Today on the podcast I am talking to Lucie, mother of two girls, Imani, 11 and Bibi, 4 & a cavalier king charles spaniel Cherry Pie who is 9 months old . Lucie is a Medical herbalist living in Glasgow and has specialised more recently in postpartum care and pediatric medicine.

We talk about how non-negotiable and essential self care is in motherhood but how this doesn't happen overnight. 11 years into motherhood Lucie says it's still a work in progress for her but she has learnt that the more you look after yourself and tend to yourself, the better everything else will be. She also shares how important being honest with yourself is, acknowledging when life is too much or too stressful, and seeing not as a failure but as a boundary. We talk about the power of venting too and how hard it is too implement things for yourself, as motherhood is so much about survival mode.

Lucie shares how she believes the postpartum is a time to be quiet and calm and protected as it such a vulnerable time and you are so open energetically but people don't value that or acknowledge it to be real. We also touch on the link between postpartum care and the menopause and Lucie shares her own postpartum expereiences which were both an experience of two halves, highlighting the juxtaposition of emotions and feelings we see so often in parenthood.

We talk about how important planning for your postpartum is and thinking less about what the baby will need and more about what you will need. Lucie thinks this change in narrative is really needed and wonders how the postpartum would be a very different thing if people put the money they spend on prams on their postpartum care instead.

Lucie shares all the wonderful ways herbs can support a family in the postpartum. For new mums, they can support breastfeeding, hormonral support, mastitis, infections, wound care, perinneal healing and c-section recovery. Herbs are also extremely nourishing and regulating for the nervous sytem, as well as benefiting sleep, mental health and so much more. Lucie talks about supporting partners with herbs too and babie as true holistic postpartum care, cares for everyone in that household.

Lucie shares with us a wealth of knowledge about the postpartum , both from her personal and professional experience and brings to the podcast how important and supportive herbal medicine can be in the postpartum. If you would like to hear more about Lucie's work please visit https://www.luciebradley.co.uk/ or follow her on instagram @lbradleymedicalherbalist

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.

In todays episode i chat with Tortie, my own doula and mother to Inigo, 14, Phoebe,11 and Zelda who is nearly 8 months old.

Tortie speaks to having a baby whilst mothering adolescents and while she felt nervous about this age gap during her pregnancy, in has turned out to be the biggest blessing and something Tortie feels so grateful for. Emotionally it provided Tortie the time to reflect and learn from her previous experiences and provide a welcome sense of perspective and practically, the children were able to offer help, be independent and bring a grateful sense of energy, playfullnes and perspective to mothering. Perhaps most poignantly though is the gift it has given her older children. Her daughter choose to be present at her birth and her son joined shortly after and witnessed her rebirth as a mother herself. Both of them seeing her body and mind at its most fragile, raw and vulnerable. Tortie is so grateful that her children have seen and felt that and as they continue to witness her mother she feels it is starting to heal some of the grievances she felt around the decisions she made the first time around. The arrival of Zelda has provided an anchor to her family, a way to keep her children in their childhood and to help soften their more tricky adolescent years.

Tortie lost her mother aged 14 and mothering her children without her mother around has been a deep sadness for her. Tortie speaks to us about motherless mothering and how the strong sense of needing to be mothered in this vulnerable time of the postpartum lead to her needing to build her own mothering nest and a create a family from friends to support her in the postpartum. This time, much more so than the others she had no fear and total confidence in asking for help and she reflected on the past 11 years of mothering and all the conversations with hundreds of women who she had been doula for over the past 13 years and really asked herself what she needed to feel supported and her amazing friends did just that- holding her a mother blessing, providing 6 weeks of constant meals for her and her family and gathering together a little money pot to provide selfcare for Tortie like reflexology and massage which were a really wonderful way to honour her body. She feels that building a supportive family around you is relevant whether you are parenting without parents or not and something we can all benefit from.

Tortie's reflections on mothering her three children in the absence of her own mother are extremely moving and her most recent postpartum experience of mothering a baby and two adolescent children is filled with so much unexpected joyful learnings. If you would like to find out more about Tortie and her offerings as a Doula please visit https://www.bristolbirthsupport.co.uk/meet-our-doulas or follow her on instagram @tortiedoula