Latest / Mothering / S1Ep3 | Amy - Have I Made The Biggest Mistake Of My Life? IVF, Melanoma, Shame, Psychiatric Unit, Complex Mother-Daughter Relationships *TRIGGER WARNING*

Transcript

S1Ep3 | Amy - Have I Made The Biggest Mistake Of My Life? IVF, Melanoma, Shame, Psychiatric Unit, Complex Mother-Daughter Relationships *TRIGGER WARNING* · Mothering

• 0:02
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, if we do want to have kids, then I think it's going to need to be an IVF process, and that could take a billion years and do it now and retrieve the eggs now rather than waiting another five years because of really severe inflammation.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: I remember going to the maternal child health nurse and I said to her, I'm thinking all I want to do is step out in front of a bus.
• 0:22
  SPEAKER_01: Because if I do that, and does that mean that I can have a rest in hospital?
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_01: Because if I get hurt, does that mean that I can can sleep for a few hours and somebody can look after me just looking up to baby?
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is the Mothering Podcast, and I'm your host, Carly.
• 0:36
  SPEAKER_00: Each episode I sit down with women who speak honestly about their life-changing transition into motherhood and what becoming a mother actually feels like.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: Please be mindful when little ears are listening to this podcast, as we can get a bit sweary and vibrant.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: One last notice to say that this is an inclusive space, but we touch on a lot of physical and psychological changes that the female body goes through immatrescence.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: The use of the term mother can encompass any person who identifies as a mother and takes on that extremely important and nurturing role.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: Hello everybody, apologies for my husky voice.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: I am getting over an illness, but the show must go on.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm here to talk about today's episode where I sit down with Amy and talk about her journey into motherhood.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's very mental health heavy.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: She had a really rocky first 12 months.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: One major aspect that Amy talks about is her various health conditions that kind of pushed her into conception.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: Amy had endometriosis, adenomiosis.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: She then conceived through IVF.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: While she was pregnant, Amy discovered that she had a melanoma that she needed to be removed.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: So she underwent surgery while pregnant, which is a pretty wild story to listen to.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: And then we get into some pretty heavy and dark themes around mental health of becoming a new mum and not having appropriate support to help her through that transition.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Me and Amy also have a big discussion around complex relationships with our own mothers and how that interplays with our new role as mothers.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: It is honestly such an incredible conversation.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: I really hope it can help make other women who might be feeling some of these feelings that are associated with shame feel less alone and know that there is help out there and there is organizations you can turn to for support.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: But before we get into it, I just want to make a final statement that as I mentioned before, Amy speaks openly about postnatal depression and suicidal thoughts and being admitted to a psychiatric hospital with her baby.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: This episode can be pretty heavy, so please take care of yourself.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: And if you feel like you're not in a space to listen today, that's okay.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: You can skip over it, come back to it, or not at all.
• 2:45
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're listening to this and it sparks some emotions in you and you feel like you absolutely need to talk to someone for support, Panda is an incredible perinatal mental health organization who specialise in helping new mums.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Their number is 1-300-726-306, and that's an Australian organization.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: If you need immediate help, Lifeline is an incredible phone hotline that you can call on 131114 and someone will be able to speak to you right now.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'll leave both those numbers in the show notes.
• 3:19
  SPEAKER_00: And one last thing, actually, before I go, at the end of our chat, Amy's laptop cuts out really abruptly, so I don't get to formally finish and thank her, but I do call her on the phone and have that chat at the end.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: So let's begin.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to Mothering, Amy.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 3:38
  SPEAKER_00: Would you like to start by introducing yourself?
• 3:41
  SPEAKER_00: Tell us who you are, who's in your family, where you're living, and what mothering looks like to you at the moment.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks, Carly.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_01: So my name is Amy.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_01: I live in Kensington in Melbourne with my partner Kurt and our 14-month-old daughter Heidi and our eight and a half year old rescue greyhound Lisa.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: I am currently in paid employment, so working four days a week.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_01: Both myself and Kurt work four days a week and have a day caring Fighty per week.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_00: Beautiful.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: And we're both wearing red today, which is just a vibe.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_00: I'm so into it.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_00: Such a vibe.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: Such a vibe.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: Just woke up feeling like we needed something to fiery.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: As we were just discussing that both our toddlers are fiery gals.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Amazing.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: What's been your journey with your desire to have children?
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: Have you always wanted kids?
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: Or is it something that you decided to do later in life?
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it certainly wasn't something that has always been or was always on the agenda.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: Mine myself and Curt have been together since we were like 22, so ages, more like 35 now.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, it never really came up.
• 4:57
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have heaps of friends, I've got kids.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: I had when I was like 32, I had some pretty intense health stuff where I had my small intestine removed, which was a bit of a weird and wonderful, or not wonderful, horrific experience.
• 5:11
  SPEAKER_01: Let's be fucking honest, I almost died, it was awful.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um but the kind of the flowing effect of that was that I had to stop um being on the pill because of the estrogen that was in the pill.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um anyway, I stopped being on the pill and I never got my period.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, what the fuck's going on?
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_01: This is a bit weird.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_01: At this stage, a bit more like, oh, questioning kind of what was going on from a health perspective rather than a can I have kids perspective.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, went down, did all the kind of all the tests and had all this medical intervention.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, holy fuck, you've got like really severe endometriosis and adenomyosis and ovarian cysts and polycystic ovarian syndrome, just now called PMOS, I think.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: Just like all this shit that the pill had been masking that I've been on since I was like 16.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: And it was this period then of like, fuck God, this might not be a choice for us.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like I think like kids might not be something we can do or might not be something but even if we want to that that that will happen for us.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_01: And uh that sort of almost like shit, we're like 33, and is if do we want to do this?
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_01: Fuck, okay.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: All the advice is that if we do, it's probably gonna be a like a pretty intense time, which probably a little bit feeds into my story around one of the reasons I found the entry into motherhood really challenging was that it was almost a I could say an artificial push, but a it's certainly an external like this might not happen, or it might take five years, or so all the advice was retrieve eggs and do this and like shit.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: That if we want to do it, we it's not gonna be this sort of journey of Kurt and I having this discussion and all this time to spend mulling over it.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's we've got to hop on it.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_01: So that is sort of the impetus, which is a yeah, not the the nicest of ways to start this this season of life, I'd say.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_01: Started with a like a a oh shit rather than a oh should we do this?
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, wow.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_00: And so was all the pressure because they needed to do surgery on you, or was it more like your health like that?
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Was the time to start getting your eggs out and thinking about it?
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_01: The biggest issue when it came came to them was that I don't ovulate, so it was like, alright, so I'm never gonna be able to have kids.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: I say that, and then I was just talking to you before we pressed record about suddenly getting my period again post-having a child, so something's fucking happening there with my hormones.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: But anyway, can I say I've heard that story a lot with women with Endometrius's Pecos, which has now been renamed?
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, um, yeah, is that kind of having a baby, regardless of how you get pregnant, kind of restarts that system, yeah.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Which is just wild.
• 7:56
  SPEAKER_00: So vibe what is it then at the start?
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why is it a heap of hormones that come on during pregnancy and birth that then allow your body to start ovulating again?
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_00: Who knows if you're ovulating, but you are getting a period.
• 8:09
  SPEAKER_01: So it makes you the assumption is you are, but it's it's really wild, and I feel like from doing a bit of reading similar to the majority of issues that affect females or uh people with with uteruses that's somewhat under-researched and not fully understood.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I think it was like a combo of okay, if uh we do want to have kids, then it's going to need to be an IVF process and oh, that could take a billion years, and oh, do it now and retrieve the eggs now.
