"It was not what I expected." Laura Byrne has shared her "painful" birth experience.

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Just over a month on from the arrival of her daughter Marlie-Mae Rose, The Bachelor star Laura Byrne has opened up about her birth story.

Laura, who won Matty J’s heart on the fifth season of The Bachelor in 2017, and Brittany Hockley, who made the top two in Nick Cummins’ season last year before he infamously chose no one, have just joined forces to produce a new podcast: Life Uncut.

In the second episode of the new podcast, Brittany interviewed Laura about what it was like being induced when her baby was two weeks overdue.

Mamamia chats to The Bachelor’s Matt Agnew. Post continues after video.

“They don’t call it labour for no reason – it is definitely very painful,” Laura said, describing her birth experience.

“Although everyone does have a very different pain threshold. I was induced and I think if you go into spontaneous labour, it’s a very different experience. It was right at the brink of my pain threshold,” she added.

“I originally wanted to do a natural birth but I ended up having to opt for an epidural because I couldn’t manage my pain expectations.”

After getting an epidural, Laura explained that the change in her pain levels was like “night and day”.

 

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A post shared by Laura Byrne ???? (@ladyandacat) on Jul 5, 2019 at 11:46pm PDT

“We went from having me over the side of the bed, being sick, unable to speak, to sitting up and having a full blown conversation with everyone that was in the room and laughing and making jokes,” Laura said.

“It was not what I expected it to be, but having an epidural definitely made it more manageable.”

In the birth room, Laura and Matt were joined by Laura’s sister and Matt’s mother. Once they took their newborn home, Matt’s mother also helped out the couple with settling into a new routine.

But although Laura and Matt had some extra help, the first few weeks of Marlie-Mae’s life weren’t always easy.

“There’s been a couple nights that it’s been difficult, but I guess that’s just the newborn stage,” Laura explained.

“You get home and you have this whole human that you have to take care of and you need to breastfeed it and make sure that it’s getting enough nutrients. Babies lose weight after they’re born and Marlie actually lost more than 10 per cent of her birth weight,” she continued.

“It just gave me this feeling that I was useless or I wasn’t doing a good enough job and I was so fearful that what I was doing was wrong but you’re just learning as you go along.”

 

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I don’t know what ya’ll are yabbering on about. Tired is the look we were going for.

A post shared by Laura Byrne ???? (@ladyandacat) on Jun 25, 2019 at 10:01pm PDT

Speaking about the birth on his radio show last month, Matty J described seeing Laura go through birth as “awful”.

“It’s awful watching your partner going through so much pain and you can’t do anything except hold their hand and kiss their forehead and tell them it’s going to be okay,” he said.

“As Laura was about to give birth they then realised the baby was… it was facing the wrong way, and the heart rate was beginning to drop a little as well,” he added.

“All of sudden there were six doctors in the room, you don’t really know what is going on because it’s your first time, next thing they are saying ‘we need to get this baby out now, come on Laura big pushes’.

“The only thing you want as a parent is to have a healthy child. It was really quite scary in the final moments when Laura was giving those final pushes, thankfully we didn’t have any major complications.”

Marlie-Mae is the first child for the couple who met on the 2017 season of The Bachelor.

The birth came after the couple miscarried in June last year when Laura was seven weeks pregnant.

 

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A post shared by Laura Byrne ???? (@ladyandacat) on Jul 9, 2019 at 12:39am PDT

She told the Daily Telegraph she and marketing manager turned radio host Matty were both surprised to discover she was pregnant again just three months later, and she was instinctively cautious about announcing it.

“When you’ve had a miscarriage, you worry if there is something wrong with you,” she said. “It is not something that people really talk about but actually one in four pregnancies end that way, you just don’t hear about it.”

Speaking on Life Uncut, Laura shared that experiencing a miscarriage impacted her pregnancy with Marlie “massively”.

“It definitely changed my ability to enjoy this pregnancy, with Marlie. I think I spent a lot of time fearful that I was going to have a miscarriage and any time there was something that seemed wrong, my first thought was ‘it’s happening again’,” Laura said.

“It wasn’t until I made it to the sixth or seventh month part that I really got into [loving being pregnant.]”

You can listen to Laura Byrne and Brittany Hockley’s podcast ‘Life Uncut‘ now. 

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