really devastating in the moment, I will say, and I will say that I felt really disappointed.
Like, um, uh, yeah, I spent that sort of hour, or it wasn't an hour, but let's just say it was an hour of the scan sort of thinking about all the things I was saying goodbye to. Um, and you know, the higher chance of complications. How would my body cope with a twin pregnancy? How would I work? Um, you know, what happens if we have preterm labor?
What happens if I can't breastfeed? What happens if they're not, you know, both head down and I can't have a vaginal birth? Like, my head was just doing all of that, and that's, you know, a reflection of what I do for work, um, really. And luckily, actually, the obstetrician who was doing the scan with it was actually a twins mum herself, and she just- Oh,
\[00:34:13\] Emma Pickett: fantastic
\[00:34:14\] Hayley: validated every, every little thing, and she was like, "You can swear as much as you want," you know? And I think I just spent an hour going, "Fuck". Um, but that was actually really healthy and that, that meant that I just let all of that out and just let it be and, um, didn't sort of try to put a yeah, but or like a positive spin on anything for tho- those first few days and just, yeah- Um, and Rob was, Rob was stoked.
He was really excited and I think that helped me to sort of move through those initial feelings. We got out of the scan and we called my midwife, who is also my practice partner at work, and just blurted it out and she came over straight away and just sat with me and she was like, "You know how to parent already.
You're gonna do amazingly. You've given birth before. You've breastfed before. You know, you sit with these feelings now, it's all okay. Um, but you're gonna do great." Um, and that's exactly what we needed at that point, um, to just be validated but also to be held and to know that we were always gonna have support You know, to, to work our way through whatever came up.
\[00:35:17\] Emma Pickett: Yeah. Yeah. And you are at work still? I mean, how, how pregnant were you when you st- stopped working?
\[00:35:25\] Hayley: I stopped doing clinical work at about 26 weeks, uh, and that it was re- it was really, really hard, um, physically. Uh, and then I worked in-- I did an office role for about a month, and I finished work at about 30 weeks with the boys.
I would not recommend that. I would recommend probably finishing earlier. Uh, but yeah, the nature of paid maternity leave and, um, and things as it, as it, um, as it is in Australia, I just... That's what we needed to do at that point.
\[00:35:52\] Emma Pickett: And, and s- spoiler alert, they, they weren't preterm. Um-
\[00:35:56\] Hayley: Correct ...
\[00:35:56\] Emma Pickett: tell us a bit about the boys' birth.
\[00:35:58\] Hayley: Yeah. So we, um, a lot of my decisions in pregnancy were centered a lot around thinking about breastfeeding and thinking about what the outcomes would be for the babies. Um, so that's why, you know, trying my absolute best to, to carry the boys to term was really important. I was thinking about their brain development and thinking about their ability to breastfeed and all those sorts of things.
Um, in the end, the decision was kind of made for me because, um, Oscar, my twin two, was found to be growth restricted at 36 weeks, uh, which is very, very common with twins. So we were having some extra scans twice weekly just to look at his fluid levels and to look at his blood flow, um, which were all thankfully really normal, but it would have meant, you know, pivoting to a different birth plan if they weren't.
So we had an induction booked for 38 and a few days.
\[00:36:43\] Emma Pickett: Do you want me just asking what, what kind of twins they are?
\[00:36:45\] Hayley: Uh, they were DCDA twins, so fraternal twins. They both had their own placentas and they both had their own sacs.
\[00:36:51\] Emma Pickett: Okay.
\[00:36:51\] Hayley: Uh, yeah, so they-- We had an induction booked, um, just around Oscar's growth restriction, and my midwife came over on the Monday to do a bit of a birth plan session, run through things.
We'd had so many discussions in pregnancy about the what-ifs and the, you know, if this happens, what are we gonna do? So we had our final sort of meeting to go over everything and make a bit of a plan about what we were gonna do, and she went, "Okay, probably should just check your blood pressure as I'm heading out the door."
Sure. And the cuff went up a second time. Um, so it ended up that my blood pressure at that point was like 100, I think it was like 160 on 100 or something, and I felt completely fine. I had no symptoms other than some leg swelling, which, you know, Queensland summer, of course you're gonna have swollen legs when you're pregnant.
So yeah, so ended up going into the hospital and having further testing and, um, turns out that I did have preeclampsia at that point. My urine pro- protein creatinine ratio was only just over the cusp, um, of abnormal. So what they considered to be like very mild preeclampsia, but preeclampsia nonetheless.
Uh, and with a growth restricted baby on board as well, there was sort of not- Much benefit really to staying pregnant. Things could get dicey pretty quickly and choices could get taken out of our hands pretty quickly.
\[00:38:05\] Emma Pickett: Yeah. Can I ask you the world's dumbest question? For, for anybody who doesn't know what it means, what is preeclampsia?
Can you just give us a kind of midwife description for, for daft people? What does, what is preeclampsia?
\[00:38:16\] Hayley: Yeah. Preeclampsia directly means like before eclampsia. So eclampsia is a condition where, um, women have seizures as a result of uncontrolled high blood pressure, and it normally affects other organs as well.
So it normally will affect your, um, your liver, your kidneys, um, also your brain. So the brain side of it's the seizures. Um, the liver side of it can be l- um, abnormal liver function tests. Uh, and then, um, with, you know, with the urine, um, leaking protein, then that's normally a sign that your kidneys are affected.
That's kind of all we really know about preeclampsia. We don't really know what causes it. We don't know, um, whether it-- There's a working theory that it's, um, potentially from the, the father's DNA that might have a role. We think that it could be to do with, um, issues with early placentation, so when the placenta embeds in the uterus that it doesn't em-embed properly and fires out these, um, you know, hormonal signals.