• 8:40
  SPEAKER_01: Uh when did I have to retreat when I was like 33 rather than waiting another five years or something with egg reserves and because of really severe inflammation, I had to have three months of the premature menopause to remove all the estrogen from my body to reduce all the inflammation, which was a it was really intense and it really made me think, fuck, for so many thousands of years women going through menopause and it's a really fucked process.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's really intense and like and I found it for the three months really awful for really physically and emotionally draining.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, and my specialist was like your uterus is just gonna keep getting more and more inflamed if your hormones keep on the same sort of trajectory that they're on.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I would suggest if you uh want to have kids to go through this process and then to just do it now, and then if if it doesn't happen, then probably like it's not gonna happen.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: I remember her very specifically being like, Have you thought about using a surrogate if you want to have kids?
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, I I've hardly even thought about having fucking kids.
• 9:48
  SPEAKER_01: And suddenly it's just like this this intense on sort of information and a really very clinical, very medical, and uh in some ways it suited me of I I can be quite black and white, I'm quite uh analytical, and so almost in my head it was like, Alright, what's our focus here?
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_01: Achieving pregnancy.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: So having an optimal kind of uh environment and doing all the things and fitting that into my life and having schedules and this is when I do my medication and this is this is the journal articles I'm reading and blah blah blah.
• 10:20
  SPEAKER_01: So it's almost like rather than thinking about what might the actual end result ever be, and what might this be, it was very much this focus of let's uh work hard and study hard and get pregnant, which is probably what you've done most of your life.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_01: On brand, totally.
• 10:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's just like my personality through and through.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_01: Let's be hyper-organized and let's solve this, and and without the really hard and intense conversations really, probably with myself and at home about what will this look like for us?
• 11:00
  SPEAKER_01: What might this bring up in me if we are successful?
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_01: And it was very much around the process.
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: And then early on I had quite a lot of bleeding, and being at IVF pregnancy was quite intensely monitored, so lots of scans and blood tests early on, because it was still a little bit like, is this actually going to be a goer, or is this sort of maybe is my body gonna accept this?
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: And then we got to 12-13 weeks and it was like maybe this this is happening.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_01: Fuck.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: And then at that time I got a melanoma diagnosis.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my god.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_01: So just as I like entered into the second trimester, so it was like it was probably at the stage where I was like, oh, maybe this is the time I'm just gonna start feeling a bit more real and start maybe some of the you know, sitting with some of the feelings of what motherhood might be for me.
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: And then it was like, oh no, now we'll focus on having surgery and s working out how progressed this cancer is or not.
• 12:03
  SPEAKER_01: And I hadn't told anyone that I was pregnant apart from obviously imagining five people, just like keep these on the wraps for as long as I can't.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: Spring! Exactly.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: It's yours.
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_00: So, what was like the time limit from the point of you f finding out about all your health issues with your uterus?
• 12:22
  SPEAKER_01: Probably about a year or so.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I think compared to some people's kind of journeys with fertility, not too bad.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: So I think Hardy was my the third embryo transfer that I had.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_00: And that's a lot.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't done it personally, but I've I've I know people who have, and it's so much all the injections and the processes and the false starts of thinking it might work and then it not working and then having to do it again.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's a lot on top of everything else you've been carrying.
• 12:57
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it was really cyclical, the sort of the emotional process, you know, like you're full of kind of hope, and then you're just doing all the things that you think you need to be doing, and and then that the sort of the crushing disappointment.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_01: Um and it was I it was really unsettling for me because I was like you're still at this stage, I was like, I don't even know if I want kids fucking doing this.
• 13:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's so hard to even say that, right?
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm absolutely pushing myself emotionally, physically to the limit, because of course I am, because what else would I do in my life?
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: Imagine like taking some time too kind to myself, but I'm like, let's just let's just like fucking raw dog it.
• 13:37
  SPEAKER_01: And I distinctly remember like doing the fucking like egg retrieval the day after I got back from Meredith, which is like the most like that's the most like incredible mothering I've ever heard of.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_00: For anyone that doesn't know, Meredith is an amazing alternative music festival.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: If you haven't been, you should go.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: It's fucking great, like it's so good, but like even reflecting on that being B Meredith taking hormonal medication, pessaries, which are like for those that don't know it, like vaginal kind of capsules that release estrogen into your cervix to make the place.
• 14:16
  unknown: Exactly.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, so if that sort of tells you a bit of a picture of psychologically where I was or wasn't, but yeah, it was about a year or so from when kind of medically health-wise things were uncovered to when it was it July, yeah, July 2024 being like yeah, fuck the two lines on the test or whatever it is.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Amazing.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and so you said your pregnancy's pretty highly monitored.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: What was overall your kind of feeling about pregnancy?
• 14:49
  SPEAKER_00: And you obviously had your melanoma.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_00: That was a huge event in your pregnancy.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_00: How did that go?
• 14:57
  SPEAKER_00: Did you have to have surgery while being pregnant?
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: I had big removal in my scalp.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_01: So they took the mole out and then they tested and were like, oh, it's cancerous, we're gonna have to remove more around.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_01: And a surgery that's normally done under general, but being pregnant I did under local, which was a bit of a a experience.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: And they were very conservative with how much yeah, how much anesthetic they gave.
• 15:19
  SPEAKER_01: So just feeling and being like, no, I need a little bit more local anesthetic because I can feel you hacking into my head.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks, mate.
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_01: Why?
• 15:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um I was like dentist times a billion.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: I can only imagine.
• 15:31
  SPEAKER_01: And being I was like 14 weeks pregnant or 14, yeah, something like that.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, I don't need to my side because you couldn't just be flat on my tummy, because I also had some stuff removed from my back as well.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: I was really very lucky that I had a very like apart from apart from the melanova and quite a lot of sort of bleeding early on, I had no nausea, I had no kind of like I didn't feel particularly tired.
• 15:56
  SPEAKER_01: I w I was very lucky in that sense, which strangely, though I think it uh um helped me along this sort of mindset of being like, let's not even really think about being pregnant.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't really uh start uh showing and until maybe I don't know, I was maybe I did, but people just didn't say anything.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: But uh probably until four or five months in I didn't I didn't tell anyone.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_01: I I just had to keep making excuses to why I wasn't drinking, like lots of antibiotics.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_01: I've got a friend recently who's recently told asked another friend that she's pregnant and the I guess the sharing the joy and the kind of the excitement and and I didn't go through that.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_01: I I kept it very much all to myself.
• 16:36
  SPEAKER_01: Probably an element of is this actually happening, is this gonna be a live birth?
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_01: I was still probably a little bit, you know, suspicious of that of it not eventuating and then just psychologically being like I'm not quite I'm not there yet.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_01: I haven't really come to terms with what this might be again, and I keep coming back to that because it's just my head it was like, Oh, we'll deal with that when it comes.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_01: And at the moment we've got to work on the melanoma and work on dealing with that, and I'd go to a scan and then come straight back to work and there was no sort of carving the time out to sit with the the feelings that might be brought on by being pregnant.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: Isn't it funny the cultural narrative we have around telling people that we're pregnant?
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I felt the same, but I've actually changed my thought now.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_00: And if I were to get pregnant again, I would do it differently.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: But I think we all start out thinking, I can't tell anyone until I know it's actually happening, which is just bizarre because you're pregnant, you're pregnant, and whatever happens, and do you not want your loved ones there for you when you have to go through it?
• 17:48
  SPEAKER_00: And like you said, you didn't get to experience that joy of sharing the news early on and just living in that moment, which is honestly one of the best moments before you have to deal with the intensity of pregnancy and birth and having a baby, is like that little moment where you get to tell the people you love that you're gonna have a baby, and to see the reaction on their face is priceless, and it's sad that we have that mindset, and it's not anyone's personal fault, it's just how we are as a culture.
