Pink Flamingo Podcast

Today on the podcast I am talking to Lucie, mother of two girls, Imani, 11 and Bibi, 4 & a cavalier king charles spaniel Cherry Pie who is 9 months old . Lucie is a Medical herbalist living in Glasgow and has specialised more recently in postpartum care and pediatric medicine. We talk about how non-negotiable and essential self care is in motherhood but how this doesn't happen overnight. 11 years into motherhood Lucie says it's still a work in progress for her but she has learnt that the more you look after yourself and tend to yourself, the better everything else will be. She also shares how important being honest with yourself is, acknowledging when life is too much or too stressful, and seeing not as a failure but as a boundary. We talk about the power of venting too and how hard it is too implement things for yourself, as motherhood is so much about survival mode. Lucie shares how she believes the postpartum is a time to be quiet and calm and protected as it such a vulnerable time and you are so open energetically but people don't value that or acknowledge it to be real. We also touch on the link between postpartum care and the menopause and Lucie shares her own postpartum expereiences which were both an experience of two halves, highlighting the juxtaposition of emotions and feelings we see so often in parenthood. We talk about how important planning for your postpartum is and thinking less about what the baby will need and more about what you will need. Lucie thinks this change in narrative is really needed and wonders how the postpartum would be a very different thing if people put the money they spend on prams on their postpartum care instead. Lucie shares all the wonderful ways herbs can support a family in the postpartum. For new mums, they can support breastfeeding, hormonral support, mastitis, infections, wound care, perinneal healing and c-section recovery. Herbs are also extremely nourishing and regulating for the nervous sytem, as well as benefiting sleep, mental health and so much more. Lucie talks about supporting partners with herbs too and babie as true holistic postpartum care, cares for everyone in that household. Lucie shares with us a wealth of knowledge about the postpartum , both from her personal and professional experience and brings to the podcast how important and supportive herbal medicine can be in the postpartum. If you would like to hear more about Lucie's work please visit https://www.luciebradley.co.uk/  or follow her on instagram @lbradleymedicalherbalist 

In today's episode I am joined by my partner Harry as we share some of the highs and lows of our own postpartum journey. 🦩Our first year of parenthood revolved largely around my boobs...and not in a good way. We share a lot about my very painful breastfeeding journey and the endless quest to make it work including lactation consultants, health visitors, midwives, NHS feeding specialists, nipple shields, cranial osteopaths and tongue tie specialists, breast feeding from one breast & combi feeding with formula....it wasnt until about 9 months that I started to feel the pain subside after a very late diagnosis of Raynaud's in the nipples and the prescription drug nifedipine. Sadly despite a solution that finally worked, our daughter Wren decided that enough was enough and self weaned a few months later at 14 months. Something I didn't feel nearly ready for, leaving me feeling a huge sense of rejection and very depressed with the huge hormonal shifts that occur when weaning happens. 🦩While those months were traumatic and awful for me , Harry also shares the emotional struggles of watching me suffer for him and not being able to help with that actual load of breastfeeding leaving him feel guilty & useless. 🦩Harry's pink started to reemerged when my pain started to subside around 9 months. Not only because he started to enjoy a life outside of our breastfeeding struggle without harbouring some form of guilt and also felt more like an equal co-parent in our life. 🦩We also share some of the relationship changes we have seen during our postpartum. How both of our love languages couldnt be met, leaving both of us struggling to show and receive love. We reflect on how little love I felt I had to give whilst giving so much of myself to wren and Harry shares how hard it was to cope with me as I went through this dark period of pain and exhaustion as a new mother and how short and irritable I became towards him. Harry absorbed a lot of our pain as a family and looking back thinks he could have set more boundaries to protect himself and his energy and also shared more of these struggles at the time to help him manage. 🦩We talk about the importance of letting your partner learn how to parent and connect with the child on their own...without you watching over their shoulder or correcting or critiquing the way they do it. This ultimately allows the primary care giver true time off without needing to write partners endless lists and pack all the bags before they go. In our experience it is also a much more rewarding experience for a dad to get things wrong and learn their own way of parenting.. 🦩Harry choose to work a 4 day week after his paternity leave which has enabled him to bond with wren at another level and allowed him to be seen by wren as a primary care giver too and not just secondary to me all the time. Harry shares a little about the difficulty forging friendships with other dads. How there are less opportunities.. not only as time is precious outside of work but also you do just see less dads around with their kids to bond with in the first place. There is definitely a need for more community dad-centric events with their children to faciliate building a better support network for dads. 🦩Finally we chat about being the first of our friendship groups to have a child and the positive and negatives we have found in this. I have always wanted this space to share both men and women's voices and so I hope you enjoy hearing some of Harry's words and reflections and our very public therapy session together. 