But it's a very unpredictable condition. Um, and most of the time it presents after 20 weeks of pregnancy.
\[00:39:15\] Emma Pickett: And it can be super dangerous as well if it's- Yep ... obviously if it's untreated or if you're in an environment where there's not medical care, it can obviously be very dangerous.
\[00:39:22\] Hayley: Also we've noticed that it can also come on postnatally and not a lot of, not a lot of women know that.
A lot of women think that if they haven't had it in pregnancy that all's good. So it's actually really important to keep an eye on people's blood pressure after they've given birth if they've got risk factors too.
\[00:39:34\] Emma Pickett: Okay. So it's time to give birth to the boys.
\[00:39:36\] Hayley: Mm.
\[00:39:37\] Emma Pickett: And you, you're n-not having a planned C-section.
No. You're aiming for a vaginal delivery. Tell, tell us what happened.
\[00:39:45\] Hayley: Yeah. So we had a, we did decide to have the induction of labor. Um, my cervix was favorable. Terrible term, but essentially my cervix was soft and open, which meant that we could skip the first step of induction and just go straight to breaking the sack of waters, uh, which my midwife did in the morning and our plan was to really try to avoid Or not avoid intervention, but use intervention really sensibly and judiciously.
And so our plan of attack was that we would give it a few hours after breaking the waters to see if we could go into spontaneous, not spontaneous labor, see if contractions would start as a result of that. Uh, and, you know, we went for a walk. We, we did all sorts of different things. I put the breast pump on for a bit.
I actually had a nap for part of it. I puffed away on the nitrous oxide gas to see whether that would put me into, like, a bit of a trance kind of state. Um, we tried a whole range of different things for seven hours and contractions didn't start. So we, uh, later in the afternoon, it was about 2:00 or 3:00, we decided to start the, the syntocinon, the, um, artificial oxytocin drip.
Uh, and I was in labor pretty soon after that. Yeah, things just sort of plodded along. My midwives were chasing the boys around on the monitors because, um, yeah, with Oscar being small, he wasn't tolerating labor very well, which we did anticipate. So there was a little bit of sort of toing and froing about, um, you know, what we would do in this sort of situation.
Um, but I was-- I felt really trusting that my team would guide me and, um, you know, would let me know if there's anything we needed to do differently and deviate from the plan. Uh, and then transition hit as it does. Um, and I sort of got to a point where I went, "I, I can't do this anymore." Like, um, "I'm in a hospital, give me, give me pain relief," even though that's not what I wanted, you know.
I really did want to have an unmedicated birth But the combination of the monitoring and, um, you know, my position being a bit restricted because of them needing to monitor the boy so quickly, it just meant that I couldn't use other tools. You know, I couldn't use my TENS machine, couldn't use a shower, couldn't get into the bath, et cetera.
And the wonderful obstetrician at that point came in and checked me over and was like, "Look, you're eight centimeters. You're really close." And I was like, "Nope. Nope. We're, we're bailing out. Um, you're giving me an epidural. I'm not doing this anymore." Um, and thankfully my midwife, 'cause she knows me so well, understood what that was all about and understood that it was the adrenaline just before you have a baby.
\[00:42:02\] Emma Pickett: Yeah.
\[00:42:03\] Hayley: And I can-- It's m- like, I can't remember most of my labor. It's like I was in a different planet, as women tend to be. But I had this real moment of lucidity at that point going, "Okay, I'm a multi, I'm eight centimeters. This cervix is gonna get out of the way. Let's just get on with it."
\[00:42:18\] Emma Pickett: So you didn't have the epidural?
\[00:42:20\] Hayley: No, no. I just started pushing.
\[00:42:22\] Emma Pickett: Wow. That, that, that really says so much about the midwife that was working with you and how she knew you and- Exactly. Yeah ... and you could communicate with her. That is absolute testament to her skills-
\[00:42:32\] Hayley: Yeah ... as
\[00:42:32\] Emma Pickett: a
\[00:42:33\] Hayley: midwife. She's incredible. Yeah. She's absolutely wonderful. And we had had this discussion beforehand about, like, what circumstances I would like to have an epidural in, and it certainly wasn't about not having an epidural at all costs.
It was more like, you know, if labor's abnormally progressing or if, you know, it's looking, um, it's looking like we do have to go for a cesarean, let's try an epidural first. But, um, she could see that labor was progressing. I was really close to having a baby. Um, so yeah, she was-- she did the right thing. And yeah, um, I had the urge to push.
I knew that I was, quote, "only eight centimeters", but I was like, "Whatever. I've had a baby before. My cervix is gonna get out of the way." And so, um, instead of breathing my baby out gently, I pushed really hard, um, and beautiful Magnus came down. Uh, and he came out, um, direct OP or posterior, as Isla also had.
Um, so he was born at 7:16 PM, so about five hours after we started the drip, he was born. And he came out beautifully, um, you know, cried straight away. We had, um, the delayed cord clamping, which was really, really important to me. And not too long after he came out and, um, yeah, it was prob- actually probably it was about 10 minutes when the cord, um, had, um, finished pulsating.
I started to, uh, lose what I thought was Oscar's waters. There was like heaps of fluid coming out, and I sort of thought, "Oh, is that baby B's waters?" And my team, like, looked a bit sort of ashen and were like, "No, that's, that's, that's not Oscar's waters." And at that point, they couldn't really get Oscar's heart rate on the monitor very well.
They did a quick scan to make sure that he was head down, which he was, but they, um, sought my consent to break his waters just to expedite his birth. I didn't really ask any questions. I was just like: Yep, sure, whatever. 'Cause again, we'd had all these discussions antenatally and I understood, um, you know, why they would be making certain recommendations.
