Through my first pregnancy I had wondered whether I would need the support of an organisation like Gidget Foundation Australia. I had flipped through brochures and walked past Gidget House many times. What I did not know then, was that my journey with Gidget Foundation Australia would carry me all the way through from my first pregnancy, to my second child’s first birthday.

My first pregnancy was filled with excitement, but also 24/7 nausea, severe carpel tunnel syndrome in both hands, 10 weeks on crutches, and emergency surgery to remove my appendix – not the pregnancy I had planned for myself in my very organised life where I was trying to pack EVERYTHING in before the baby came.

Our daughter was born and my husband and I were smitten. I was 33 at the time. My mother had passed away when I was 16 years old. I’d had some ad-hoc counselling as an adult to manage the waves of grief, but becoming a mother, without a mother of my own, was a very unique type of grief. I did not know how to manage this heavy grief I was experiencing for the first time. 

My previous coping mechanisms from my teenage years kicked in – keeping my head above the water, and taking complete control of everything I possibly could. However, controlling a baby? Forget it! I read the books, tried all the methods, routines – nothing was sticking. I felt like I was failing.

Other mums had a natural instinct, supported by the knowledge imparted to them by their mums, by their side, in the moment – it was a massive hole I could never fill for myself or for my daughter. For the first time, I felt like I was also grieving in tandem – for me, and also for my mum, who never got to hold her grandchildren, or see her own children become mothers. Now that I was a mum, I could only begin to imagine how hard it was for my mum – to be diagnosed with cancer, knowing that she would have to say goodbye to her children. I was left with so many new, and forever unanswered, questions, through this wave of grief. 

When my daughter was six months old I had my first session with my Gidget Clinician. I cried, a lot. Once my baby daughter could crawl, every time I cried in a session, she would make her way over to me for a cuddle. My Gidget Clinician commented about how in tune my baby and I were to each other. It was the boost I needed.

I eventually went back to work after a longer than planned parental leave and I cried every day for six weeks. I had come to realise I was much more in my element as a ‘toddler’ mum. However, I tapped into some of my new skills learnt in my sessions to help adjust to our new normal. 

A few years later, I fell pregnant with our son. The nausea was worse, and I was not a pleasant pregnant person. My husband and I (much) later laughed about how I was grumpy for nine months. 

I had a traumatic birth with my son – a Code Blue medical emergency. Within a week I had a telehealth appointment with my Gidget Clinician to navigate through the flashbacks that kept me up at night in those early days. 

But, I told myself, motherhood was going to be different this time. I knew why my eldest didn’t sleep ‘so well’ as a baby, and I knew the sleep signals so that I could catch that magical sleep window. I knew the ‘mistakes’ I had made and why my daughter was an early 5am riser, and I would ‘fix’ that with my son. I would be able breast feed him for longer. He would not need a dummy. He would transition from the car to the cot and stay asleep. I’m a second time mum now, so I completely knew what I was doing, right?

Wrong.

When the baby blues hit a few days after my son was born, the haze didn’t lift for months. I could not comprehend that while he had come from exactly the same parents, he was a completely different child from his big sister. He refused to sleep more than 40 minutes, EVER, day and night. Some days, I didn’t leave the house, didn’t get out of my pyjamas. It was a post-COVID world, and all my baby go-to activities had just vanished into thin air. There were no mothers’ groups. Just long, long walks each day around the same oval to get my son to sleep at least once a day, in the carrier, on me. I would ask myself, why is it getting harder? He was growing, getting older. I was getting more tired, exhausted, worn out. One of my friends told me recently that through that time – “you were just a ghost.”

So, my Gidget Clinician and I revisited some of the strategies I had previously applied, and we worked hard on some more deeper aspects of my emotional health that had driven my anxiety, including grief, coping with uncertainty and managing healthy boundaries. These were all great foundational blocks for me that now enable me to support both children in their own emotional development. 

About one month after I finished my appointments at Gidget Foundation Australia, I was with my twin sister when I bumped into my clinician. I told her that we had just navigated a very challenging emotional situation. The growth and emotional support provided to me from the services provided by Gidget Foundation Australia, and the encouragement to keep up the work on myself, for myself, led me to be able to overcome that situation. Exchanging glances, I knew that my clinician knew exactly why it was such a huge moment for me.

My family and I am forever grateful to her and Gidget Foundation Australia.