If I Speak - 22: How will I know if I really want kids? w/ Renay Richardson

Episode Date: July 16, 2024

Ash and Moya are joined by podcast entrepreneur and single mum Renay Richardson to talk about the realities of solo parenting, from being blocked from adopting to the shortage of Black sperm donors. Plus: a harrowing faux pas. Come and see If I Speak live at the London Podcast Festival on 15 September! Tickets available […]

Hello and welcome to If I Speak. Unfortunately my voice has decided not to join us today. I've left it in the field. So instead, you're getting Eartha Kitt, Moya Lothi McLean. But instead of my voice, I've got Ash Sarkar with me instead. So that's something. Ash, how are you doing? You know what? I'm a little bit seduced by the husky voice, Moya. The knickers are on the floor. Maybe you should pick them up. Keep your house clean. Come on. What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing? Bitch, you live like this. What?

Ash and I, though, are not alone in this metaphorical studio. We are joined today by Renee Richardson. Woo! Hello! Hello, hello. So, Renee has lived about 20 million lives. I remember very clearly a lot of stories you told me about being an agent to celebrities which was a talent agent which I won't repeat here but they are really good about famous actors crying when they didn't get James Bond those are good stories um but she is

currently a producer and an entrepreneur and is the reason that I got into podcasting in a serious way because most recently Renee was the CEO of Broccoli Productions which was founded to address you know the lack of opportunities for minority demographics in the audio world and believe me there is a lack of opportunities. Broccoli made some very very cool programs of one of which was called Human Resources a little series about Britain and the transatlantic slave trade that I happen to present but we're going to talk about other things today Renee thank you so much for joining us no thank you for having me what are you actually up to at the minute tell me catch me up okay so human resources as you got a book deal I was gonna as you know the listeners don't know

it had a book deal so I am writing it with the researchers so we've just literally yesterday had our notes. So have to get working on those. Yeah. So that's what I'm doing at the moment. Do you know when that's coming out? It will be spring next year. Spring next year. Okay, cool. Yeah.

Right. We'll plug that at the time. So exciting. Human Resources was a really great series. And the more I think about being involved in something as special as that, I'm like, wow wow it's crazy that I got to do that so early in my career and it's all thanks to Renee but also what's crazy is and I will just I was going to get it real for a second um if I speak it's really managed to like cut through we we have like quite a lot of listeners we've invited you podcast festivals human resources never got any of that shit even though it was about some

topic that was so like important and I think presented and created shit, even though it was about some topic that was so important and I think presented and created the way we did it was in a really interesting way. And everyone who listened to it was like, wow, everyone should hear this series. It's so good. And history can be really dull, but you've made it really engaging. And I'm not saying that to blow my trumpet. I'm saying that because topics, as soon as you say the words things like slave trade or on this podcast, you say things like capitalism, people's minds shut down and it's really hard to get them into it so i think about

that a lot i think what it is is that people think they already know the story and like we come across this all the time within navara which is there are all these subjects which our audience tells us they want more of but because we can see what they're clicking on what they're not when we produce those stories they're like no because i feel like i already know it and it's so difficult when you are presenting new information to really really really like blow your own trumpet about how new it is because when it's something like you know the history of transatlantic slavery or climate change people go oh i already know this even if i don't know it i kind of know yeah but it's also the it makes people uncomfortable so like pretty much everyone in britain is connected so it's really hard to um it's kind of like climate change um people will veer off

climate change because they drive an suv I drive an SUV um mine is low carbon emissions okay um but that's why people veer off because they're like I understand the problem but I'm the problem and I don't want to hear it and it's like slavery is like um I understand I know we should talk about I know we should learn about it but it's kind of like how we got survived so like shut up yeah basically guilt guilt is a crazy powerful emotion to get people um not engaging with their own history which is sad because you only learn about you could only change the future if you actually learn about the past um but moving away from the heavy heavy topics we've got a special segment for you ash introduce it please these are actually all really really heavy questions so this is our regular icebreaker 73

questions minus 70 beginning with what was the worst kind of slavery in global no um no question one question one what is your go-to asmr sound oh do you know what I've got a child I do listen to the white noise machine all the time and I can't sleep without it and actually it was it was so funny because my neighbors there's like a whole problem on my little block like there's a house of squatters that have 40 people and there's been police called a lot and my neighbors were telling me about it I was like oh I've not heard any of it because I just had my white noise machine on and I'm just like conked out so it actually blocks out the world. How loud is the white noise machine? Did the white noise machine start out for the child?

