I am profoundly grateful. I am home. I am alive. I am held by my beloved partner, and we have our precious baby boy. I am infinitely thankful for the village that has shown up in ways I will never forget.

And I am also a traumatised person, slowly coming to terms with what I have lived through and how my baby came into the world.

After a four-day labour that initially progressed beautifully, everything changed. My baby shifted position, my cervix began to swell and close, and it became clear that a vaginal birth was no longer possible. By that point my body was completely exhausted, my natural pain-relieving hormones depleted, and I was in excruciating pain. A caesarean section became the only option - something I never hoped for, but had always held as a possible outcome, knowing that birth is unpredictable and that we don’t always get the birth we envision.

What no one could have anticipated was what happened next.

During the caesarean, I had a sudden anaphylactic reaction to a medication. Within seconds my airways closed and I thought I was going to die.

There was an extraordinary and terrifying moment of feeling my baby being pulled into the light of this world at the exact same time that I was pulled into darkness.

Following this, I was resuscitated and placed into a medically induced coma for around 20 hours and remained in ICU for another 9 before being released to the maternity ward.

In the midst of this dear friends and midwives advocated fiercely - ensuring my baby received skin-to-skin contact and was supported to breastfeed while I was unconscious. Our wider community mobilised within hours, gathering breast milk so that my son could be nourished during the time I was unable to be with him.

There are many blessings woven through this story, yet I am struggling with life as a new mum whilst trying to regulate my nervous system and move forward from this huge life event.

It has become clear that I need ongoing, specialised professional support - psychological, somatic, and trauma-informed care - to help my nervous system process what has happened and to support my long-term wellbeing as a mother. Unfortunately, the level of care I need is not something we can manage financially on our own.

This GoFundMe is a gentle call to the wider community to help fill that gap.

Funds raised will go toward:

If you feel moved to support us in this way please donate and share.

With Aroha,

Hine Te Ra & whanau.