In todays episode i chat with Tortie, my own doula and mother to Inigo, 14, Phoebe,11 and Zelda who is nearly 8 months old. Tortie speaks to having a baby whilst mothering adolescents and while she felt nervous about this age gap during her pregnancy, in has turned out to be the biggest blessing and something Tortie feels so grateful for. Emotionally it provided Tortie the time to reflect and learn from her previous experiences and provide a welcome sense of perspective and practically, the children were able to offer help, be independent and bring a grateful sense of energy, playfullnes and perspective to mothering. Perhaps most poignantly though is the gift it has given her older children. Her daughter choose to be present at her birth and her son joined shortly after and witnessed her rebirth as a mother herself. Both of them seeing her body and mind at its most fragile, raw and vulnerable. Tortie is so grateful that her children have seen and felt that and as they continue to witness her mother she feels it is starting to heal some of the grievances she felt around the decisions she made the first time around. The arrival of Zelda has provided an anchor to her family, a way to keep her children in their childhood and to help soften their more tricky adolescent years. Tortie lost her mother aged 14 and mothering her children without her mother around has been a deep sadness for her. Tortie speaks to us about motherless mothering and how the strong sense of needing to be mothered in this vulnerable time of the postpartum lead to her needing to build her own mothering nest and a create a family from friends to support her in the postpartum. This time, much more so than the others she had no fear and total confidence in asking for help and she reflected on the past 11 years of mothering and all the conversations with hundreds of women who she had been doula for over the past 13 years and really asked herself what she needed to feel supported and her amazing friends did just that- holding her a mother blessing, providing 6 weeks of constant meals for her and her family and gathering together a little money pot to provide selfcare for Tortie like reflexology and massage which were a really wonderful way to honour her body. She feels that building a supportive family around you is relevant whether you are parenting without parents or not and something we can all benefit from. Tortie's reflections on mothering her three children in the absence of her own mother are extremely moving and her most recent postpartum experience of mothering a baby and two adolescent children is filled with so much unexpected joyful learnings. If you would like to find out more about Tortie and her offerings as a Doula please visit  https://www.bristolbirthsupport.co.uk/meet-our-doulas or follow her on instagram @tortiedoula

Today I speak to Polly, mother of Eben who is nine months old, a yoga facilitator and facial therapist. Polly moved from living on a house boat in London to the Gower in Wales just before Eben was born. Polly loved being pregnant, she felt firmly in her power and was planning a homebirth. Sadly homebirthing wasnt an option at the time of her birth and she got trapped in the cascade of intervention in hospital and after a long labour ended up with an unplanned cesarean two days later. She experienced the scariest night of her life on the postnatal ward, alone, unable to move post Cesarean or tend to her baby, full of post operative drugs, in a foreign hospital environment, pressing a bell for help and no help coming and hallucinating from severe sleep deprivation. Polly was left feeling broken after her birth, physucally, emotionally and mentally and so totally differnt to the polly before her labour started. We chat about her physical and mental health postpartum and how she really struggled being alone, waking from occasional pockets of rest and naps, disorientated and confused. Polly suffered from horrible night sweats, and a very sore injured coccyx for the first few months post birth and wondered how much one body can take! She felt scared being out in public early on, feeling very overwhelmed, too busy, too loud, too vulnerable and just too much. We chat about the dreaded "what ifs" when self reflecting and processing your birth and how Polly feels some saddness and grief for that newborn time as she really didnt enjoy the early months. We chat about the anxieties surrounding returning to work around the nine month mark postpartum and the dreaded loaded question of "are you going back to work?" if you haven't figured that out yet or decided not to. We also cover the difficulties staying in touch with friends postpartum and the impossibility of translating motherhood on whatsapp. I am so grateful to Polly for sharing her story, so much of which deeply resonated with my own story and I think it is an conversation you will find really honest, quite shocking and really moving. To find out more about Pollys work please visit https://www.pollymossman.com/ or follow her on instagram @pollymoss_ 

