Tell us a bit about yourself?

My name is Kristen, and I am a 33-year-old mother to 2 beautiful daughters. We live in Queanbeyan, NSW.

I am very family orientated and I love the little community of friends and family I have built over my life.

I am a very maternal, nurturing, and loving person who has always wanted to be a mother and have always wanted a big beautiful family to love, support and raise. I think this comes from the way I was raised. My mother comes from Greek heritage and the core value of Greek culture is family values and how close Greek mothers and their children are. I feel like this is something my mother, myself, and our children all share and we have a wonderful relationship that has shaped who I am as a person and parent.

As well as having Greek heritage, I am a proud aboriginal woman, and my “mob” is Ngunnawal and Dharwal. When exploring my aboriginal heritage. The core values of this culture align with my own value system such as caring for country, loyalty, strong family connections and caring for our own. As part of the oldest living culture, I am extremely proud to identify as a Ngunnawal and Dharwal woman and supporting my children and other young ones to find their place as Aboriginal people in Australia is something, I have become passionate about.

Apart from all that, I am a full time registered mental health nurse and I started my nursing journey after I had my first babe 12 years ago.

I currently work in a crisis and assessment team for mental health, and I have previously worked at headspace, Child and adolescent mental health, perinatal mental health, psychiatric inpatient units for both young people and adults, paediatrics, Youth and Adult forensic mental health services and Emergency.

I have just completed post graduate studies specialising in youth mental health – specifically targeting suicide and self-harm in young people and I am completing a Masters in mental health nursing – specialising in perinatal, infant, child, and adolescent mental health.

I am very committed to working with families and young people and I have spent the last year completing research on how to support young aboriginal people and their families when a young person In community and / or families are experiencing mental health issues.

What were you doing before babies?

A whole lot of nothing. I was working in the mail room at a law firm deciding if I wanted to study law or catch up for drinks with my girlfriends.

I had my first baby at 20 years old, so if you can think back to what you were probably doing at 20 years old. I was probably doing that.

How did you come to be a mum?

Life is all about the journey - my road to motherhood has been such a wonderful and challenging journey.

If we start from the beginning, I have experienced pregnancy loss since a young age, well before my first birth at 20 years old.

I was incredibly disinhibited, wild, and untamed and lived in each moment without abandon and as I have come to know from research, our young adolescent brain does not really factor in consequences and we don’t really have great decision making capacity due to our frontal lobes not being fully developed until after 25 years... so I blame my brain for at 20 years old and not in a stable or supportive relationship or with someone I could be with for the rest of my life and living with my parents, I fell pregnant and was able to stay pregnant and I really wanted to have my baby. So badly. I felt it was right for me.

I was always looking for my next adventure and I guess at 20 years old; I found my biggest adventure and I gave birth to a beautiful daughter who we named Hollie.

My labour was incredibly difficult as there were significant complications which resulted in me nearly losing my life. I however clearly survived and lived to tell the tale to CBR. Mamas. I will not bore you with the further details, however it was not pleasant.

Suffice to say, my life with my newborn inspired me to be better and do better for my daughter. I have never found direction or purpose like I did when I held my daughter in my arms.I applied for university and started on my life course to be a good role model for my daughter.

It did not work out with my daughters’ father, and my daughter and I left this relationship and lived with my parents who were incredibly supportive and wonderful. I started seeing my now husband when Hollie was 3 years old, and we now have been together for 9 years and married for 7.

Our journey to parenthood has been the most difficult experience I have ever gone through.

We were married less than 2 years into our relationship, and we were exhausted with pregnancy loss. Toby and I have experienced 16 pregnancy losses, including missed miscarriages, miscarriages, and ectopic pregnancies.

We had a failed IVF attempt and after my 30th birthday we decided that the grief and loss of trying and the painful experience of hyper-fertility resulting in pregnancy loss was too much and we decided to be happy and comfortable in being blessed as Hollie’s parents and invest in other dreams.

Fortunately, we fell pregnant one more time and although that pregnancy was difficult due to hyperemesis and bleeding and the baby was diagnosed with in uterine growth restriction, we delivered our baby girl Daisy Evelyn in December 2018.

Following the delivery, I developed post-natal anxiety as Daisy had a seizure on day 2 of life and had to be resuscitated in our home by paramedics and was in NICU for 2 weeks. I went home and I co slept with Daisy and did not sleep myself and neither did my husband as we were so anxious and worried something would happen to our rainbow baby.

Can I just say, she is 100 percent okay and a force of life!! She does and has always kept us on our toes and both my daughters love each other in a way that warms the deepest parts of my soul. Life is bliss.

What has your feeding journey been like?

Well, feeding has always been okay, and it is one of my favourite parts of being a mother. However, sometimes breastfeeding gets you down because it is tricky and hard work at first. But once I got it, for me it was lovely.

I wanted to breastfeed for a billion years but my babes did not. They self-weaned before 12 months. Hollie at 7 months old and Daisy at 9 months old. I think this is because I went back to work both times. I found that shift work, having a demanding job and trying to find time to pump was unmanageable and the upkeep was hard, and I think the girls decided a bottle was far better than my inconsistent boobs.

What has sleep been like in your house?

Oh god, it was soooooooo terrible. Like unbelievably terrible and still is.

My 12-year-old stopped sleeping either on a special bed next to me or in my bed when she was 10 years old. She didn’t consistently sleep there but we always had to have an emergency bed available for her to pop in and just feel safe and supported around me.

My 2 and a bit year old, still wakes up one to two times a night and co sleeps mostly every night. Both my daughters required me to hold them until they were about 6 months old while they slept and I barely slept.

Both loved and continue to love co sleeping as a preference and yes, I went to QEII and I did not graduate.

The hardest bits…

Shift work, both of us are shift workers and raising children in that lifestyle is probably not sustainable and can be incredibly stressful and I find managing it at times an all-consuming task. We are lucky to have my parents, as otherwise we would not survive it.

The fertility issues and pregnancy loss, the terrible and traumatic labours, and the seizure/ emergency and NICU experience.

Being a single mother was not fun, but it was the best thing for my babe and me.

The best bits...

Being able to be gifted with the experience of being a mother

Watching my eldest grow and become her own person

Watching my youngest thrive

Loving my husband and watching him develop into an attentive and wonderful man who has taken on Hollie as his own and embraced being both a stepfather and a father and never making anyone feel like there is a difference, because for him there is not.

How do you make time for you?

We have our daughter in childcare four days a week and with my mother one day a week. Sometimes as a shift worker you get a few hours before work after you have dropped the children off to have sometime for me.

In this time I see my friends or relax in bed, reading or watching trashy television.

What is next for you and your family?

The next for us is that we have been extremely fortunate enough to be blessed with a third and final pregnancy that seems to be going well and we are currently 23 weeks and due in July this year.

In a house full of women, my husband Toby is glad that this one will be a baby boy.

I am looking forward to Maternity leave. This equals no shift work, spending more time with everyone in my family and bonding with my newborn.

I have never taken a year off, however I think for my last pregnancy it might be nice to give myself the time.