Ep131: Andrew - A dad’s perspective of two births, the impact of birth over the years.

Hello, welcome. For those listening today, I've got another story. I love getting stories from dads because dads have a very different perspective, and partners, you know, their role is so very significant, and sometimes we don't realize that and they don't realize that. And the beautiful man I have with me today is Andrew, and I love Andrew because I've watched him and his beautiful partner Kate and have their two boys And I've watched a real journey of growth, and that's what this is. It's a, it's an important pathway. And Andrew has had his babies 5 and 7 years ago now, so he's going to really also touch on the impact of the birthing experience even years down the track. So let's welcome Andrew. Thank you, darling.

Hello, thank you for having me.

Yeah, no worries. So you were pregnant with, with your first son What— how were you and Kate feeling about the idea of giving birth, and what sort of prep did you do for number one?

For number one, um, gosh, it's sort of 8 years ago now. Um, there's a lot of, a lot of excitement, a lot of, uh, and we're older parents just to— well, we were in our 30s, I guess. A lot of people, yeah, slightly older now. Um, so we, uh, 32 and 34. Kate's slightly older than me. Very diligent preparation. You know, we wanted the best of everything, wanted to go to the best hospital, the best obstetrician, the, you know, the whole scenario, thinking that, you know, that was the absolute way we needed to go. So there was a lot of— that mentality shaped how we approached the first birth. And yeah, Kate, Kate, an inordinate amount of Red Licorice Bullets. Um, that's definitely a feature of the pregnancy that stands out in my mind. I used to find empty packets of them shoved under the car seat, you know, basically everywhere you'd go. She really went crazy on the Red Licorice Bullets. That was funny. And I forget about that sometimes and remind each other about it. She's never had one since, so, um, she can't. But yeah, no, it was, it was a— I mean, we, we thought we were just doing pains to try and do everything that we thought we needed to do in the best way possible, you know.

Um, and, um, it can be a little bit of an interesting thing, isn't it? You think the more you pay, the more you get, and that isn't always the case.

That's correct. Yeah, yeah, that was it. That was the understanding, the mindset we had going into it.

Yeah, yeah. Um, so tell me, Andrew, how are you feeling about going through the birth process? Do you— can you recall back then? Were you feeling confident? Did you see yourself having a role?

I was naive. I think I was relatively confident, but as you'd expect, uncertain because we've not, you know, necessarily done it before. I didn't seem— I didn't know exactly what my role should, should have been, um, or was meant to be, other than just to be as supportive as I possibly could. You know, and me being who I am, just always wanting to help out and all the rest of that, just trying to be diligent. But there was no— I didn't really have a specific idea or understanding of how the scenario was going to play out. And of course, then you go into the hospital and you do your kind of pre-run through it and, you know, the walkthrough, and they tell you this is where you're going to be. And I think I think we, from memory, we did one or two pre-birth classes at the hospital, but it was more like a, you know, when you come in, this is where you'll go, this is how the, you know, the thing will play out. Um, and, you know, it gives you a bit of an understanding. So obviously, you know, when you hit the hospital, it's not the first time you've been in there.

Uh, right.

So that, but it was all pretty sanitized, that's the right word for it.

Yeah. Okay, so tell us what unfolded then.

Well, we went in and we were due to have a December baby, and his due date was mid-December. I recall we got the— what we've sort of since discovered is a fairly standard line. Our obstetrician was going on leave in December and going skiing in North America at a particular date. Which sounded like a deadline. And we were monitoring the situation, doing our usual checkups and all of that type of stuff, and basically started to go through this process of being conditioned to expect almost that we could result in an emergency C-section or that we'd need to be inducted because the baby was very large. And that you're a first-time mum, you're a geriatric mother. And so we didn't have a—

Zap your confidence. Jesus.

