Speaker 1: Welcome to the Seize the Yay Podcast.
Speaker 2: Busy and happy are not the same thing. We too
Speaker 2: rarely question what makes the heart seeing. We work, then
Speaker 2: we rest, but rarely we play and often don't realize
Speaker 2: there's more than one way. So this is the platforms to.
Speaker 1: Hear and explore the stories of those who found lives
Speaker 1: They adore, the good, bad and ugly, The best and
Speaker 1: worst day will bear all the facets of Seizing your Yea.
Speaker 1: I'm Sarah Davidson or a spoonful of Sarah, a lawyer
Speaker 1: turned funentrepreneur who swapped the suits and heels to co
Speaker 1: found Matcha Maiden and Matcha Milk bar Czya is a
Speaker 1: series of conversations on finding a life you love and
Speaker 1: exploring the self doubt, challenge, joy.
Speaker 3: And fulfillment along the way.
Speaker 1: Hello, lovely neighborhood. Welcome back to the show, including welcome
Speaker 1: back to myself because I realize it's been an entire
Speaker 1: month since our last episode, which was Our birth Story
Speaker 1: hosted by the wonderful Sophie of the Australian Birth Stories podcast,
Speaker 1: and this of course was meant to be the follow
Speaker 1: up to that, where I answer any of your questions
Speaker 1: that you submitted in response to what came out in
Speaker 1: that first episode. Technically this is still a follow up episode.
Speaker 1: It just followed a lot later than I initially intended.
Speaker 1: But that is just the perfect example of the world.
Speaker 3: That I live in now. It's Teddy's world.
Speaker 1: We're all just living in it. This is maybe the
Speaker 1: sixteenth time I've sat down to try and record this,
Speaker 1: which is why it's taken so long to get it
Speaker 1: to you guys. He just point blank refuses to let
Speaker 1: me do the entire episode with him in a separate room.
Speaker 1: So this time he's in the carrier, which means his
Speaker 1: head's very close to the microphone, so he's pretty much
Speaker 1: co hosting. He might contribute a few noises here and there.
Speaker 1: No one prepares you for how loud newborns are at
Speaker 1: all times, especially overnight. Sometimes it feels like there's a
Speaker 1: little pug living in our house. It's just something I
Speaker 1: was so surprised by.
Speaker 3: No one prepared me for that.
Speaker 1: But also the gap between episodes is probably part of
Speaker 1: me just losing all concept of time. I have no
Speaker 1: idea what the day is, what the date is, and
Speaker 1: I had no idea that it had been a month
Speaker 1: since the last episode, but I did know how many
Speaker 1: times I'd tried to record, and I think part of
Speaker 1: it is just surrendering to not being able to keep
Speaker 1: the same schedule as normal. I'm so grateful that you
Speaker 1: guys are so patient. It's been a real exercise in
Speaker 1: surrender and changing the expectations that I have on myself.
Speaker 1: It's a whole identity thing. But there's a whole section
Speaker 1: on that of questions that you guys submitted, so we
Speaker 1: will get to that eventually. Thank you so much to
Speaker 1: everyone who listened to the birth Story episode and took
Speaker 1: the time to write beautiful messages and share your own
Speaker 1: stories back. And I know I say it every Q
Speaker 1: and a episode, but it really is a gift that
Speaker 1: you guys give when you submit follow up questions, because
Speaker 1: it's so rare that you actually sit down and reflect
Speaker 1: on some of these things. I hadn't even thought of
Speaker 1: half of these questions, but now you give me the
Speaker 1: opportunity to sit down and almost write a diary of
Speaker 1: how I felt at a particular moment in time, which
Speaker 1: changes so quickly, and if you don't write it down
Speaker 1: or record it somewhere, you forget how you felt. There
Speaker 1: are so many different emotions, and I'm so grateful that
Speaker 1: one day, when Teddy's bigger, I can go I can
Speaker 1: remember what this hazy time in our life actually felt like.
Speaker 1: And same goes for that first episode. It was very,
Speaker 1: very early. I felt not confident at all about my
Speaker 1: ability to be coherent. I still don't, so apologies in advance.
Speaker 3: I know I'm still rambling.
Speaker 1: I've tried to recall this quite a few times, and
Speaker 1: sometimes it was Teddy interrupting. Mostly it was myself because
Speaker 1: I just didn't feel like I was clear enough. But
Speaker 1: I know it was really early, and part of the
Speaker 1: reason there was so many follow up questions is because
Speaker 1: I didn't get to some topics. I didn't give enough
Speaker 1: detail on some topics. We ran out of time as well,
Speaker 1: because it's just so much to cover. But I'm really
Speaker 1: glad now that I pushed through and did it, because
Speaker 1: I didn't when the emotions were so raw. It was
Speaker 1: really close to just.
Speaker 3: Having given birth.
Speaker 1: And now I'm really glad that I haven't had time
Speaker 1: to sort of sanitize my answers, which you do if
Speaker 1: you leave it too long. So on the flip side,
Speaker 1: oh Budy. On the flip side. I'm also kind of
Speaker 1: glad that it's taken four weeks to do the follow
Speaker 1: up because it's allowed more milestones to happen. Like last night,
Speaker 1: for example, was the very very first night I left
Speaker 1: Teddy and went out to an event for our dear
Speaker 1: friend Kahn's restaurant launch that he's doing a pop up
Speaker 1: at Crown. You can see the details on socials if
Speaker 1: you haven't seen them already, And that involved a whole
Speaker 1: logistical thing around breastfeeding and expression and bottles, and that
Speaker 1: led to all these new questions that people wanted me
Speaker 1: to address in the podcast that I hadn't They hadn't
Speaker 1: been submitted in the first few rounds of questions. So
Speaker 1: maybe it was all meant to be. Maybe we needed
Speaker 1: to have a month between the episodes. I don't know
Speaker 1: that's how I'm going to interpret it, but either way,
Speaker 1: thank you guys so much for being so interested and
Speaker 1: excited for us in this wonderful journey. Teddy is an
Speaker 1: absolute dream. I feel like I was born to be
Speaker 1: a mum. I've loved every minute so much and really
Speaker 1: appreciate the opportunity to reflect.
Speaker 3: On your questions.
Speaker 1: So what I've done because I know it's not all
Speaker 1: relevant to all of you. Is group them into themes
Speaker 1: that are kind of chronological. So I've started with the
Speaker 1: delivery generally like hospital bag, choosing private versus public, all
Speaker 1: that stuff. Then the main section, yeah I didn't go
Speaker 1: into as much detail as I would have liked, was
Speaker 1: the cesarean and that happened to be where most of
Speaker 1: your questions are, so I'll go into more detail about that.
Speaker 1: Then there's the feeding, the bottles, expressing, and then getting home.
Speaker 1: So the first few days at home, the first few weeks,
Speaker 1: some of the items we've got, like the snoother are
Speaker 1: a lot of questions about, and then the identity questions
Speaker 1: about how much time I'm taking off working the mum
Speaker 1: juggle and making time for us as a couple, and
Speaker 1: I won't have the time stamps, but I've listed all
Speaker 1: the questions in order in the show notes so you
Speaker 1: can more easily skip through.
Speaker 3: To the bit that's relevant to you.
Speaker 1: I can't guarantee we'll actually make it through, but we've
Speaker 1: already made it much further than we have in any
Speaker 1: other attempt, so I feel like we're on a good wicket.
Speaker 1: Just a quick disclaimer before we begin as always, this
Speaker 1: is just my personal experience. I don't have any medical background.
Speaker 1: Please excuse any mistakes that I make in explaining things
Speaker 1: from a procedural perspective. Any medical professionals that are listening,
Speaker 1: I'm sure you will cringe at some of the things
Speaker 1: I say. I'm just sharing how we felt and our experience,
Speaker 1: and if I could give anyone any advice in this area,
Speaker 1: it's actually that there is no advice that's universal. There
Speaker 1: really is nothing that's going to suit every parent and
Speaker 1: every child, and yet there is so much information. And
Speaker 1: I think my biggest lesson in observation so far has
Speaker 1: been there is no other area in life where there
Speaker 1: are so many different opinions, such a volume of opinions,
Speaker 1: so much judgment about the opinions and which ones you
Speaker 1: listen to. And that's judgment from others, but also on yourself.
Speaker 1: We're so critical of ourselves as parents in ways that
Speaker 1: I've never been critical of myself as an individual beforehand.
Speaker 1: So it's just such a sensitive, heightened emotional area, and
Speaker 1: anything can be triggering at any time. Also, you've got
Speaker 1: hormones going wild when you're reading a lot of the materials,
Speaker 1: so all I will say is I'm just going to
Speaker 1: share what I found useful, as I usually do in
Speaker 1: things that aren't related to parenthood, and please take all
Speaker 1: of it with a grain of salt, because it is
Speaker 1: really finding the right balance for you and what works
Speaker 1: for me one day. Like I will answer all of
Speaker 1: these questions differently when we do the next episode, which
Speaker 1: will probably be in twenty twenty five at this rate,
Speaker 1: So please keep that in mind when you're listening. But
Speaker 1: I hope that in amongst all the anecdotal answers, that
Speaker 1: maybe there's something helpful in there for you, And at
Speaker 1: the very least I will have enjoyed the process because
Speaker 1: it really is like keeping a beautiful journal. And I
Speaker 1: can't wait to listen back to this one day. Maybe
Speaker 1: cringe at all my answers, but remember how I felt
Speaker 1: at this special special time. Okay, oh my god, we
Speaker 1: actually made it to the questions. This is the first
Speaker 1: time we've made it to the questions. I'm so proud
Speaker 1: of us, little Teddy. Okay, first question was did you
Speaker 1: feel any warning going into labor? Short answer? You know,
Speaker 1: I don't do short answers, but I'm going to try
Speaker 1: and do one or a few in this episode is no,
Speaker 1: I didn't feel any warning. As you guys know from
Speaker 1: the previous episode, we had a c set booked in
Speaker 1: for thirty nine weeks because Teddy was breach which means
Speaker 1: upside down, and then we went in a week earlier
Speaker 1: than that at thirty eight for our just regular checkup,
Speaker 1: and my waters broke, so I actually went into labor naturally,
Speaker 1: even though I ended up having a C section and
Speaker 1: I labored for six hours. But interestingly, I had no
Speaker 1: idea on the day. There was no sort of niggerly
Speaker 1: weird feelings or extra pain or cramps or changes. I
Speaker 1: was so unprepared that I went in without a bra,
Speaker 1: no handbag, just my phone. We didn't pack the hospital
Speaker 1: bag or anything. It just felt so foreign and like
Speaker 1: just out of the realm of possibility that we could
Speaker 1: give birth that day, because I think one of the
Speaker 1: things that comes with a cesarean is that you get
Speaker 1: this added certainty of having a booked date, so you're
Speaker 1: not kind of waiting for labor to just come at
Speaker 1: any time. But then we discounted the fact that it
Speaker 1: could still happen spontaneously before thirty nine weeks, So yeah,
Speaker 1: I just wasn't prepared, and I had started feeling more
Speaker 1: heavy and more uncomfortable about a week earlier than that,
Speaker 1: so around thirty seven weeks, so I knew that stuff
Speaker 1: was happening, but there was no warning. On the day
Speaker 1: that I was going to go into labor. I had
Speaker 1: lost my mucus plug, which is one of the very
Speaker 1: very early signs of things starting to happen around thirty
Speaker 1: seven weeks, but that was a good few days beforehand,
Speaker 1: and nothing had changed since then. So yeah, on the day, no,
Speaker 1: I had no idea. So it was a big surprise
Speaker 1: when my waters just exploded everywhere, but obviously a really wonderful,
Speaker 1: happy surprise. The next question was why did we choose
Speaker 1: private health? And this is having just talked about taking things,
Speaker 1: taking your own personal approach to things, this is a
Speaker 1: very personal question that depends very heavily on your circumstances,
Speaker 1: and I'm probably not going to get all.
Speaker 3: The facts right.
