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

Today I speak to Polly, mother of Eben who is nine months old, a yoga facilitator and facial therapist. Polly moved from living on a house boat in London to the Gower in Wales just before Eben was born.

Polly loved being pregnant, she felt firmly in her power and was planning a homebirth. Sadly homebirthing wasnt an option at the time of her birth and she got trapped in the cascade of intervention in hospital and after a long labour ended up with an unplanned cesarean two days later.

She experienced the scariest night of her life on the postnatal ward, alone, unable to move post Cesarean or tend to her baby, full of post operative drugs, in a foreign hospital environment, pressing a bell for help and no help coming and hallucinating from severe sleep deprivation.

Polly was left feeling broken after her birth, physucally, emotionally and mentally and so totally differnt to the polly before her labour started. We chat about her physical and mental health postpartum and how she really struggled being alone, waking from occasional pockets of rest and naps, disorientated and confused. Polly suffered from horrible night sweats, and a very sore injured coccyx for the first few months post birth and wondered how much one body can take! She felt scared being out in public early on, feeling very overwhelmed, too busy, too loud, too vulnerable and just too much. We chat about the dreaded "what ifs" when self reflecting and processing your birth and how Polly feels some saddness and grief for that newborn time as she really didnt enjoy the early months.

We chat about the anxieties surrounding returning to work around the nine month mark postpartum and the dreaded loaded question of "are you going back to work?" if you haven't figured that out yet or decided not to. We also cover the difficulties staying in touch with friends postpartum and the impossibility of translating motherhood on whatsapp.

I am so grateful to Polly for sharing her story, so much of which deeply resonated with my own story and I think it is an conversation you will find really honest, quite shocking and really moving.

To find out more about Pollys work please visit https://www.pollymossman.com/ or follow her on instagram @pollymoss_

In today's episode I am talking to Emma about her postnatal journey with her son Oska who is 16 months old. Emma is single mother, a Medical Herbalist and currently living out in Bali.

Emma had a homebirth with her Doula and best friend present and was looked after by friends and family in the first few weeks by dropping off lots of food to nourish her. She was physically forced to rest as she experienced a small prolapse and had heavy bleeding. As someone who normally finds it hard to stop, this enforced rest was really useful for her to fully embrace and surrender to the mess and chaos of motherhood and let people help her.

Despite feeling like she was naturally the mothering type, mothering still felt pretty shocking to her system and in the early days she really wasn't sure what to do!! Emma used herbs in her postpartum to support her placental delivery, her healing and the start of her breastfeeding journey which she shares for us alongisde how she now uses herbs with Oska too.

We discuss the hardest bits for Emma which have been sleep and the lack of a companion to share the hard moments with as a single parent. She had to stop going to mums groups as everyone around her seemed to be finding it easy and sleeping and she felt that noone could relate. She shares her sleepless night survival guide including the dulcet tones of Matthew McConaughey and how important it is to ask for help.

Emma spent a period of time with Oska's dad in Sicily and was very looked after by his family but she shares with us some of the coparenting challenges that she faced resulting in them going their separate ways and Emma moving to Bali.

It was really interesting to hear about life raising a child in Bali with thier love of children, play, the access to afordable childcare and cross generational living alongside grandparents, aunties and uncles. This family orientated rather than peer orientated living was very supportive and community driven and gave me a real sense of 'The village'.

Emma speaks candidly about her motherhood experience and shares a real insight into postpartum as a single parent and I am so grateful she came on the podcast.

To learn more about Emma's work as a medical herbalist and her membership space please visit https://www.artahealing.com/ or follow her on instagram at @arta_healing

In today's episode I am joined by Laura, mother of Forrest who is 3.5 and Tanner who is 1. I just want to add a *TRIGGER WARNING* before i introduce her, as Laura shares a traumatic birth story during this episode around 21 minutes in.

Laura shares her radically different births and postpartums first and second time around. Her first birth during covid was very traumatic and left her incredibly crushed, depleted and stressed which negatively affected her start to breastfeeding and left her too low to implement any boundaries to protect herself and her space. After a trip to hospital a week later, it gave her the kick she needed to priortise herself and her breastfeeding journey which she did by staying in bed all of the second week with her baby and it was the best week ever, allowing her to bond and breastfeed her baby.

Second time around she had a much calmer pregnancy and despite planning for a VBAC, after induction pressure she opted for a elective ceasaren which was an incredibly calm, slow, respectful and honoured birth which in Laura's words "felt like a spa day" and this mirrored her postpartum with Tanner which felt easeful from the very first breastfeed. Laura was very strict with her boundaries second time around, not leaving her bed or having any guests for a week. She also used The Food Doula to ensure she and her family were really well nourished and all of this a year on, has resulted in a very content and calm baby.

