By Casey Neill
A lack of sleep is something most new parents accept as inevitable.
But Kew mum Melissa Scudeller hadn’t slept for more than three hours at a time in nine months.
Second daughter Maxine would only nap in a carrier and was often waking every hour overnight.
“I would tell anyone who would listen that she wouldn’t sleep, that she was waking that frequently,” she said.
“She snores, she breathes loudly. There’s something not right.”
Mel tried for months to find a place at a sleep school and enlisted multiple sleep consultants.
She was told time and again to wait it out.
Mel jumped at a sleep school cancellation the week before Christmas, and was sent to emergency after one night.
“They told me she would have periods where she stopped breathing for 20 seconds,” she said.
“She had her first Christmas in hospital.
“She had severe obstructive sleep apnoea. Every time she was horizontal she couldn’t breathe.
“Your oxygen levels should be above 95.
“She was dipping down to 30 and 40. She wasn’t getting enough oxygen to her brain.”
They normally don’t operate on babies so young but scheduled surgery for three days later.
Covid caused delays, so Maxine was sent home with a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machine to help her breathe.
Mel said the surgery recovery was rough, but after two weeks Maxine was a new child.
She was 19 months old when we spoke, and eldest daughter Skye was 4.
“Before Skye I did have a miscarriage. It was a real eye-opener,” Mel said.
“I didn’t know anyone who had gone through that.
“It was quite an isolating experience for me.”
People questioned why she was so upset about the loss.
“I was that baby’s mum as well,” she said.
“It made me realise how many people have actually been mums but you would never know.”
Mel fell pregnant with Skye about five months later.
“The only challenging thing was at about 36, 37 weeks she turned breach,” she said.
She declined an offer to manually turn Skye after researching the procedure – it can be painful, carries a risk of bleeding and isn’t necessarily permanent.
So she was booked for a cesarean and told that attempting a vaginal delivery was against hospital policy.
“I felt quite disappointed that my only option for a breach delivery was a cesarean,” she said.
“I understand that when things go wrong they can go very wrong.”
But her grandfather was an obstetrician, and explained that breech deliveries were no longer taught in medical school.
“It’s a set of skills that has been completely lost,” she said.
“It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. If no one has the skills to deliver a baby breech there are going to be complications.”
Ironically, Mel suffered complications from the cesar after the spinal block pierced the fluid sack around her spine.
“For the first eight weeks with a newborn I had a raging headache and couldn’t see,” she said.
She wanted a VBAC with Maxine, but at 38 weeks she was measuring small and Mel’s amniotic fluid was low.
This time the cesarean was straight forward, but adjusting to being a mum of two was not.
“I didn’t realise how intense it was having two to look after,” she said.
“I actually remember reaching out to a few mums who had two kids already and said ‘I’m so sorry, I wish I’d supported you more’.”
Keeping a toddler quiet while getting a baby to sleep and vice versa was a huge challenge.
“There was a good few weeks where I don’t know how I coped,” she said.
“I knew what needed to be done and felt confidence in my skills as a mum.
“But it was exhausting managing two people on different schedules.”
Mel’s husband Carlos was born in Brazil, so the couple will teach their girls to speak Portuguese.
“My mother in law was able to come out earlier this year when the borders opened up,” she said.
“The dynamic between them really made me realise that Skye needed to speak Portuguese to have a relationship with Carlos’s family.
“I think it’s helped that there are things like Spotify, so it’s very easy for us to listen to songs in Portuguese.
“With TV streaming services now, a lot of the kids’ ones you’ll be able to change the language.
“I’ll put on My Little Pony, I’ll change that to Portuguese.
“We need to somehow maintain a bit of Brazil here.”