Speaker 1: But the public versus private question is something you decide
Speaker 1: quite early. It's a really big one because you're choosing
Speaker 1: your obstetrician or you're choosing your pathway early on. There
Speaker 1: are a lot of different factors at play, but the
Speaker 1: most obvious one I think is probably cost. If you
Speaker 1: go in the public system, then Medicare will cover the
Speaker 1: costs for you. If you go private, then either you
Speaker 1: will have private health insurance and it will cover it
Speaker 1: for you. There might be a few out of pocket costs,
Speaker 1: or there's a bit of a complication here where your
Speaker 1: most policies by default don't cover pregnancy, and you have
Speaker 1: to add it when you're ready so that you're not
Speaker 1: paying for it your whole life.
Speaker 3: The problem is a.
Speaker 1: Lot of those policies, when you add pregnancy, it takes
Speaker 1: twelve months of waiting before it activates, So if you
Speaker 1: wait until the day that you're pregnant, then you'll give.
Speaker 3: Birth before it activates.
Speaker 1: And that's why if you haven't thought about it yet
Speaker 1: but you're thinking of getting pregnant, we added pregnancy to
Speaker 1: our policy years before, like when we first started thinking
Speaker 1: about it, so that that waiting period would have activated.
Speaker 1: So for us we were in the position where our
Speaker 1: private health did cover pregnancy, or we could choose public.
Speaker 1: If you didn't have that option because your waiting period
Speaker 1: wasn't hadn't actually passed, then sometimes the decisions made for
Speaker 1: you if you really still wanted to go private, you
Speaker 1: could just choose to pay the out of pocket cost
Speaker 1: for the private hospital, and that obviously is much much
Speaker 1: more expensive, and I think it varies a lot hospital
Speaker 1: to hospital, but it could be you know, in the
Speaker 1: tens of thousands to get all your cost covered. So
Speaker 1: there's a lot of difference when it comes to your
Speaker 1: financial position. So that's probably the first thing. The second
Speaker 1: thing is how high risk your pregnancy is. You might
Speaker 1: choose to go for a particular obstetrician, in which case
Speaker 1: you would go to the hospital where that obstrition is.
Speaker 1: One of the big parts of going private is that
Speaker 1: you choose your obstrition and you get that same person
Speaker 1: the entire time. Because we had had a pregnancy loss
Speaker 1: and we were a bit older. I was technically a
Speaker 1: geriatric pregnancy, which is anywhere from I think thirty four
Speaker 1: years old, which is crazy, but that's another topic. We
Speaker 1: wanted that continuity of having the same person check in
Speaker 1: on us, so that was a big incentive to go private.
Speaker 1: In the public system. You still, we are so fortunate
Speaker 1: in this country that we knew in terms of the care,
Speaker 1: there are excellent doctors that both we were going to
Speaker 1: get amazing care no matter what. But it was that
Speaker 1: continuity for us. So in the public system, you don't
Speaker 1: necessarily get one person and.
Speaker 3: Stick with them the whole time.
Speaker 1: They're sort of a group of people that will tend
Speaker 1: to you during your pregnancy and your delivery, and you
Speaker 1: don't necessarily guarantee who that is. There are some people
Speaker 1: that go into a continuity of care stream, but I
Speaker 1: think places are limited, so there's a big difference there
Speaker 1: depending on your preference or the level of risk of
Speaker 1: your pregnancy. The biggest thing for us, what it actually
Speaker 1: came down to in the end, was actually the aftercare.
Speaker 1: So there's a lot of other factors in between, but
Speaker 1: this was the decider for us. In the public system,
Speaker 1: you often will be sharing a room with other mothers
Speaker 1: who have delivered are about to deliver. But also you
Speaker 1: can get sent home anywhere from six hours after delivery
Speaker 1: if you have a cesarean or those complications office, that's different,
Speaker 1: but you get sent home quite a lot more quickly
Speaker 1: than you would in private. In the private health system,
Speaker 1: most hospitals, I think it's from four to five nights
Speaker 1: and an extra night and day if you had a
Speaker 1: sea section at Cabrini, where we were.
Speaker 3: We had five.
Speaker 1: Nights in six days because of the sea section, so
Speaker 1: to me, as a kind of nervous first time parent
Speaker 1: who had had a little bit of complication along the way,
Speaker 1: we really wanted that knowledge that we would have the
Speaker 1: extra nearly a week of recovery, surrounded by midwives and
Speaker 1: check ins from our ob who was the same again,
Speaker 1: the same person who had had the whole time and
Speaker 1: knew we wouldn't go home, sort of feeling like, oh
Speaker 1: my God, who let us go home with this child
Speaker 1: that we need to keep alive, which definitely does still happen,
Speaker 1: but you have a little bit of a head start
Speaker 1: to kind of recover, particularly from the wound, but just
Speaker 1: recover from your entire world being shaken up. With the
Speaker 1: support of medical professionals who can help you. You have
Speaker 1: your first freak out about everything in the hospital before
Speaker 1: you go home. And that was pretty much enough for
Speaker 1: us to decide that we would try and get pregnancy
Speaker 1: added to our policy and then have.
Speaker 3: It activated before we gave birth.
Speaker 1: Which ended up being a wonderful decision for us. I
Speaker 1: feel like that six days was pivotal in making me
Speaker 1: feel like a confident, like not riddled by anxiety in
Speaker 1: coming home, and I would otherwise as a control freak,
Speaker 1: that's really OCD.
Speaker 3: I would otherwise have.
Speaker 1: Probably been at risk of being very overthinking everything. But
Speaker 1: that six days made such a difference. So that's why
Speaker 1: we chose private health. And I know that's a really
Speaker 1: great privilege, but definitely it's something that you should look
Speaker 1: into and look into the pros and cons. And Sophie,
Speaker 1: who hosted our last episode from Australian Birth Stories her
Speaker 1: Guide to Pregnancy and Birth. The book has a wonderful
Speaker 1: section that can help you decide sort of what the
Speaker 1: factors are and balance that out for you. Hospital bag
Speaker 1: recommendations was another one. This is probably a bit of
Speaker 1: a difficult one to answer in an audio like without
Speaker 1: me just literally reading out a list to you. So
Speaker 1: what I might do for this one is I'll write
Speaker 1: up a list and to pop the link in the
Speaker 1: show notes for you. All I'll say here is that
Speaker 1: there is a big difference. Having just said that, the
Speaker 1: stay length is quite different, and there's a different list
Speaker 1: for a stay in a public hospital because you might
Speaker 1: be home that night versus knowing that you'll be there
Speaker 1: for a couple of days in the private system, so
Speaker 1: obviously it's a much longer list, and mine will be
Speaker 1: tailored towards that.
Speaker 3: But there are a couple.
Speaker 1: Of amazing resources that have lists with general rules about
Speaker 1: how many things per night for both you and the baby,
Speaker 1: and I'll link those as well. So the memo is
Speaker 1: an amazing and we've had the founder on you guys
Speaker 1: probably already know about it. It's the mecha of baby Everything, Baby, childbirth,
Speaker 1: prenat or postpartum. But online they also have these amazing
Speaker 1: lists and that helps you form the basis of your
Speaker 1: own list. There's a couple of hospitals that write amazing list,
Speaker 1: so I'll put some of the links in that helped
Speaker 1: me write mine. I'll include my own as well. But
Speaker 1: you know, there's a few basic rules, like the baby
Speaker 1: will always need one more layer than you're wearing that
Speaker 1: you know, per day, they'll probably go through at least
Speaker 1: two to three sets of that thing because there's so
Speaker 1: many bodily fluids going on, they change a lot more
Speaker 1: each day than I expected, so you definitely need to
Speaker 1: pack more than one outfit for them each day. And
Speaker 1: then the only other thing I'll add for the hospital bag.
Speaker 1: Is that I spent a lot of time, like most
Speaker 1: of you probably will, looking at what other people wore,
Speaker 1: kind of planning my going home outfit, getting cute photos,
Speaker 1: like thinking that you're going to be doing all that stuff. Honestly,
Speaker 1: while I was in the hospital, I just wore that
Speaker 1: either the mesh hospital undies with the pad or the
Speaker 1: disposable nappy undies that I had, which were from both
Speaker 1: were from bear Mum. I'll include the link to those
Speaker 1: as well. They were amazing for recovery. I just kicked
Speaker 1: around in those and my nursing bra like I literally
Speaker 1: just I thought I was gonna wear all these outfits.
Speaker 1: I didn't wear any clothes. You're just uncomfortable. You want
Speaker 1: to be free, no one, You're not seeing anyone if
Speaker 1: you did get a bit cold. I had a robe
Speaker 1: and I could just throw it on over the top,
Speaker 1: but I was not wearing outfits. I definitely wasn't wearing
Speaker 1: anything with elastic around the waist. So I think you
Speaker 1: need a lot less than I think that you originally
Speaker 1: believe that you do. We were really lucky we lived
Speaker 1: near the hospital, so Nick could also go home and
Speaker 1: grab stuff. But yes, I will include the list for that.
Speaker 1: One of the other questions was what did you wear postop?
Speaker 1: So I think, yeah, I just answered that I didn't
Speaker 1: have an outfit. I just rocked around in my knickers
Speaker 1: and then a robe when it got cold, and honestly,
Speaker 1: that was the most comfortable. I think a lot of
Speaker 1: mums pack a lot of things and then they don't
Speaker 1: touch them. Did I go straight back to my normal
Speaker 1: diet after gestational diabetes?
Speaker 3: Great question.
Speaker 1: Yes, I don't know whether I was supposed to do
Speaker 1: more tests, but I literally gave birth and then the
Speaker 1: first meal they served me was normal and I was
Speaker 1: loving my life so much when I had that first
Speaker 1: piece of toast.
Speaker 3: I had misbread so much.
Speaker 1: So yes, I went straight back to my normal diet.
Speaker 1: To the baby for their blood sugar levels, I think
Speaker 1: three times in the first twenty four hours. So another
Speaker 1: thing there's a lot of memes about is they wake
Speaker 1: you up a lot in that first little bit where
Speaker 1: you just want to be asleep, but that's to test
Speaker 1: the baby and make sure that their insulin and everything
Speaker 1: is fine. But I didn't have any tests and I
Speaker 1: just went straight back to eating normally, which was amazing.
Speaker 1: But having said that, you've all heard me say that
Speaker 1: there were many silver linings to having GD, and I
Speaker 1: went into delivery and labor feeling very strong and very
Speaker 1: well nourished, and much less full of KFC than I
Speaker 1: would have been otherwise if I'd been left to my
Speaker 1: own devices. Oh okay, So the next section is on
Speaker 1: the cesarean and this is the part in the first
Speaker 1: episode where I didn't go into as much detail as
Speaker 1: I wanted to, but purely because of time and also
Speaker 1: because yeah, I was in such a haze.
Speaker 3: I don't even know what I said.
Speaker 1: I'm probably repeating myself apologies along the wave. I'm repeating
Speaker 1: things I've said in the earlier episode, just trying to
Speaker 1: answer as best I can.
Speaker 3: But first, there was his.
Speaker 1: Suggestion rather than a question, which I thought was worth mentioning,
Speaker 1: and that was to change the language of natural birth
Speaker 1: in contrast to my cesarean to vaginal birth. So I
Speaker 1: think sometimes, as I mentioned before, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: judgment and stigma around different types of birth and different
Speaker 1: types of feeding, and calling a vaginal birth a natural
Speaker 1: birth can sometimes imply or might sound like I mean
Speaker 1: that a cesarean birth is not natural. I have had
Speaker 1: the most positive experience having a sea section. I didn't
Speaker 1: choose it, it was chosen by Teddy being breach, and
Speaker 1: I ended up coming to the conclusion that I trusted
Speaker 1: my medical team beyond anything. They were the experts, they
Speaker 1: had the knowledge, and all I wanted above anything was
Speaker 1: the safe and healthy delivery of Teddy, and if that
Speaker 1: had to be by sea section, then I definitely felt
Speaker 1: a little bit of disappointment at not being able to
Speaker 1: experience a vaginal birth or just a natural labor. Interestingly,
Speaker 1: as you know, I ended up getting to experience it
Speaker 1: for a little while. Anyway, I kind of had a
Speaker 1: bit of both. But I do know that for some
Speaker 1: people it could be triggering for one to be called
Speaker 1: natural birth and one to not be called natural, so
Speaker 1: I will try and use vaginal birth. I think mainly
Speaker 1: the reason I called it natural is because I hate
Speaker 1: the word vagina. I just think it's gross. I don't
Speaker 1: know why, I just don't like the words, so maybe
Speaker 1: I was just trying not to say vaginal over and
Speaker 1: over again. Anyway, that was a really wonderful suggestion, and
Speaker 1: the terminology is a really it's a bit of a minefield.
