preterm birth

Now here's the part I want you to sit with.

Preterm birth is not one thing.

It is a bucket with two very different things in it.

About a third of preterm births are what we call medically indicated.

That means the baby was born early because I or some other doctor made the decision to deliver that baby early.

Maybe the mom had severe preeclampsia or the baby stopped growing or the placenta was failing.

That said, there are things that do raise the risk and you should know about them because some of them we can do something about.

So the single biggest risk factor is having had a preterm labor before.

But then there's also this mystery of what initiates labor, and for a long time we really haven't known what kickstarts that process.

But now there's growing evidence that it's actually the immune system that presses the go switch for the onset of labor, and what's really exciting about that is because if we know what's actually turning it on, it could potentially give us ways to develop drugs that prevent premature birth, preterm birth.

Mm.

And also maybe to even predict exactly when you are likely to have that baby.

But her path to building her family was definitely a roller coaster.

We're talking early losses, an unexpected premature birth that landed her son in the NICU, and a subsequent three-year fertility and surrogacy journey to bring her daughter home.

We dive into the real, messy emotions of postpartum anxiety, losing control of your timeline, and how creativity actually helped her heal.

I'm so grateful she's here to share her heart with us, so let's get into it.

what causes preterm birth.

There's probably about five or six different known pathways to prematurity as far as what causes it medically.

Unfortunately, we don't have great tools to stop it.

I, um, I wanted to switch over for a minute, um, both, uh, personally in my life and, um, just from what I've been hearing.

And again, I live in a very small bubble of things, so it could just be, it could just be, but, um, uh, uh, premature, uh, babies.

So can we just rewind to what causes a, is, is this just an anomaly that some babies are prematurely are ready or so what causes preterm birth?

Yeah.

If I knew the answer to that, I'd win the Nobel Prize.

So the reason that I'm alive, and in fact the reason Ollie is alive, is when he was seven days old in the neonatal intensive care unit, he nearly died.

And the piece of equipment that saved him unbeknownst to me at the time was donated by a woman who I've since become very close to Sophie Smith, who runs a charity in Sydney called running for premature babies.

So Sophie lost triplets to prematurity.

But I mean, not not even all at once.

Like she thought she was bringing one baby home and it wasn't to be.

And you know, this is a really, life doesn't get much harder than this.

And instead of wallowing in her grief, she's turned it into this incredible fertilizer, turned her shitty situation into this wonderful fertilizer running for premature babies, which to date has raised $10 million for neonatal intensive care unit, including a piece of equipment that saved Ollie's life when he was seven days old.

So I met Sophie about a year later, looking for ways to help this charity.

Your introduction to motherhood really was all at once.

Becoming a first-time mum to identical twins, an unexpected premature birth at 33 weeks, seven weeks of NICU and experiencing postpartum psychosis in the days after Mumford and Murphy were born.

You've spoken incredibly openly about what followed, being separated from your babies while receiving psychiatric care, navigating postnatal depression and eventually being diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

With parents of multiples already at increased risk of postpartum mental health challenges, your story is such an important one for our community.

I just felt like I was so lost in my place.

Where did I belong? I was in a psychiatric ward, but my children were in the NICU.

But also, if we didn't have a premature birth, we would have been at home.

um

Okay.

Pre-premature babies, early labor, these are like real, real health outcomes that we don't wanna see.

And if we can-- And we've seen with clinical data using lactoferrin in pregnancy, reducing all of these things.

No, interesting.