• 18:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's yeah, how we deal with pregnancy, and yeah, it's interesting how you reflect on that as well.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's interesting you mentioned that my sister-in-law is from Mexico, she lives here now, and her and my brother's son is four months older than Heidi, which has been really amazing having them really close in age.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but she told everyone that she knew that she was pregnant from when she pissed on a stick.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_01: It was I'm telling everyone now, if this doesn't eventuate, then I want my loved ones to know what's happened.
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: There was no sense of this isn't something that we share through the ups and downs of life.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't need to be like there's no right way of doing something.
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: So it was very interesting the approach there.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: No sense of, oh, we'll keep this to ourselves until a specific moment and we won't talk about the hard stuff.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: This is not what we do in Mexico.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: It's that real hush-hush, shameful, you know, women's problems.
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_01: And God, what if this doesn't eventuate?
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: What will we say to this person who might have experienced pregnancy loss or miscarriage or stillbirth?
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: And God, oh no, let's let them deal with that alone and quietly and in the shadows.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's quite a bit.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: Not exactly.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to talk a little bit how your birth went?
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: So I've said to a few people, if you went through something, you know, as physically traumatic on the body as birth for any other circumstance, you'd have at least a couple weeks afterwards, I would say, to rest and recover and to physically recover from the onslaught that the body goes through, and it's just funny funny that that you give birth and here's your baby, and then the day after you're home and you're like fuck I'm like my body is like wrecked, and also learn to breastfeed and here's your baby, you don't know what to do.
• 20:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's the most cooked, yeah, far out.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: The my birth or Hardy's birth, I started having some pain on Tuesday night, like some cramps, and I was like, Yeah, I don't know what labour feels like, but this maybe is a goer.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: Like, this is starting to feel a bit like some period cramps, and then an hour later I'm like, whoa, this is really starting to amp up.
• 20:35
  SPEAKER_01: In a couple of hours, I was just vomiting and in intense amounts of pain.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_01: It was like probably 2-3 a.m.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: and contractions were every like fucking six minutes or something.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_01: And Kurt's oh, this should we because we've gone to like the prenatal classes with the women's and they're like, Oh, you'll have this, you'll probably just have a few days of just little amounts of pain at home, and then you'll know when I was like, God, this better be it, because this is going on for days.
• 20:57
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, this this is we gotta do something.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: I remember that.
• 21:00
  SPEAKER_00: I remember thinking that yeah, it starts and you're like, nah, I can't do this, but right, and then you're like, There's no choice now, right?
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: Like, we're we're in it.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember Kirk, yeah, Kurt calling the women some being like, This we're out, they're like, Oh, look, you could come in, but we're probably in digest sending you home.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_01: You probably want to labour at home for a bit longer, and I was like, nah.
• 21:20
  SPEAKER_01: Anyway, the contractions probably started about 11, 12.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: We just got in like 3 a.m.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, this is very fucking painful.
• 21:29
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like, Oh, yeah, you're seven centimetres dilated.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, Yeah, okay, that makes sense as to why this has been so fucking painful for the last three hours.
• 21:37
  SPEAKER_01: And but then Heidi just didn't make her way out very quickly or promptly.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_01: Her heart rate was dropping quite a lot and was just a very quick start, but then the actual final birthing process wasn't happening, and I remember just being in the birth suite and more and more people coming into the room, and more and more.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Doctors, they were fantastic, but very calm.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, you're thinking why why is there so many like people coming in and they're like, Are we gonna do this?
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna monitor this.
• 22:07
  SPEAKER_01: And at this stage I was still in so much fucking pain.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: I'd had the fucking gangs like with nitrous oxide, hadn't done anything.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, Give me some, give me something else.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, then they were like, We're gonna have to prepare your theatre, and so they're like, We're gonna have to meet baby a bit earlier.
• 22:20
  SPEAKER_00: I always say that to them.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: We really want to meet baby, and I'm like, You want to meet baby?
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, fuck man, I'm the one here doing the work.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, like they're being so fantastic and wonderful and balancing, like, oh, we need to get this show on the road without panicking anyone.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: We'll try four steps, but then we'll get you ready.
• 22:42
  SPEAKER_01: We'll be in theatre.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_01: It means that if we can't get her out using the four steps, then we'll go straight to a C section.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: Do you feel like you were at the pushing stage or not yet?
• 22:51
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was, yeah, and I was pushing and she just wasn't um she was just the positioning wasn't quite wasn't quite right.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, just yeah, remember just them telling you to push us like I'm fucking dry here.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_01: Like, like just like the most like honestly, nothing in life as wild as giving birth, nothing fucking close.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: It is at the top of the list by the longest shot possible.
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: It's insane.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_00: It is insane.
• 23:18
  SPEAKER_00: I still think how we all walking around having done this thing sometimes multiple times, and no one blinks an eye.
• 23:29
  SPEAKER_00: It's like everyone's just on your way back to work, anyway.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: We'll talk about that later, but yeah, it's insane.
• 23:37
  SPEAKER_00: Honestly, it breaks you open physically, mentally, emotionally.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: You get everything transported to this other planet while you're in that phase, and then you honestly are rebirthed as a different person because you just can't go back to the world that it was before.
• 23:54
  SPEAKER_00: Like, how could you?
• 23:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's psychedelic in a way.
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_01: It it really is, it's fucking indescribable.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: Like the the idea of you wake up one morning and and then that night you have birthed this human being that you have grown from nothing.
• 24:14
  SPEAKER_01: For fuck for fucking a mishmash of cells, yeah, is yeah, it's astonishing.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's part of you, and then it's not part of you anymore.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: It's this own little thing, but it grew inside you, which is just it's still hard to wrap my head around the concept of that whole thing.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: And the idea of my body and so so many people in society's bodies have done that, and it's like such an extraordinary thing to do.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_01: But again, it feels like a society sometimes.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's like, yeah, tick off, you've given birth, it's completely life-changing because it's that moment, right, isn't it?
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: It's the point of no return.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: Because you're like, shit, baby's here.
• 24:54
  SPEAKER_00: You've got the demands of the baby crying at you and needing your milk, and you're just like, This is a whole nother level.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: And being for the majority of people with birth, like in some level of pain, like some people as in afterwards, the exhaustion.
• 25:16
  SPEAKER_00: You totally you can't even stand up and some people can.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: I won't put everyone in the category, but most of us can't even stand up and have a shower.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_00: They give you their little shower seat.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 25:28
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, that's if you're lucky enough to do that.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: So did you end up having to have surgery to have Heidi?
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: Sh she was managed to be via forceps and her episiotomy, so I didn't have a Caesar, I had yeah, her pulled out, which was a sort of a bonkers thing in itself.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: I remember at that stage I felt like I was probably a bit of a mix of the morphine, and I had a drill by that stage, but it was too late because I had to do the episiotomy.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_01: They did quite a lot of local anesthetic.
• 25:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember at that stage feeling like I was just out of my body, because at that stage she'd become so interventionist.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: There was literally it felt like a thousand people around me, people doing the cut for the episiotomy, the lovely woman holding my hand, being like, You're doing great job, and Kurt there just crying, feeling very emotional already.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, I'm I feel like I'm high, I am, and but I'm also just now I'm not even pushing because they're just trying to get this baby out of me.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_01: It felt like I was on a different planet.
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_01: And when they got Heidi out, she wasn't breathing, so she had to have some recess for about five or so minutes, and at that stage I felt like I was on a different planet.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_01: It was almost like I was a bit disconnected from that.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_01: Kurt was much more aware of that happening.
• 26:42
  SPEAKER_01: I remember just lying there and just being like, I don't know who I am, what's going on.
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_01: I assume the baby's okay, but at this stage.