Um, yeah, and then he was born, I think he was born maybe two contractions later. Um, he was born at, uh, 16 minutes after Magnus, so like 19:33 he was born. And I didn't realize until I watched the video afterwards, but what had actually come out was heaps of blood. So I had- Yeah ... like absolutely saturated the bed with blood, and when Oscar came out, he was covered in blood.
Um, and that is most likely just Magnus' placenta separating a little bit- Yeah ... which is okay. But you've got no way of knowing that. Like, you don't know whether it's the second twin's placenta detaching and which is, you know, quite a serious emergency. So my team were really calm about it and, um, I didn't feel any sort of sense of panic or anything like that.
And when Oscar was born, he was born in perfect condition. You know, cried straight away, had his delayed cord clamping as well. But that was sort of like the only little, I suppose, you know, hiccup or the only thing that sort of was a source of worry was- Yeah ... you know, trying to get him out safely.
\[00:45:15\] Emma Pickett: And your bleeding didn't continue?
\[00:45:17\] Hayley: No, luckily it
\[00:45:18\] Emma Pickett: didn't. Obviously because you were able to- Yeah ... have the placenta delivery for Oscar. Sounds like it was pretty straightforward.
\[00:45:23\] Hayley: Yep.
\[00:45:23\] Emma Pickett: Wow. Okay. So they are, what? 38 a- and- Yeah ... however many days at this point. So I'm- Yeah, great ... and I'm presuming therefore breastfeeding's gonna be okay, or was Oscar smaller and that made breastfeeding more challenging?
How did things go in the early days?
\[00:45:37\] Hayley: Yeah, so I assumed the exact same as you. I thought, great, we've made it to term. Um, we've had an uncomplicated birth for both babies. Um, they're both well. There's no anomalies. Um, amazing. You know, we, we, we've got this. This is gonna be okay. I'd done a lot of research in pregnancy on, um, breastfeeding multiples because I don't have any professional experience at all, 'cause I've always worked in home birth and I've always worked with, um, you know, low-risk women.
Um, but yeah, done a lot of research. Catherine Stagg's book, would strongly recommend that. And I sort of had my plan of attack. My plan of attack was that, uh, you know, born at term, um, we would prophylactically just top them up with, um, with their antenatally expressed colostrum until they'd regained their birth weight and until we were confident with, with breastfeeding, and then we were just gonna breastfeed on demand from there.
And from that very first feed with both of them, so I did, um, I fed them individually after birth, something just didn't feel right. It was really, really sore, and I'd never experienced any pain at all with Isla. And Magnus in particular kind of curled himself over, like tucked his chin really down and like burrowed his face into the breast, and it just...
I couldn't, I couldn't sort of get him to like extend his neck. Like, I just couldn't, I didn't really know what was going on. But I sort of, I didn't feel too worried because I felt like, oh, this is extremely early days. This is literally our first breastfeed. We've got loads of time to work on this.
Priority right now is just skin to skin, getting some colostrum into them, and we'll work it all out from there.
\[00:47:01\] Emma Pickett: Yeah. So you'd done antenatal expression-
\[00:47:04\] Hayley: Yeah ...
\[00:47:04\] Emma Pickett: um, obviously, so it sounds like you had, that was all up and running, um-
\[00:47:07\] Hayley: Yeah ...
\[00:47:07\] Emma Pickett: okay.
\[00:47:08\] Hayley: Yeah. And there was also the added pressure of, um, the medication I was on for the high blood pressure, labetalol.
Um, they recommend blood sugar monitoring for babies 'cause there's an increased chance of babies becoming, um, hypoglycemic or having low blood sugar. So there was sort of a bit of extra pressure there to, you know, make sure that the boys were getting lots of colostrum regularly, um, to avoid the chance of them becoming hypoglycemic.
So I strictly fed them every three hours, and I think I, by 12 hours it was pretty obvious that their latches weren't great. And the help that I was getting at the time was great, but, um, none of us could really figure out what was going on or really how to address it And we got to 24 hours and I had really bad damage by that point.
Um, and feeding was really, really painful, and I just-- I'd been awake. I don't think I'd slept since they were born because of, you know, feeding each baby every three hours and feeding them individually. And I couldn't, couldn't really think my way through it at that point. My midwife did suggest, um, you know, just hand express and just give them colostrum.
Let's focus on just get it, like getting the volumes into them at that point, and we'll keep working on it, which we did. Um, and then at 48 hours, I, uh, ended up going back into the hospital 'cause I had, um, another episode of really bad hypertension. I checked my blood pressure and it was like 180 on 110 or something crazy like that.
So I ended up going back into hospital. The boys came after a few hours as well, and, um, they ended up, um, changing my medications, which stabilized my blood pressure. But at that point, it was like day three, and I had no signs of transitional milk at all. And at that point as well, because I was hand expressing and able to sort of see what was there, for lack of a better word, I know that we, we don't normally say that as LCs, but my, um, my supply basically vanished at that point.
And I know that we often do see that in women who are hand expressing in that time and not directly breastfeeding, that their volumes in that sort of second 24 hours go down.
\[00:49:11\] Emma Pickett: Yeah. And, and you don't, you don't have the protocol to start pumping in this situation 'cause that's probably what would be happening-
\[00:49:17\] Hayley: Yeah
here in the UK. I was pumping. I was pumping, but like nothing was coming out. But I was doing it for stimulation. Yeah, I was just doing it for the stimulation. Like I, I... That's all I was sort of focused on. And the boys were having my antenatally expressed colostrum through finger feeds, like syringe finger feeds, um, again, strictly every three hours.