Yeah, that's it. So we didn't realize it at the time, but that was very, uh, particular language, which then, you know, and of course, because we'd sought the best advice, you know, uh, we'd gone to the right place and all that type of stuff, we were with the best person we possibly thought we could be. Then of course, we just, you know, we follow following the advice. So, okay, our baby's growing, um, no signs of labor, it's getting big, we might have to induce if we haven't, you know, hit this, you know, hit things by a certain date, then we'll come in for an induction. So that's what we did, went in for an induction, got induced. I can't remember how many hours the induction process went on for. Yeah. But it didn't work. And it was, it just went on for hours and hours and hours, like 12 or 16 hours or something like that. You know, until such a time that about halfway through that period, our obstetrician began the conversation with us about potentially needing, you know, preparing ourselves mentally for an emergency caesarean, that, you know, their number one priority is a healthy baby. And, you know, if that's a decision that needs to be made, it's one that we should consider very carefully. And in the end, the we got to a point where the decision was, the options that were put in front of us were, you can go home, the induction has failed, you know, it hasn't worked, so you can go home or we can book you in at 4:00 PM this afternoon for an emergency C-section.

Yeah.

Wow. And we would highly recommend, you know, and so we lived in our, out of town. We're thinking to ourselves, we can't just, what are we going to do? Go home? Like we've just been through this process of, you know, this failed kind of induction, you know, my wife was just rattled, as you can imagine. And so, in that state, we're there, we're looking at the time, it's 2 PM, so we're thinking, okay, well, I guess the best option for us is to go with the C-section. So, that's what we did. And so, we had a beautiful little baby boy. You know, Kate had a— yeah, Kate had the emergency C-section and then, Yeah, we got William. He had to spend a period of time in the humidity crib. Kate, uh, you know, had her blood pressure— gee, all this stuff I forgot that I'm now remembering— dropped a fair bit. So she had to spend some time, uh, in theater afterwards, and she never got to really connect with Will, um, straight away. Oh, it makes me a bit emotional talking about it. Oh, sorry.

It's hard to go through. Yeah.

Yeah, wow, that's a surprise. Uh, and so then I spent the first, I reckon, a good 24, 36 hours, um, just me and the little fella. And he was in the, the humidity crib, and I'd walk him around when we had the opportunity to. And then, yeah, Kate came out of surgery, and, um, on we went from there. And so then things really didn't— things really went from kind of bad to worse for us, actually. Um, He had a tongue tie, but we didn't really know that at the time. And he wasn't feeding particularly well. And because it was sort of mid-December, there was a different roster of midwives and nurses and stuff like that in the hospital. So there's quite an itinerant workforce. So we were getting a different midwife was coming in basically every shift, giving what turned out to be contrasting advice around feeding. Which then just confused us. And we're trying everything. And, and, uh, anyway, eventually, uh, after a couple of days, we were deemed fit to go home. Um, and so home we went, and it was Christmas. And we, um, yeah, we battled on for a few weeks. And unbeknownst to us, you know, he just wasn't getting enough tucker. And, um, we couldn't— we didn't know, you know. And there was no support. We had no support from, um, from the hospital or anything like that, uh, or the midwives. So we had no postnatal support whatsoever, and we're kind of on our own.

Um, wow, that's a— that's a really big journey. And yeah, what you're highlighting there, Andrew, is the flow-on effect of, you know, what seems to be a small decision like an induction.

Yeah.

And the also the type of care that we take on board can feel very fractured. And that's what you're describing. And this is something I would encourage listeners to really think about, to identify what sort of postnatal support you can expect and what sort of postnatal stay you can expect and where to go if things are not unfolding in the right way. Often we're so caught up in the birth and we can't think beyond the birth, but The birth is the doorway into where the rubber really hits the road afterwards. And I feel so very sad that that is how it unfolded. Because even you looking at that, you know, 7, 8 years later, you can still feel the energy and the emotion of that. And that's, that's a, you know, birth matters. It's not the type of birth that matters. It's often how we were treated, what we were able to bring to the party, how we were supported. Whether our voices were heard, what gets activated in us through that journey. So gosh, hats off to you and Kate for kind of getting through that.

Yeah, well, it was— we sort of learned a lot out of it, um, and God willing, you know, well, yeah, so, and I guess that's part of the reason to come along and talk today because we, we were so preoccupied with, uh, with the birth and with the birthing process that we never really gave much thought to what comes after that. Yeah, in our naivety and, um, Can I ask a quick question?

Was he big when he was born?

Oh, he was not huge. No, he was 3.6 kilos or something like that.

So he was still quite small.

He wasn't, he wasn't a, you know, giant. No, not by any stretch. He's probably on the larger side of normal, you know.

