“Code Pink, we need blood now.”
Sensing the midwives’ brewing panic, my OB took firm control.
It was only a few minutes ago that my baby had been whisked away for oxygen. I was not overly worried. I knew this was often standard and after just a couple of minutes, a fierce, shrill tore from her newly opened lungs just as I had expected and read about.
I am a mental health counsellor with a tremendous, national organisation that works with thousands of people every single day over the phone or on webchat. Throughout my three years in this role, I have been exposed to anxiety, depression, suicide, trauma, postpartum struggles and so much more.
When I started as a 26 year old woman I had recently been married to my now husband, owned a successful exercise therapy business and co- founded a disability support organisation. I was a workaholic and nothing energised me more than providing hands-on daily assistance to those in need.
In August 2025 I gave birth to my daughter Darcy Charlotte. Her birth marked the painful dawn of my postpartum challenges.
It’s funny I often view myself as almost two different people. The person I was before giving birth and the person I am today.
As a mental health counsellor, I never truly grasped the profound resilience a mother is forced to display until I became a mother myself. When I gave birth to my daughter, I suffered from a severe postpartum hemorrhage.
After the placenta was birthed, I began to lose blood extremely quickly. By the time 15 medical professionals bolted into my hospital room in immediate response to a code pink, I was losing blood and fast fading. Despite my blurred and sluggish thoughts, I clearly remember dreaming of crashing ocean waves.
Following a full twenty minutes and the maximum therapeutic dose of coagulant, the bleeding subsided.
Relief washed over the room as two litres of donated blood flowed into my veins pulling me back into a nauseating state of consciousness. As my dedicated OB visited me the next day on the ward, he noted that “this would have been a very different outcome in a country like Africa.”
I wish this was the end of my story. It should really be, however the universe does not always work in our favour.
Six weeks postpartum, an investigation into my continuous bleeding revealed a retained placenta. Consequently, I needed hospital readmission and under general anesthetic my incredible OB removed the remaining tissue.
As I sit here today, my body has since healed and I can still close my eyes and see the frantic, life saving blur of the medical team moving around me that day. While I trust that time will heal this trauma, my new and immediate focus has been shattered by yesterday’s news of my 10 month old daughter’s upcoming hip surgery.
My daughter has been living in a hip brace for six months due to severe hip dysplasia. As a first time mum, hearing that my daughter needed an orthopedic brace for hip dysplasia crushed me. “What had I done wrong? Did I exercise too frequently during pregnancy, did I eat the wrong foods? did I fall too often? Why was this happening to us?”
Yesterday, six months after Darcy began her hip brace journey we found out our efforts of bracing our daughter had failed. Our options are now surgery, a cast and indefinite hip bracing until she is two.
Once again as a mother I ask myself “What I did wrong? How will I move past this? How can I watch my ten month old baby in a hospital bed with a half body cast? Will she ever learn to walk?”
As I write this and try to organise my spiraling thoughts, I question a mother’s resilience.
Eventually, my daughter will walk. She will have a normal life. Yet I am haunted by the reality of so many other mothers whose babies will never take a step.
How are these mothers so resilient? How do we as parents get through every day knowing that we have to watch our child in physical pain.
I don’t know if I will ever have another child, but I know this with absolute certainty: there is no greater strength than a mother’s love.
Nothing can replicate that bond. Mothers are truly incredible, and as a first time mother and mental health counsellor, I have never appreciated this truth as deeply as I do today.
