Wheelchair mums: Yvette Eglinton and Elise Kennedy have children despite spinal cord injuries
Serious spinal cord injuries mean these two mums will never walk again, but it hasn’t stopped them realising their dream of starting a family. Listen to the podcast.
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It was one of the pivotal moments of the eight long months Elise Kennedy spent in Hampstead Rehabilitation Centre after the horrific car accident that left her a quadriplegic.
It was the moment that gave her hope. It was the moment she understood her dream of creating her own family remained alive. It was the moment the Pinnaroo-raised farm girl realised she could still be a mum.
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Because there, across the room, was Yvette Eglinton, a marine biologist and former triathlete who had become a paraplegic after a bicycle accident four years earlier. And there, on Yvie’s lap was her baby son, Dylan, just a few months old.
“In Hampstead I had seen a lot of guys that were injured, or females in other situations, but I was craving to meet someone who was a mum … in a wheelchair,” Elise says as she reflects on that meeting just over seven years ago. “Since the accident that had been a huge struggle for me, knowing whether or not I could have a family and be a mum.”
She might have been only 20 years old but starting a family one day was already part of the future Elise (nee Summerton) and fiance Luke Kennedy had been planning.
So meeting Yvie and Dylan provided the visual confirmation that motherhood remained a possibility.
Today, that possibility is Elise’s reality. She is now the proud mother of three-year-old daughter Evelyn. Yvie’s first child, Dylan, has grown into an energetic seven-year-old who will turn eight in June. Her second son, Jensen, is six.
Like all mothers, Yvie and Elise are negotiating the pitfalls and pleasures of parenthood on a day-by-day basis.
Pregnancy, birth plans, nappies, bathtime, breastfeeding, tantrums, toilet training, childcare, mothers groups, play dates, school lunches … the list of tasks, decisions and activities facing young families is complex at the best of times.
Throw a wheelchair into the mix and the difficulty level multiplies. But Yvie and Elise are living proof these are challenges that are by no means insurmountable.
The mothers have shared their stories with SAWeekend to help raise awareness about spinal cord injuries and the challenges of wheelchair-based people, and to provide inspiration for current and future mothers dealing with adversity.
Yvie Eglinton was cycling to work with partner Kriston Bott on March 31, 2009 when she stopped to fix a faulty chain while going up a slight incline on the Esplanade in Brighton.
It was a daily routine for the couple to set out from their Hallett Cove home and ride together until they reached Anzac Highway. Yvie would then peel off and head towards the city en route to her work at the Department of Environment and Water, and Kriston would continue north to his work at SA Research and Development Institute at West Beach.
The ride to and from work was part of a training regime for Yvie, a state triathlon champion, who was gearing up for world titles in October that year.
After fixing the chain on that fateful Tuesday morning, two days before her 30th birthday, she took off up the hill to catch Kriston, who had continued riding.
She thinks she was only travelling about 25km an hour when she hit the pothole, but she was out of her seat and pedalling hard. So when the front wheel hit the pothole, her bike stopped and she cartwheeled over the handlebars, coming back to earth with a pindrop onto her head.
Her helmet saved her life, but she had no feeling from her chest down and knew immediately she had a spinal cord injury.
“Kriston was a little bit ahead of me, heard me scream and looked back and saw the whole thing happen,” she says.
“He came running back to me, and people that were in the houses came running out, and I just said ‘I can’t feel my abs, I can’t feel my legs’.”
An ambulance rushed her to Flinders Medical Centre, where she was diagnosed with a dislocated fracture between her T4 and T5 vertebrae and a burst fracture at her C1 vertebrae.
After more than two weeks in the old Royal Adelaide Hospital’s spinal unit, Yvie spent 4½ months in Hampstead Rehabilitation Centre. She was now a paraplegic who could not move her body below the chest.
Even though her days of ocean diving to map marine habitats might have been over, she returned to work in a desk job seven months after the accident and was determined to maintain her interest in sport.
She had her sights set on a paralympics berth in para-rowing but the consistent early morning training sessions, combined with a growing desire to start a family, became too much.
