Baby Freddie's frightening arrival gave his mum pause to share their cause

But within 20 minutes it all went awry - she was hit with intense back pain and found herself unable to breathe.

Mrs van Galen was experiencing a placental abruption, where the placenta detaches from the uterus wall and causes internal bleeding.

Had the Wodonga mother arrived at hospital just moments later it's likely her baby would have died.

Ahead of Traumatic Birth Week, July 16 to 22, Mrs van Galen shared her story in the hope of raising awareness of potential birthing complications.

"It was my second pregnancy, but now I am scared to have another and go through the same thing," she said.

"I was very excited for the labour and in a healthy condition. Everything that happened was spontaneous."

Mrs van Galen said medical staff jumped on to it fast, as "I was bleeding internally but my water hadn't broken".

"I was very lucky because it could have gone a completely different way."

Her son Freddie, now four months, was delivered by an emergency caesarean section half an hour later, and due to the abruption, he was rushed to Melbourne.

"What should have been happy moments of cuddling and spending time with my newborn were taken from me," she said.

"And due to the placental abruption, they assumed he was hypoxic because he wasn't getting any blood flow inside my belly.

"I had to stay in Wodonga for four days because I lost a lot of blood. I was a bit too unstable to transfer.

"He was put into NICU (neonatal intensive care) in the Sunshine Hospital and I later was able to go there and was put into the maternity ward."

Mrs van Galen said due to staffing issues she had to go into social housing, where she had no access to pain relief.

"It was a bit rough, I wasn't able to walk and I was left bruised," she said.

"It wasn't a happy time but Freddie was fine, that was the main thing.

"We're very lucky there was no brain damage from the abruption - he now gets monitored every month."

Mrs van Galen said she had planned on a home birth, but "that wouldn't have been a good outcome for either of us".

"It was very unlikely that we would have survived the bleeding if I did."

Infertility is a likely side effects of such an episode.

"I'm terrified it could happen again, as I was worried I was going to die," she said.

"It happened so fast and I didn't register it until I got home, it was a whirlwind.

"But it was so nice to get that first cuddle. The first time I saw him he was covered in cords and that continued for the first two weeks.

"But he is so great and hitting all his milestones and, surprisingly, has no issues at all."

Mrs van Galen was a student midwife at the time and yet never realised such a thing could occur.

"It's just so uncommon, but I'm going to keep talking about it now," she said.

"It's changed my perspective of how quickly emergencies can happen."