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