“I was driving down to rowing training and just ended up crying and emotional because I was so tired,” she recalls. “But I also think that my biological clock was ticking. It was two or three years after my accident, and I was 32 or 33 and I was, like, ‘it’s time to start a family’.”
The maternal urges kicked in earlier for Elise, who was just 20 when her world turned upside down – both literally and metaphorically – about 10am on September 19, 2013.
The recently engaged Elise and Luke had nearly completed the three-hour drive from Adelaide to Luke’s farm at Kringin, between Pinnaroo and Loxton, when another car travelling too fast and on the wrong side of the road smashed into their Jeep Cherokee.
Elise can’t remember the accident, which happened exactly one year and a day before the date they had scheduled for their wedding, but woke to discover her worried parents by her side as she lay connected to life-support machines in intensive care.
“My recollection is that we left Adelaide, and the next thing I remember, I felt like I was trapped in just this black box,” she says. “I couldn’t see anything, I couldn’t hear anything, I didn’t know what was going on.”
Both Elise and Luke spent two weeks in the ICU. Luke suffered complex facial fractures, shoulder damage, a shattered hip and pelvis and two broken feet. Surgeons then nicked his lateral femoral cutaneous nerve during one of his many operations, which left him with chronic and ongoing pain issues.
Elise suffered an incomplete C6-7 spinal injury, which meant she retained some sensation but no movement below the chest and no hand or finger movement. Over time, she has regained some strength and movement in her right hand but she will live out her days as a quadriplegic.
“Between the two of us, we might have one working body,” she laughs. The couple moved from the RAH to the Hampstead rehab centre on Luke’s 27th birthday. He stayed for three months but Elise was there eight months, learning how to live in her new body.
About three months into her stay, she was introduced to Yvie as part of a Paraplegic and Quadriplegic Association of SA peer support program.
Elise put on hold both her optometry studies at Flinders University and her wedding to concentrate on her recovery. She and Luke split their time between medical appointments in Adelaide and home on the farm near Pinnaroo and finally married in April, 2017.
“Family has always been important for Luke and I – it was definitely one of our priorities,” she says. “We had been trying for a little while and once we were able to have our wedding day we thought we might need a little bit of a helping hand.”
But requiring a helping hand had nothing to do with Elise being confined to a wheelchair. For, while spinal cord injuries can affect a man’s fertility, they do not affect a woman’s reproductive organs and her ability to produce a baby.
Elise and Luke discovered that their fertility issues were predominantly from Luke’s side of the partnership. In the end, though, they conceived naturally.
“We went for our first consultation at the fertility clinic and in between that and the follow-up appointment I started feeling a little bit nauseous … and along was coming Evelyn,” Elise says. “The stars managed to align and that was very, very special.”
Both of Yvie’s sons were also conceived naturally, and both women progressed through their pregnancies under the watchful eye of their dedicated medical teams with few major complications.
Associate Professor Dr Ruth Marshall has been medical director of the South Australian Spinal Cord Injury Service for 35 years and is the first female president of the International Spinal Cord Society.
She’s seen thousands of patients come through Hampstead over the years and speaks passionately about helping wheelchair-based people create a family.
“There’s no reason they (women with a spinal cord injury) can’t get pregnant and have babies – unless they’ve had other injuries,” she says. “If they’ve had other injuries that might make a difference … but a spinal cord injury is not a reason to not have a baby.”
Spinal cord injuries can affect a woman’s level of enjoyment during intercourse because of a lack of sensation or pain, Marshall says, but if a woman is still having normal periods, she can still conceive naturally.
Marshall and her team encourage women with spinal cord injuries who are contemplating a family to speak with both an obstetrician and other wheelchair-based mothers to learn about the challenges that lie ahead.
Pregnant women in chairs are categorised as high-risk, primarily because of the danger of urinary tract infections, so are closely monitored through each trimester. Some women might experience pressure sores as the pregnancy progresses because they can’t lift themselves anymore and they might not be able to push their wheelchairs as the baby grows. Doctors also keep a keen eye on their blood pressure and manage injury medications that might be incompatible with pregnancy.