So yeah, so anyway, the days kind of ticked along and I think we got to like day four and I still didn't have any transitional milk, and I was really starting to panic at that point 'cause I was going, "What on earth is happening? Like I've breastfed before. I didn't have a postpartum hemorrhage. Um, why is my..."
Like I've been stimulating, I've been having skin-to-skin contact. We had tried, um, directly breastfeeding again at that point.
\[00:49:56\] Emma Pickett: And just to interrupt you for a second, the, the blood loss that you had lost-
\[00:50:00\] Hayley: Hmm ...
\[00:50:00\] Emma Pickett: was not enough of a volume to, to be concerned for like pituitary gland compromise or anything like that.
We're not talking about that
\[00:50:05\] Hayley: kind of volume. No, it wasn't. It was only about 400 mils. I think they weighed it. So like not even, not even sort of considered it like up, uh, across that threshold of hemorrhage. But again, I asked my midwife that. I was like, "What was my volume of blood loss? Um, was my pl- were both of my placentas complete?
Like, what are we missing here? What's not-- Why is this not happening?" And at that point, I reached out to a friend who'd had a baby about a month prior and, um, asked for some donor milk. So, um, very grateful that she came to our rescue and, um, supplied us with some donor milk so the boys could be fed while we worked on whatever was going on.
And in that time, I was just trying to express as much as possible. Like, I had the pump on for stimulation. I was hand expressing, um, and trying to have as much skin-to-skin contact with the boys as possible. But, you know, as you can imagine, I wasn't, I wasn't sleeping. I think I was getting maybe an hour of sleep in a 24-hour period.
\[00:50:55\] Emma Pickett: Gosh, that is intense, Hayley. And I'm just thinking, you know, what's Isla doing? I mean, Isla's like- Yeah ... "Well, here are the boys, and where's mommy gone, and what the heck's happening?" It's, you've got lots of people to worry about, haven't you?
\[00:51:06\] Hayley: Yeah, yep, yeah. And thankfully we had family support for Isla, and Isla was going to school, so life, apart from just not really seeing mom that much, you know, life did con- sort of continue for her at that point.
Um, and she came in and helped with nappy changes and things like that. But, um, yeah, for sure, Isla, uh, we needed family to look after her there. So I think it got to maybe day... I think my transitional milk started to come in maybe day five, um, where I noticed that I was starting to get some volumes again.
Um, so the boys had donor milk for a few days. Um, and then the volume sort of got to a point where we did n- need to introduce bottles. Um, we did try cup feeding. We tried using a supply line. Like, we tried a whole different, a few different alternatives and none of them were just workable, particularly with two babies.
They were also 38-weekers, so they were quite sleepy and behaved like preterm babies, you know, as often 38-week babies do. Um, so trying to get them to latch and trying to, you know, get them going with the breastfeed would take forever.
\[00:52:09\] Emma Pickett: Yeah. Is Magnus still curled into a little kidney bean- Yes ... at this point?
Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
\[00:52:14\] Hayley: He was our little banana baby, and he was also really cranky. He was also like, he, he was clearly in, in pain and had a lot of tension, um, which, you know, in hindsight, being the presenting twin and, you know, his head was in my pelvis for probably months, he was probably in, you know, a fair, fair amount of discomfort from being in an awkward position for a while.
So yeah, that first, that first week was just like white-knuckle, hold on for dear life, take it day by day kinda thing. And that's basically how we got onto the triple feeding because I was in so much pain from, like, from the direct breastfeeding, and then I had the nipple damage, which eventually healed, I think probably by the end of that first week.
And I really didn't want them to develop a bottle preference, so I was, you know, doing my darndest to have them at the breast, um, but not really able to figure it out, and I couldn't figure out why it wasn't working. You know, this was my job. This is what I do all the time, helping people with newborn babies, and I'd breastfed before.
Why wasn't this working? I couldn't, I, I just couldn't figure it out.
\[00:53:18\] Emma Pickett: A great example, if you don't mind me using you as an example of how-
\[00:53:21\] Hayley: Please do ... you,
\[00:53:22\] Emma Pickett: you were a flipping IBCLC, you're a midwife, you're a second-time parent-
\[00:53:26\] Hayley: Yeah ...
\[00:53:27\] Emma Pickett: and you still couldn't work it out. So the idea that a newborn, m- you know, mom, first-time mom, not an expert, it's her fault, in inverted commas- Yeah.
Yeah ... if it doesn't work out, we can see how, how nonsense that is. There are factors that you simply can't control.
\[00:53:40\] Hayley: Yeah. Yeah. It was deeply, deeply humbling to be in a, you know, privileged position of having so much knowledge and having done it before, and having the most amazing support and the most amazing sort of care around us, but to, for it to still just not be working, I, I can't even, I can't even describe the depths of, um, hopelessness, I would say that it felt, you know?
\[00:54:02\] Emma Pickett: Yeah.
\[00:54:03\] Hayley: Yeah. I was pumping, like, 12 times a day or something like that, and trying to give them some time at the breast, and luckily my supply picked up really quickly. Like, I think I, I think by day 10 I was already expressing more than a liter of milk a day. I think it was, like, 1.2 or 1.4 liters of milk a day.
Wow,
\[00:54:21\] Emma Pickett: that's okay. So your body's definitely responding. There's no sh- no issues- Yeah ... with primary milk supply. It's just about- Yeah ... getting it into them and transferring. And how long... And you, you carried on using your friend's donor milk for the sort of first week or so, but then that was- wasn't necessary beyond a certain point?
\[00:54:34\] Hayley: Yeah. I think it was only maybe two or three days that the boys had the donor milk for. I think it, I think by the end of the first week, I definitely, um, had, and like they were having my milk in the bottle, and then I was giving them breast time, and it became really challenging to try to figure out how to taper down those top-ups because the boys weren't transferring milk at the breast, and I could tell that they weren't.