• 26:49
  SPEAKER_01: I I just don't think going through the prenatal classes it didn't ever feel like it was communicated that it could be a f like a fairly traumatic experience.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, there's no preparation for it.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: No, it's like it's different than pain, it's pain for a good reason, and it was no like, oh there's actually so many things that can happen and can make it tried a traumatic experience, and it is for so many people, but it didn't ever come up, and maybe I put it down to maybe the fact that I didn't read much into it, I didn't explore much as to what the various things that could happen, I just let it happen.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, but I think that this is the broader problem with the way that society talks about birth and becoming a mother, which is pretty minimal and especially basically non-evident until you're in the process of having a baby.
• 27:47
  SPEAKER_00: And even then, like you said, you went to the birth classes, which I assume were at the hospital you're talking about, and even then they're not even giving you the appropriate information of all the ways that birth can happen.
• 28:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's not uncommon, and that's the thing.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: It's like you said, you've talked to so many women, and as have I, and you realize how rare it is to have an uncomplicated birth.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's so rare.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_00: And if that's the case, then the narrative around what you should be expecting with birth needs to change.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 28:23
  SPEAKER_00: And 100% wherever you're getting your education, I think it's up to them to provide that to you.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_00: Obviously, yes, I think there's an element we can all go and read books and do our own education, but that also takes a lot of time and energy that lots of people don't have.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: And if you've never been in this space before, which none of us have for the first time around, if none of us have people in our lives that can point us to useful books or tools or resources, if you're doing it all on your own, it's forget about it.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: You're not gonna find all the things you need to know.
• 28:59
  SPEAKER_00: It's impossible, really, unless you have a lot of spare time.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: And as you said, because it is inherently something that women are experiencing or people with uteruses are experiencing it, it just doesn't ever feel like it's sort of front and centre in the so interesting.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: I wonder if we taught a bit of birth ed at school, if the world at large would have a greater understanding, because everyone's sitting there listening to what's going on, yeah, whether it would be a good thing or not.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: Or too intense.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: This is the thing.
• 29:32
  SPEAKER_00: It's like we all think, oh, it's too intense, we can't talk about it, but then we all go through it and feel so alone and unprepared because no one's talking about it.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so And it is really fucking intense.
• 29:42
  SPEAKER_00: It is intense, but we can handle intense stuff because we have, and we're still here alive to tell the story.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: So this whole fear around sharing intense stories needs to stop, which is obviously why I want to start doing this, is to share more stories so that it becomes more normalized and it's not this hush-hush behind closed doors thing anymore because it doesn't serve anyone when it's like that.
• 30:11
  SPEAKER_01: It absolutely doesn't, because it's certainly not something I heard from my mum how her births were or any part of her experience of pregnancy of birth of mothering, and that's maybe related to my experience my relationship with her as well, but it also just the fact that it's very much was secret women's business, right?
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 30:31
  SPEAKER_00: Heidi had to get resassed, and how were you after birth?
• 30:37
  SPEAKER_00: Did you stay a few days?
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: Did they send you home?
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, stayed two nights because of the resource.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_01: They just wanted to keep a bit of an eye on her.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_01: I remember the first night being I think because I'd had the morphine, I was fairly groggy, and she was still a bit groggy, so it was sort of blur.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um the second night where she was screaming for most of the night, I just having no fucking idea.
• 31:02
  SPEAKER_01: I just remember calling on the midwives just to be like, I don't know what to do, what do I do with like how do I make the baby stop screaming?
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: And they were just like, Oh, you just need to swaddle her and do this.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, I don't know how I I've never done it before.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: I've never done it.
• 31:18
  SPEAKER_00: Like, can someone show me?
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like that's the narrative it's been in my head.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what I'm doing.
• 31:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just throwing shit at a wall and hoping it sticks.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm by myself in yeah, this hospital room, it's like 4 a.m.
• 31:33
  SPEAKER_01: or something.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_01: Can you show me, or can you just do it so that I can have a few hours of rest because oh yeah, yesterday I birthed this child, so I'm quite like sore and I can't see it because my because my like I'm I'm so my vagina got chopped ripped open chopped and I'm so like bruised and battered.
• 31:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it was the second it hit me pretty early the the total hormone drop and I remember just starting to cry so much in the from the second day onwards.
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_01: And I think it was the morning we were leaving and I just couldn't stop crying and had gone to get the car, and there was a woman in the shared room, and she couldn't move because she'd had a C-section.
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_01: She was having a really rough time, and she just shouted out to me, She's like, You're doing such a good job.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: This is so fucking hard, you'll get there, but I'm sorry I can't get up, but you're okay, it's so hard.
• 32:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I just remember that being like the first of many times where woman to woman you get this G up, like you're a fucking queen.
• 32:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think this one, this is her third.
• 32:43
  SPEAKER_01: It was almost like, oh all right, if she thinks I'm gonna be okay, then maybe I am gonna be okay.
• 32:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:51
  SPEAKER_01: It still is a little bit wild to me though that I gave birth on the Wednesday and then the Friday morning we were home.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, and what did that look like for you guys?
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: Did you guys plan any prep food on your own, or you did you ask people to drop things around?
• 33:08
  SPEAKER_00: Did you organise anyone to come and help you?
• 33:11
  SPEAKER_01: We had like people that had kids previously, were like, Do you know the most helpful thing is I'm gonna drop around a lasagna that I've made.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so we had stuff in the deep freeze, which was the most useful thing, just practically, not having to think about any sort of preparation was was super useful.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: Took two or three weeks to start off with.
• 33:34
  SPEAKER_01: He took four months later on as primary caregiver, but he took two or three weeks initially, and even with that, I would say from day three or four onwards, I was already starting to feel myself unraveling a little bit.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: But I didn't have much of the sort of oh my gosh, I've got a baby.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's the kind of unraveling, maybe the rebirth, I don't know, but it happened pretty early for me.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: So that initial postpartum was very hard.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the thing that is the hardest about it is you're starting this entire journey sleep-deprived, absolutely being pushed to your limit physically, yeah.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_00: You're exhausted, you're probably a little bit scared of the unknown, you're in this new world, you have this thing, this beautiful, gorgeous little cherub that you have to take care of.
• 34:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I think the thing about being the mother is you just know inherently that it is your responsibility.
• 34:44
  SPEAKER_01: I've had therapy for decades, but it feels different now, and it feels, at least for myself, so critical because all I want is to be a different mum than I got.
• 34:53
  SPEAKER_01: There have been times that I've this resentment to Heidi of going, I wish you were easier and I wish you didn't cry as much.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: And then I thought that's exactly what I got when I had lots of really big feelings and struggled as a young person.
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, you have a partner, no matter how incredible and helpful and caring and emotional and a rock they can be for you.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_00: You know that you are the one that actually has to do all the work and you're the one that has to keep this baby alive.
• 35:21
  SPEAKER_00: There's this like what do you call it?
• 35:24
  SPEAKER_00: The word escapes me, but there's this line that it can't be tethered, you're still joined together as the mother and the baby, and even if you bottle feed, there's just this emotional toll that the mother takes on.
• 35:41
  unknown: Yep.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, on top of that, you're you're learning to breastfeed as well at this time, yeah, which is just an intense, hard task on its own.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_01: So fuck like you're learning, baby's learning, it's painful, you're exhausted, sucking the life out of you because you're nourishing a baby as well.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: And as you said, you're coming to it from already pretty low kind of level of what's in your cup.
• 36:08
  SPEAKER_01: Your resilience is not there.
• 36:10
  SPEAKER_01: You've got this oh my gosh, you know, you've got cards and well-wishes and texts and gifts and this magical kind of isn't this so wonderful?
• 36:21
  SPEAKER_01: Look at this baby and blah blah blah, and people dropping around not doing anything helpful, just dropping around and making them a cup of tea and and like there are so many times that initial uh two months of life for Heidi that I just thought this idea of what I'm meant to be what am I meant to be so happy and that this is the love of my life here and this is the most wonderful thing that's ever happened, blah blah blah.