Yeah, but I'll, I'll just come in there too about induction, you know, and we have talked about induction a lot on these episodes, but for those who are just listening for the first time, I want to highlight that induction itself has risks. And often— I heard an obstetrician say this, he said, when your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. And so any type of, you know, variation from a very narrow normal, for example, advanced maternal age, you know, IVF conception, high BMI, um, gestational diabetes, even if it's been managed there. And, and by the way, Christmas. Yeah, yeah, you know, these are all sort of moments in time where, okay, we need to manage the process. And so the way we manage is with induction or an elective cesarean. And so the induction rates are up around 50%, and they're not lowering the risk to stillborn. They're actually— what that's doing is increasing the stint of babies having, um, needing to go into neonatal intensive care, um, increased risk of postpartum hemorrhage, increased risk of birth trauma, um, and increased risk of cesareans. These are all, um, signs that that type of management can be incredibly useful under certain conditions, but it's being way overused to avert from the whole stillborn, you know, fear, when in actual fact there are other ways and alternatives that you can manage risk. For example, going in for some extra monitoring. So Andrew's story is not an unusual story from that perspective. But Andrew, coming back to you now, you and Kate went through that. You're pregnant with baby number 2. You decide to do some very different things. Tell us about that.

Well, that journey started in that period of time after baby number 1, right? We're at home, um, struggling. Turns out baby was losing weight, and, um, Kate, uh, cast around, was just looking for help anywhere we could possibly find it. And, and, um, and ended up finding, um, midwife Mel. I can't remember exactly how, but somehow in the grapevine, she was in a tent in Tumut camping over her, over her Christmas holidays and was due to come home. And we're kind of on the way back from Tumut to Canberra. So she stopped in and saw us and she's, uh, she's looked at us, taken one look at us and gone, oh, you guys are in trouble. So she, um, that was the beginning of the turnaround basically.

Uh, so that's lovely. Mel Pearce, she used to run the birth center at Canberra Hospital and now she's part of the Mother Hub, um, with Sarah Bombell. GP obstetrician and a fabulous lactation specialist. Well, they've got a great practice here in Canberra called the Mother Hub.

Yeah, so big, big plug to them. They are— so she, yeah, so she was our guardian angel that turned up, um, you know, in that intervening period between Christmas and New Year and, or just afterwards in early January. And, and, uh, basically that was the, that was the point at which we started to turn around from there. Um, you know, we got his tongue tied sorted out got his feeding lined up properly. I think we ended up going to a bottle scenario and Kate pumped just because it was the most appropriate thing for us in our situation. And then we started to, you know, from that point forward, we started to realize that in our endeavors to do all of the right things, we'd probably in the end just walked into a system that was very, very oriented to a predetermined outcome. And that's exactly what happened. And so we learned lots of lessons and Kate took a lot of trauma out of it, unfortunately. And I think I probably have too, just judging by my reaction thinking about it all these years later. But then baby number 2 came along and we had made the decision then to go with a completely different approach. So we engaged with the Motherhub, with Mel and Sarah Bombell, and decided to go to Queen Biean. Hospital. And Kate decided that she— because just the other thing, just to reverse for a minute back to baby number 1, we had a birth plan, but it never mattered in the end. And I think one of the things that Kate took away from that is that she was completely disempowered. And that was a tangible, palpable feeling of being disempowered. You know, your birth plan, just put that off to the side. We have a medical priority now.

We know what you need. We know what's best for you.

Yeah, so everything that she wanted, had hoped for, and all that sort of stuff just, just kind of got pushed to the side, which in a medical emergency, right, you can't argue with that. No, but you know what, was it a medical emergency?

I don't know.

So, um, so that was that. This time she was determined to own her destiny, and she wanted to have a VBAC.

Um, which is a vaginal birth after cesarean.

Yeah, yep, yep. So, um, so that's what we started to work towards. And, uh, yeah, so we fell pregnant and, um, that was fun, obviously. And then, um, went through the, went through the, the scenario with Mel and Sarah and, uh, yourself. And that was when we came on to— I think Mel put us on to you, um, and we came and did Transform Your Birth. And it was at that point we came and did the weekend course, um, that for the first time I saw my role in the birth.

Wow.