You know, like I, they weren't, um, I couldn't hear audible swallows. They were really sleepy. Magnus' latch in particular was terrible. Like, I just... I could see that they weren't transferring. So we were trying to taper down the top ups, but in terms of observing the feed and trying to sort of go, "Okay, yep, they've transferred really well.
We'll do a half top up." None of the feeds were ever like that at that point, and then so we're talking like the second week here. Um, and so I had a few LCs sort of come and see us at home, um, who were really, really helpful and sort of, you know, did big systematic sort of checks of everything, um, and gave us some good suggestions in terms of optimizing some of the positioning and attachment and got me set up with a tandem feeding pillow, which just cut down some of that time, thankfully.
But I just didn't feel comfortable to stop pumping because I didn't feel that the boys were transferring, and I couldn't drop those top ups because I felt that they weren't actively feeding at the breast. But then the question was, why aren't they actively feeding at the breast? And, um, every, the, the LC and the chiropractor that I was seeing to help with Magnus' tension, they were very much of the opinion that they had normal oral function, um, but they were just 38-week babies.
\[00:56:03\] Emma Pickett: Yeah. That little window that Catherine Stagg talks about, you know, the kind of great pretenders. People think, "Oh, 38 weeks, all good. Off you go, love." Um, and actually sometimes it's just that couple of weeks that can, that can make the difference.
\[00:56:16\] Hayley: And then the weeks sort of ticked by and we got to 40 weeks and I went, "Okay, well, I've got 40-week babies now.
Surely these babies are gonna be alert enough to be able to feed." Same sort of thing. So we were triple feeding for three weeks and, um, my blood pressure was really labile and I was on meds and all that sort of thing in the background as well. Um, but I got to three weeks and I just went, "There's no reason why this shouldn't be working.
These boys are, you know, 40 weeks corrected and they're getting really good volumes. Their weight gains are great. They can feed at the breast. Why aren't they transferring well? They've got normal function." Like, I was just like, "What's going on?" And I actually-- I don't recommend this, but I just stopped the bottles cold turkey and just went, "What happens for 24 hours if I just don't give them any top ups at all?"
'Cause their weights were really good, so I sort of th- I sort of thought, "I've got a safety net where if this doesn't go well, they're okay." Like they're not, um, you know, it's not like they were 10% below their birth weight or anything like that. So yeah, so that's what I did. At three weeks I just went, "Nah, no more bottles."
And the-- I think there was like three or four days of just rabid cluster feeding where I didn't get up at all. Like, I was just stuck under two babies, and same sort of thing. And you're
\[00:57:26\] Emma Pickett: not getting damaged again? I guess that would be the
\[00:57:28\] Hayley: worry- No ... with these
\[00:57:29\] Emma Pickett: latching issues. No, okay.
\[00:57:30\] Hayley: Yeah. Yeah, so I wasn't having pain or damage, but I still, I still wasn't happy with their transfer.
Like, I still couldn't hear them swallowing. I still-- Their poos were really infrequent as well. And you know, you, me, we all tell people all the time with newborn babies, like breastfeeding babies, that, you know, their poos, frequent poos, you know, frequent stooling is a sign of adequate milk intake. So all of the signs that I was looking at with my IBCLC hat on were saying, "These boys are not getting enough milk at the boob."
Yet they were putting on weight. And, um, by all appearances, you know, every pers- every person that sort of came to see us was like, "You're doing great. Everything's really good." And I'm like, "Well, it's, it's not." 'Cause watch, watch this feed, listen to this baby. Can you hear how nothing's happening? So because of that, I was really, uh, focused on pumping to protect my supply.
So I got into this really sort of vicious cycle in a way of feeding the baby. The baby's not feeding well, I need to pump. I need to pump, I need to protect my supply. So that's what I was really, really focused on. Pumping, pumping, pumping, pumping. And again, I was probably pumping nine to 10 times in 24 hours on top of feeding the two babies on demand.
So I was just, um, demand feeding at that point. I wasn't doing like three-hourly or anything. Okay. Still couldn't figure out what was going on. Why wasn't I having letdowns? Why couldn't I feel my letdowns? Why couldn't I hear swallowing? Why were their poos really infrequent, yet they're gaining weight?
What on earth is happening?
\[00:58:51\] Emma Pickett: Yeah. And you're obviously letting down on the pump because the pumping's happening, so- Exactly.
\[00:58:57\] Hayley: Yep ... you know it's nothing to do with your milk supply. Yeah. And that's the other thing too, that like, again, when you're so tired, you can't think yourself through this, and you can't see the patterns, and you can't sort of make these connections.
I was, you know, sleeping two hours at a time in 24 hours. Um, but yeah, you're right. I was... My letdown had become conditioned to the pump, and I would hear that Spectra start going and I would let down. Uh, whereas with the baby, I wasn't letting down. So I... There was another LC that I saw who told me that, that the problem was my supply, and that some people just can't breastfeed twins.
Um, and that's okay, and go and take these supplements here and, um- You're pumping like 1.3 liters or something. Yeah, I know, but- It doesn't make a lot of sense ... but again, des- I was desperate for an answer. So when she was like, "Oh, it's supply." I was like, "Okay, great. My supply, I can do something about that." Um, and then drove home and thought about it and went, that doesn't make any sense Then I sort of went down the rabbit hole of thinking that maybe it was because Magnus had a tongue tie or had some sort of issues with his oral function.
