Trigger Warning – this story contains death of a baby.
“ I went back to Melbourne to be with my Mum. I saw an ad for a full time course doing hiphop and drama. I remember calling the answering machine saying…’Hi, my name’s Sally, your course sounds so amazing and I can’t do it because I’m a single mum but …blah, blah.’ I was depressed and my boy was only 1 1/2. Anyway, I got this call back from this amazing man called Daryl and he said…Let’s navigate the course for you. It was such a lovely act from this man. He had 2 daughters and he was such a huge stepping stone for me. He helped me to see that I could do anything. I could put Lorien in the childcare downstairs and Daryl would let me bring him up to breastfeed him. He let me be this young single mum and he empowered me. I met some fabulous humans through doing that course who are still my friends now.
I’d known this guy Dwayne for a while who had just broken up with his girlfriend. He and I got together when my boy was about 2. We ended up having a relationship for 17 years. We’ve only just recently broken up. He was a full time father to Lorien. Dwayne had been living in Tassie. He’s really wild. On our first date he taught me how to skin a seal. He was a great hunter. Because I love earth base living I found that really fascinating. He has an incredible 6th sense in nature, especially with tracking. He collects fossils and skulls. He’s a great big wild fella.
We moved to Tassie. I was really happy to raise my son in the wild in Tassie. A friend had 300 acres and was selling off little shares for a good price. It was a very hippy, easy going agreement. I thought it might last a year which would have been cheaper than rent. It’s still there 18 years later. We built a stone shack into the hill. We collected all the stone by hand. We were so strong and fit and everything was recycled from the tip or from the earth. It’s a beautiful little shack which is 400 metres up and has views of the Styx Valley, the ranges and the snow comes. I still go there sometimes and it feels like home. I know the Kookaburras that come there, I know the Wombats, I know that country. It talks to me and we have a relationship. It’s taught me a lot, that land.
Dwayne was really keen to have another baby. I was a bit scared as I’d been a single mum but I wanted another baby so we got pregnant. Throughout the pregnancy I couldn’t stop crying, really sobbing. I didn’t know why. I went and had a treatment with a Cranial Sacral therapist. I said to her… I don’t know whether this is the right treatment or whether I should see a Counsellor. She gave me a treatment and acupuncture and said …You’ve got a big storm coming. I thought, maybe I’m going to be a single mum again or something like that. It was such a strange thing to say. I went back and told all my friends who also thought it was an odd thing to say.
A couple of months later I gave birth in Hobart and he passed away just after he was born. Billy Dingo was his name. We had a home birth but I was right next door to the hospital. He came out in the footling breech position which is feet first and his little head was caught. My Midwife got her fingers up above my pubic bone and pulled him out. He was trying so hard to breathe. Dwayne was so happy we had a baby but because I’d given birth before I knew he wasn’t ok. I looked and my umbilical cord was white. He was dying. It was all so fast. The ambulance over the road was coming and the midwife was saying…’Talk to him, bring him in.’ Newborns have those black, ancient eyes and he looked at me. That moment is very precious to me.
Our baby and Dwayne were whisked to the hospital and I still hadn’t birthed the placenta. I was in this room naked with all these male ambo’s. It was so full on. I was still so high on birth endorphins. It was surreal. They brought in a female Paramedic and she helped me dress. I thought in my head that my baby was going to a warm humid i-crib and we might need to stay for a while. It never crossed my mind that I would lose him. The Paramedic was asking me what my favourite books were and keeping me really calm. I can vividly remember that conversation with her. They wheeled me into the hospital and Dwayne was there holding our dead baby in the corridor. He was sobbing deeply and had been there for an hour on his own. They had tried to resuscitate our baby but they couldn’t. They let us hold him before they took him away for the autopsy. They finally got me to birth the placenta. It was so horrendous.
I had these hormones to deal with and my milk coming in. I had 6 months of it but I had my boy Lozzy so I had to get out of bed, I had to take him to the park and to school so he really kept me going. I had incredible support in Tassie with my big boy and my friends. Dwayne went through a terrible depression and we ended up not living together. It was the early days of the internet. I went over to the library with my son and we booked for Vanuatu. There was a theatre company in Vanuatu called the Wan Smol Bag theatre. Lorien and I went to Vanuatu and visited this theatre company. It was so beautiful and healing being in that tropical climate for both of us.
We came back and I saw a job online in the highlands of Papua New Guinea working at a theatre company which is now called the National Performing Arts Group. I applied and got the position. I really feel our baby helped. We were still pretty broken but the three of us moved to the highlands of PNG and worked at that theatre company. That was just the most profound healing.”