In today's episode I am talking to Emma about her postnatal journey with her son Oska who is 16 months old. Emma is single mother, a Medical Herbalist and currently living out in Bali. Emma had a homebirth with her Doula and best friend present and was looked after by friends and family in the first few weeks by dropping off lots of food to nourish her. She was physically forced to rest as she experienced a small prolapse and had heavy bleeding. As someone who normally finds it hard to stop, this enforced rest was really useful for her to fully embrace and surrender to the mess and chaos of motherhood and let people help her. Despite feeling like she was naturally the mothering type, mothering still felt pretty shocking to her system and in the early days she really wasn't sure what to do!! Emma used herbs in her postpartum to support her placental delivery, her healing and the start of her breastfeeding journey which she shares for us alongisde how she now uses herbs with Oska too. We discuss the hardest bits for Emma which have been sleep and the lack of a companion to share the hard moments with as a single parent. She had to stop going to mums groups as everyone around her seemed to be finding it easy and sleeping and she felt that noone could relate. She shares her sleepless night survival guide including the dulcet tones of Matthew McConaughey and how important it is to ask for help. Emma spent a period of time with Oska's dad in Sicily and was very looked after by his family but she shares with us some of the coparenting challenges that she faced resulting in them going their separate ways and Emma moving to Bali. It was really interesting to hear about life raising a child in Bali with thier love of children, play, the access to afordable childcare and cross generational living alongside grandparents, aunties and uncles. This family orientated rather than peer orientated living was very supportive and community driven and gave me a real sense of 'The village'. Emma speaks candidly about her motherhood experience and shares a real insight into postpartum as a single parent and I am so grateful she came on the podcast. To learn more about Emma's work as a medical herbalist and her membership space please visit https://www.artahealing.com/ or follow her on instagram at @arta_healing

In today's episode I am joined by Laura, mother of Forrest who is 3.5 and Tanner who is 1. I just want to add a *TRIGGER WARNING* before i introduce her, as Laura shares a traumatic birth story during this episode around 21 minutes in. Laura shares her radically different births and postpartums first and second time around. Her first birth during covid was very traumatic and left her incredibly crushed, depleted and stressed which negatively affected her start to breastfeeding and left her too low to implement any boundaries to protect herself and her space. After a trip to hospital a week later, it gave her the kick she needed to priortise herself and her breastfeeding journey which she did by staying in bed all of the second week with her baby and it was the best week ever, allowing her to bond and breastfeed her baby.  Second time around she had a much calmer pregnancy and despite planning for a VBAC, after induction pressure she opted for a elective ceasaren which was an incredibly calm, slow, respectful and honoured birth which in Laura's words "felt like a spa day" and this mirrored her postpartum with Tanner which felt easeful from the very first breastfeed. Laura was very strict with her boundaries second time around, not leaving her bed or having any guests for a week. She also used The Food Doula to ensure she and her family were really well nourished and all of this a year on, has resulted in a very content and calm baby.  Laura and I discuss sleep, her feelings around sleep training, how much kinder to herself and more intuitive and less influenced she has been second time around. We talk about attachment led parenting, the lack of support past the newborn phase and how everyone just assumes you have everyhitng together, we talk about breastfeeding and how it is the proudest things Laura has ever done. We chat about the dangers of mothers covering up how hard they find things and how that really alienates other mums and finally we cover the concept of finding your pink a lot in this episode and the importance of finding your pink within motherhood, in a world that includes them rather than searching for your pink outside of it. Laura shares so much juicy insight and wisdom on mothering and i cant wait to hear what she has to say. To find out more about Laura please follow her journey on instagram @laurawildlove