Speaker 1: So again I'm not an expert, and I might say
Speaker 1: the wrong things, particularly now it gets a bit technical,
Speaker 1: but I know.
Speaker 3: People were really interested about the sea section.
Speaker 1: And it is really nerve wracking. It is, especially if
Speaker 1: you weren't planning on a C section. We did our
Speaker 1: birth classes before it had been decided, so a lot
Speaker 1: of our preparation was a round a vaginal birth, and
Speaker 1: suddenly everything changed. And you often, I think there's a
Speaker 1: big perception of the kind of womanliness or the yeah,
Speaker 1: the attachment to nature of going through a vaginal birth
Speaker 1: versus not having the the baby, having the exposure to
Speaker 1: all the bacteria and the vaginal canal, like, there's so
Speaker 1: many elements to it. I'm not sure a lot about
Speaker 1: the science, but C sections are incredibly common, and I
Speaker 1: personally was still able to have an experience that was
Speaker 1: magical because it was the first moment I met my child,
Speaker 1: and the whole team were so embracing of still wanting
Speaker 1: it to feel really loving and nurturing and as not
Speaker 1: clinical as it possibly could be, considering that I wasn't
Speaker 1: going through a natural labor. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that surprised me the most is that it's so fast.
Speaker 1: It is so fast, literally I went in and then
Speaker 1: like fifteen minutes later, I was a mum. It was
Speaker 1: just it blew my mind. I don't know why I
Speaker 1: thought it would take longer, but I just did. And
Speaker 1: then suddenly they're like.
Speaker 3: Here he is. I was like, oh my god, this
Speaker 3: is my child. Oh.
Speaker 1: So, the first question was about the hospital bag for
Speaker 1: a C section, which is, yes, admittedly quite different, but
Speaker 1: mainly because you spend a lot more time in the hospital.
Speaker 1: The other big difference for me, which will only make
Speaker 1: sense once you've seen the list, is that there's a
Speaker 1: lot of things on a vaginal birth hospital list for
Speaker 1: your peraneum, which is the area that often tears during
Speaker 1: a vaginal birth, and that's like a pary bottle, a
Speaker 1: piry spray, which helps you know, wash or soothe the
Speaker 1: area because you can't reach it as easily. I personally
Speaker 1: found I didn't need any of those things. Some people
Speaker 1: still use them around the wound, or you know, you
Speaker 1: don't shower straight away after either. I don't think either
Speaker 1: type of birth because you're just so oh my god,
Speaker 1: it's wild. But I found that I cut out that
Speaker 1: whole area in my list.
Speaker 3: I didn't take.
Speaker 1: Any pery anything, but I did still really really appreciate
Speaker 1: the disposable nappies because they were loose around where your
Speaker 1: wound would be. The hospital mesh unders that you get
Speaker 1: are also the same. They were really loose. I changed
Speaker 1: the waste of everything. That was the big difference for
Speaker 1: me with the sea section is that I didn't take
Speaker 1: any pants. I didn't take anything that had elastic around
Speaker 1: the waist. The only items of clothes I did take
Speaker 1: were like loose, oversized T shirts, and I had one
Speaker 1: nighty that was nursing friendly as well that was from
Speaker 1: Ah oh Gosh. I'll include the link in the show notes.
Speaker 1: I can't remember exactly where it was from, but you
Speaker 1: just don't want anything tight around your waist when you've
Speaker 1: got sort of a fresh sea section wound. So that
Speaker 1: was the biggest difference for me. I wouldn't pack pants
Speaker 1: or shorts or anything like that. The next question was
Speaker 1: was I panicky or anxious going into the sea section? Wildly,
Speaker 1: I actually was very calm. I don't know why I
Speaker 1: was obviously nervous, but I think part of it was
Speaker 1: just trusting my ob so implicitly, I just felt so
Speaker 1: secure in her care and in her ability to make
Speaker 1: decisions that she had the same risk balance and risk
Speaker 1: tolerance as I did, and the same values as I did,
Speaker 1: and it's just an excellent She's the head of maternity
Speaker 1: at Cabrini, and that alone, like really trusting in your
Speaker 1: medical team, takes away a lot of anxiety. I thought
Speaker 1: there'd be a little bit of panic around the fact
Speaker 1: it was a surprise, but I actually think there was
Speaker 1: less panic because it was a surprise if we'd known
Speaker 1: the date. A lot of people say that the only
Speaker 1: part of knowing the date of a C section that's hard.
Speaker 1: It's good because you get certainty, but it's hard because
Speaker 1: then you don't sleep for like a couple of nights
Speaker 1: before because you know it's coming, rather than it being
Speaker 1: a surprise, and you can just go about your life.
Speaker 1: Because it was a surprise for us, I was just
Speaker 1: going about my life. I wasn't counting down and knowing
Speaker 1: it was tomorrow. So maybe I was a bit less
Speaker 1: panicky because I just didn't have time to think about it.
Speaker 1: It just all happened, and by the time my brain
Speaker 1: had caught up with me, i'd already had him. So
Speaker 1: I don't know if it was a combination of those circumstances.
Speaker 1: I felt very calm, and I think also when you
Speaker 1: have done a lot of research and birth education, you
Speaker 1: also know a lot about the statistics and the risks.
Speaker 1: You know it's very common. I knew everything that was happening.
Speaker 1: One of the biggest parts of fear is not being informed,
Speaker 1: I think, and not knowing what's going on. But I
Speaker 1: knew what anesthetic I was getting, I knew why, I
Speaker 1: knew what order things would happen in. The team were
Speaker 1: amazing at talking us through everything, and I was definitely nervous,
Speaker 1: but not panicky, and I was extremely excited. As I mentioned,
Speaker 1: there was probably one half hour period when we first
Speaker 1: decided where I was a bit disappointed about doing a
Speaker 1: C section.
Speaker 3: There's a bit of a.
Speaker 1: Perception around the idea that it's a cop out because
Speaker 1: it's easier after having done the recovery. It's not easier,
Speaker 1: it's just different. It's quicker, it's different. It's a super
Speaker 1: dramatic surgery. They rearrange your organs like. It's not easy.
Speaker 1: It's just different. So don't ever think it's a cop out.
Speaker 1: You have still birthed a child, grown them from scratch,
Speaker 1: and brought a human into the world. But yes, it
Speaker 1: really helped me to have looked at what the actual
Speaker 1: steps are in getting a local anesthetic to then get
Speaker 1: your oh sorry, getting like, yeah, an anesthetic on your skin,
Speaker 1: to then get the need or that gives you the
Speaker 1: actual anesthetic that numbs the bottom.
Speaker 3: Half of your body.
Speaker 1: There's a screen, put you lye on your back, and
Speaker 1: there's a screen so that you can't see what's going on,
Speaker 1: but you can ask if you would like the screen
Speaker 1: to be pushed open as the baby is lifted out
Speaker 1: of you. The biggest surprise for me is that you
Speaker 1: could feel more than I expected. No pain, but you
Speaker 1: can just feel the pulling sensation, which blew my mind.
Speaker 1: I thought i'd feel nothing, so that was a big surprise.
Speaker 1: But yes, so it was happening in exactly the order
Speaker 1: that I thought it would. As I mentioned, you do
Speaker 1: the anesthetic, you're go in, they cut the wound, they
Speaker 1: pull out the baby, they put the baby on you,
Speaker 1: and you get skin to skin. Teddy had a little
Speaker 1: bit of trouble breathing at the start, so they took
Speaker 1: him to the side and gave him some oxygen, then
Speaker 1: brought him back and then he went off to get
Speaker 1: weigh and do all that stuff, and I went into
Speaker 1: recovery just to make sure that I obviously got stitched
Speaker 1: back up, and then went into recovery to make sure
Speaker 1: everything came back to a good level, and then we
Speaker 1: met back in the room.
Speaker 3: So it was all exactly.
Speaker 1: What I expected that it would be, and I had
Speaker 1: a beautiful experience. I met my son for the first
Speaker 1: time and it was Yeah, it was really wonderful.
Speaker 3: Okay, C section recovery.
Speaker 1: This is the area where I had the most questions,
Speaker 1: but I probably covered in the least detail in the
Speaker 1: last episode. And again it's one of those ones where
Speaker 1: I'm going to give the dickiest answer, which is to
Speaker 1: start with that it's going to be so different for everyone.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people's questions also included in it
Speaker 1: a comment about how many weeks they're at and that
Speaker 1: they might still be feeling pain and is that normal?
Speaker 1: And I don't think there is a normal. I really
Speaker 1: think our bodies are all so differently composed. Are levels
Speaker 1: of activity, the weight of your baby, whether your house
Speaker 1: has stairs or not, how much exercise you did beforehand.
Speaker 1: Also during pregnancy, we all will have different levels of
Speaker 1: ab separation, and so it will take longer or shorter
Speaker 1: for them to come back together. It's just going to
Speaker 1: vary so much. So I'll share as much as I
Speaker 1: remember about the time markers of when things happened in
Speaker 1: my recovery and tips about what helped, and then just
Speaker 1: take it all with a grain of salt, also because
Speaker 1: who knows if I'm actually remembering it properly. I'm going
Speaker 1: to use photos of my diary to try and be
Speaker 1: as accurate as I can. But yeah, remember that everyone
Speaker 1: will be recovering at a different rate. So I'll start
Speaker 1: now and then go back to the start at about seven.
Speaker 3: And a half weeks.
Speaker 1: Now, I would say I'm much more recovered than I
Speaker 1: expect it to be, And hopefully that's reassuring for some
Speaker 1: of you, because when you actually think about it, it's
Speaker 1: quite a dramatic abdominal surgery. They have taken a baby
Speaker 1: out of a space where it's been taking up so
Speaker 1: much room, and then suddenly all your organs can move
Speaker 1: back to where they were before. But that happens very quickly,
Speaker 1: and yeah, everything gets reorganized. But in any other situation,
Speaker 1: if you had a surgery that big, you'd be on
Speaker 1: bed rest and you wouldn't get up, and you'd be
Speaker 1: resting and sleeping. But with a newborn, then suddenly you've
Speaker 1: had the surgery. But then you've got to be moving
Speaker 1: and up and down and changing them and holding them
Speaker 1: and looking after them, and also not sleeping. So it
Speaker 1: definitely will take you longer than it might have if
Speaker 1: you were able to just life flight and rest. But
Speaker 1: now at seven weeks, I actually just had my follow
Speaker 1: up appointment this morning, so the timing again it kind
Speaker 1: of worked out that we left it this long. That
Speaker 1: was the first time that I had the dressing taken
Speaker 1: off my incision. It has healed completely, healing really well.
Speaker 1: Other than when I physically apply pressure to the wound,
Speaker 1: like to the actual way the scar is. That's still
Speaker 1: a bit tender and it's still quite lumpy underneath, but
Speaker 1: the wound itself is healed. You can just see the scar,
Speaker 1: and now is when I can start to use oil
Speaker 1: or vitamin E to improve the appearance of the scar
Speaker 1: and then start to kind of massage the lumpiness underneath
Speaker 1: to help that go back to normal. But pain wise,
Speaker 1: unless I'm pressing on the site, there's a few times
Speaker 1: where I'll notice a bit of a pull. I'm clear
Speaker 1: to start exercising, and once I do start, I'm sure
Speaker 1: certain things will not feel as comfortable, but pain wise,
Speaker 1: I often forget about it. For a couple of weeks
Speaker 1: now have been able to just move around, run up
Speaker 1: and downstairs, lift Teddy and not even notice. And that's
Speaker 1: a lot quicker than I was expecting. So that's been
Speaker 1: a really positive thing. I thought if I had been
Speaker 1: if I had heard that, you know, seven weeks ago,
Speaker 1: I'd feel really reassured by that. The whole process has
Speaker 1: actually been less intense than I thought it was going
Speaker 1: to be. But so to go back to the beginning.