And just thought, wow, like, what this is— look at, look at the role that I can play. And, uh, a role beyond, you know, fetching this and scooting off to get that. And, you know, and so that, that, that was a huge— well, transformation. The secret's in the name. So, um, So we did your course and the long story short is we went in for a checkup very late in the pregnancy and Sarah was doing a checkup and while that checkup was happening, Kate's waters broke. And so we toddled off, her contractions were just sort of starting really lightly. I even remember it was a pretty drizzly sort of day in Queenbian and We had a hotel room somewhere in Canberra, and so we went and just spent a couple of hours there. As the contractions got stronger, time came to go to the hospital, and everything was just as smooth as silk, you know. Um, I think she had probably a 6-hour labor in the end. Um, the nurses and midwives were incredible, and Give me one moment.

These are touching, tender moments in our lives. I'm not surprised, Andrew, that the, the emotions coming back up. It would have been an incredible turnaround for both of you to have this type of an experience.

Oh wow, that's a surprise. It was the most incredible experience of my life. Sorry.

No, I apologize. I got goosebumps.

So, so we went through the birth process and, um, yeah, I just played my role, um, did all of the things in terms, you know, the massaging and the— and you just being there for my wife. Wow. Yeah, it was, it was just, it was unreal. It was the most— and I just saw this power, um, come out of her from a really deep place. Sorry. And in the end, she called for an epidural, um, and by the time the, the poor old anesthesiologist got there, um, she'd had the baby.

It's that typical getting into transition towards the end, say, I'm done with this, I want an epidural, and often at the time you can't have one.

You know, we, well, we basically just said to her, you know, okay, if that's what you want, darling, let's, you know, we can call it. There's, there's nothing lost in that. And so she called it, and then the lady's just, you know, sort of standing behind her, just said, Kate, I think you've got this, you know, 'He's on his way and he's going to get ready, of course, but I think you've got this.' And she did. She had it covered. And gosh, she delivered this baby without any drugs or anything like that other than whatever it was that she was— she might have had a bit of Panadol or something like that, but without the epidural anyway. And the empowerment that came from that, He's a healthy little fella. He had a true knot in his cord, amazingly, but he's not too wild these days. Well, he's wild, but he's not, he's not too wild. But yeah, so he had, and he's a happy, healthy little fella. She, her recovery, you know, like she was sort of straight onto him. We still ended up going down the same route with regard to feeding. She fed him better in that whole scenario in the initial part, was a lot more successful. She was with her baby straight away. You know, so I guess the amazing part about that is watching the difference between the first and the second process, having been completely disempowered and watching my wife become a shell of a human afterwards, you know, because she suffered a lot of postnatal anxiety and depression after the first baby and still had some challenges with that. After the second baby as well. But within herself, she had discovered an inner strength that she never knew she had, although I think she might have thought she had, you know, but, but maybe not thought she was capable of finding. She found it. And so the self-confidence that kind of comes from, from that was— has been pretty remarkable to, to watch and witness that, and to have been able to play my role in it. Um, is a bond that her— her, like, a depth of— it deepened our bond, you know. So depth of bond that we never would have had otherwise. Wow.

That is Mother Nature's design, Andrew. That's what she wants us to discover. Mother Nature wants us to discover that we're much more than what we think, and we have to dig deeper to get through the intensity of any birth experience. Even caesareans are a big birth experience. Definitely. I don't, I don't have value judgments about any birth at all because they are the pathway. And even even that first birth that you went through, that was an integral part of you getting to that point and her getting to that point of self-discovery. Sometimes we have to go down the wrong path in order to work out what the right path is. Sometimes we need to be disempowered in order to work out what true empowerment is, where we start to wake up, step up, and bring into our lives things that we know now that we'll never do again. And I'm choosing this, I don't want that. And so no birth is ever in vain, and I think your story highlights that beautifully.

Well, what it's taught us as humans in every other part of our life, it's affected every other part of our life, right?

So talk more about it now.

Well, you know, like I said to you, we were relatively naive, I think, going in, as most people would be, right?

You've never done it. Yeah, you don't know what you don't know.