In todays episode I had the joy of speaking with Catrin @mama_lleud, mother of 5 children and many animals all living nestled between the mountains and the sea in Eryri, North Wales. Catrin has raised her children at home, opting to home educate and somehow manages to also have been a birth worker since 2017 and now specialising in postpartum support and providing nutritious food boxes to local women in her community. I learnt so much from this conversation with Catrin as she shares the starkly different accounts of her first birth as a single young mum at 19 with a practically non existent postpartum and lacking if any advice on postpartum boundaries or breastfeeding support. Comparing that to her subsequent births when she had the care and unwavering support of her husband and greater access to the internet where she learnt about doulas, and the home birth community, and postpartum care and different parenting styles ...each experience has been so different through as every child is so different and her most recent birth 9 months ago was a huge learning for Catrin when her baby was born quite poorly and needed a few weeks in intensive care hours away from their home which she found to be a very humbling experience of letting go of how things should or could have been and surrendering to the situation which is a lesson she has learnt again and again as a mother.  Catrin shares her experience of home educating her children up until very recently when her older girls have just started at a small local school. So much of this conversation i found fascinating and so insightful but with the postpartum in mind it was both the support of the home educating community that have provided such an important village for her but also the way she spoke about navigating the postpartum with other kids at home all the time and how important that was to her for them to see her in the postnatal period, see their dad care for her and how she was attending to her own needs. This education on how to mother and father, a lived expereince of the postpartum, has stuck with me since this conversation and i feel life changing for her children. As you will hear there is a little bit of backround noise in this episode as Catrin was joined by her baby who was being looked after by her seven year old in the same room. I hope you enjoy all the extra giggles and squeaks so you can hear from Catrin authentically in her home surrounded by her children.  To learn more about Catrins work as a doula please visit  https://mamalleuad.wixsite.com/doula or follow her on instagram @mama_lleuad 

In todays episode I had the honour of chatting with my best friend Deya about the last 6 months of postpartum life with her son, my godson, Woody. Deya had a restful start to motherhood which she credits to her Doula who encouraged her to spend time thinking and preparing for postpartum  when she was still pregnant and also reading the book The First Forty Days. As a very outdoorsy active person it was a real change of pace, but she managed to not leave her house for over a week and was fed by friends and family for about 3 weeks which enabled their new family of 3 to spend as much time as possible getting to know each other. Breastfeeding was a major feature of the first few months for Deya. Never did she think she would think so much about her boobs. It was very painful for many months. She sought help from her community and professionals but it wasn't until she got some much needed sun, salt and sea on holiday that a longstanding fissure and raynauds in her nipples dissapeared which was a real turning point in her breastfeeding journey. Deya recalls the raw emotions of dreading a feed, panic that it will never improve and the exhaustion of trying to fix it. She really felt the duality of the early months - intense joy and intense pain living side by side and feels sad that so much of her brain was taken up by the pain but that it taught her intense patience and huge resilience and she continues to breastfeed Woody today. We talked about her surrending to slowing down more recently and how it was easy to fill her days with endless classes and meet ups at the start but this need to stay busy was in part to show she had achieved things with her day. As despite knowing in herself all the tiny moments that add up to a day in the life of a mother at home with her baby, when sharing it with others it fell sickenly short of doing the day any justice. Her focus now on unfilling her days has led to a greater sence of presence to her baby, to her self, her intuition and the world around her. Deya also shares how her work in widlife documentaries and researching animal behaviour, especially orangutans, has informed her natural parenting and made her pinker in combining her old work with her new role as a mother. Deya speaks from the heart and shares some wonderful stories and insights into motherhood, I hope you enjoy it!