Speaker 1: As soon as you come out of surgery. The first
Speaker 1: obviously the time that I was in the hospital, and
Speaker 1: then the first couple of days at home, I was
Speaker 1: using painkillers. I usually don't even take pan at all,
Speaker 1: so that was quite foreign to me. But the first
Speaker 1: tip is just whatever they give you. Like I said,
Speaker 1: it's a dramatic surgery. You wouldn't normally be up and
Speaker 1: about during that time. Pain management helps so much for
Speaker 1: you to be able to engage in how special that
Speaker 1: time is and how overwhelming it is. You've got so
Speaker 1: much to deal with with a tiny, little human. So
Speaker 1: I get that pain managed in that early few days
Speaker 1: where it is quite intense. That was really, really helpful.
Speaker 1: So you know, obviously that will be tailored to you,
Speaker 1: and that will be the decision of you and your doctors.
Speaker 3: So in the first twenty.
Speaker 1: Four hours, it takes about that time for the anesthetic
Speaker 1: to wear off. So I had a catheter. You'll mostly
Speaker 1: have a catheter for the first twenty four hours so
Speaker 1: you won't.
Speaker 3: Have to get up and go to the toilet.
Speaker 1: Slowly, the feeling will come back to your legs or
Speaker 1: to your bottom half, and then usually that will remove
Speaker 1: it the next day and then you can go to
Speaker 1: the toilet and have your first shower. So I had
Speaker 1: my first toilet visit, my first shower a day after
Speaker 1: we gave birth, in the evening, and it was the
Speaker 1: evening after so twenty four hours, and yeah, I could.
Speaker 3: Stand up, I could walk. It was definitely.
Speaker 1: Tender, and even though you have pain relief, the pain
Speaker 1: is managed, but you're still kind of hesitant moving around.
Speaker 1: I found it hard to sort of sit up from
Speaker 1: a lying down position, so you roll to the side
Speaker 1: and push yourself up. I use my arms a lot
Speaker 1: while I was still in the hospital, and I would
Speaker 1: say for the first week to two weeks, you're still hesitant,
Speaker 1: it's tender, you're trying to avoid doing too much. And
Speaker 1: my biggest tip in that time is that you'll heal
Speaker 1: a lot quicker if you're not getting up and down
Speaker 1: a lot unnecessarily, which is much easier said than done
Speaker 1: with a tiny human that needs you. But the more
Speaker 1: you can lean on a partner or support people or
Speaker 1: loved ones to do as much of the up and down.
Speaker 1: So like if you wanted to go and get a
Speaker 1: jumper instead of getting up out of bed and walking
Speaker 1: over to get it, if you didn't need to get
Speaker 1: up and change the baby or feed the baby, try
Speaker 1: and get someone else to do that for you. The
Speaker 1: support the medical support team will give you advice on
Speaker 1: when you can start to walk around. It is important
Speaker 1: to move quite quickly, a bit like walk around to
Speaker 1: get the blood flowing. That helps with healing. But you
Speaker 1: don't want to add tat it and be up and down,
Speaker 1: up and down, up and down. So I relied a
Speaker 1: lot on Nick. He was amazing. He did all the
Speaker 1: nappy changes pretty much for the first couple of days,
Speaker 1: and that gives you just a head start to get
Speaker 1: some healing, to be lying flat as much as you
Speaker 1: can while you're still in that really tender face. So
Speaker 1: that would be my first piece of advice in that
Speaker 1: first couple.
Speaker 3: Of days or first week.
Speaker 1: They also say, like try not to if you do
Speaker 1: go home really early, try not to walk up and
Speaker 1: downstairs too much if you are on the second floor,
Speaker 1: Like try and have everything upstairs that you need, so
Speaker 1: that you're minimizing the amount of time that you're fidgeting
Speaker 1: around really and moving and then around the actual incision itself.
Speaker 1: I think most doctors do this. I had a dressing
Speaker 1: applied that there were dissolvable stitches, then a dressing applied
Speaker 1: that's waterproof, so at least I didn't have to worry
Speaker 1: about the wound itself getting infected or getting anything in it.
Speaker 1: It was waterproof, I could shower with it. And I
Speaker 1: only got that taken off this morning, so soision care
Speaker 1: was really easy because it was just kind of covered
Speaker 1: up and I didn't have to worry about it, you know,
Speaker 1: getting caught on anything, and it was completely sealed in
Speaker 1: so and by the time I had it taken off,
Speaker 1: it came off really gently, and it wasn't painful to
Speaker 1: take the dressing off. So I think incision care is
Speaker 1: kind of taken care of. It's just managing the healing underneath.
Speaker 1: So yeah, one of the questions was immediately after, how
Speaker 1: how were you up? It was twenty four hours. I
Speaker 1: could walk around and I could walk kind of to
Speaker 1: you know, there's a tea breakout area.
Speaker 3: I could walk to.
Speaker 1: There and walk back and it would feel a little
Speaker 1: bit sore, but I didn't expect to be walking so quickly.
Speaker 1: So you do still look quite, you know.
Speaker 3: Puffy at the start.
Speaker 1: I still looked pregnant afterwards, and there's a lot of
Speaker 1: water attention and fluids have been pumped through you, so
Speaker 1: that takes a little while. I've kind of gone back
Speaker 1: and looked at photos, and what might be more helpful
Speaker 1: to explain this is I'll do a as well with
Speaker 1: those photos, so you can see how many days it
Speaker 1: took for the fluid to leave the body and they're
Speaker 1: swelling to all go down. Now it's seven weeks. I'm
Speaker 1: the same size. It doesn't underclose, it's not the same,
Speaker 1: but I can fit into the same size, and I
Speaker 1: could from about five weeks, so four or five weeks,
Speaker 1: and again that was a lot quicker than I was expecting.
Speaker 1: I think that was also partly really lucky genetics. My
Speaker 1: body just kind of lost the fluid, and breastfeeding also
Speaker 1: drains a lot out of you, so I'll show you
Speaker 1: the time markers for that. But yeah, I was up
Speaker 1: and about the next day and then my first actual
Speaker 1: so by the time we got home.
Speaker 3: I could walk around. I could lift.
Speaker 1: Teddy pretty much straight away. They say, don't lift more
Speaker 1: than your baby for the first little while, and I didn't.
Speaker 1: I would say, just follow the instructions. You get to
Speaker 1: the tea. Phisio will probably come and see you and
Speaker 1: they'll help with giving you like a compression slip kind
Speaker 1: of thing, and they'll give you instructions on where to
Speaker 1: when to wear that. I followed those to the tea,
Speaker 1: and that helped bring the swelling down. Interestingly, water retention wise,
Speaker 1: I was fine until.
Speaker 3: I got home.
Speaker 1: So it was about day ten when suddenly, like my
Speaker 1: meal could come in. I was like not hydrating as
Speaker 1: much because I was just distracted, and suddenly I was
Speaker 1: puffy everywhere, like my legs, my face. I didn't have
Speaker 1: any in the third trimester or during the first few days,
Speaker 1: but it hit me at home. That's when I started
Speaker 1: wearing recovery shorts and socks. The ones that I wore
Speaker 1: were from.
Speaker 3: The Ry Group.
Speaker 1: They had both were amazing, but I also had quite
Speaker 1: a few other brands and I would swap between them.
Speaker 1: Some were tighter, some were looser, and you'll know what
Speaker 1: feels comfortable. Like I couldn't wear the really tight compression
Speaker 1: ones until about two weeks in, but then you'll kind
Speaker 1: of graduate, so I have a few options ready. Another
Speaker 1: great brand, I think their Mum I had their compression
Speaker 1: undies that had a pocket that has room for an
Speaker 1: ice or a heat pack and you don't have hands
Speaker 1: to hold those on.
Speaker 3: Too, so that was really helpful at the start.
Speaker 1: Then I used ever Form shorts as well that were amazing.
Speaker 1: Bubblah Bump had some amazing shorts. Jules Robinson's Figure Co
Speaker 1: has an amazing Shapewak collection that has some compression.
Speaker 3: Shorts as well.
Speaker 1: There's the official SRC recovery shorts. They're kind of like
Speaker 1: a Mum Grapevine Hero. You'll just try and find the
Speaker 1: ones that work for you. I really like the Roi
Speaker 1: Group ones because they have a pocket that really helps me.
Speaker 1: But yes, I was able to do more than I
Speaker 1: expected quickly. I think I stopped painkillers after about ten
Speaker 1: days and that's when the puffiness started that kind of
Speaker 1: calmed down.
Speaker 3: About a week later.
Speaker 1: I went for my first walk, like around the block
Speaker 1: on the thirty first of March. That was ten days
Speaker 1: after I'd given birth, and that was fine, and then
Speaker 1: I slowly, slowly increased the distances. We went for our
Speaker 1: first longer walk on the fourth of April, and then
Speaker 1: I think my abs had joined back together. I had
Speaker 1: only about one centimeter of separation by about the seventh
Speaker 1: of April. And I'll include.
Speaker 3: Photos of all of that.
Speaker 1: So, yeah, it's strange how I can't even remember when
Speaker 1: I stopped wearing their recovery shots, but I have stopped
Speaker 1: wearing them now I don't need them. It will be
Speaker 1: different for everyone, but I think, yeah, as much as
Speaker 1: in the early days, you can minimize your movement around
Speaker 1: to give yourself a head start, and then when you
Speaker 1: can life flat, life flat, and if you can have
Speaker 1: your feet above your head to get the circulation going
Speaker 1: if you're puffy, even prop them up on some pillows
Speaker 1: or upper wall. That really helped me, and yeah, I
Speaker 1: think just also be really gentle in yourself. Don't rush
Speaker 1: to like I haven't started exercise except gentle walks. Someone Also,
Speaker 1: I gave me a heads up, which I found really helpful,
Speaker 1: so I didn't worry so much about it. I had
Speaker 1: like a really really good recovery for four weeks, and
Speaker 1: then you might just have a setback where I was
Speaker 1: bouncing too hard on the bouncer and suddenly by the
Speaker 1: end of the day the incision had flared up and
Speaker 1: got puffy again, And that was just because I'd overdone it,
Speaker 1: and it felt like a step backwards, but it was nothing.
Speaker 3: To worry about.
Speaker 1: You'd just start to notice what helps and what doesn't,
Speaker 1: and then modify your behavior as much as you can.
Speaker 1: But then also be patient that every time you know
Speaker 1: you're doing your mum thing, that's also completely going against
Speaker 1: what your body needs for its recovery from.
Speaker 3: The actual sea section.
Speaker 1: So it's definitely going to be slower because you're fitting
Speaker 1: in stuff that again normally you would be on bed rest.