Went down, you know, all the conflicting sort of opinions about ties and all the different stories out there, 'cause again, I was just... I was trying to hunt for an answer. I was trying to figure out what on earth is going on here. And then a really fabulous LC that I saw just said, "Uh, you're pumping too much, and your breasts aren't getting the chance to fill, even though we know that breasts are never empty.
But your breasts aren't getting a chance to fill, so your babies aren't getting the reward when they start feeding." And you- Oh,
\[01:00:19\] Emma Pickett: that makes sense. So they're coming to an emptier breast. They are-
\[01:00:22\] Hayley: Yep ...
\[01:00:22\] Emma Pickett: not getting that letdown stimulation, not swallowing. You're not hearing audible swallows 'cause they're not getting that, that fuller breast.
Okay.
\[01:00:29\] Hayley: Yeah.
\[01:00:30\] Emma Pickett: Yeah.
\[01:00:30\] Hayley: We were also thinking about hyperthyroidism, 'cause I'd had some hyperthyroidism in pregnancy that was subclinical. Um, and we were also thinking about preeclampsia. Like, we were thinking about all these things. We were making it way more complicated than it actually was, but it was just that I couldn't figure out what it was.
And this LC sort of, um, she actually held my hand quite literally and said, "I want you to stop pumping for 48 hours. I don't want you to go anywhere near your Spectra for 48 hours. Um, and I wanna see what happens." Uh, and I did, and they started transferring pretty much straight away. Like, I could hear- Wow
them gulping, and my letdown happened. And I think it was just also that I'd conditioned my letdown to the Spectra, but also that I was so tense and anxious and worried about why isn't this working, why isn't this working, that of course I wasn't letting down because I was so Worked up about
\[01:01:19\] Emma Pickett: it ... the minute you put it, put them on the breast, your, your logic brain is switched on.
You're waiting to find out what's gonna happen. You weren't able- Exactly ... to get that oxytocin flowing.
\[01:01:26\] Hayley: Yep, exactly. It was a procedure.
\[01:01:29\] Emma Pickett: That particular LC, the hand holder, that's- Mm. That's a brave thing to say to somebody. Mm. To say, "Just stop pumping for 40"... I mean, that is, that's a brave thing when you don't really understand what's going on, and her, obviously her experience and her professional experience just gave her a gut, that she had a sense, and-
\[01:01:44\] Hayley: Yep
\[01:01:44\] Emma Pickett: and you trusted her, and y- again, it's all about communication between professional and mum, and, and that, that was the answer. So did you then not pump at all? What happened, what happened next?
\[01:01:55\] Hayley: I think for 48 hours I didn't pump at all, and then I just pumped a little bit, 'cause I had just built that attachment myself with the pump and trusting the pump.
Um, but in the week after I'd seen her, so I think I saw her around week four, and then when my w- midwife came around week five, both boys had put on more than 400 grams in that week each from directly breastfeeding. Wow, so for anyone listening, that's kinda double what we need. That's, uh- Yeah.
\[01:02:21\] Emma Pickett: That's great.
\[01:02:22\] Hayley: Yeah. Wow. And it felt like from that point on, I just went, "Oh, I, I, I know what I'm doing now. Like, I understand what..." It, it was like the boys had also turned a corner in terms of their maturity, and I think they were both a little bit more alert. Um, all of the things I was noticing with Magnus in terms of like his tension, and, um, the chompy, the chompy latch and that sort of thing, and the sleepiness, all of those things got better around that time as well, like around sort of four, five weeks.
And breastfeeding just became this natural rhythm rather than like a procedure or a set of things I had to work through. I didn't have to be the detective for every feed. Like, I was able to just follow their lead and, you know, let them latch when they needed to. The s- you know, I was able to have the experience that I'd had with Isla except there was just two babies.
\[01:03:09\] Emma Pickett: Yeah. Wow. And did you carry on simultaneously feeding or did you do one, one at a time? How did that go?
\[01:03:16\] Hayley: Most of the time I tandem fed them when they were that little, uh, just because of the time factor. So I had like a tandem feeding pillow, and I would either sit on the couch or on the bed, um, and have them, like on the pillow in the football hold, and then I would have like some swaddles under just to sort of bring them up to height a little bit more.
Okay. Uh, and then if they happened to wake singly, I would feed one at a time, if they did happen to wake. And then over time that it became much easier overnight to just feed one at a time. So, um, a lot of the advice out there for twins is like, "Make sure you sync them up. Make sure you wake up the second one."
I f- you know, personally actually found it much easier to deal with one baby at a time, um, particularly overnight, 'cause I could side lie feed and go back to sleep.
\[01:03:56\] Emma Pickett: Yeah, I'm kind of worried about you only having two hours of sleep for, for four
\[01:04:00\] Hayley: months. Yeah.
\[01:04:00\] Emma Pickett: Yeah, yeah. What happened with your sleep?
\[01:04:02\] Hayley: Yeah, so, um, luckily I had really good support.
Um, I was seeing a psychologist as well. Um, I had a GP checking in, like I was having weekly appointments with a GP as well, 'cause yeah, my mental health wasn't good, and it was related to lack of sleep, absolutely, but then also the feeling of helplessness and the sort of loss of control with breastfeeding not going as I thought it would.
And we just got to a point, I think, yeah, probably around that four-week mark once breastfeeding became more natural and less, you know, pumping and all that sort of thing, where instead of pumping I could sleep. You know, instead of having to set an alarm to get up and pump, um, I would sleep and just slowly, slowly, you know, the, the numbers sort of went up and I think I had...
There was one night where I had four hours in a row and I remember waking up just like A new woman. I didn't know myself after four hours of sleep. What
\[01:04:49\] Emma Pickett: a luxury.
\[01:04:50\] Hayley: Yeah.
\[01:04:50\] Emma Pickett: And so from about five weeks you just got into the groove. Yeah. That things worked from, from then until now, um, the breastfeeding's felt positive.