• 36:52
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought I'm not feeling any of that.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: I'm spending six to seven hours a day bouncing this baby on a ball while she screams at me because she's so unsettled and she's just the most colicky, unhappy baby in the world.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_01: That I'm meant to in this period of this is the most wonderful thing in the world.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_01: I distinctly remember at 3, 4 am just spending hours on Reddit being like, I think I've made the biggest mistake of my fucking life here.
• 37:24
  SPEAKER_01: Just feeling so fucking lonely and thinking, is there anyone else feeling this feeling, or is it just like that we've just wrapped this up in this, oh, the best time in the newborn bubble and just so much love around and love every moment and and I just remember hating every time I'd hear that because I'm like I feel mad at this and I yeah, I had never been as critically unhappy in my life as those first couple of months of Hardy's life, which is so sad, yeah, and so lonely, so lonely, so tough Ames.
• 38:04
  SPEAKER_00: I have to say, I do relate.
• 38:06
  SPEAKER_00: If I had a similar start and I didn't feel any of the joy, so alone, so like, oh my god, I have made such an error.
• 38:20
  SPEAKER_00: I am not the woman I thought I was, I am not able to do this.
• 38:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I just felt like I couldn't really tell anyone, even though I have such incredible people in my life, it was this it was my own shit, honestly, to not be able to reach out and ask for help.
• 38:42
  SPEAKER_00: It was my own barriers of just how I've lived my life, and um I moved out of home when I was 18, and I've just been a very hyper-independent human being from that point onwards.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: I've just been on my own and done everything myself, and in that I think isn't talked about enough in that the way you have lived your life as a woman up until the point of becoming a mother has such a profound impact on your ability to shape shift into the role of a mother because being a mother asks so many things of you.
• 39:26
  SPEAKER_00: You are at your absolute most vulnerable, apart from being a human baby, and you have to rely on other people to get through because you cannot do it on your own.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't have the tools and the skills to wave your hand and ask for someone to come and save you because you're drowning, and if you can't recognize that in yourself, it makes it really difficult because it takes a long time for you to notice that you're actually drowning, and by that point, it's never too late, but it gets harder.
• 40:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you get further away from reality, and yeah, it's yeah, it's it's a lot.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_00: I know you went through a really dark period.
• 40:15
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to talk a little bit about when that came about?
• 40:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's really interesting.
• 40:19
  SPEAKER_01: I relate to your experience in in many ways, and yeah, that feeling of that I can I've been able to do everything else in my life and just rely on myself to to get through and to do what I ever need to.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_01: Or is this just so fundamentally different in an experience like being a a mum and becoming a mother?
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_01: I was at eight weeks old and I can't remember she was getting her vaccinations or maybe I can't remember.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_01: But anyway, we'll go to the GP and Kurt was like, I really think you need to see the GP too.
• 40:51
  SPEAKER_01: I'm really worried and we need to get some advice or some speak to somebody about how you're going.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: And unfortunately, most of the GPs had left my practice, the ones that had done the shared care with my maternity period, and remember this GP and I just I it's in this point where I just couldn't stop crying for the whole time.
• 41:10
  SPEAKER_01: And and he was like, Are you going to hurt yourself or your baby?
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_01: And I was like, I don't think so.
• 41:17
  SPEAKER_01: And he was like, Unless you're actively going to harm yourself or your baby, I can't help you.
• 41:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um go to the emergency department if you think you're going to harm yourself or your baby.
• 41:27
  SPEAKER_01: But what you need right now is I I want Kurt to work a little bit less and for for him to be around home a bit more.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember just thinking, and at this stage I was so fucked.
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_01: I I just had nothing left, and I was just like, oh, so I need to be the space of I'm going to kill myself actively today to get proper psychiatric help.
• 41:49
  SPEAKER_01: And the worst thing about that is that it got to that.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_01: I completely teetered towards the edge when Heidi was about four months old because as a lot of people listening would know that's just historically when babies stop sleeping.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_01: And Heidi was doing about two hours, two to three hour periods before that, which was really felt really good.
• 42:11
  SPEAKER_01: How fucking cook didn't say that, right?
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_00: True, it's true.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_00: A two-hour without a break is fantastic.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_01: And then it got to a period of waking eight to ten times a night for weeks on end, and I was already pretty low in my carp, and I then stopped sleeping because I I was so anxious, Kurt and I would split the night.
• 42:35
  SPEAKER_01: He's like, So you can rest for the first half of the evening and I can rest the second half, but I couldn't sleep, I was so anxious and I started losing my grip because she was still screaming most of the day anyway, so I was doing that throughout the day, and then at night it was every hour or two.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I I I'm so happy I did, but I remember emailing the maternal child health nurse and I was like, Is there any chance I can see you?
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_01: Because I was like, I don't feel like I've got a supportive doctor.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_01: I'd reached out for help to my parents and they'd said that they would help with Heidi when she became a bit more settled, and I thought, I don't know if Heidi's ever going to become more settled because they were like, We can't look after her when she all she does is cry.
• 43:24
  SPEAKER_01: And that's all I wanted was somebody to help me, because that's all she did for the first sort of like four months of her life.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so I remember going to the maternal child health nurse and and I said to her, I'm thinking all I want to do is step out in front of a a bus because if I do that and does that mean that I can have a rest in hospital?
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_01: Because if I get hurt does that mean that I can sleep for a few hours and then somebody can look after me rather than just looking after the I guess at that stage I was I remembered just saying to Kurt I I just I can't anymore.
• 44:08
  SPEAKER_01: I can't I can't and and I was really lucky at that stage that the maternal child health nurse got the local cat team, which is the crisis action team through the local mental health service to come and monitor me at home until Kirk got home.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_01: And they saw me every day until a couple of days later I myself and Heidi were admitted to hospital.
• 44:42
  SPEAKER_01: Myself as a psychiatric patient and Heidi as a pediatric patient, as in they've had two arms, which was the psychiatric mother's support and then the sleep and settling side.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_00: Can I just ask when the cat team came to your house?
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_00: That must have felt weird and intrusive to be monitored.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_00: That's probably yeah, as a mother, you just think, wow, I'm really fucking not doing it, am I?
• 45:13
  SPEAKER_00: That's horrible.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_01: Oh and it was completely appropriate because the nurse was clearly concerned about myself being alone, like with myself, let alone looking after a child.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_01: But to feel like, whoa, how have we got here?
• 45:30
  SPEAKER_01: And from then onwards that I couldn't be by myself at home with Hardy until I was pretty much institutionalized in some way that I had to ask permission to leave to go for a walk.
• 45:44
  SPEAKER_01: And by far um that was the best thing I could have ever done.
• 45:53
  SPEAKER_01: And there were so many elements of it.
• 45:56
  SPEAKER_01: Even thinking about it, like it's wow.
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_01: I remember like checking into the room in the hospital and I was like, oh, there's there's no hooks in here, there's no shower rails, there's no hot water because you were checked in every hour at night somebody to come with a torch to make sure that you were still there.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: But overnight there was just these extraordinary nurses who were like, We're looking after Heidi overnight, but all you're doing is resting.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_01: And throughout the day there was all sorts of group therapies and art therapy and music with the babies.
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_01: But the main thing was that there were other mums going through the same thing.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_01: And that was there were different experiences, a lot of similar backgrounds and a lot of similar personalities, and that's really interesting, actually.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_01: And a lot of it was women in their mid to late thirties who are pretty capable, independent women.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_01: Lots of people with not a lot of village around and interesting relationships with their mums, particularly, including myself.
• 47:13
  SPEAKER_01: And also I guess with tricky babies as well, with inherently very, very screamy babies, yeah.
• 47:20
  SPEAKER_00: Sensitive babies that and there absolutely is a spectrum.