      In todays episode I chatted with the lovely Sophia, a doula and mother to Elba, 9 and Wren, 7. Sophia experienced two very different postpartum with her daughters. As a young mum at 24 years old and the first of her friends to have a baby, she wanted to show the world and herself that this new chapter wouldn't drastically change her life but she quickly learnt that she was lying to herself and there comes a point where you are forced to surrender to it. Once she did surrender and accept this new self and stage she was so immersed in it and happier in her mothering. Second time around she was much more calm and boundaried with her postpartum nest, she was much more comfortable with being slow and still and not rushing to groups, classes and to make friends. We chat about making friends in the postpartum- how hard it can be. Yhe challenges of finding your like minded tribe, feeling pink enough to socialise in the first place, social anxiety, constantly running off after your crawling/running baby mid sentence when trying to converse. The exposing nature of making friends in the postpartum when you are potentially at your most vulnerable with a new unknown identity, doing a new unknown job. Sophia talks about her work as a doula, and specifically within the postpartum, the importance of feeding people nutritious foods, emotionally holding people and listening and assisting families with asserting boundaries to help protect their postpartum. Sophia is a fantastic Doula in Bristol and a great resource on instagram for learning about your birth rights and learning more about uninterupted physiological births and you can find her at @theintuitivedoula on instagram and https://www.theintuitivedoula.co.uk/  

In todays episode I am speaking to Jessica about her mothering experience with her daughter River who is now nearly two. Jessica runs Mother Circle in Bristol, which came out of her own postpartum journey and the lonliness Jessica felt spending hours and hours alone with a baby at home each day, she missed the village, didnt understand what was happening to her and wanted a space to talk...and that is exactly what mother circle is- a landing pad for mothers to gather, learn and share their experiences as mothers – physically, sexually, emotionally, spiritually, and archetypally. We also discuss the elimination communicated (EC)- the idea that babies have a natural instinct to poo on a loo/potty very early on and it can be an alternative or work alongside nappies . Jesicca mentions the account go diaper free if you want to learn more. We also talk about the importance of surrendering to a new you and reevaluating what actually works for this new you and how there can be a sudden new appeal for things you once swore would never happen! For Jessica her love of festivals didnt feel quite so easy and fun as a mother and the new appeal for all inclusive holidays and Centreparks has now been understood! Jessica speaks wonderfully on this episode and I am really excited for you to learn more about the wonderful work of MotherCircle . To find out more or find a leader near you please visit https://mothercircle.com/about/ and jessica is @mothercirclebristol.

In todays episode I am joined by my freind Serena who shares how the last 15 months has been with her son Max. Serena shares how pink she has found postpartum and while not pretending its all been easy breasy she feels more herself that she did before Max. She shares with us 5 amazing reasons why she thinks her experience has been as such and there is so much to learn and take from all 5 of these which she shares on the podcast for us today. Serenas is a story of resilience, acceptance, surrender and perspective and she sums up it all up as a joy that just keeps getting better and better. As she says it is really important to share postive narratives about having children too and is why this podcast is here to celebrate every shade of pink that parenthood brings.  Serena has her own podcast, Birth tales, which shares amazing stories of birth and pregnancy and I highly recommend a listen. She is a hypnobirthing teacher who offers online courses and a pregnancy reflexologist in London. To find out more about all her wonderful offerings please visit https://serenalouth.com/ 

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 

In todays episode I am speaking to Mat, who is our first father on the podcast to Bowie, 3 and River 1. As mat reminds us, it is both flamingos that loose their pink during the early days of postpartum and is why i wanted this space to be about, and for, both mums and dads.  Following a homebirth with their first child they had a very slow and cosy early postpartum experience which Mat largely puts down to it being lockdown so they really nested and hunkered down and it helped to really enforce that all important rest. In the early days Mat talks about the difficulties of being a father when most babies are in the 4th trimester and only really want their mum. Going back to work for Mat was tough and he took holiday days to go back on a 4 day week and we talk about the inevitable and necessary element of work but how it is an ongoing conflict of being there earning money Vs being around to help with the family. While Mat admires and is inspired by those couples who truly co-parent, while this is not a reality for him at the moment he is constantly trying to do his part to feel like he is as close to that as possible and what that looks like for everyone is different but we talk about doing the night shifts as dads. We talk about making new friends or dad freinds and how that can be quite tricky if the father is the one to go back to work  Mat talks about how for postpartum 2.0 the main challenge was how to navigate both having special time with the newborn when there is an older sibling who needs lots of attention but also how to have special time with an older sibling when there is a newborn requiring all of their attention too.  It was reading Matresence by Lucy Jones - that Mat gained a deeper understanding of a mothers expereince and it has also given him and his wife Ellie an amazing channel of communication and a common language for their shared experience and he recommeneds this read to all fathers out there.