Yeah, exactly. And we were very conscious, we've got to take the advice, we've got to trust the medical professionals and all that sort of stuff. It's not to say we don't trust medical professionals, just to be very clear. Yeah, yeah. But we are certainly a lot more eyes wide open when it comes to defining our own journey in every other part of our life now. And so, um, it made us realize that we are probably too complicit. You know, we're both youngest kids, uh, we both tend to want, you know, do the right thing and, and what have you, and, and, um, uh, impress the elders around us and stuff. And, and we've just realized that, that, that whole scenario has helped us come to a point where we know we are, we are our own people and we will carve our own path in this, in this world. And it's certainly been a part of helping us to come to, you know, to realize that, um, at a very basic level.

And you need to do that for your kids, don't you?

Oh, definitely.

Yeah, absolutely. You become an advocate for them for the rest of of their life, not just at birth.

That's right. Like, as a man, um, I'm now in my 40s and I feel like I'm growing up just now, you know. Um, and you come to this point, I think a lot of blokes struggle at this particular time in their lives. Um, but it's made me realize, and some people realize this sooner rather than later, um sooner, sooner than others. But for me, it, it's helped equip me on my journey as a man to play my role in my family and to, to step in my role, into my role as a dad, as a husband. And, uh, made a huge amount of mistakes along the way, but, and will continue to do so, no doubt. Um, but you get to this point where it probably sounds a bit crazy to say it, where you realize in life there's no one else to hide behind but you. You know, and particularly my line of work, I run my own business and, and, uh, and what have you. There's no one else to blame. You know, I sink or swim under my own steam. Um, and as an individual, these are very kind of, um, a huge— it's been a huge growth phase to come into that place where I can step into that role and that responsibility. And now look at my children and they look to me I'm their dad and I've got to carve the path with them. And then you bring that into the partnership I have with my wife, and then we come together and play my role in our marriage and holding up my end of that bargain and being, as you know, always trying to be as good a husband as you can be, right? Noting that we're all human, but that it's just an amazing period of maturity and growth that's come from, that started with that whole experience. And Yeah, it's when you sort of accept that you're, you're the one that's responsible for defining your own path, and that I feel— I find that— I found that really empowering. And, um, so, you know, she and I work together in a partnership now in a way that we never did before to the same extent, um, because we've got such a deeper understanding of who each other's— who we each are. Um, I don't know if that made sense, but we've got a much more deeper understanding of each other. How we work together, how we can support each other. Yeah, how to pick each other up when we're, um, when we are, you know, when we trip, and, and how to have grace for one another, to accept each other's failings and, and, uh, and all of that type of stuff.

And all of that hopefully helps us to be as good parents as we can be, um, which again is, you know, obviously a challenging The parenting piece is less about what you do and say to your kids and more about who you are and who you become, because they're watching you from the very moment they land. Yeah. And it is a growth process, parenting. But what you're describing there is so powerful for people to really start to think about and contemplate. The birth is going to be 1, 2, maybe 3 days out of your life, but it is a doorway. It acts as a catalyst. It puts you in the trenches together. And that process of going through the struggle, the hardship, the, the good decisions, the not so good decisions, the dead ends and the better roads that we, we end up ultimately following is a maturation process. It's designed to mature you. And what you've described so beautifully, Andrew, is you're going from a victim consciousness. Not that you and Kate were victims, but this is where we're going as humans, where when we're little, we blame everybody and it's everybody else's fault and things like that. But as you you get older, you start to step into fully the realization that, uh-uh, my— I don't care. It doesn't matter what conditions you've got around you. It's not what happens, it's what you do about it that makes the difference. And we have as humans so much more power, power than what we realize. So instead of blaming and, you know, oh, this was terrible and that person did this and it's all everybody else's fault, that leaves you in a very powerless state. And the maturation process is going from victim consciousness to, I'm in the driver's seat here and what I do matters. And if I want to change something, I've got to change me. And when people get that, their life unfolds in the way that I think Mother Nature's designed it to be for us to become bigger, better, wiser humans and to move into eldership with those notches on the belt, those experiences, those hard times, particularly the hard times, because they tend to teach us more so that we can continue to guide the younger generation I see it so clearly. I've watched so many people's paths and you and Kate, full credit to both of you for both staying committed to each other, even when it's hard to, even when you give each other the shits and moving beyond that to, okay, what are we going to do? What, how, how do we need to step up in this situation? And I've watched that for you and a lot of families. It's truly magnificent. And birth, I think, is a massive catalyst for that.