• 47:23
  SPEAKER_00: Some people just score and get calm chill babies, and then there's a true thing that some are just so sensitive, poor little things, they just need so much more.
• 47:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:38
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's such a trick comment, which is wild.
• 47:42
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think I quite realise that until having Heidi and she's got older and stuff, and that's of course they're all like we're all different as adults.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_01: And she's a very sensitive, intense, opinionated, strong-willed.
• 47:55
  SPEAKER_01: Of course she is.
• 47:56
  SPEAKER_01: Who like genetics?
• 47:58
  SPEAKER_01: Like and yeah, the combination of of that and just being cared for.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_01: I think this feeling of we'd come together as a group of the mums and babies, and every meal would be there for us.
• 48:11
  SPEAKER_01: And we could just there would be nurses and nursing students that would play with the babies, and we would sit and have a cup of tea and do some drawing together and talk about all sorts of shit that was going on in our heads and in our hearts and in our lives and people having better days and worse days, and it was that was the first time um in my postpartum experience that I started to rebuild a little bit and be like I'm not the only one in the world that is finding this really hard.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I think it sounds like it gave you that sense of village that I think we're all expecting when we have a baby, and not knowing how much it's actually not there, and the sense that you're doing this life-changing role surrounded by other mothers in the same room rather than being in little isolated houses where you might catch up and see a mum for a coffee once a day.
• 49:23
  SPEAKER_00: You're actually doing the work beside each other, you're having people care for your babies so that you can have a break and have a cup of tea, have a shower, go to the toilet without someone screaming.
• 49:37
  SPEAKER_00: Having one of them strapped to you or screaming.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 49:40
  SPEAKER_00: And yeah, it must have been really hard to do it in that environment of knowing you're in a psychiatric ward and having to ask to to do things, but I guess at the same time, it sounds like it gave you care and hope and a little bit of mothering, which is what you needed.
• 50:05
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 50:06
  SPEAKER_01: I I think because there's never a time in life where you are just giving everything to someone else.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_01: Like you are just physically and emotionally, and everything you are giving to your baby, and to have that somebody or something or some feeling of being wrapped up and going, We're gonna look after you.
• 50:28
  SPEAKER_01: I remember getting there and doing intake and one of the nurses being like, just give me Heidi and I'll she's like, It doesn't matter if she's if she screams, I'll give her a cuddle and then we'll get her to sleep.
• 50:38
  SPEAKER_01: And you just have a cover and just and just being like, Oh, that would be really nice.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_01: Just just to have a breath.
• 50:44
  SPEAKER_01: And it's not groundbreaking stuff, but it's like just looking after the person that's giving their life and is has given their life to this baby.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_01: I've spent a lot of time thinking about how other cultures do it with multi-generational families and really much more communal way of life and living, and it's not just the mum at home looking after the baby whilst dad's at work during the first months, years, whatever.
• 51:12
  SPEAKER_01: It's lots of family members and neighbours and all people that are part of that.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's the most like fundamental thing when I think about what I needed and what would have helped others.
• 51:27
  SPEAKER_01: There's something very like, you know, being with these other mums and having everyone's babies were screaming and no one's babies were sleeping, and but just you just there with each other and you're like, this is fucking tough.
• 51:41
  SPEAKER_01: And but then you have a bit of a laugh about it and then have a cup of tea and a cry together and a hug, and then you're like, oh, we got through the day, and now we can have a rest because there are going to be people that support help the babies overnight whilst we rest.
• 51:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and I think that's a huge part of it as well.
• 51:57
  SPEAKER_00: You're in an environment where there's this group of people who are taking control and are kind of guardians, and you have a sense of like you can relax a little bit because you know that they know what they're doing.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas when you're at home with your partner, you're both doing this for the first time.
• 52:19
  SPEAKER_00: Whilst they can be helpful to hold the baby and soothe the baby and change the baby's nappy and do all the things that it takes, they're still not confident.
• 52:30
  SPEAKER_00: Neither of you are confident.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_00: There's no one kind of commanding and being someone who everyone can lean on.
• 52:37
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that's what we are all missing in our nuclear families when we don't grow up with the multi-generational village, is you don't have those older women or men who can say, I've done this before, I know what I'm doing, let me just take the baby.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_00: And you have this sense of relief because you know that they've been through it, and you just think, thank fuck, someone can take the fucking driver's seat, and we can all contribute it.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_00: And even if the baby does cry, I've seen this with my mother-in-law, who is an incredible carer for the girls, she looks after them one day a week, but she was there a lot for us in this at the start, and I just had this sense of relief when she was around because she'd done it before, and I knew she knew what she was doing, and if the babies cried, it was upsetting for me thinking I couldn't settle them, but I also knew they were totally fine, yeah.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas, yeah, I guess to reiterate, like when you're both at home, new parents, it's just fucked.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yep.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_00: Because you're trying to be a rock to your partner, but you're also got no idea what you're doing.
• 53:45
  SPEAKER_00: They're trying to be a rock to you, but they've got no idea.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_00: They've got no fucking idea.
• 53:48
  SPEAKER_00: And you're just like children trying to who let these teen parents have who let us have this fucking baby.
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, but who are the adults in the room?
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, it's it's us.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_01: Fuck.
• 53:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's us, right?
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, all you want is this you're just looking for this this presence.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_01: My my sister-in-law and my brother, when they had their baby, my sister-in-law's mum um came and stayed with them.
• 54:13
  SPEAKER_01: She lives in Mexico and she stayed with them for three months.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_01: And she did all of that.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_01: It was this, I've done this before, but baby's crying, it's okay.
• 54:24
  SPEAKER_01: I'm doing all the cooking and all the cleaning.
• 54:26
  SPEAKER_01: I'm looking after you, like you, as in her daughter.
• 54:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm very close to my sister-in-law and my brother, and it's been like challenging for them, but perhaps not the the the level of challenge challenging that it has been, and having that maternal support.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_01: And I guess I've just had to get that in different ways.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_01: And this same wonderful woman, my sister-in-law's mum, Arabella, she would from Mexico text me once or twice a day through that period, reams of things telling me how great I am and how wonderful I'm doing and how it's gonna be okay, and that she wishes she could be there to give me a cuddle and to make me amazing Mexican food and to hold heidi and that it's all gonna be okay.
• 55:16
  SPEAKER_01: And it was there was some incredible light around me, even though it was an extraordinarily hard time.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_01: Some real wonderful performance.
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_00: It's yeah, it's beautiful having those people in your life because they I think really get us through the dark times, but I think there is a loss when you don't get that from your own mother, and I think if you've got a tough relationship with your own mother, I think all those issues get blown up and thrown in your face when you become a mother, and that is actually something I've been doing a lot of therapy on.
• 56:04
  SPEAKER_00: Me too.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_00: You can kind of deal with it before having a baby because you can just push it aside and move on with your life and live live your little insular life and the way you want, but when you become a mother, your brain is just it questions everything, and ah god, I just for me personally, there's just been so many times where I'm like, if I feel all this love and devotion if I can feel all this for my baby, like how is it that you have behaved the way you have in my life?
• 56:50
  SPEAKER_00: Me too, and I know there's layers of that, and the biggest one being she obviously didn't get the love that she needed as a child, and I can recognize that, but it's really hard to try and be a mother.
• 57:12
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, it's not hard to try and be a mother, it's incredible to be a mother to my daughters, but it's tough to look at my own relationship with my mother and wonder so many things about what she thinks about me.
• 57:27
  unknown: Me too.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_00: Thanks for sharing, girls.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_00: Sorry, I didn't realise this was going to be such a therapy session.
• 57:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's impossible sometimes for not to, isn't it?
• 57:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's so inter and that's the thing, it's so interconnected, everything about relationship with your parents.