In this weeks episode I spoke to Holly, mother to Jasper, 5 and Slyvie, 1. Holly had two somewhat similar but very different births of her children and went on to have two very different postpartum experiences too. We talk about why Holly thinks she found the transition from 1-2 childern a lot easier than having just one, why Holly consciously choose to wait and have a 4 year age gap and the pros and cons that come with that. We discuss contemplating having an only child, different childcare decisions and how you navigate and balance career aspiriations and building a self employed business if you do decide you want to have another child. Holly's pink was less affected second time around and she puts this down to her confidence and trust that everthing is a phase, knowing what to expect and having lower expectations of herself and of her pink.  Holly is a reflexologist in SW London and treats lots of pregnant and postnatal mums and we talk about why it is the perfect postpartum treat for you all! To find out more about Holly's work please visit https://www.hollywebber.co.uk/home or follow her on instagram @_hollywebber

This week on the podcast I am talking to Laura Gwilliam, mother to Rui who is nearly 3 years old now and soon to be brother to another baby on the way! Laura describes motherhood as the greatest spiritual journey she has ever be on. She shares how her their family have shifted the lifestyle to the needs of their growing family, birthing Rui in the depths of the Scottish highlands to quieten the noise, connect to nature, slowdown and be free but now as Rui nears 3 wanting to meet his need for more of a social life their next move is towards more of a community. Laura had a beautiful slow homebirth and first few weeks of postpartum life being cared for by her husband, her parents and 2 female friends in the spring sunshine. We discuss the bits Laura found the hardest in becoming a new mum and that included loosing the freedom and spaciousness of her previous life, going against the grain with different parenting decisions, and the trenches of sleep deprivation and how that has a knock on effect to every aspect of mothering. We touch on rage and anger at the patriarchy and how under seen and undervalued motherhood it is. but how integral it is to a healthy society. Laura works 1:1 with mothers who want to carve out small pockets of time to connect to themselves through different meditative practices and she feels that this work, mothering her children and mothering other mothers, is her dharma, her life purpose, and in walking this path it brings her back to herself, the most aligned and authentic self and her very most pink. 

In todays episode I am speaking with Annie Clempner Clarke about the last 14 months with her son Marlowe. Despite being pretty clued up on the challenges of motherhood, Annie's postpartum experience still took her so far away from what she had anticipated and feeling like herself .Following a medically managed pregnancy and birth, Annie went on to face huge feeding challenges with Marlowe but with incredible determination and grit she navigated a late diagnosis of a tongue tie and treating raynauds in her nipples so that she could breastfeed, something she has continued to do until very recently, which would have felt truly impossible to believe in those early months. Annie recognises that it was re configuring her attachments to certain parts of how she thought motherhood would look, and in accepting these changes and removing expectations of what it should look like, is what has helped bring her closer to being the pinkest version of herself. We also discuss balancing motherhood with sustaining a business and why we should all be adding mothering to our CVs. This is a slightly longer episode today but Annie shares so much wisdom and insight that is really is worth listening to the end.  To find out more about Annie, her pregnancy yoga, online yoga studio and so much more visit https://annieclarke.com/ or https://www.instagram.com/annieclarke_/ on instagram.