Speaker 1: So I'll include links to all those recovery items. I
Speaker 1: did a lot of pilates in the lead up, so
Speaker 1: I think that also helped with my care kind of
Speaker 1: staying strong and then recovering quite quickly and then eating
Speaker 1: really well and drinking enough water. If you can't get
Speaker 1: enough sleep, you can still do it much of the
Speaker 1: other stuff as you can, and yet really leaning on
Speaker 1: your support people as much as you can, being patient
Speaker 1: with yourself. But yes, I'm about to restart exercise this week,
Speaker 1: so I will keep you guys posted on that. But
Speaker 1: if there are any like really specific questions about items,
Speaker 1: please let me know. But overall, so far, it's been
Speaker 1: really positive and I'm learning really to be more compassionate
Speaker 1: with myself, so it hasn't been a terrible process. And
Speaker 1: then one of the questions was about the mental health
Speaker 1: part of the C section, and I'm guessing that's kind
Speaker 1: of what we covered about, like whether there was any
Speaker 1: birth trauma anxiety it being not the pathway that I've
Speaker 1: chosen originally, and I haven't really had any sort of
Speaker 1: trauma associated with it. Again, I think that's part of
Speaker 1: the preparation that you have and the team that you're
Speaker 1: with and the approach that you take as well, Like
Speaker 1: so much of it, so much isn't within your control,
Speaker 1: but you can kind of set an intention at the
Speaker 1: start of how you're going to be, and if you
Speaker 1: put a lot of pressure on yourself to recover really quickly,
Speaker 1: or you expect certain things by certain weeks and it
Speaker 1: doesn't happen, you'll be really disappointed. But if you don't
Speaker 1: set an intention or have a week where you hope
Speaker 1: to do X Y by this, then you won't be disappointed.
Speaker 1: So keep a really open mind and just see how
Speaker 1: your body feels weak to week. You'll definitely know. I
Speaker 1: knew when I felt ready to go for a walk,
Speaker 1: and I knew that I didn't feel ready a minute
Speaker 1: before that. I knew the day I walked a bit
Speaker 1: too far for a bit too long, and I didn't
Speaker 1: do that again, and I didn't try again until like
Speaker 1: another week later. So really tune into your body if
Speaker 1: you can. But yeah, particularly the incision care was a
Speaker 1: lot easier than I expected, just without miracle dressing. So
Speaker 1: that's been amazing.
Speaker 3: Okay, we are on too feeding again.
Speaker 1: This is like even more varied for each person and
Speaker 1: possibly one of the most controversial areas. I don't know
Speaker 1: why it isn't it shouldn't be. I think it's just
Speaker 1: so straightforward in it every other area of life. We
Speaker 1: all just do different things. We have different careers, we
Speaker 1: have different passions, we have different hobbies. Why is feeding
Speaker 1: such a sensitive area and.
Speaker 3: Not everyone deals with it particularly well?
Speaker 1: So I have to add extra extra disclaimers that this
Speaker 1: is just our journey and there is absolutely no judgment
Speaker 1: on any pathway. This is just what we did and
Speaker 1: what's been working for us so far. There's so much
Speaker 1: about breast is best, and like there's a lot of
Speaker 1: stigma around formula and then women who choose not to
Speaker 1: breastfeed or can't breastfeed. Like, there's just so many different
Speaker 1: pathways in within feeding that it's very loaded. So I'll
Speaker 1: start off by saying I am breastfeeding Teddy exclusively. I'm
Speaker 1: very lucky to have been able to. But I also
Speaker 1: have the perspective of having obviously been adopted and I
Speaker 1: came here to my mum when I was five months old,
Speaker 1: so I was obviously not breastfed, and I have been
Speaker 1: exclusively formula fed, so I kind of have both. I'm
Speaker 1: not worded to one or the other, and maybe see
Speaker 1: my sort of healthier relationship going into whether or not
Speaker 1: we could feed was because I had an open mind
Speaker 1: to it because no one had sort of, you know,
Speaker 1: been around me saying pushing one agenda or the other,
Speaker 1: because I knew that I'd been formula fed. So above all,
Speaker 1: again the same way vaginal versus cesarean the ultimate outcome
Speaker 1: is healthy, safe baby. My view with feeding is kind
Speaker 1: of at the end of the day, what gets your
Speaker 1: baby fed and healthy. So whatever that looks like for you,
Speaker 1: our bodies are all so different, and I can.
Speaker 3: One hundred percent guarantee you I am the last.
Speaker 1: Person I thought would be a good candidate for feeding.
Speaker 1: You know, I've been the president of the Eatybidy Tit
Speaker 1: Committee until pregnancy. My boobs have never done the feminine
Speaker 1: thing they are supposed to do. They've never performed for
Speaker 1: me before, so I did not expect that they would.
Speaker 1: But it's got nothing to do with size. It's really
Speaker 1: got nothing to do with trying hard either, Like if
Speaker 1: you can't produce enough milk, it's got nothing to do
Speaker 1: with anything. It's not whether you try hard or you don't.
Speaker 1: It's just I don't know genetics, or it's just yea
Speaker 1: luck of the draw. So we're fortunate that we have
Speaker 1: been able to breastfeed in a pretty straightforward way. What
Speaker 1: happened with us was I had started expressing colostrum in advance.
Speaker 1: They recommend that if you can, you wait until after
Speaker 1: thirty six weeks, you wait until you get your obstration
Speaker 1: gives you permission to start when they see whether or
Speaker 1: not that's working for you. I did as much as
Speaker 1: I could so that there would be some because it
Speaker 1: takes a little while after you give birth anyway, for
Speaker 1: your milk to sort of come in, like there's a
Speaker 1: bit of a lag. So in that time they if
Speaker 1: you've had if you've expressed colostrum, you can give that
Speaker 1: to your baby because they don't need very much in
Speaker 1: the first couple of days. You can just give them
Speaker 1: those little bits until your milk comes in and then swap.
Speaker 1: Otherwise you give them formula, so obviously they need to
Speaker 1: eat something, and then once your milk comes in you
Speaker 1: would swap. Or if your milk doesn't come in, then
Speaker 1: some babies just continue to be formula fed. Some people
Speaker 1: mixed feed. There are so many different options, but for us,
Speaker 1: I had express quite a lot of colostrum. Sometimes with
Speaker 1: the cesarean, because your body doesn't go through natural labor,
Speaker 1: it takes a little bit longer for your milk to
Speaker 1: come in. So we started giving him the colostrum, and
Speaker 1: we ran out by day three and my milk still
Speaker 1: hadn't come in. So he was feeding off me and
Speaker 1: still getting some colostrum like the previously expressed and some
Speaker 1: from me from feeding, but there still wasn't milk coming
Speaker 1: in like properly, so he had lost. Babies lose a
Speaker 1: lot of weight when they're first born, and then they
Speaker 1: have to restore the weight, and he had lost weight
Speaker 1: and then was continuing sort of. He hadn't lost too much,
Speaker 1: but if he had kept continuing, it would have been dangerous.
Speaker 1: So we gave him formula.
Speaker 3: For three feeds.
Speaker 1: I think that was three hours apart, so over nine ish,
Speaker 1: maybe twelve hours, I can't really remember, but we gave
Speaker 1: him formula because he wasn't getting enough. And what happens
Speaker 1: is their stomachs darts as like a pea size, and
Speaker 1: then the next day it grows.
Speaker 3: To like a strawberry or whatever it is.
Speaker 1: So they need hardly anything, but they rapidly need more
Speaker 1: and more, and to bring on the milk you also
Speaker 1: do a lot of different things to help that happen.
Speaker 1: So there's partly letting the baby feed. But then I
Speaker 1: also started to use a breast pump in the hospital,
Speaker 1: they recommended that to start trying to get more. That
Speaker 1: encourages your milk to come in. And then I went
Speaker 1: from on about day three and a half from nothing
Speaker 1: coming and colostrum is golden and it comes out in droplets.
Speaker 1: Then slowly, slowly, little bit started to turn more white
Speaker 1: and then suddenly it just all came in and like
Speaker 1: suddenly I had milk. And I mean like very rapidly. No,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't say no.
Speaker 3: One told me.
Speaker 1: People did tell me, but I didn't appreciate. They were
Speaker 1: always like, you just work to your milk comes in.
Speaker 1: You're going to have the biggest boobs ever. When I
Speaker 1: was pregnant, I had much bigger boobs than I've ever
Speaker 1: had before, and that was really fun. So I thought
Speaker 1: it was going to be the same. I was just like, okay, cool,
Speaker 1: like one more cup size. They came in. I'm like
Speaker 1: a triple A cup normally like a crop top.
Speaker 3: They were a D cup.
Speaker 1: I literally went to sleep with no milk. I woke
Speaker 1: up de cup and like so many people have this
Speaker 1: photo on my phone on their phone because I sent
Speaker 1: it to.
Speaker 3: All my friends.
Speaker 1: They look fake, they are bolt on, so they just
Speaker 1: it was like wild and the novelty was so much fun,
Speaker 1: but at the same time it was kind of painful,
Speaker 1: like they were just so rock hard and in gorge.
Speaker 1: And there started the juggle, this delicate balance of getting
Speaker 1: just enough but not too much, and like you kind
Speaker 1: of have to fiddle with it a little bit to
Speaker 1: make sure that your baby's getting the right amount, but
Speaker 1: at the same time, the right amount and what they
Speaker 1: need each day changes as their stomach gets bigger. So
Speaker 1: it's totally wild process. That's a roller coaster, and that's
Speaker 1: why they say not to start, you know, messing with
Speaker 1: too many other things and techniques of expressing in bottles
Speaker 1: in that until eight weeks. I think it takes eight
Speaker 1: weeks to get into a routine. So we tried to
Speaker 1: do that. We tried to just I stopped I was
Speaker 1: expressing all the time. Once it came in, we didn't
Speaker 1: need to be so aggressive, and we just started feeding
Speaker 1: on demand. So we moved to just when he would
Speaker 1: cry and be ready for food, I would feed him
Speaker 1: and then I would stop. And they were engaged and
Speaker 1: had too much or too little for probably two weeks.
Speaker 1: And this I should have done this bit at the
Speaker 1: start because it's probably the thing I want to emphasize
Speaker 1: the most, which I don't know if I did in
Speaker 1: the birth story episode, But nobody prepared me for the
Speaker 1: fact that breastfeeding or getting used to it at the start,
Speaker 1: was more painful than childbirth because the pain was more intense,
Speaker 1: like close to your heart. It kind of feels so
Speaker 1: intimate because it's like right in your chest, but it's constant,
Speaker 1: like constant, and the childbirth pain, like the incision kind
Speaker 1: of like reduces in acute pain and starts to throb
Speaker 1: more dully, but having cracked bleeding nipples that you then
Speaker 1: have to put a child back on to feed, and
Speaker 1: when it was cluster feeding, which is when they're really
Speaker 1: having a gross burd and instead of every few hours,
Speaker 1: it becomes like every forty five minutes. I've kin'd of
Speaker 1: even explained the pain, like I've already forgotten how bad
Speaker 1: it was, But I understand why so many women give
Speaker 1: up really early, because it's just so incredibly painful. And
Speaker 1: I don't mean to scare anyone, but I think if
Speaker 1: I knew that, I wouldn't have come so close to
Speaker 1: just abandoning it so many times because I just was like,
Speaker 1: this is too painful. And it's because your nipples have
Speaker 1: never had such sensitive skin and they've never been abused
Speaker 1: so much. So I cried more in that first two
Speaker 1: weeks about the nipple pain than I did about anything else. Plus,
Speaker 1: your boobs are engorged, they're like throbbing, they hurt, it's
Speaker 1: just your body adjusting, and really, like I don't know
Speaker 1: how else to say it other than it's just a
Speaker 1: process you need to go through where the pain is extreme.
Speaker 3: It is so character building.
Speaker 1: It's distracted me all day every day, even in between,
Speaker 1: like you're just trying to manage the fact that it hurts,
Speaker 1: and you don't want the nipples to touch fabric, and
Speaker 1: there's so many things that you try and like they have,
Speaker 1: you know, kind of reduced the pain, but really you've
Speaker 1: just got to let them toughen up. And unfortunately, rather
Speaker 1: than forty eight hours or thirty six hours, it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, it's going to take a couple of weeks.