• 57:50
  SPEAKER_01: But it's as you said, it when you're pre being a parent, I've had fucking therapy for decades, but it just feels different now, and it feels at least for myself, so critical because all I want is to be a different mum than I got.
• 58:13
  SPEAKER_01: There have been times that I've got this resentment to Heidi of going, I wish you were easier and I wish you didn't cry as much.
• 58:21
  SPEAKER_01: And then I thought, that's exactly what I got when I had lots of really big feelings and struggled as a young person, and it was your difficult we don't cry here, we don't emote here.
• 58:36
  SPEAKER_01: And as you said, it just brings everything up, and you're like, oh it uncovers things that you were like, Oh yeah, hello old friends.
• 58:47
  SPEAKER_01: I forgot that you were you thought I dealt with that.
• 58:51
  SPEAKER_01: I thought I dealt with that, right?
• 58:53
  SPEAKER_01: You're like, I I've gone to therapy for decades, I thought but it's amazing how everything has this different lens, and I think I don't know if it's the same as you but having a daughter or having daughters as well when you've got the layering of challenges and a a relationship with a mum that isn't what you want it to be or isn't what you wanted it to be, and then you're like, now I'm the mum, I want to be different.
• 59:17
  SPEAKER_00: The most amazing thing for me having children is I get to be the one to give them all the love, and I get to be the one to tell them how incredible they are, and you basically reparent yourself through parenting your children, and that is a fucking gift, and it's like the world is like here.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna give you this opportunity, and now I've got to do it twice, and each time it just like levels up, and it's like here, have two daughters and go be a mum, go do all the things that you wish you got.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and you get to be in charge, and you get to determine how much love outflows from you into them, and how many times you get to kiss and cuddle them and tell them how much you love them every day, and it's the fucking best.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_01: I've had this conversation with a few people think you were probably a similarish age, and it does feel like it hopefully a generation of healing whilst going through this amazing process of of mothering and parenting, and those two things can coincide.
• 1:00:34
  SPEAKER_01: Because there are times that I've thought I'm too broken to be a mum and doing such a fucking awful job at this.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_01: But then rebuilding yourself whilst you see this love that you're getting and you give so much love back and you're like maybe we can both grow together we could Yeah.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's so beautiful, Ames.
• 1:01:02
  SPEAKER_00: That's true.
• 1:01:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's really powerful.
• 1:01:05
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe it's a good time to segue into a different topic because you've spoken so beautifully about all that.
• 1:01:14
  SPEAKER_00: What's been your take on maternity leave and how much did you take?
• 1:01:21
  SPEAKER_00: And do you think it was sufficient for you?
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_00: And if you got some from your work as well as the paid parental leave from government?
• 1:01:32
  unknown: Yeah.
• 1:01:33
  SPEAKER_00: Do you want to talk about that as well?
• 1:01:35
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, happy to.
• 1:01:37
  SPEAKER_01: I work for the the State Department of Health.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_01: I really like my work and like my job and also comes with the benefit of four months paid parental leave at my wage and up to two years.
• 1:01:53
  SPEAKER_01: Very supportive environment in the sense of kind of what's written in policy as to what you can take.
• 1:01:59
  SPEAKER_01: I think I ended up taking about nine months off paid and then Kurt took four months off paid leave.
• 1:02:06
  SPEAKER_01: And it was quite interesting.
• 1:02:08
  SPEAKER_01: I get work for a State Department and lots of females around, lots of part-time work, no issues at all.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_01: Kurt is an engineer and works at a manufacturing site and he was like this different species, this idea that a dad would be taking.
• 1:02:24
  SPEAKER_01: Like no one even knew the policy because men, because it was like primarily a male workplace, and even though they had this, no one was taking it because it just it wasn't what you do.
• 1:02:34
  SPEAKER_01: And the comments that he got, oh yeah, everybody's gonna have a holiday, mate.
• 1:02:38
  SPEAKER_01: That really antiquated, just ridiculous kind of old school mentality of men and them not actually being part of and not wanting to be part of raising their daughter, and he just was like, No, this is what I want to do, and I'm allowed to do it, and so I'm doing it.
• 1:02:54
  SPEAKER_01: Um I always feel a little bit too because I feel like when I went back to work was when it just started becoming a bit easier with Heidi, which I feel like in talking to some other people they've had similar experiences of it starting to be a bit more fun and actually being able to do some stuff with them and her not just screaming all the time.
• 1:03:14
  SPEAKER_01: So there was a bit of a like, oh this is his experience was so different.
• 1:03:20
  SPEAKER_01: It was quite different.
• 1:03:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:03:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then you had to also jumble being in two places, working and being a mum.
• 1:03:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think I've heard a couple of times it's like you're meant to parent like you don't have a paid job and have a paid job like you don't parent, like you're just meant to do it all all the time, of course, and also be all the other things that you're meant to be, yeah as a human being.
• 1:03:42
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, great partner and all that's bullshit.
• 1:03:44
  SPEAKER_01: I I think it's something that I've needed to I'm still working through.
• 1:03:50
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, excuse my dog coming in.
• 1:03:52
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just gonna close the door so that it remains quiet.
• 1:03:56
  SPEAKER_01: Wondering where you are.
• 1:03:58
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, exactly, just everything okay.
• 1:04:00
  SPEAKER_01: There was almost an element for myself of because I'd found parental leave, mothering, the whole process so fucking hard that it was almost like a relief when it came to or a real complex emotions, but this almost relief returning to paid work because I was like, I know that I can do this.
• 1:04:20
  SPEAKER_01: But I've had to actively be like, I don't want to see this as a relief or a release, this is a part of who I am, but it's different now, and I'm really strict about my hours and if I need to take leave and s you know, that it's different now to how it was.
• 1:04:41
  SPEAKER_01: Work plays a different role in my life.
• 1:04:43
  SPEAKER_01: But I think I felt a sense of sadness and relief and a little bit of light resentment towards Kurt that he was now experiencing parental leave in a very different way that th than I did.
• 1:04:59
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I can totally understand that.
• 1:05:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:05:03
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's incomparable as well.
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:05:06
  SPEAKER_00: Because you are the mother and you went through birth and you were alone in the weeks when you were learning who she is and learning who you are as a mother, and then you got to hand her over with a a little bit of a manual.
• 1:05:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 1:05:28
  SPEAKER_00: To go, here you go.
• 1:05:29
  SPEAKER_00: Totally.
• 1:05:30
  SPEAKER_00: And then you had to move into a new challenge.
• 1:05:32
  SPEAKER_00: So, in a way, it's like you've just been looking back at our whole discussion today, it's like ever since you got told about all your health issues with your uterus, you've just been in this continuous moment of challenges and moving through them.
• 1:05:50
  SPEAKER_00: And you've done an incredible job doing that to be here today and confidently sharing your story and being vulnerable and you're back at paid work, you're juggling work mum life.
• 1:06:07
  SPEAKER_00: Would you say you're happy these days?
• 1:06:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:06:13
  SPEAKER_01: I feel it's interesting, you know, when you like you think about where you were a year ago and now that um obviously Odyssey your second, but like you feel like, oh what was I doing a year ago today?
• 1:06:27
  SPEAKER_01: Because they were in this world.
• 1:06:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm such in such a different place than I was.
• 1:06:33
  SPEAKER_01: I still have a lot of work to do because I want to be the best mum that I can and be a a good partner and friend and all those sort of things.
• 1:06:45
  SPEAKER_01: But primarily I want to give Heidi what I didn't get and do what I can to not be perfect but be who I want to be with her.
• 1:06:56
  SPEAKER_01: But I feel like I'm on that journey and I don't feel like I've made the biggest mistake in my life which is what I did a year ago and I I think it was last week, last Friday because I didn't work Fridays and Kurt came home and he was like how's your day and I was like good yeah we like it it was like I know it's taken a long time and I think I'm still building my confidence as well a little bit to be like oh yeah we did a few things.