Yeah, definitely. I think like that's just that, that mindset shift really began when Kate and I— she always amazes me, um, in this regard, her capacity to be able to be self-aware enough to go out and search for something different. And right, I was— I didn't probably fully appreciate that, um, element of her, that part of her. And, um, yeah, so I, I, you know, after the, after the first birth, you know, she was determined to do things a different way. And we did have some victim mentality around that, absolutely. And we could have stayed in that, but, you know, she— I was led by her determination not to let that dictate how we moved forward. And that was, you know, and will remain one of the most critical decisions of our lives that, you know, that she led us into. Because then it's, it just, it's, it's set everything else up in a much more positive trajectory. And you're right, like the birth scenario, I look at, you know, I still see in my mind, and we were talking off air about this, like I still see in my mind myself as a dad of little babies, you know. And but now, like, I look at my boys and, um, gosh, they're— one's mowing the lawn on the zero-turn mower and the other dude's, you know, riding his bike like a madman. And, uh, it's just, it's the best, you know, but it's insane. And then you don't necessarily realize it until you see someone else in the street with a little baby, and if in a minute it takes you back to that place, you think, oh, okay, I remember that, you know. And it wasn't that long ago, uh, it was a long time but not that long ago at the same time. And I think about, you know, the old adage of, you know, if you knew then what I know now, you just probably couldn't, couldn't have comprehended it. But The growth in me as a human has been markedly— like, it's been profound being a dad, particularly of boys. And to your point before, how much they watch me. They watch me a lot. And when they, you know, I've read Steve Biddulph's Raising Boys about 4 times now, and every time I feel like I get stuck, I pick it up and read it again. It is such a good book, as is, um, another one that he's got, um, Fully Human, right? You know, it's, it's that, that overlaid with the experience with Mel, yourself reading that Fully Human, and then reading, um, Raising Boys and a couple of other books has just been such a journey of self-discovery. But then also, you can read all the books in the world, but the physical act of raising these boys has taught me so much about my own childhood and also helped me to understand that I have not— I had not and probably have not, and am now in the process of dealing with a lot of things from my upbringing that, uh, I now know, um, impacted how I matured into being a man and And, and I don't mean man as in a toxic masculine way. I mean like a man who's prepared to step up into his family responsibility and do the things that I need to do. And, and, and it's made me determined to raise my boys in a different way to how my old man raised me, right? Uh, my parents raised me. Now, they— I had a— my childhood was fine. So, you know, um, there's some traumas in there like every person would have to varying degrees. And things that I worked through. But by and large, you know, I was blessed to grow up in a family with a mum and dad that was a safe home, you know, not a violent home, not a, you know, so all of that type of stuff. But there were other, other challenges, you know, an old man that wasn't around much because he was working and he was working all the time. And it doesn't mean he didn't love me, it just means he wasn't around. Now, by the time he sort of started to finish working, I was coming into being a teenager. And he, he had this expectation that he wanted to come into my life again. I'm like, nah, mate, I'm gone.

I'm off with my mates.

That's it. And so, and I'm like, who are you? So we had a lot of conflict, uh, through those years, and I'm determined not to repeat that with my boys. And that's been a part of the, um, a part of the, uh, motivation to work for myself so I can be around a lot more. And to the point about being there at the birth I feel very blessed to have been able to be there at the birth of both kids, even though the birthing experiences were diametrically opposed. I was still completely involved in both of them. On the one hand, because, you know, I got to put that little fella on my chest, you know, when he was, you know, after the caesarean, and we spent a few minutes together before Kate had to go off to theater. And then we spent that time together you know, before she came back to the room, you know, over that first 24 hours. So I feel a very special bond with him because of that. And then the second little fella, because I was so in, in the birth, like in it there, you know, and, um, just like right there, you know, helping and being present and supporting and all this stuff. So both I have this real bond from that. But in very different ways to both my kids. So it's not like the first— my first kid I don't have a relationship or the same type of bond with. I do, but just in a very different way. Now that's setting me up to be a completely different dad to how my dad was, which is again not to say he was a bad father at all. He's a great father, and I have a lovely relationship with him now. Um, but the watching these guys grow, watching them throw, watching them get frustrated and throw a hammer at the wall, and, you know, or kick something over when they can't figure you know, has revealed to me that I need to work on myself a lot more than what I thought I did.

What an epiphany!