Speaker 1: And it was so hard for me to get my
Speaker 1: head around this. Some hilarious photos and we boiling my
Speaker 1: eyes out, but then suddenly one day you just turn
Speaker 1: a corner and now I can feed without feeling anything. Really,
Speaker 1: so you can get there. And I think the really
Speaker 1: really fine line is between hanging in there knowing that
Speaker 1: they will toughen up eventually, but then also not hanging
Speaker 1: on too long when it's just a case of you
Speaker 1: actually your milk is actually not coming in. And I
Speaker 1: think some women are so attached to they have to
Speaker 1: breastfeed because breast is best, and they really kill themselves
Speaker 1: and it affects their ability to enjoy that newborn bubble
Speaker 1: at the beginning because they go on longer than they
Speaker 1: need to because you know, you know that they're willing
Speaker 1: to put up with pain when it's not improving. And
Speaker 1: that's a really fine line, and I don't know where
Speaker 1: the line is. I think it's different for everyone. And
Speaker 1: the best advice I have is to consult a lactation
Speaker 1: or breastfeeding consultant because they know much better what's going
Speaker 1: on and can pick whether it's a normal pain that
Speaker 1: you need to get through or whether it's a pain
Speaker 1: that's saying this is not going to be productive for
Speaker 1: you or your baby. And we had we did a
Speaker 1: session before we started, and then during the first five
Speaker 1: to six days at the hospital, we continually had people
Speaker 1: checking the right latch and the right You know, you
Speaker 1: can't tell the volume of baby's getting from your boob,
Speaker 1: so you don't know if they're getting enough. You just
Speaker 1: have to check their nappies and see that they're sleeping
Speaker 1: and they're putting on weight. And it's a lot of guessing.
Speaker 1: But I would say by two weeks. The things that
Speaker 1: really helped in that two weeks were silverrettes. They're these
Speaker 1: little silver cups that just go over your nipples and
Speaker 1: there's something about pure silver that helps soothe them. They're
Speaker 1: like one of the best selling items at the MEMO
Speaker 1: And when I was Phoebe the founder told me that,
Speaker 1: and I was like, how are these little silver things? Like, honestly,
Speaker 1: I don't get it. There's nothing medicated. They are life saving.
Speaker 1: Like I kept wearing them for maybe six weeks just
Speaker 1: for the comfort of them.
Speaker 3: They helped enormously.
Speaker 1: Also, lanoline, that's like the oldest natural remedy in the book,
Speaker 1: the cream that helps so much. There's these like compress
Speaker 1: what are they like wipes that you can put on
Speaker 1: that you can apply there's different BOMs. People say it's
Speaker 1: really good to air them out when you can, like
Speaker 1: they get cracked and sometimes they even bleed, and for
Speaker 1: most women you just have to keep going and pushing
Speaker 1: through and that's quite normal. But yeah, there's a few
Speaker 1: things that helped along the way, and I would definitely
Speaker 1: commend silver It's they were so so helpful. I turned
Speaker 1: a corner at about two weeks and then it started
Speaker 1: to not help not hurt so badly. Some people use
Speaker 1: nipple guards. They're like a silicon thing that you can
Speaker 1: put over the nipple that is a shield between you
Speaker 1: and the intensity of the breastfeeding. For me, they actually
Speaker 1: made it worse because Teddy would just suck harder and
Speaker 1: the friction made it worse. But for some people they
Speaker 1: use those until their skin toughens up a bit and
Speaker 1: then transition out of them. I'll include links to all
Speaker 1: of those products. But for me, two weeks turned a
Speaker 1: corner started to hurt a lot less. The actual feeding
Speaker 1: was fine, he was getting the right volume, but it
Speaker 1: was just painful for me in a skin nipple skin
Speaker 1: acute way and in a breasting gorge throbbing way. And
Speaker 1: then it started to adjust and my body started to
Speaker 1: realize how much it did need to produce and kind
Speaker 1: of cool its jets on the pain and engagement. Now
Speaker 1: we're at a stage where I did try not to
Speaker 1: interfere with anything, because the smallest tweaks like your baby,
Speaker 1: will start feeding, their stomach will grow and they'll start
Speaker 1: feeding a lot more. And then suddenly you go back
Speaker 1: into a cycle of being engaged and too much is
Speaker 1: producing and like, get it's really delicate the balance, and
Speaker 1: you'll get it. Your body will get confused, and then
Speaker 1: it'll even out again, and then it'll happen again. And
Speaker 1: I tried not to interfere with that until about six weeks,
Speaker 1: and then we got to the point where this is
Speaker 1: where that mix comes in. So some people choose to
Speaker 1: mix feed where they do part formula part breast milk,
Speaker 1: and adjusting to that, again, you're reducing the amount of
Speaker 1: breast milk you're producing, so your body takes a little
Speaker 1: while to.
Speaker 3: Adjust to that.
Speaker 1: We aren't mixed feeding, but the bottles that you see.
Speaker 1: People have been asking about bottles. So the reason I
Speaker 1: could go out last night. The only way you can
Speaker 1: do that is if the person who's looking after the
Speaker 1: child can feed them, or if the baby is near
Speaker 1: you so that you can feed off them directly. If
Speaker 1: you're going to leave the baby with your partner or
Speaker 1: someone else, then you need there needs to be milk
Speaker 1: in a bottle, so that means you express. They call
Speaker 1: it EBM expressed breast milk, and that's when you need
Speaker 1: a pump or you can hand express, but a pump
Speaker 1: is usually the easiest way. And again I think people
Speaker 1: say wait until you start to do it, so you
Speaker 1: can establish what your normal pattern is before you start,
Speaker 1: because if you pump too often, then your body overproduces
Speaker 1: and then you can get mastiitis, which is the condition
Speaker 1: where your milk I think your ducks get blocked and
Speaker 1: it's incredibly painful. You get like fever like symptoms, and
Speaker 1: that's what you're trying to avoid. So I have we
Speaker 1: started pumping. What we've started doing is at the highest
Speaker 1: your hormone, your milk producing hormone is called prolactin. That's
Speaker 1: highest between two to four am. So I started after
Speaker 1: one of the feeds between two and four am, like
Speaker 1: off the back of a feed, so that my body
Speaker 1: just thinks it's part of that feed rather than a
Speaker 1: whole nother one. I would finish feeding Teddy and then
Speaker 1: get hooked up to the Spectra is the machine that
Speaker 1: we've got a lot of them, and express for about
Speaker 1: ten minutes and you're just capturing the milk in bottles
Speaker 1: and then i'd store it in milk storage bags and
Speaker 1: then the next night we'd put that in a bottle,
Speaker 1: and then Nick will give him a bottle at night.
Speaker 1: It's for the dream feed, which is the last feed
Speaker 1: before you go to sleep. So I will do the
Speaker 1: last feed at sort of nine to ten pm, then
Speaker 1: I go to sleep, and Nick does the next feed
Speaker 1: at about midnight, and then Teddy doesn't need to feed
Speaker 1: again until like two or three, so I get from
Speaker 1: nine till two or three of actual sleep.
Speaker 3: Without having to be woken up.
Speaker 1: And then I swap and like we swap and then
Speaker 1: I take him for the rest of the night. So
Speaker 1: that allows you to sort of share some of the
Speaker 1: load of the sleep deprivation. And that's why we started
Speaker 1: and it's worked incredibly well. And then this for actually
Speaker 1: leaving the house. This time we had enough milk from
Speaker 1: me expressing, and then we froze any of the extra
Speaker 1: so that he could give Teddy two bottles while I
Speaker 1: was out and I wouldn't need to be sort of
Speaker 1: tethered to the house. And that's been amazing to introduce
Speaker 1: bottles and expressing for that. But by about the I
Speaker 1: was out for four and a half hours. By the
Speaker 1: three hour mark, my boobs were telling me it was
Speaker 1: time to go home. They were so sore and so engaged,
Speaker 1: and I realized it is really a delicate balance. So
Speaker 1: that has been a really amazing addition for us. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he really didn't like it. I know you didn't like it, buddy.
Speaker 1: I missed you too. I missed you so much anyway,
Speaker 1: So that's been feeding for us. Another thing I would
Speaker 1: add is at the beginning, when you're getting used to
Speaker 1: the balance. Sometimes when you're like producing a lot of milk,
Speaker 1: and even when you're normal, sometimes there's just let down,
Speaker 1: which is when your breast will just start leaking milk.
Speaker 1: And that's not related to a feeding time, just in
Speaker 1: the middle of any time, they will just start leaking,
Speaker 1: and particularly when your body's first getting used to it.
Speaker 1: I was leaking so much. I did not expect to
Speaker 1: have too much milk, but I was leaking so much
Speaker 1: all the time that I would go through multiple bras
Speaker 1: a day. There are some amazing.
Speaker 3: Sort of like what do they call like cups.
Speaker 1: That you can put in your bra. Bear Mum makes some.
Speaker 1: Quite a few different brands make inserts that you put
Speaker 1: into your bra. A lot of the bras are also leakproof.
Speaker 1: Then there's disposable ones as well that you can stick
Speaker 1: into the inside of your bra that are kind of
Speaker 1: made of similar stuff to nappies. I would leak through
Speaker 1: all of them and my bras would be drenched and
Speaker 1: I'd literally wake up. I'd have like three bras of
Speaker 1: four bras overnight. There was just so much milk. I
Speaker 1: tried everything, and I just I just had to deal
Speaker 1: with until they settled down. That was how it was
Speaker 1: going to be. And that's why one of the reasons
Speaker 1: I couldn't leave the house, it's because I couldn't wear
Speaker 1: normal clothes in that time. There's these amazing silicon milk
Speaker 1: collectors that aren't pumps because I didn't want to use
Speaker 1: a pump. Would you recreate a feed and start messing
Speaker 1: with the system, but would just catch the letdown. So
Speaker 1: they're like these silicon little They're called Ladybugs from a
Speaker 1: brand called hucker struck at the memo, and you would
Speaker 1: put them inside your bra. It's said that you can't
Speaker 1: see from the outside. You can definitely see they're quite
Speaker 1: round and they look like you've put socks down your bra,
Speaker 1: but they kind of like suction onto you and they
Speaker 1: just catch the milk that's automatically coming out, and then
Speaker 1: you can transfer that and keep it for later. That
Speaker 1: was amazing so that I wasn't wasting all this leaking milk.
Speaker 1: So I'd have those in for most of the day
Speaker 1: in between feeds. I'll include the link to them because
Speaker 1: they were so so useful. And then when it comes
Speaker 1: to bottles, Teddy has recently become really gassy as his
Speaker 1: little digested, like their digestive system is brand new and
Speaker 1: they're figuring it out, and gas causes a lot of
Speaker 1: pain and they get collicking and they.
Speaker 3: Cry a lot.
Speaker 1: So for bottles as well, there's like anti colic bottles
Speaker 1: that control a lot of the air that they take
Speaker 1: in and they're sucking, so that's also something to look at.
Speaker 1: The speed that the nipple of the bottle releases milk out.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's too easy for them and they start to
Speaker 1: not want your nipple because.
Speaker 3: They have to work harder.
Speaker 1: So that's sort of another consideration. There's so much you're
Speaker 1: just learning constantly every day and tweaking and figuring out
Speaker 1: new things. But at the moment, that system's working well,
Speaker 1: really well for us. And I'll include a link to
Speaker 1: the expressing machine and the milk collectors, the milk bags,
Speaker 1: and then I haven't tried it yet, but there's also
Speaker 1: an amazing new business that freeze dries your frozen breast
Speaker 1: milk so that it becomes a powder, so that it's
Speaker 1: kind of like formula as convenient as formula in that
Speaker 1: you don't need a fridge to carry it around. We're
Speaker 1: looking at also doing that so that then if you travel,
Speaker 1: you can also take it with you. I think that's
Speaker 1: called nourishly. I'm not sure, but I'll obviously keep you
Speaker 1: guys posted on that. And I think for with feeding,
Speaker 1: that pretty much covers it. What else is there anything
Speaker 1: else that we've been using? There is so much milk
Speaker 1: and breast paraphernalia around our house it's absolutely wild. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I think I've covered that topic off, but again, just
Speaker 1: d meet any questions. Okay, last bit the home stretch.
Speaker 1: These questions are all about after we got home, and yeah, gosh,
Speaker 1: I can't believe it's been seven weeks so far. So
Speaker 1: the first question is did you feel overwhelmed when you
Speaker 1: got home? What was your biggest challenge in the first
Speaker 1: few days. Again, I think because we had that six
Speaker 1: days in the hospital, I didn't feel nearly as scared
Speaker 1: and just out of our depths as I thought we would.
