As their four-month-old daughter Orchard wakes, sustainability influencer Kate Hall and her husband Tim are immediately responsive, both beaming while they tend to their baby. Tim carries their wee girl back from the toilet – yes, toilet, they’re doing elimination communication and loving it – and Kate is completely at ease chatting to the Weekly as she reaches out for her baby and begins to breastfeed.
It’s a picture of family harmony and contentment, something Kate, known to thousands online as Ethically Kate, has longed for since she was a little girl. But after a miscarriage, an ectopic pregnancy and emergency surgery to remove one fallopian tube, it’s a dream she once worried would never happen.
A lifelong dream of motherhood
“I’ve always wanted to be a mum,” says author and speaker Kate, 29.
“Even at high school, I was known as the person who had Band-Aids, Panadol and tampons in my bag. I just can’t help but mother and look after people and animals.”
Now it’s her reality, Kate and Tim share that being Orchard’s parents is the best thing they’ve ever done, but they’re also careful to add that it isn’t always as perfect as it looks. There are plenty of ups and downs.
Heartbreak and hope
Kate explains, “This was our third pregnancy. I only have one fallopian tube and it had started to feel quite dire. “There were moments of utter despair, like it’s never going to happen. I described it as feeling like a dishwasher with no dishes to wash. I felt like a mother with no baby.”
Their first pregnancy tragically ended in miscarriage. The second was discovered as ectopic at a medical appointment when Kate thought she’d miscarried again. Instead, she was rushed in for emergency surgery.
“I was like 10 weeks’ pregnant and because the baby had grown so much, they had to take out my fallopian tube,” she recalls.
“It all went from zero to emergency really quick.”
Finding strength and closure
The couple took time to grieve, placing the tissue from the operation into the ocean one year later.
“That was such a full- circle moment,” she shares.
“It felt like we were ready for another.”
Unbeknown to both, at that time Kate was already several weeks’ pregnant with Orchard.
“It was like a little wink from the universe,” smiles Tim, 36.
Joy, anxiety, and the journey ahead
Finding out they were expecting again filled them with both happiness and trepidation.
“I took a test and it came up clear as day, like, ‘Boom! You’re pregnant,’” remembers Kate.
“It was really exciting still, but I was also open for vulnerability if it was another loss.”
Kate also experienced crippling nausea for the first half of her pregnancy.
“In this current moment, I want to have multiple children. But back then, I was like, ‘I can never do this again.’ I was quite bedridden and felt miserable. Then I would be thinking about how much I wanted this baby, but also part of me knowing it may still end and all of this hardship may be for nothing.”
Speaking out about loss
Tim says their decision to talk openly about pregnancy loss on Kate’s online platforms, which he helps run, saw them “accidentally become spokespeople for loss”.
Kate continues, “I had so many messages saying, ‘I’ve never told anyone that I’ve had multiple miscarriages but now I feel like I can because you’ve shared about your experiences.’”
As her third pregnancy progressed, Kate also remembers feeling like she was “betraying the miscarriage club”.
She explains, “I knew a lot of people had followed me because of the loss. I knew my story would bring a lot of hope. But I also felt bad that I couldn’t bring everyone with me. “The public was so awesome about it, but it was a strange feeling.”
Loving the journey
Despite the complex emotions, Kate loved being pregnant.
“The first half, I was so, so sick. The second half was awesome. I genuinely miss being pregnant. I loved it.”
Tim recalls watching his wife of eight years in awe.
“To see her pregnant with Cricket, which is what we called her before she was Orchard because we didn’t find out the gender, I just thought it was the best of Kate. She had a spring in her step and she was just glowing.”
Excitedly, they prepared for the birth. Kate prioritised staying fit and active, even embarking on a nationwide road trip for two months from weeks 24 to 32 of pregnancy to connect with followers.
The plan was always to give birth naturally in a hospital where blood products were available in the event she needed transfusions because, as a result of a virus she contracted as a teen, Kate has low blood platelets.
