Katie Newcombe | Mother, Sleep deprviation, postpartum sex, postpartum depression, parenting in a digital age

In today's episode I am chatting with Katie about the last 19 months with baby Elliot. We focus on sleep deprivation today and navigating the realities and normality of a baby who continues to wake at night well into the 2nd year of life and beyond. We chat about the socially isolating aspects of this, the feeling of dashed hopes that tonight might be better, the clock watching at night, comparisons and the incredible resilience of anyone in this position. we chat about how quick people are to offer unsolicited advice postpartum when all you really need is someone to listen, acknowledge and cuddle you, and how rarely that happens. How the whole world of parenting in this digital age has become about fixing things and viewing babies as a problem with a hack to solve it. We stalk about balancing FOMO and staying connected as mums with also trying to stay off our phones infront of our babies. Katie struggled with postpartum depression but it is largely looking back on her postpartum experience that Katie has been able to acknowledge this, as at the time she wasn't aware that what she was experiencing felt anymore hard than the next person. We talk about how little time and space there is to give to your partner in postpartum and the subsequent pressure that then puts on special date nights and postpartum intimacy and sex. Katie found that just acknowledging the lack of everything and all the changes with her partner was incredibly liberating in and of itself. We talk about the hugely different sexual experience between a couple postpartum due to all the hormonal, physical, and emotional changes that can affect intimacy for the birthing woman compared to the somewhat less changed hormonal & physical landscape of the partner. Katie shares so much so openly and I am so grateful to her for chatting about some of these harder topics so I really hope you get a lot from this conversation and resonate with what has been one of my favourite chats since we launched the podcast. To find out more about Katie please join her mailing list at https://view.flodesk.com/pages/6258214a5a98458d0c472d17?fbclid=PAAaYyx_fOSsQD44x9NoePh8cNz4P7FDt97lpQzg-P3RZo9H4TA0MvOMXpGiw