Southern Queensland couple Hayley Harris and Jack Milne were still grieving the loss of their baby girl to stillbirth earlier this year when they found out they were expecting another baby.
Now 12 weeks' pregnant, Ms Harris, from Pittsworth near Toowoomba, is the first in Australia to take part in a pilot program aimed at guiding women through a pregnancy after a previous stillbirth.
"We were very scared at the beginning, worried, but I guess as it goes on, we're getting more excited to be able to have a family again," she said.
The Rainbow Baby Project is a 12-month pilot program open to women in Queensland.
It also expanding to Victoria.
So far, 12 women have signed up to receive continuity of care and 24/7 support.
A midwife also attends additional scans and makes home visits.
My Midwives managing director Liz Wilkes said the program opened doors for women who otherwise wouldn't get the support and reassurance they needed.
"With obstetrics and doctors, they're really super busy, their appointment schedules are five to 10 minutes … 45 minutes to an hour, there's also not that ability to be on call," Ms Wilkes said.
Midwifery continuity of care has been demonstrated to reduce the risk of stillbirth between about 16 to 20 per cent in a number of international trials, according to the Cochrane database.
"So it's not just about that reassurance, it's about reduction of that risk for families," Ms Wilkes said.
She said the program would cost up to $7,000 per mother.
But she said it was fully-funded by charity Sydney to CAMberra, which raises funds for awareness on stillbirth and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
The service starts from the day a woman finds out she is pregnant and continues until six weeks after their child is born.
Ms Harris said she couldn't afford the extra support living in a regional town without the pilot project.
"Jack's only on minimum wage as a floorer and I'm on a very low-income job too," she said.
"I knew I wanted to get a private midwife and then I got some pricing and talked to a lot of women and went, 'wow that is so expensive', you wouldn't even imagine a woman able to pay that much.
"But then I heard about this program."
Overwhelming grief
Ms Harris said she and her partner felt a whole mix of emotions when they discovered they were expecting again, months after losing their baby girl at 25 weeks' gestation.
Back in January, the 19-year-old said she had a feeling something wasn't right.
"The morning I went in for my 25-week appointment, I woke up at three o'clock in the morning," she said.
"I went, 'something's wrong, I know she's not here anymore'.
"You always have that feeling as a mum."
Ms Harris delivered baby Grace stillborn soon after, but she said tests never revealed exactly what went wrong.
She said the grief of not bringing her newborn home to her four-year-old son was almost too much to bear.
"The first couple of months [were] rough, just depressed … being away from my boy was a big thing, as well living half a week without him when he was with his dad," she said.
She said her partned had to go back to work after it happened.
"Sometimes I'd wake up and say, 'I'm never leaving the house' and then other times I was thinking, 'get me out of here'," she said.
"You've got seven stages of grief and you do go through them all."
Ms Wilkes said the program would help mothers deal with their complexity of emotions after a stillbirth.
"It's both the time that it takes to dispel the anxiety, and also that availability that we're trying to really just cut through so that women just have somebody that is available all the time that's a health professional that can really just be there for them really, as well," she said.
Regional disadvantage
The Safer Baby Bundle initiative is funded by the federal government to provide evidence-based resources for health professionals working with pregnant women to try to reduce the rate of stillbirths.
Stillbirth Australia chair Sean Seeho said while continuity of care was important, he believed high-risk expectant mothers should pair sessions with midwives with more regular obstetric appointments.
"I think [midwifery care] is important for women, particularly if they've had a stillbirth that they don't have to tell their story to a different clinician, different health care workers every single time," he said.
"I think as a model, I support the pilot because I think we should see how beneficial this program is to these women should also have true existing obstetric care because they will need surveillance."
Ms Wilkes hoped the program would be adopted by healthcare providers and through telehealth to assist remote and regional families.
"We'll be trying to ensure that we can service a greater number of locations and are really looking at ways to expand it to offer it to women in a range of different areas," she said.