A high-stakes induction
But when her blood pressure spiked at 40 weeks and four days, Kate disappointingly learned that waiting for labour to start spontaneously was likely not possible.
“I went to a routine midwife appointment and my blood pressure was sky-high,” she recalls.
“She told us to get to the hospital within the hour.”
Immediate induction was recommended, which Kate declined, agreeing instead to stay in the hospital under observation while she researched her options.
After consulting multiple midwives and her closest family, Kate felt ready and agreed to be induced the following day.
Entering labour
“The induction was pretty non-invasive – you just have a bit of medicine every two hours,” she tells.
“They were expecting me to have eight doses. But after two doses, I said to Tim, ‘Just so you know, after the next dose, it’s on.’ “By 4pm, when I took the third dose, things were ramping up. I started going into active labour at 5pm and she was born by 6.50pm.”
Thinking back to the birth, where Tim was reading out birth card affirmations he had hand-illustrated, Kate shares, “I had a wooden birthing comb in one hand and a [natural pain relief] TENS machine remote in the other, and I was just listening to Tim’s voice. “I got into the zone and I loved it. It felt like using my body to its full potential. Honestly, even a day or two afterwards, I felt like, ‘Let’s go again.’”
She’s quick to add a disclaimer that her midwife described Orchard’s entry to the world as a “unicorn birth”, saying in 20 years of practice, she had seen very few like it.
Celebrating motherhood with awareness
“I want to celebrate it but also say I know this might not be other people’s experience,” Kate adds.
It’s undeniable, long-awaited motherhood has brought deep fulfilment.
“It makes life feel so much more rewarding,” she says.
Turning to Kate, Tim enthuses, “It’s been so cool to see you follow your intuition. It’s like watching you live up to your potential.”
Rocking Orchard gently, he continues, “I think our generation has been on the receiving end of social culture really heightening the downsides of parenthood – how you lose your independence and have to sacrifice everything. There’s not enough positivity or optimism spoken about pregnancy, birth and parenting. I’d love to be part of breaking that.”
Eco-friendly and intentional parenting
True to her mission to encourage others to live life sustainably with joy at the forefront, Kate is embracing low-waste parenting options, including reusable hankies instead of disposable wipes.
But what she’s most passionate about is the practice of elimination communication or offering babies to use a potty from birth.
“It’s just normal in so many other cultures,” says Kate, who always has a cloth nappy on Orchard as a back-up. “But basically, it’s acknowledging that a child has cues from day one around when they need to pee and poo, and that no human wants to poo themselves and sit in their own waste. “When I offer her the potty, I make sound cues and say, ‘Go potty’, and she knows. I’ve also started doing the sign language for potty. I only have a handful of poo nappies a week.”
Kate reveals one of her proudest moments came as Orchard accompanied her and Tim to New Zealand Fashion Week.
She recalls, “I wasn’t able to read her cues there as easily because I was busy. But I knew I needed to change her nappy and I just held her over the toilet, waited a little and she went poos.”
Moving towards an ubran homestead
Now, after three years of full-time housesitting, they’re moving to their own home in Auckland’s Hibiscus Coast. They’re excited about a new mission to undertake eco-renovations and transform the small 476 square metres section – of which 122 square metres is their house – into an urban homestead.
“We’ve always loved a garden, so we’re going to see how self-sufficiently we can live on a tiny amount of land,” she says.
A food forest and a few chickens are on the horizon and, as always, they plan on sharing the highs and lows online with their followers.
“I’m sure we’ll figure out a lot of wins and fails, and people can learn from our mistakes,” smiles Kate, who can’t wait to have Orchard by her side for it all.
Parenting is deeply connected to their wider mission of living lightly on the Earth.
“Before we had kids, I asked myself, ‘Is it sustainable to have a kid?’” reflects Kate, referencing the impact each human has on the planet.
“But to deny myself of being a mother for the environment felt wrong. For me, having a child in the face of our climate crisis is potentially one of the biggest acts of hope that we can do.”