And, and I guess one of the things that I'm, I'm sure you'd say this as well, somebody listening to this thinking, "Oh, I'm struggling to breastfeed. I'll just stop pumping then," 'cause that's what- Yes ... what Hayley did. Well, well, hang on. Yeah. This is a story about working with professionals. You'd had all the, all the oral assessments, all the looking at oral function, the whole...
You've, you've got a real team caring for you, and, and one person found that piece of the puzzle that, that your professional gut also said made sense. Um- Yeah. Yeah ... the answer is not necessarily let's just stop the bottles, let's just stop pumping. You- it's, it's getting that team to help you come up with the solutions that, that work for you and make sense for you.
\[01:05:35\] Hayley: And I also had a follow-up as well, so if that hadn't, if, if that 48-hour experiment didn't work, we would've done something differently. It's just that that happened to be the thing that made a difference for us.
\[01:05:45\] Emma Pickett: Yeah. I'm kind of looking back to the beginning of our conversation when I said, "Hey, she's gonna give us insight into what it's like to, like, you know, look after your th-three-and-a-half, f-f-four-year-old, five-year-old," well, you've got twins.
Y- you probably waved at Isla as you were walked, walking to the kitchen. Pretty much. I mean- Yeah ... how did you get on with, with Isla and, and, and connecting with her throughout this whole process?
\[01:06:06\] Hayley: I don't remember much of those early weeks in terms of Isla, 'cause everything was so focused on breastfeeding, and then also my recovery from preeclampsia.
It was pretty scary, like having, you know, needing to be readmitted and, um, that, uh, you know, I've never had health issues like that before. So I think my, my head space was dominated by that, and we also had family looking after Isla, so I knew she was safe, I knew she was cared for. She understood what was happening.
\[01:06:30\] Emma Pickett: I guess the benefit of her being that age- Yes ... she was right at the age where you could explain and then she could understand. I mean, if she'd been like 18 months, it would've been-
\[01:06:38\] Hayley: Yeah ...
\[01:06:38\] Emma Pickett: a very, very-
\[01:06:39\] Hayley: Absolutely ...
\[01:06:39\] Emma Pickett: different story.
\[01:06:40\] Hayley: Yeah. Yeah. And she had the routine of going to school and the rhythm of going to school.
Uh, and little by little we were just able to build in some more one-on-one time with her, and, you know, Rob would take the boys for a walk in the pram, and I would just sit and do some coloring in with Isla. And we're talking maybe half an hour pockets of time here and there. Um-
\[01:06:59\] Emma Pickett: Yeah ...
\[01:07:00\] Hayley: or yeah, I maybe, um, at the point where I was still pumping, like I might be pumping but I might be doing, you know, reading her a story or something like that.
So yeah, it was, it was survival mode plus, plus, plus. And- Yeah, for sure ... um- Yeah ... she did tell me something a few months ago, um, again, the same sort of little throwaway comment like she made about, um, the, that she wasn't ready to stop breastfeeding. She said, "You know when the baby brothers were here, Mom, I thought that you and, you and Bubble," she calls Rob Bubble, um, "I thought that you and Bubble didn't care about me anymore".
\[01:07:31\] Emma Pickett: Aw. Oh dear. She's very good
\[01:07:32\] Hayley: at- Yeah ... pressing
\[01:07:32\] Emma Pickett: the buttons, isn't
\[01:07:33\] Hayley: she? Yeah. But, uh- Wow ... the really fascinating thing is that she says it Just to share how she's feeling, and it's not a-- You know, she says it and she moves on, and we have a chat about it, and I, I just love that she could tell us that. Like it was, you know, it was a few months down the track.
Um, and we tried to sort of keep her involved with everything. Like we tried to get her to make decisions about the boys, what outfits are they gonna wear, um, what nappies are we gonna put on them today, do you wanna grab me this out? Be like, we try to sort of keep her involved with all of it. But like, yeah, the, the, the threshold was survival.
The threshold was just getting through, getting through a 24-hour period with everybody fed and, and clothed and, um, and that was about it.
\[01:08:13\] Emma Pickett: Yeah. She sounds like she's a deep thinker. I think we've got a- Yeah, she is ... future philosopher here. Things kind of- Yeah ... appear months later, like she's really been dwelling on things and thinking about things.
So, so the boys are seven months now. Um, what's a sort of typical 24 hours for their feeding right now?
\[01:08:28\] Hayley: 24 hours typically, um, would be they feed a few times overnight. Normally a, a good night would be two to three. Um, a bad night, sometimes it's hourly. Um, and again, I just roll with it. Um, I don't do any-- I just Whatever we have to do to get through, we get through.
Uh, and then yeah, they normally feed when they wake up, and then I'd say maybe every two to three hours during the day, sometimes more, sometimes less. Um, they don't do the typical evening cluster feed, which Isla did when she was a baby, and I don't know whether it's that I just don't have time for them to do that, so they can't.
Um, and we do do a lot of like baby wearing in the, um, afternoons and stuff so we can get things done, and then we feed to sleep, um, overnight. Um, but yeah, normally during the day I'm single-feeding them one at a time 'cause we're normally out and about. You know, we'll go to a Pilates class or we'll go, um, to the library or, you know, whatever it is that we, we might do, and it's just when you're out in public g- getting both boobs out and having two distracted babies that are pulling off and looking around, it's just not a vibe.
