In today's episode I am joined by my partner Harry as we share some of the highs and lows of our own postpartum journey.

🦩Our first year of parenthood revolved largely around my boobs...and not in a good way. We share a lot about my very painful breastfeeding journey and the endless quest to make it work including lactation consultants, health visitors, midwives, NHS feeding specialists, nipple shields, cranial osteopaths and tongue tie specialists, breast feeding from one breast & combi feeding with formula....it wasnt until about 9 months that I started to feel the pain subside after a very late diagnosis of Raynaud's in the nipples and the prescription drug nifedipine. Sadly despite a solution that finally worked, our daughter Wren decided that enough was enough and self weaned a few months later at 14 months. Something I didn't feel nearly ready for, leaving me feeling a huge sense of rejection and very depressed with the huge hormonal shifts that occur when weaning happens.

🦩While those months were traumatic and awful for me , Harry also shares the emotional struggles of watching me suffer for him and not being able to help with that actual load of breastfeeding leaving him feel guilty & useless.

🦩Harry's pink started to reemerged when my pain started to subside around 9 months. Not only because he started to enjoy a life outside of our breastfeeding struggle without harbouring some form of guilt and also felt more like an equal co-parent in our life.

🦩We also share some of the relationship changes we have seen during our postpartum. How both of our love languages couldnt be met, leaving both of us struggling to show and receive love. We reflect on how little love I felt I had to give whilst giving so much of myself to wren and Harry shares how hard it was to cope with me as I went through this dark period of pain and exhaustion as a new mother and how short and irritable I became towards him. Harry absorbed a lot of our pain as a family and looking back thinks he could have set more boundaries to protect himself and his energy and also shared more of these struggles at the time to help him manage.

🦩We talk about the importance of letting your partner learn how to parent and connect with the child on their own...without you watching over their shoulder or correcting or critiquing the way they do it. This ultimately allows the primary care giver true time off without needing to write partners endless lists and pack all the bags before they go. In our experience it is also a much more rewarding experience for a dad to get things wrong and learn their own way of parenting..

🦩Harry choose to work a 4 day week after his paternity leave which has enabled him to bond with wren at another level and allowed him to be seen by wren as a primary care giver too and not just secondary to me all the time. Harry shares a little about the difficulty forging friendships with other dads. How there are less opportunities.. not only as time is precious outside of work but also you do just see less dads around with their kids to bond with in the first place. There is definitely a need for more community dad-centric events with their children to faciliate building a better support network for dads.

🦩Finally we chat about being the first of our friendship groups to have a child and the positive and negatives we have found in this.

I have always wanted this space to share both men and women's voices and so I hope you enjoy hearing some of Harry's words and reflections and our very public therapy session together.