Speaker 1: You're still nervous that you've got this tiny little human
Speaker 1: you've never had before and you've got to keep them alive, and.
Speaker 3: It's all new.
Speaker 1: But we had had a lot of freakouts in front
Speaker 1: of nurses and doctors who could reassure us, which means
Speaker 1: when they happened this second time, it was a lot
Speaker 1: easier to manage.
Speaker 3: So there was.
Speaker 1: Overwhelmed, but there was also just love and excitement and
Speaker 1: exhaustion as well. The biggest challenge in that first few days,
Speaker 1: honestly for me, was the nipple pain. Like I just
Speaker 1: still can't believe that that was the standout takeaway, But
Speaker 1: no one talks about it. I think not because anyone's
Speaker 1: trying to hide it, but they forget It's only been
Speaker 1: seven weeks and I've already forgotten how bad it was.
Speaker 1: I only remember it because of my diaries. There's so
Speaker 1: much emphasis on labor and childbirth and your vaginal or
Speaker 1: your cesarean recovery, but not on the nipple pain. And
Speaker 1: I honestly I cried so much just because of that.
Speaker 1: So that was probably the biggest challenge. And then on
Speaker 1: around day three, a lot of people have a big
Speaker 1: hormone dump, which is there's some crazy stat of the
Speaker 1: hormone dump is like the biggest swing in hormones that's
Speaker 1: like a hundred times a period or something like that.
Speaker 1: A lot of people have that on day three or four.
Speaker 1: I had it around date eight on nine when we
Speaker 1: were at home, and you're just so heightened, and like,
Speaker 1: logically my brain knew I wasn't upset, but you just
Speaker 1: couldn't control the emotion of happiness or sadness. So like
Speaker 1: I saw a golden retriever puppy, like literally just saw one.
Speaker 1: Nothing even happened, and I started crying. But that wasn't
Speaker 1: so much challenging because I was ready for it.
Speaker 3: It was more for Nick that he was just like,
Speaker 3: what is happening?
Speaker 1: So yeah, the nipple Paine was the biggest challenge in
Speaker 1: that first first few days. The first few weeks postpartum
Speaker 1: were very blurry. I genuinely, I think one of the
Speaker 1: first things I did when I started to come out
Speaker 1: of that haze. Everyone calls it a haze, and it
Speaker 1: truly is a haze. I think the first thing I
Speaker 1: did is apologize to every parent I knew for having
Speaker 1: thought I knew what they were going through, but you
Speaker 1: just can't understand.
Speaker 3: It until you go through it yourself.
Speaker 1: It is a haze like nothing else, even for someone
Speaker 1: who is not the first in our group to have children,
Speaker 1: and people I've had amazing role models around me who
Speaker 1: are close enough to have been very realistic about their experience.
Speaker 1: I still I felt very familiar with the concept of postpartum,
Speaker 1: and I still just had no idea how intense it
Speaker 1: truly is. It's not bad necessarily, it's just new. You're
Speaker 1: so tired, and the hormones do help you adjust to
Speaker 1: the sleep deprivation, but at the beginning, it's just so hard.
Speaker 1: Your body is going through so much. It's recovering you
Speaker 1: just like it's relentless is the word that comes to
Speaker 1: mind that you've never been on someone else's schedule, trying
Speaker 1: to keep them alive before and it's really blurry just
Speaker 1: trying to do that, Like it's hard to go to
Speaker 1: the toilet, it's hard to feed yourself, it's hard to
Speaker 1: get everything you know, it's hard to do life just
Speaker 1: trying to hold a baby, even logistically just holding them,
Speaker 1: making sure someone's holding them and changing them and on
Speaker 1: the feeding schedule.
Speaker 3: So it's very hazy.
Speaker 1: I don't remember much of it. Definitely didn't feel ready
Speaker 1: for visitors. I felt so bad that I had thought
Speaker 1: before that the best way as to have a love
Speaker 1: language is to visit people in the hospital. I was like, what,
Speaker 1: that's the worst thing. Give them space until they feel ready.
Speaker 1: It's just very blurry, like you hardly register what you're doing.
Speaker 1: You're just in survival mode, but kind of a beautiful
Speaker 1: survival mode that your sole focus is this tiny human
Speaker 1: getting to know them and getting to know your new self.
Speaker 1: And the next question was what are your top three
Speaker 1: tips for your parents in the first few weeks. I
Speaker 1: would say, just not have any expectations of yourself, like
Speaker 1: if you try and even think about the word routine
Speaker 1: or think about trying to return to who you were before,
Speaker 1: like I mentioned before, those kind of expectations will just
Speaker 1: make you disappointed rather than leaning into the fact that
Speaker 1: this is how chaotic it's supposed to be, and I'm
Speaker 1: just going to lean in with it, like whatever happens,
Speaker 1: I'm just going to go with this tiny human and
Speaker 1: I think seeing everything from his perspective as well. Like
Speaker 1: when a baby is crying over and over and over again,
Speaker 1: it's a lot easier to deal with when you know
Speaker 1: that they aren't doing it to annoy you, like they
Speaker 1: don't want to be crying either. It's they're trying to
Speaker 1: tell you something. They're brand new. Everything is new for them.
Speaker 1: They've never left the hospital building, they've never been you know,
Speaker 1: they've just come out of the womb. Like everything is
Speaker 1: new and foreign. So there's lots of crying, there's lots
Speaker 1: of adjusting, and you know, I'm still in the throes
Speaker 1: of the fourth trimester. Apparently from twelve weeks onwards, a
Speaker 1: lot of things really settle down and it becomes a
Speaker 1: lot easier. But now when he's really gassy and just
Speaker 1: crying incessantly, it's easy for me to think but that's
Speaker 1: because his digestion is brand new. He's never done this before,
Speaker 1: and he's just as uncomfortable as I am. So just
Speaker 1: my role is to help make him as comfortable as
Speaker 1: I can and help him get just be here for
Speaker 1: him to get through this. Like he is adjusting to
Speaker 1: being a human and he's doing such hard work. So yes,
Speaker 1: I'm doing hard work, but it's in support of him
Speaker 1: learning how to exist. So I think you're that kind
Speaker 1: of mindset that you bring to everything really helps. And
Speaker 1: the other thing is the other tip would be don't
Speaker 1: I think a lot of us are really stoic and
Speaker 1: you've never For many of us, you've never accepted help
Speaker 1: before or needed to accept help because it's all been
Speaker 1: just for yourself. It is so consuming that it's the
Speaker 1: first time I've just been like, sure, just drop some
Speaker 1: food around, like I would. You normally feel so guilty
Speaker 1: about making someone else cook for me, but I'm like
Speaker 1: anything I can get if someone is willing to give
Speaker 1: me some home cooked food, because I'm not getting it otherwise.
Speaker 3: Just be willing to.
Speaker 1: Accept some help because it's a joy to do it
Speaker 1: for other people. So if they're willing to offer, Like really,
Speaker 1: there's a beautiful parent community and family community who know
Speaker 1: how hard it was, and if they're willing to reach
Speaker 1: out and help you and pay it forward a little bit,
Speaker 1: then don't feel bad accepting help or leaning on others
Speaker 1: because really it is a season where you really need
Speaker 1: that and that can help as much as possible, and
Speaker 1: be kind to you, especially if it's your first time,
Speaker 1: like no one knows what they're doing. Don't worry if
Speaker 1: you're so anxiety riddled.
Speaker 3: It's normal. It's normal to.
Speaker 1: Freak out every second, Like I checked Teddy so much
Speaker 1: because I'm like, is he still breathing? And that's so normal.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I think they'd be my top tips. Most
Speaker 1: difficult part of recovery generally was the next question. Again,
Speaker 1: it's weird, I would say getting used to breastfeeding. I
Speaker 1: just still can't believe what a hurdle that was. And
Speaker 1: I think as it lasted so long and there there
Speaker 1: was about seven days where it didn't feel like it
Speaker 1: was getting better each day, so you don't even feel
Speaker 1: like you're making progress, and that was really hard for
Speaker 1: someone who's a type and needs to feel like they're
Speaker 1: improving bit by bit. That honestly has been the hardest part.
Speaker 1: A very specific question, was it worth having a snoop
Speaker 1: and a cocuona baby definitely, so they play very different roles.
Speaker 1: The snow is the bacinet that is rather than just
Speaker 1: normal basinet that you put a baby in to sleep
Speaker 1: usually at night. Well actually that's like twenty hours a
Speaker 1: day at the start, so most of the time, the
Speaker 1: snow is the one that kind of self soothes them.
Speaker 1: It rocks the baby by itself, and everyone has different
Speaker 1: opinions on them. Some people it's literally a godsend. It
Speaker 1: helps their baby sleep, you know, x percent more than before.
Speaker 1: Some babies hate it and they don't even use the
Speaker 1: swinging function. It's pretty divisive. We have one and we've
Speaker 1: loved it. It's amazing. There's like a baseline rocking and
Speaker 1: that helps him fall asleep, and then if he cries,
Speaker 1: it will like increase. And there's been a lot of
Speaker 1: occasions where we would have had to go in ourselves,
Speaker 1: but the snow does the first bit and then sometimes
Speaker 1: there's times where it's not enough. We found it really wonderful.
Speaker 1: The cocuna baby is like a lounger, which is just
Speaker 1: a kind of big pillow looking thing that has back
Speaker 1: support and then a strap to strap them in. But
Speaker 1: it's portable, so that's more for during the day when
Speaker 1: you know I'm downstairs doing the washing or something or
Speaker 1: cooking and you can't bring this new with you, but
Speaker 1: you want the baby to be able to sleep and
Speaker 1: be near you so you can watch them, and it's
Speaker 1: portable so you can take it around the house. So
Speaker 1: they've said very different functions and we've loved having both,
Speaker 1: so definitely worth both. They've had different roles, and I
Speaker 1: will eventually get around to doing a full list of
Speaker 1: all the things that have really helped. I've kind of
Speaker 1: covered some of them, but there's a full list of
Speaker 1: other items, like the carrier we've used that we found amazing,
Speaker 1: the rocker before having the baby, and even each week
Speaker 1: I discover why a new item that we have that
Speaker 1: I haven't touched yet is so important and life changing.
Speaker 1: You kind of grow into each one. There's so many
Speaker 1: things that have helped us enormously. So I'll make a
Speaker 1: list as well, but those two will put the links in.
Speaker 1: They're all available from the memo. Next question, how is
Speaker 1: his sleep wild? It changes so much every week, Like
Speaker 1: the first twelve weeks, I think every week is just
Speaker 1: so different.
Speaker 3: Every day is different.
Speaker 1: The growth is so rapid you just get used to
Speaker 1: something and then a couple of days later it changes.
Speaker 1: And that's a tip for the first little while is
Speaker 1: don't worry if you feel like you've got it and
Speaker 1: then you don't. You're not supposed to. Like I think,
Speaker 1: it's just meant to be a total clusterfuck shit storm
Speaker 1: for this first little bit. So his sleep has gone
Speaker 1: from at the start, they're pretty nocturnal. They don't have
Speaker 1: a circadian rhythm, they don't know what's day and night,
Speaker 1: so they're up and down.
Speaker 3: He actually slept a.
Speaker 1: Lot during the day, but then was awake all night
Speaker 1: at the beginning. And then the tip we got was
Speaker 1: to do his day naps with the blinds open. Your
Speaker 1: instinct would be to hide light from him, but it
Speaker 1: was to kind of get him used to the difference
Speaker 1: between day and night. And eventually, like he turned a
Speaker 1: corner maybe two weeks ago, so about five weeks where
Speaker 1: he suddenly just started sleeping overnight and then being awake
Speaker 1: during the day. So that's been a really wonderful change.
Speaker 1: He started not sleeping through the night, but having like big,
Speaker 1: bigger gaps of longer sleeps overnight between feeds, so like
Speaker 1: three hours at a time. He did a five and
Speaker 1: a half hour the other night, which was out of
Speaker 1: this world. It was so weird. But then during the
Speaker 1: day he might only have like hour long breaks between
Speaker 1: feeding and not nap in between all of them.