Laura and I discuss sleep, her feelings around sleep training, how much kinder to herself and more intuitive and less influenced she has been second time around. We talk about attachment led parenting, the lack of support past the newborn phase and how everyone just assumes you have everyhitng together, we talk about breastfeeding and how it is the proudest things Laura has ever done. We chat about the dangers of mothers covering up how hard they find things and how that really alienates other mums and finally we cover the concept of finding your pink a lot in this episode and the importance of finding your pink within motherhood, in a world that includes them rather than searching for your pink outside of it.

Laura shares so much juicy insight and wisdom on mothering and i cant wait to hear what she has to say. To find out more about Laura please follow her journey on instagram @laurawildlove

In todays episode I had the joy of speaking with Catrin @mama_lleud, mother of 5 children and many animals all living nestled between the mountains and the sea in Eryri, North Wales. Catrin has raised her children at home, opting to home educate and somehow manages to also have been a birth worker since 2017 and now specialising in postpartum support and providing nutritious food boxes to local women in her community.

I learnt so much from this conversation with Catrin as she shares the starkly different accounts of her first birth as a single young mum at 19 with a practically non existent postpartum and lacking if any advice on postpartum boundaries or breastfeeding support. Comparing that to her subsequent births when she had the care and unwavering support of her husband and greater access to the internet where she learnt about doulas, and the home birth community, and postpartum care and different parenting styles ...each experience has been so different through as every child is so different and her most recent birth 9 months ago was a huge learning for Catrin when her baby was born quite poorly and needed a few weeks in intensive care hours away from their home which she found to be a very humbling experience of letting go of how things should or could have been and surrendering to the situation which is a lesson she has learnt again and again as a mother.

Catrin shares her experience of home educating her children up until very recently when her older girls have just started at a small local school. So much of this conversation i found fascinating and so insightful but with the postpartum in mind it was both the support of the home educating community that have provided such an important village for her but also the way she spoke about navigating the postpartum with other kids at home all the time and how important that was to her for them to see her in the postnatal period, see their dad care for her and how she was attending to her own needs. This education on how to mother and father, a lived expereince of the postpartum, has stuck with me since this conversation and i feel life changing for her children.

As you will hear there is a little bit of backround noise in this episode as Catrin was joined by her baby who was being looked after by her seven year old in the same room. I hope you enjoy all the extra giggles and squeaks so you can hear from Catrin authentically in her home surrounded by her children.

To learn more about Catrins work as a doula please visit https://mamalleuad.wixsite.com/doula or follow her on instagram @mama_lleuad

In todays episode I had the honour of chatting with my best friend Deya about the last 6 months of postpartum life with her son, my godson, Woody.

Deya had a restful start to motherhood which she credits to her Doula who encouraged her to spend time thinking and preparing for postpartum when she was still pregnant and also reading the book The First Forty Days. As a very outdoorsy active person it was a real change of pace, but she managed to not leave her house for over a week and was fed by friends and family for about 3 weeks which enabled their new family of 3 to spend as much time as possible getting to know each other.

Breastfeeding was a major feature of the first few months for Deya. Never did she think she would think so much about her boobs. It was very painful for many months. She sought help from her community and professionals but it wasn't until she got some much needed sun, salt and sea on holiday that a longstanding fissure and raynauds in her nipples dissapeared which was a real turning point in her breastfeeding journey. Deya recalls the raw emotions of dreading a feed, panic that it will never improve and the exhaustion of trying to fix it. She really felt the duality of the early months - intense joy and intense pain living side by side and feels sad that so much of her brain was taken up by the pain but that it taught her intense patience and huge resilience and she continues to breastfeed Woody today.

We talked about her surrending to slowing down more recently and how it was easy to fill her days with endless classes and meet ups at the start but this need to stay busy was in part to show she had achieved things with her day. As despite knowing in herself all the tiny moments that add up to a day in the life of a mother at home with her baby, when sharing it with others it fell sickenly short of doing the day any justice. Her focus now on unfilling her days has led to a greater sence of presence to her baby, to her self, her intuition and the world around her.

Deya also shares how her work in widlife documentaries and researching animal behaviour, especially orangutans, has informed her natural parenting and made her pinker in combining her old work with her new role as a mother.

Deya speaks from the heart and shares some wonderful stories and insights into motherhood, I hope you enjoy it!