DIARY OF A BIRTH: 'I struggled to fall pregnant. I had a breakdown when I found out I was having quadruplets.'

It's the moment every expecting mother dreams of. The first time you hear your baby's heartbeat thrumming away inside as they grow stronger, getting ready to enter the world.

After struggling to get pregnant, the sound was everything Taylah Tudehope Glachan and husband Sean hoped for.

"It's got the strongest heartbeat ever, and I get emotional, because… that's coming from inside you, and that's your baby, and that's the sound you have longed for, for so long. We're just wailing, like we're bawling," she tells Mamamia's newest podcast, Diary of a Birth.

But that moment of pure joy was fleeting.

"She's put the wand on my belly, and I've seen multiple black circles, and then she's ripped it away, and I see the colour drop from her face.

"She just puts her hand on my leg and she said, 'Taylah, you have multiple pregnancies here.'"

The sonographer starts counting. One… Two…

"I'm like, 'Holy crap'," Taylah says.

Three… Four…

"I'm instantly hysterical… I could feel my heart coming out of my chest.

"I've just grabbed Sean's hand. I'm squeezing it for life on my shoulder, and I was so scared… There was not an inch of excitement in me, to be completely honest."

Taylah was overwhelmed with fear, as her mind raced. Could she carry four babies? Was she going to die because of this?

In an instant, Taylah and Sean had gone from struggling to fall pregnant to preparing to welcome four babies into their life.

Listen to Taylah's story here. Post continues below.

An IVF journey.

Falling pregnant was far from smooth sailing for the high school sweethearts. Taylah was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome in her early 20s and was eventually told she had stage four endometriosis.

"I was lucky enough to have all that removed and keep my ovary intact, which was great. And they also saw my ovaries were quite enlarged. Because of that, you should be really fertile. Now, go on your way. And that most definitely wasn't the case," she said.     

The couple kept trying and Taylah was put on letrozole, a medication that encourages ovulation. But still nothing was happening: no period and no ovulation. So, off to the specialist they went.

They upped Taylah's dosage and she was undergoing blood tests to track when she was ovulating.

"Here we are trying to have sex every second day like it's just ridiculous. It just makes everything feel so procedural… And it's just not the way that you plan to get pregnant… But that's what we had to do, and so be it, we'll do it."

Taylah pregnant with quadruplets. Image: Instagram/@theglachanquadsquad

After a year of tracking ovulation and not falling pregnant, Taylah's next step was IVF.

"It came to the collection phase, and I remember them going, 'Taylah, did you hear that we've got your first egg?'… And then the rest was a blur. I remember them coming in and saying, 'Taylah, we got 30'. And I was like, 30 eggs. What? I know friends and family that have had IVF, and they're getting four, I'm getting 30." 

Five days later, an incredible 14 embryos had survived to the blastocyst stage. But then Taylah fell ill and was hospitalised with ovarian hyperstimulation.

By the time she recovered, it was three months after the retrieval date and finally time to be implanted with the most viable embryo.

For many couples, the first cycle is not successful. Sean and Taylah anxiously waited to listen to their blood test results together to find out.

"We press play, and she says, 'Congratulations'. It still makes me so emotional, because that's the day you hope and you pray for… We just held each other for so long… And at that point we're going, 'Oh my God, we're pregnant with one baby.'"

Little did they know what was in store for them.

Watch the trailer for Mamamia's newest podcast, Diary of a Birth. Post continues below.

What is a pregnancy like with four babies?

Taylah will never forget the moments after she and Sean learnt they were expecting quadruplets.

"We walk out the door and then the weight just crushes me, and I'm in Sean's arms, and we're just trying to get back to the car, and I'm just hysterical. And we don't speak. We we don't even know what to say to each other."

At first, even their own family didn't believe them until they saw the sonogram with their own eyes. Everything progressed quickly from there.

Taylah had a bump at her eight-week scan. By 12 weeks, she had a belly.

"Suddenly, on my 24th week appointment, my cervix had dropped drastically, and it was because I was pushing myself way too hard… It was just silly, so I ended up in hospital," she said.

Taylah went on to spend almost two months in hospital before her birth.

"I was so big at 30 weeks, I think I was measuring at 52 weeks pregnant. I was massive, and my lungs were getting compressed. I couldn't breathe properly because my lungs were so squished. I couldn't eat much because my stomach was getting squished."

But she needed to consume about 3,000 calories a day for the bubs growing inside her.

"They were just loading me up on milk… and like, crackers and cheese and their fruit," she said.

Soon enough, she figured out how to order Uber Eats down to the hospital — a game changer for a mum-to-be who was fed up with hospital food.

While she tried to keep her routine in hospital, pregnancy wasn't easy.

"Sometimes it was rough. I remember my social worker coming in and just bawling my eyes out, going, 'I just I'm gassed, I'm mentally exhausted'," she said.

"You want to go as far as you can for your babies, and you feel guilty for thinking like, 'I can't keep going anymore.'"

Thankfully, she had a strong support team around her, including her incredible husband Sean.

Sean and Taylah with their newborns. Image: Instagram/@theglachanquadsquad

What are the odds of having a multiple birth?

You definitely don't hear about quadruplets every day, but just how likely is this to happen to someone else?

Mamamia's in-house expert, Melbourne-based paediatrician Dr Daniel Golshevsky tells Diary of a Birth the chance of naturally conceiving quads is close to one in a million.

"It's basically one in 800,000 pregnancies, roughly. And then, if you're talking identical, that's four identical humans. The probability extends out to one in 15 million," he said.

"When you compare that to the incidence of twins naturally, that's roughly one in 250 pregnancies."

When it comes to IVF pregnancies, the chances of twins is as high as 30 per cent, Golly says.

"And the chances of quads with IVF, it's reported differently in different centres, but we're probably In the vicinity of half to one per cent."

In part two of Taylah's story, she tells Diary of a Birth how her mind-blowing birth went down and her first moments with her beautiful quadruplets, Daisy, Archie, Billy and Charlie.

Find updates from Taylah and her quadruplets at @theglachanquadsquad on Instagram.

For more information on multiple births, visit Australian Multiple Births Association.

For more stories from Diary of a Birth click here.

Listen to part two of Taylah's story here.

Feature image: Heartfelt via Instagram/@theglachanquadsquad.