Many women with spinal cord injuries have limited bladder and bowel control, and rely on catheters As pregnant stomachs grow, catheters become harder to manage.
“And then if they have other problems, we may have an entire team (looking after them),” Marshall says. “There may be an obstetrician, there may be a physician who specialises in problems during pregnancy – that’s a whole area of internal medicine.
“There may be an infectious diseases doctor involved to help sort any antibiotic issues. And then if they suddenly don’t fit in their wheelchair anymore, we might have to measure them up and loan them another wheelchair.”
Many pregnant women with spinal cord injuries choose to have their babies induced, to both avoid last-minute rushes to the hospital (a panicked, frantic process for even able-bodied mums, let alone those relying on a wheelchair) and mitigate the danger of not recognising the signs of labour.
Yvie and Elise both experienced the thrill, and then the discomfort, of feeling their babies kick, and both were induced at 38 weeks.
Yvie had hoped to deliver Dylan vaginally but she was only dilated 2cm and his heart rate was dropping, so doctors carried out an emergency cesarean section. Yvie also had an adverse reaction to the morphine used in the C-section’s spinal block, which left her nauseous and delayed her first skin-on-skin contact. Because Dylan was delivered via C-section, doctors recommended Jensen be born the same way.
Evelyn was delivered vaginally. Elise’s body went into what she calls a “spinal shock meltdown” immediately after the birth, when she became very cold, shivering and supersensitive to people touching her, but returned to normal within a couple of hours.
Both women agree that the thrill of meeting their babies for the first time is something they will never forget.
“It’s the best feeling in the world to finally meet this child who’s been growing inside you,” Yvie says. “It’s just instantaneous love, isn’t it. I think as a mother you just feel that instant love anyway when you’re feeling them inside you. But, like any parent, it was pretty awesome to finally meet your own child and hold your own child.”
As any mum or dad knows, though, the hard part of parenting starts when you get them home from the hospital and, all of a sudden, you have a tiny human relying on you for their every need.
Modified baby goods such as cots, bath tables and prams help mothers like Yvie and Elise complete day-to-day chores. Elise’s limited left hand movement meant choosing baby clothes with minimal press studs.
“Changing nappies? Unfortunately, my hand function is still capable of doing that, though I did try to use it as an excuse to start with,” she says, tongue in cheek. “It’s just a matter of managing. Sometimes I did need assistance, especially when Evelyn started rolling. It’s difficult to handle a rolling baby at the best of times, even with completely functional hands.”
Yvie says her boys soon became accustomed to her sometimes not-so-subtle handling techniques.
“Because I don’t have any core, I had to throw them around a little bit,” she says. “Throwing is probably a bit of a harsh term, but I kind of just had to, well, almost throw them into the bassinet or their car seat or whatever. And they just dealt with it. You learn that they’re not super fragile. You don’t have to be handling them with kid gloves.”
As Dylan, Jensen and Evelyn have grown and become more mobile, both mums have relied on the power of projecting their voices and the support of friends and family to prevent their children running into danger.
They are often frustrated they are unable to participate in activities such as pushing a swing because they can’t wheel their chairs on the sand or bark chips employed on most playgrounds as ground cover.
And they worry about the things their children might miss out on because mum is in a wheelchair. Trips to the beach are scarce and family camping holidays are incredibly complicated.
Elise, now 27, and Luke, 34, have set up bases in both Adelaide and Pinnaroo since the accident, and run tyre and auto business Hyper Garage, with outlets at Wingfield and The Bend Motorsport Park. Luke also helps manage Elise’s family farm near Pinnaroo and continues to run his own farm further north at Kringin. During her rehabilitation, Elise started painting, which segued into creating signage company ME Studios, named after her goddaughter, Mila, and daughter Evelyn.
The family is in the process of moving back to Pinnaroo permanently, where Evelyn will go to school and her parents can take advantage of the help and security that comes with living in a close-knit rural community. Elise has relied on friends and family to drive her around since the accident, but has now started the process of learning to drive a car with modified controls.
Yvie, now 42, rises between 4am and 4.30am each day because she needs to spend about two hours in the bathroom to complete her bowel management routine and shower before preparing her boys for school at Hallett Cove East Primary.