• 1:07:25
  SPEAKER_01: We even went in the car which at a time I never would have because all she did was scream in the car still not great but getting the short trips short trips.
• 1:07:34
  SPEAKER_01: But it's a healing process I mentioned being in the hospital and being with those other mums that went through that process and we me and these five other mums we talk every day and we catch up once a month and we have this probably a bit of a trauma bond but we have this shared experience and that that has been a really big part of my continued healing is knowing that there's this group of people that I really value and that I really look up to and that that they are there and I hope I can be there for them as well.
• 1:08:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's really beautiful.
• 1:08:14
  SPEAKER_00: As we just muddle our way through this this process of learning two mum sort yeah and it's probably the only group chat where and in in real life as well when you catch up that it probably feels most truthful as well because you guys have been in the depths of hell together.
• 1:08:36
  SPEAKER_00: You've gone as low as you can go so everything is up for discussion and you know that they have a shared experience so you know you can talk openly which is such a gift because while mothers' groups are so incredible and they do provide such an amazing amount of support and sisterhood through the mothering years it can be surface level because you don't know each other beyond the mother's group and I feel like there's this sense that you don't want to bring things up if it's if you're having a super tough time because you don't want to bring the mood down.
• 1:09:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah the group is a group of people who are there to catch up and have a good time.
• 1:09:25
  SPEAKER_00: Does that make sense?
• 1:09:26
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah am I making sense totally I'm just trying to I guess compare your two experiences of these mothers groups and that I love that you have this beautiful group of mums to be with and I love that you guys catch up.
• 1:09:41
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm sure you guys will be friends for life now because I feel when you go through something really tough with another human they become special to you.
• 1:09:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah because they make you feel less alone.
• 1:09:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah I've got some absolutely wonderful friends that don't have kids and who I value the world but they just fundamentally and I've said this to friends of mine that do have kids that have kids before me that I'm like I had no idea.
• 1:10:08
  SPEAKER_01: You just cannot until you've gone through it like you can sympathize, empathise and try and relate but it's just it's n I've never had an experience so fundamentally unique.
• 1:10:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah and when others have gone through the experience it's quite different.
• 1:10:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:10:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's a brilliant place to finish with our quick fire questions.
• 1:10:34
  SPEAKER_00: Go for it.
• 1:10:35
  SPEAKER_00: Alright if there were unlimited resources and finances available how would you rewrite your postpartum period and what would it look like?
• 1:10:45
  SPEAKER_01: Some sort of lovely shared commune space where you've got people around to help you learn how to breastfeed, to soothe your baby, to help nourish yourself and give you chances to rest and recover with other people around and a big old warm hug.
• 1:11:05
  SPEAKER_01: Something that other cultures do inherently in their like house settings or home settings.
• 1:11:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah I completely agree with you.
• 1:11:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's my dream but number two what is one joy you get out of motherhood that was unexpected being or relearning how to be silly and childish and that's a good one.
• 1:11:34
  SPEAKER_01: Rediscover or re-be a yeah carefree adults.
• 1:11:39
  SPEAKER_01: Be carefree reflect what your child being carefree and doing whatever the fuck they want and just being chaotic and shoving food all over their face and you're like fuck yeah like I'm just gonna do a silly dance or sing a silly song and not be this polished adult that I've thought I needed to be.
• 1:11:58
  SPEAKER_00: That's great.
• 1:11:58
  SPEAKER_00: Actually it took me a really long time to sink into that especially with all the food and everything I'd be like oh my god it's getting everywhere they're getting mud on their pants and yeah I'm way more laxed now with my second than I was with my first and thank God because I don't want to be the mum that's worried about that stuff.
• 1:12:18
  SPEAKER_00: Kids are messing turning into the greatest now if we walk out of the house and my kids have food on their clothes and their hair's all just dishevelled and they look like they haven't been cared for I honestly feel proud.
• 1:12:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like my kids are being kids and I'm not forcing them to be clean and I think that is the purest form of childhood.
• 1:12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Love that yes yep okay so they don't give a shit yeah they do not they do not at all what's one thing you would tell a new mum about to go through matrescence or their own postpartum?
• 1:12:56
  SPEAKER_01: I thought a lot about this this question and I think about all the different bits of advice that I've got and I kept coming back to oh things are just a phase and things are just temporary.
• 1:13:10
  SPEAKER_01: But then I really thought and I'm not sure if it's the thing that people want to hear but it's really fucking hard.
• 1:13:18
  SPEAKER_01: It is amazing and life changing and all those sort of things but it is the hardest thing that I've ever had to do by so far.
• 1:13:27
  SPEAKER_01: And giving yourself the kindness and the grace to be like yeah this is fucking hard and that's okay.
• 1:13:36
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah sometimes I felt like I just see all these ideals and even just seeing people out having a nice little coffee with their babies in there sleeping their bassinet prams whilst I'm bouncing my baby blows my mind because I never had that experience like just being like my baby won't even go into Pram has to be connected to me the whole time and on this ball.
• 1:13:57
  SPEAKER_01: And so I feel like for people that if you get you have a pretty chill baby fantastic then this advice of it's really fucking hard you'll be like no it's not what she talking about.
• 1:14:07
  SPEAKER_01: But if anybody in the world has a really hard time or has a particularly tricky baby and to be like yeah this is a hard time and in this environment that so many of us experience this in this fairly insular individualistic society it is really fucking hard and you're doing a great job.
• 1:14:28
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah and you know I just think that's one thing that's not spoken about enough or at all is that you may have a baby that absolutely hates the Pram.
• 1:14:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah hates the car hates a carrier even you don't even know you don't even know so you could spend all your weeks doing your lovely little spreadsheet research on the best pram possible but let me tell you girlfriends I spent two over$2,000 on a pram that I quickly sold because my babies just they're sensitive both of them they want it to be on me invest in a carrier look even then you don't know if the baby's gonna like the carrier are you still there Ames hello I'm gonna call you hi oh you have a laptop oh because you unplugged it from the power dock dude don't worry we can leave it there but I'm so sorry I didn't get to formally finish but can I just say thank you so much.
• 1:15:34
  SPEAKER_00: You spoke so beautifully and vulnerably and I honestly feel so special to have had that story shared with me.
• 1:15:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I will do my best to put it out in the ether in the most respectful way.
• 1:15:52
  SPEAKER_00: I love hearing stories because it's the real reality of it all and I feel like life is just so stupidly polished and we don't talk about it.
• 1:16:02
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway I'm just I'm so grateful and I hope you have a really beautiful day with your family.
• 1:16:09
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Mothering if you're a mother yourself I hope it provided comfort that you are not alone in your journey.
• 1:16:17
  SPEAKER_00: If you're about to be a mother or have a new mother in your life I hope it provided some understanding of the complex emotions and experiences women go through during this life changing transition.
• 1:16:27
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just a one-woman show so I would love love love love love to hear what you thought.
• 1:16:33
  SPEAKER_00: Subscribing is the greatest way you can help this podcast reach other mothers who need it.
• 1:16:37
  SPEAKER_00: If you rate and leave a comment on here I will be eternally grateful to you.
• 1:16:42
  SPEAKER_00: Follow the Instagram page which is at byMothering BY Mothering I have a lot of opinions on motherhood and share all sorts of things mother related on there.
• 1:16:53
  SPEAKER_00: If you want to be a guest on the podcast I really encourage you to reach out to me there is a section on my website where you can submit and I'll leave a link for it in the show notes.
• 1:17:05
  SPEAKER_00: You can find all the relevant links and information mentioned in this podcast below in the show notes as well.
• 1:17:10
  SPEAKER_00: Have a beautiful day and I will see you next time