In today's episode I am talking to Sus Davy about her postpartum experience with her son Rennan who is now 18 months. Sus had a planned C-Section and shortly after the birth, Ren terrifyingly stopped breathing and was admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit where he spent 2 weeks being cared for and was diagnosed with a rare condition called panhypopituitarism. Sus had a really tough start to her breastfeeding journey, pumping for Ren while he was in NICU, syringe feeding and eventually getting him to latch with nipple shields. Despite months of struggle and two tongue tie seperations, they are still amazingly breastfeeding today. After a really traumatic start to motherhood, once they had got Rens condition under control with medication they returned home and were looked after by Sus mum who is very helpfully a doula! After a few weeks it became clear that Sus was not ok and she was diagnosed with PTSD from the birth and post natal depression which she later took antidpressants for which made a really big difference for her. Alongside her own mental health Sus expereinced non stop crying from Ren for 6 months, deep sleep deprivation, wild hormones and a complete sensory overload and reflecting back on those early months she feels sad that this left little space to celebrate him and his arrival. It was her growing confidence as a mother that started to see the return of her pink alongside getting outside for runs and learning to put Rens condition to the side and just focus on him as person. She urges caution in consuming too much advice and information in those early months and trusting in the fact that everything really is a phase! To find out more about Sus, her brilliant cafe Cascara in Bath and her motherhood journey follow @roughmeasures and @cascarabath

In this weeks episode Sophia Forrester is my guest. Sophia is a fellow medical herbalist and has a 8 month old daughter called Eden. Sophia planned for a homebirth but after a long and hard labour, lacking sleep and fuel and with meconium in her waters she delivered Eden by C-section. Sophia shares how painful her body was in the aftermath of this surgery and how the early days of postpartum at home were really difficult with such imobility. Sophias breastfeeding journey was not a breeze but she shares some of the ways they managed to find a solution and go on to still be breastfeeding today. She also shares a golden top tip to look after your pelvic floor during pregnancy and in life in general. We talk about the importance of nourishment and good food and how hard it is to feed yourself as the primary caregiver. Sophia recommends doing a mealtrain with freinds in the early days to keep you well fed and also using supplements and she shares her recent struggles with slowing down and shifting away from her self worth and identity being based on productivity and success. To find out more about Sophia and her work as a herbalist and mum please visit https://www.sophiatheherbalist.com

In today's episode I am speaking to Mary Flynn about her postpartum experience with her daughter Sofie, who is nearly 13. Mary had a wonderful pregnancy and gave birth in Austria where she was living at the time. Despite Mary's birth being far from what she had originally hoped and resulting in an unplanned c-section, it was actually the way she was treated in the early period after her birth that was incredibly challenging. Her daughter was taken away from after the birth and placed in a nursery despite no medical necessity, which was common practice at the time post cesarean to let the mother rest. It has taken Mary a long time to accept and come to terms with this early separation and it set her up for a really tricky start to postpartum. Mary was completely unprepared for the reality and intensity of the physical and emotional recovery from birth and she struggled with the isolating environment she found herself in postpartum. Mary felt that she was very slow to get her pink back but that it was feeling physically strong and returning to her yoga practice that really started to see flushes of pink return. She also found building a community and meeting other mums with shared experiences that really supported her pink and that was her big piece of advice for those preparing for postpartum; seek out community. Mary's own birth and postpartum experience, however tricky, has shaped her as an amazing midwife today, giving her a passionate drive to change new mothers experience for the better and if you are in Bristol or the local area I really urge you to check her out - https://www.yogimidwife.com/ 

In this, the very first episode of the Pink Flamingo Podcast, I am joined by the gorgeous Sarah Malcolm who tells the story of her postpartum experience with her first son, Oscar, who was 15 months at the time of recording. Sarah didn't get the birth experience she wanted but did still describe her emergency C-section as a beautiful way for Oscar to arrive in this world. It was the post birth days, spent on a wild postpartum ward with unkind midwives, that set a foundation for a really tough start to motherhood for Sarah who also found her C-section recovery incredibly hard. We spoke about the relentlessness of postpartum, sleep deprivation and breast feeding as well as the importance of close family and friends being near by ,meditation and rest. Sarah shares her mental health struggles, and seeking a therapist to deal with her birth trauma but she says there is still work to be done. It was through starting to teach yoga again and spending time in nature with her family that Sarah started to flush pinker and she speaks of the importance of self love and kindness as a parent.