She drives into the city two days a week in her role as co-ordinator of a National Parks and Wildlife program that aims at making the state’s national parks accessible for people with disabilities. She works from home the other three days, while Kriston, 45, works full-time at SARDI Aquatic Sciences at West Beach.
As well as riding their bikes and scooters and watching Star Wars, their boys, only 20 months apart, participate in karate, swimming and gymnastics.
Yvie says the initial tough slog of dealing with two children so close in age is starting to pay dividends as they grow older and can entertain each other. She became pregnant with Jensen sooner than planned, and was so worried how she would cope with both a toddler and a newborn, while she was in a wheelchair, that she initially found herself hoping for a miscarriage.
She also had to deal with crippling neuropathic pain during her second pregnancy, and the stress of an amniocentesis after a blood test indicated a 50 per cent chance of Jensen having Down syndrome.
But he was not, and she now views as a blessing the fact they are so close in age.
Both mothers hope their children’s experience of growing up with a wheelchair-based mother, and living with the extra thought and time required to complete tasks most people take for granted, will help them grow into empathetic, compassionate people. The signs are already there that this is the case. When Dylan was in kindergarten, his teacher identified his acceptance and patience with a child with autism.
“They’re more accepting of disability and more accepting of difference,” Yvie says of her boys as they play loudly but lovingly with Lego on the loungeroom coffee table.
Yvie and Elise represent a growing number of wheelchair-based women with spinal cord injuries who make the decision to start a family. Ruth Marshall estimates their number increases by one or two every year. She says there are between 1800 to 2000 people with spinal cord injuries in SA and the NT. About half of those are trauma cases and about a quarter of those are women.
Marshall has a simple message to the broader community if they see mums in chairs, such as Yvie and Elise.
“It’s not about disability, it’s about ability,” she says. “It’s not about what someone can’t do, it’s what they can do, and how we enable them to participate in the community.
“It’s really important if you see somebody struggling, regardless of whether they’re in a wheelchair or walking, you ask them whether you can help – you don’t just take their arm and help them across the road. The same is true if you see a young mum with a baby sitting on her lap and she’s in a wheelchair.
“It’s absolutely about what people can do. Rehabilitation is about empowering people to get back into their lives as much as possible. And if they want to be mums, then we will do everything we can to help them.”
The support network to which Marshall is referring includes organisations such as the Paraplegic and Quadriplegic Association of SA. Chief executive Peter Stewart says the association had been supporting South Australians with a spinal cord injury for more than 50 years, providing services including nursing, occupational therapy, assistance with the NDIS, home care, vocational rehabilitation.
“One of PQSA’s key services is peer support,” Mr Stewart says. “Our peer support advocates provide support, advice, information and advocacy for clients and their family and friends. Given their lived experience with spinal cord injury they bring an understanding of the issues facing our clients during and after rehabilitation.
“At PQSA, we believe that people with disabilities have the right to live the life they choose but the reality is they face barriers and challenges every day. We support our community by delivering quality services to uphold those rights and remove those barriers wherever possible. Motherhood is unfortunately not feasible for many women with spinal cord injuries, but we take great pride in being able to support those for whom it is possible.”
In fact, it was PQSA peer support advocate Vicky Machen who introduced Yvie and Elise in the Hampstead rehab centre back in 2014.
“It’s just really good having that peer support and having people that know what you are going through,” Yvie says. “I’ve got really good friends who are not in wheelchairs, and I can talk to them, but they don’t have that understanding of what I’m going through.
“Sometimes we do feel alone in what we’re going through. Sometimes we need that empathy. We need that understanding. It’s invaluable to know that there are people out there who completely understand you.”
Elise sometimes gets emotional when she thinks back to the day she met Yvie and baby Dylan.
“Within about three or four months of my accident and my life being thrown upside down, being newly engaged, studying at uni, to lying in a hospital bed and not being able to walk, I was introduced to Yvie,” she says.
“I was shown that it can be done – that you can be a mum in a wheelchair. You can be a person in a wheelchair and live life to its fullest.”
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