Speaker 3: So it's really up and.
Speaker 1: Down, and you actually cope a lot better than I
Speaker 1: expected because the hormones just kind of help you, and
Speaker 1: the adrenaline I hear that starts to wear off. So
Speaker 1: at the moment I'm in survival mode. He's a pretty
Speaker 1: good baby in that one half of the day or
Speaker 1: the other will be bigger gaps, and then the rest
Speaker 1: of the day you're up a lot, but you do
Speaker 1: get big chunks here and there, and I'm learning to
Speaker 1: survive on a lot less. So yeah, up and down.
Speaker 1: And then the last couple of questions about taking time
Speaker 1: off and the identity question, so I took This was
Speaker 1: a really hard one for me because obviously I used
Speaker 1: to be a lawyer and I would have had a
Speaker 1: really structured, paid MATT leave and a lot of security
Speaker 1: around that. I thought that now would be the first
Speaker 1: time I really really missed that corporate structure and security. Interestingly,
Speaker 1: I actually haven't in such a fortunate position that I
Speaker 1: work for myself and don't have official MATT leave, but
Speaker 1: was able to kind of create it myself, but in
Speaker 1: a much more flexible way. So I officially took six
Speaker 1: weeks like blanket six weeks off, which to some people
Speaker 1: sounds incredibly short. I haven't really taken six days off
Speaker 1: in a row officially in a long time, so it
Speaker 1: was felt really really long when I first took it,
Speaker 1: but during it, suddenly it felt very short when I
Speaker 1: got to the end of it. But that was six
Speaker 1: weeks of nothing like, no posting, not even small jobs.
Speaker 1: I just totally allowed myself to be in the bubble,
Speaker 1: and it was I thought I would grieve the loss
Speaker 1: of productivity. I thought I would grieve the loss of schedule,
Speaker 1: and I'd worry about feeling relevant and keeping my career momentum.
Speaker 1: But I was so present in the mum bubble that
Speaker 1: it just felt like I blinked and it was gone.
Speaker 1: But it allowed me to not have deadline each day
Speaker 1: and do not have expectations on any particular time. I
Speaker 1: just could let every minute be what it was. Didn't
Speaker 1: matter if it was day or night, didn't matter if
Speaker 1: I slept or I didn't. There was no expectation, and
Speaker 1: it meant that there was. I was never resentful, I
Speaker 1: was never pressured. I could just lean into being there
Speaker 1: for Teddy for whatever he needed minute to minute. And
Speaker 1: I'm so so glad that I did that. And I'd
Speaker 1: made sure I worked a lot, as you guys probably remember,
Speaker 1: in the last couple of trimeths in the last trimester
Speaker 1: to save so that I could do that. So I
Speaker 1: kind of counterbalanced it as much as I could and
Speaker 1: made the most of before he arrived. Then after the
Speaker 1: six weeks it's now been seven weeks, I kind.
Speaker 3: Of went back to work.
Speaker 1: But I have the great privilege of having a very
Speaker 1: flexible working life where I can kind of do a
Speaker 1: bit of filming, like one or two times a week,
Speaker 1: and then ramp up when I would need to, and
Speaker 1: then ramp down if it's proving too much. So I'm
Speaker 1: very lucky to be able to do that with my
Speaker 1: career and have an amazing support team at the TV show.
Speaker 1: My first filming back, they brought the whole team to
Speaker 1: our house and shot at our house so that we
Speaker 1: could not have to leave him, and that was I'm
Speaker 1: just dipping my toe in and doing it bit by
Speaker 1: bit and allowing myself to ease into it, and that's
Speaker 1: I'm very grateful to be able to do that, and
Speaker 1: mental health wise, that's been amazing. It's also meant that
Speaker 1: I think if you take matt leave, some people do.
Speaker 1: The next question was about grieving your work identity versus being,
Speaker 1: you know, like a mum, and that that's really divisive
Speaker 1: for some people. I've had friends who took say twelve months,
Speaker 1: and then that was all or nothing, that was twelve
Speaker 1: months of no working identity, and then they've kind of
Speaker 1: lost touch of that person and then found it really
Speaker 1: hard to get her back again and then grieve the
Speaker 1: loss of each of those identities. And I personally find
Speaker 1: that the balance of being able to keep a toe
Speaker 1: dipped in one and still focus on the other. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's very very early days. I feel like I'll have
Speaker 1: to keep you updated on this front. But I haven't
Speaker 1: really grieved the loss of my work identity yet. But
Speaker 1: I also think that part of that for me is
Speaker 1: no dally. I think I'm nearly at the end of
Speaker 1: Teddy being so patient with this episode. But yeah, I
Speaker 1: think I haven't really a grieved it because I also
Speaker 1: was so ready to be a mom, and it's been
Speaker 1: embracing the start of a new chapter in a new season.
Speaker 1: And one thing I have really tried to I've noticed
Speaker 1: in the last week, and some of you will have
Speaker 1: noticed it in the way that I've been posting about
Speaker 1: how long I've delayed this episode. I noticed that since
Speaker 1: I did start introducing some work things again, that suddenly
Speaker 1: I'd be like, oh God, Teddy's not letting me record
Speaker 1: this episode, Like I just can't get through it. I've
Speaker 1: tried sixteen times. I'd catch myself saying.
Speaker 3: That to Nick, Hey, Budy. But then I'd.
Speaker 1: Realize I created that deadline, and last week I didn't
Speaker 1: have that deadline. I'd allowed myself to fully concentrate on him,
Speaker 1: and it's yeah, he has no concept of the fact
Speaker 1: that I have chosen to create a deadline for a
Speaker 1: podcast for myself, and that created pressure and frustration that
Speaker 1: I had self created all of that by just introducing
Speaker 1: a new obligation for myself and I kind of have
Speaker 1: control over those decisions. And I don't want to do that.
Speaker 1: I don't want to start loading all this stuff up
Speaker 1: and then be resentful that he's taking up my time
Speaker 1: when really I'm the one who put things in the
Speaker 1: time that previously i'd been giving one hundred and ten
Speaker 1: percent to him. So I really want to still keep
Speaker 1: this newborn bubble going as long as I can, but
Speaker 1: allow my work identity to gently, gently come back in
Speaker 1: but without starting to you know, do.
Speaker 3: There we go?
Speaker 1: I mean, he's really saying, Okay, I've given you balance.
Speaker 1: You've had a full hour and twenty and it's actually
Speaker 1: taken me so many more hours with breaks to do this.
Speaker 3: But yeah, it is a real juggle.
Speaker 1: And you guys know that I did the first shoot
Speaker 1: back very early and much earlier than I would have otherwise,
Speaker 1: for the sake of a beautiful Mother's Day cover. That
Speaker 1: was a full circle moment for Stellar Magazine, who had
Speaker 1: originally shared our pregnancy love story, and that was wild.
Speaker 1: But I have completely lost my train of thought. But
Speaker 1: I didn't even know what I was going to say there,
Speaker 1: but something about oh.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was the start of the mum juggle.
Speaker 1: I was feeding on set and learning how to work
Speaker 1: part of one identity around the other. And I don't
Speaker 1: think it has to be all or nothing. And I
Speaker 1: think the balance will look different at different times, but
Speaker 1: a shorter answer is I am easing in. I haven't
Speaker 1: felt I have had to grieve the loss of one
Speaker 1: to gain another. It's definitely already star to feel hard,
Speaker 1: but it's also worth it, and I'm sure I will
Speaker 1: continue to navigate it. There is something wonderful coming on
Speaker 1: the point of Juggle from someone else in the network
Speaker 1: that I can share very soon and have helped or
Speaker 1: I have had a sneak peek into, but that will
Speaker 1: come soon. And then the very last question that we
Speaker 1: have time for is how have you made time.
Speaker 3: For you as a couple.
Speaker 1: I will have to circle back on this one because
Speaker 1: I must say we haven't had a lot of time.
Speaker 1: It's really interesting. Immediately everything is about Teddy and so
Speaker 1: we are often dividing and conquering, which means that there
Speaker 1: is not a lot of time together. That's a really
Speaker 1: new dynamic. But we are so fortunate too. Both work
Speaker 1: from home, so we've both been really present together, even
Speaker 1: if not focused on each other as a couple. We've
Speaker 1: both been at home and sharing in the first smiles
Speaker 1: and the first laughs, and that's meant so so much.
Speaker 1: I know not every couple has the flexibility of work
Speaker 1: to be able to do that. And we're still probably
Speaker 1: a bit early on to have been making time for
Speaker 1: us separately as a couple and date nights and stuff,
Speaker 1: but the fact that we work from home means that
Speaker 1: at least we're getting a lot of contact time together.
Speaker 1: And because we are, yeah, have been at home and
Speaker 1: have been really embracing the bubble and not you know,
Speaker 1: going out too much. We've had lots of beautiful nights
Speaker 1: at home as a trio really like watching movies. We've
Speaker 1: watched so many movies and had a lot of Uber eats,
Speaker 1: takeaway nights and just cuddle on the couch and had
Speaker 1: little bathtime routines that we've done together and getting to
Speaker 1: know the person that we made together.
Speaker 3: That is time as a couple and that's just beautiful.
Speaker 1: But I'm sure the whole date night thing will start
Speaker 1: to become more prominent when we come out of the trenches.
Speaker 1: But I will keep you guys updated on that. And
Speaker 1: for now, I think I do need to turn my
Speaker 1: attention back to our little man.
Speaker 3: He's just the.
Speaker 1: Most special little boy. I feel so so lucky to
Speaker 1: be his mum. I can't believe that we had our
Speaker 1: first Mother's Day. It was absolutely beautiful. Interestingly, no questions
Speaker 1: came up about the adoption and having him as my
Speaker 1: first blood relative and how that's all been, so maybe
Speaker 1: I'll cover that in another episode. But I know Darling,
Speaker 1: Ange and I will be back for another Years of
Speaker 1: Our Lives episode shortly. Again, can't promise it will come
Speaker 1: before twenty twenty five, but if you do want to
Speaker 1: ask any other questions, including about Angre and the role
Speaker 1: her role as Auntie, then yeah, just send us a
Speaker 1: DM as usual and we will get back to you
Speaker 1: at some point in the future. I won't even say
Speaker 1: near future because I have no idea. But thank you
Speaker 1: guys so much for being along on the journey. I
Speaker 1: just am so grateful for this wonderful yighborhood. It's been
Speaker 1: beautiful evolving with all of you into a new chapter,
Speaker 1: and I appreciate those who have stuck around so so much.
Speaker 1: Your love and support has meant the world. I love
Speaker 1: being a mom so much, and I love that you
Speaker 1: guys have embraced it too. I hope you were all
Speaker 1: having a wonderful week and are seizing your yay and again,
Speaker 1: thank you for being patient while it's been a little
Speaker 1: pause in planning for events and products and all that
Speaker 1: stuff has taken a little bit of a back seat
Speaker 1: for a little while. But I'm so glad we actually
Speaker 1: did this episode. I can't believe I actually made it
Speaker 1: all the way through, and thank you for sticking with
Speaker 1: the monologue. I will see you guys some point soon,
Speaker 1: and I also hope that it's made sense. I kind
Speaker 1: of feel like I'm already having that weird vulnerability hangover
Speaker 1: where I'm like, oh my god, that was such a
Speaker 1: rubbish I just want to delete it all and start again,
Speaker 1: but that'll make eighteen times of recording it, so I'm
Speaker 1: just going to trust it.
Speaker 3: There's some parts of this that make sense and that
Speaker 3: are useful.
Speaker 1: But again, apologies for anything I've said or messed up
Speaker 1: in the haze and my brain just being all over
Speaker 1: the place. I hope it was interesting in some way
Speaker 1: for those of you who are stuck with it.
Speaker 3: Till the end.
Speaker 1: Yeah, anyway, we'll be back at some point. You