Well, you see, they are watching. Yeah, well, I was building a, building a chicken pen, and, you know, I was having trouble, uh, you know, I had some grit on the inside of the magnetic bit on the hex head driver, and the screws just kept, you know, trying to drill, screw, screw off corrugated iron, and the screws were just going everywhere. And I like found myself becoming— observed within myself that I was getting very angry. And I turned around, I did something, I can't remember, I chucked the impact driver or something. And I turn around and both these kids are just watching me.

You're gonna see that come back at you.

That's where they—

Andrew, that is gold. It's what you've shared today is so putting into context the birth in a much bigger picture and helping us to realize that, yes, it's important. Actually, it's important because it can be a catalyst. And getting the right support around you, the right people at the right time, can make a really big difference to not potentially fall into the traps of doing what you're told, developing that advocacy piece and how important that is. Um, and to recognize the growth, not just of you as parents, but also of you as a couple, as a human being moving from victim consciousness to, okay, creator consciousness. I create my reality here. If I don't like what I'm seeing, I better change it. Is, is really inherent to the maturation that we need to go through as humans. So I want to really thank you for the gift of your stories, both yours and Kate's and your two sons. Is there anything you'd like to finish us off with? What would you, you know, what sort of advice would you give to people listening who are preparing for birth?

Uh, don't be afraid to ask questions. In fact, asking questions, and there are no dumb questions, so you've got to ask the questions and you don't just, don't just assume, um, don't, don't assume anything. Just ask the questions. Make sure you are fully comfortable. If you recognize within yourself that you have doubt or some anxiety around a particular situation or a scenario, or it's unsure, it doesn't feel right, explore that. Don't ignore it, you know, ask questions around that and, um, and, and keep going until you feel perfectly at peace. Well, you're never going to feel perfectly at peace, especially if it's your first kid because you don't know what you're in for. But, um, but you know, you, you need to feel at peace with the situation that you're in, and if it doesn't feel right keep asking questions and don't be afraid to find the right help and the right support and all that type of stuff. The second thing is just to know that what people say to you, oh, you know, it goes by so quick. Well, it actually does. It doesn't feel like it in the moment, but it will pass. And the decisions that you make, they do matter, and it will be okay. And then to your point about You know, being like a creator consciousness. I like that. There's a book called A Gentleman in Moscow, um, written by a guy called Amor Towles, and there's a quote in it. I wish it was like some amazing Greek proverb, but it's, it's from, from an author. But it says, you know, a gentleman must master his circumstances before his circumstances master him, or, or his circumstances will master him. So I think that's, you know, Kate, Kate reminds me of that all the time. She goes, you be the master of your circumstances, don't let your circumstances master you. You can and have the ability to be able to change, uh, your circumstances and make decisions for you that are in your best interests and all of that type of stuff.

So very true. And you might have to make a few mistakes on the way, but that's the pathway.

That's the reality.

You don't— yeah, you don't get it right first up. You gotta, you gotta— yeah, make mistakes. And that's what I love about sharing often birth stories like yours, because the first one, even though it wasn't ideal and ultimately, as a result of it, you learned an incredible amount, which sets you up not just for the next birth but for your life beyond that.

So, you know, sure, one other thing I would say is that the, the one, the big, one of the biggest things that I've learned in recent years is the role of grace within a marriage and cutting each other some slack. And recognizing the fact that you are going to make mistakes, big ones, small ones. You know, there are some things that, you know, you've got to handle and all that type of stuff, but the role of giving each other grace, you know, is a concept that I'd never appreciated before. Yeah, and not, not sweating the small stuff. And it changes your life, um, when you appreciate, you know, a partner's capacity to be able to have grace to one another, just improves your life and your marriage and your ability to be able to parent your kids, um, I think remarkably.

God, I'll drink to that. I was telling Andrew before we got online, Peter and I have just come back from a month in France, and I feel like we're really reaping the rewards of, um, you know, all the work that we've done together, how we've given each other some slack when we're not in our finest moments.

Yeah.

But the capacity to read each other, to respond, and to love more deeply has only deepened over the years of doing that. And now we're really having fun. It's great. So big thanks to Andrew and all of you listeners out there. I hope you've got plenty of goodness in this. I've absolutely loved this conversation, and there'll be more goodness to come. Thanks for listening.