Um, so I tend to feed them one at a time. Yeah, this is the age of the pulling off and
\[01:09:34\] Emma Pickett: looking around, isn't it? This
\[01:09:35\] Hayley: is- Yeah, exactly. Yeah ... the
\[01:09:36\] Emma Pickett: distractible age. Um, solids have been okay. That's been fine.
\[01:09:40\] Hayley: Solids has been great. Lots of mess. Um, but it's really, they are, interestingly they're taking to it a lot more than Isla did.
It's just, yeah, it's bittersweet in a way because like I feel so proud of the fact that I exclusively breastfed the boys for six months, and I want, you know, equal measure want them to be taking that next step and then also not, because it's just that step away from, yeah, from being exclusively breastfeeding and being my little tiny babies.
\[01:10:04\] Emma Pickett: Yeah. I mean, exclusively breastfeeding twins, you know, that is extraordinary. That is, that is a very determined woman, um, with all the challenges that you had, that is absolutely extraordinary, so amazing. Amazing. And future plans for them, when do you go back to work, and what are you thinking their journeys might be like?
Are you sort of thinking roughly the same sort of timeframe as Isla, or are you just gonna wait and see what feels right?
\[01:10:27\] Hayley: Well, yeah, well, my goal with Isla and my goal with the boys was always to make it to two years. I suspect that the boys will probably show some more interest in weaning than Isla did.
I- that's just a suspicion. It's not really based on anything. Um, but yeah, I think, uh, like at this point I plan to be more sort of child-led. Um, I'm planning to go back to work when they're about Probably will be about 16, 17 months. Um, and again, we'll be winging it in terms of what we do. I'll go back part-time as again.
But yeah, just I, I'm planning to just sort of follow their lead, um, in terms of how long they wanna breastfeed for. I do suspect that I will get to a point where I'll need to have some more boundaries in place, um, because feeding two babies is really over-stimulating, uh, at this point. I can't even imagine once they get older and they're twiddling and they're doing all sorts of other things.
Um, but no, I don't, I don't have any sort of like, um, hard lines, I suppose.
\[01:11:24\] Emma Pickett: Yeah. It sounds like you've always been very good at listening to your body and listening to your instincts and, and knowing what feels right. That's part of winging it. Winging it gets a bad rap. We imply that that's a bad thing, but actually winging it- Yeah
also means listening to the gut, listening to the moment, doing what feels right, and it sounds like you've done a-
\[01:11:39\] Hayley: Yeah ... fantastic job of doing that. And just trusting that we can figure it out, and that there is support available and there is help, and everything's fixable, or, you know, the vast majority of things are fixable.
That's how I feel.
\[01:11:48\] Emma Pickett: Yeah. Thank you so much for your time today. Yeah. Hayley, I really appreciate it. You've mentioned Catherine Stagg's book. Um- Mm. And Catherine Stagg also has a Facebook group for people in the UK who have give birth to multiples. Is there any equivalent to that in Australia? Do you have any sort of communities-
\[01:12:03\] Hayley: No
\[01:12:03\] Emma Pickett: that particularly use- There's
\[01:12:03\] Hayley: nothing, there's nothing anywhere near as good as Catherine's. She's also got a fantastic website, the, um, the Breastfeeding Twins and Triplets UK. I can't think of what it's called, but I'm sure you'll be able to link it. Yeah.
\[01:12:13\] Emma Pickett: Yeah, I think it might just be Breastfeeding Twins and Triplets.
Um, but we'll put the link in the show notes for sure.
\[01:12:17\] Hayley: Very comprehensive. Yep. Really, really good. Um, but no, unfortunately there isn't. Um, the local multiple birth associations in Australia, um, some of the parents breastfeed, but the vast majority of them either combi feed or, uh, have had such traumatic breastfeeding experiences that there's, you know, they're- You go to sort of ask for the, um, you know, advice or help, and there's not really much there just because a lot of babies are born preterm and, um, the supports just aren't there for them.
\[01:12:46\] Emma Pickett: Yeah. And just to say that Catherine's group is, is absolutely for people who combi feed as well. Absolutely, yeah. It's a space for, for all kinds of breastfeeding. Um, yeah, um, I don't think either of us would want anyone to listen to this and think if you have twins, you should be exclusively breastfeeding like Hayley.
No, that's right. And if you're not, you failed in some way. It's what you did, what you did was, I use the word extraordinary 'cause it is really tough when, you know- Yeah ... people
\[01:13:08\] Hayley: are
\[01:13:08\] Emma Pickett: exclusively breastfeeding twins. And
\[01:13:08\] Hayley: it's just that that's, those were my goals, and it doesn't mean that they're the goals for, for anybody else.
And, um, any, you know, any lactation consultant's gonna be there to support somebody no matter what they want to do. Um, and I was just really grateful that, that people did take the time to listen to what was important to me, um, at that point.
\[01:13:25\] Emma Pickett: Some of the things that's really clear from this is you're really good at getting your team around you.
You're really good at finding the right people, and if you need to see three lactation consultants, you'll see three, and if you need three different opinions, that's what you'll do, and I think that's, that's obviously one of your great skills as well. Thank you so much for sharing your story today, Hayley.
Very best of luck with next steps. Um, and I'd love to hear how things carry on with the boys and, and what the ending of your journey looks like. So think of me when you get to that point.
\[01:13:51\] Hayley: I'll let you know. Thanks, Emma.
\[01:13:57\] Emma Pickett: Thank you for joining me today. You can find me on Instagram at emmapickettibclc and on Twitter at makesmilk. It would be lovely if you subscribed because that helps other people to know I exist, and leaving a review would be great as well. Get in touch if you would like to join me to share your feeding or weaning journey, or if you have any ideas for topics to include in the podcast.
This podcast is produced by the lovely Emily Crosby Media.

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