Yeah, so you have it for the child because the child stays in your room and then the child moves into your room and then the child stays. And then you're like, I can only sleep with the white noise machine on. You can have it as loud as you want. But it blocks out Ronnie, like my dog Ronnie.

He sometimes barks as there's foxes. It blocks out the world. I Ronnie he sometimes barks as there's foxes um it blocks out the world I live on a main road my god that's my noise machine I don't actually know what noise really sounds like I've always had people talk about I'm like what is why it has like waves and it has um kind of like um kind of I'd say jungle sounds but I just go for you know like tv you know in old days when you could turn the TV channel onto nothing. Yeah. I have that.

Have you ever heard of brown noise? My friend. Yes. My friend is like brown. Yes. It's called this podcast. No. My friend always makes this joke that brown noise makes you shit yourself.

If you listen to it, that's apparently the new up and coming thing, but I've not dabbled. Brown noise. But now it's, yeah, now it's a thing. It was like brown noise. And all I can think about about is brown noise which is a sound that if you hear it

instantly makes you defecate so it's so funny because i know the asmr sound that i hate and it's like chewing people eating on um like podcasts on tv just anywhere anyone eating my mom sort of like this kind of like my mom will call me and she's like oh you can't hear because i'm not but like and i'm like mom call me afterwards call me after you call me after you so that's yeah speaking of eating question two what is your favorite side dish at a barbecue? Potato salad. Ooh. Yeah. What kind of potato salad?

So there's some good ones like where you have like boiled egg in and some made with like avocado. I like an interesting one. One with dill is delish. Oh, yeah. Yeah, and with the skin on. The skin on potatoes. Yeah, I actually agree.

Yeah, it has to be skin on. I'm with you on dill. Ash, what's your favourite side dish? Okay, well, I made it this weekend just gone, actually. It is a kimchi mac and cheese. So you make it basically the same way as you would any mac and cheese. So you make your Mornay sauce first. And the only thing that's different about it

is that you put some gochujang in your mornay sauce first and the only thing that's different about it is that you put some gochujang in the mornay sauce so you get like a nice sort of like warm funky chili heat going through it and then when you're mixing it through with your pasta you put in kimchi and some spring onions and it's good for vegetarians because one thing that I've decided never to do again is when barbecuing don't do like a barbecue vegetarian options because no one actually likes the portobello mushrooms that you're just like resentfully grilling there are good meat-free sausages though richmond's yeah but i feel like especially when you've like made like some marinated ribs for everyone else and then you're just like throwing linda mccartney i feel like

if you're doing a vegetarian if you have a barbecue do vegetarian you should do it either you commit and you do all vegetarian meats like all meat-free meats or you do the what you're doing which is have like the barbecue options maybe some yeah some amazing amazing sides and maybe like quiches that kind of vibe like some really banging like baked mains over here but that's not on the bar otherwise it's just as you say there is really a hierarchy of things also ash that's an amazing side but it's not standard side like not everyone's making fucking kimchi macaroni cheese no no no but mac and cheese is a standard yeah that's okay that's a standard that's a standard and i will try this. This is the hill, I'll die on. I'm going to try this recipe. Okay. All right, last question.

What is the last cringe-inducing faux pas that you've made? And I will also, cards on the table, tell you my own, which is so embarrassing. Every time I think about it, I do a little squawk. Okay. What is it? Okay. I went to a really fancy restaurant I like really really fancy I don't go to fancy restaurants all that often and I went I went for my birthday but I wasn't feeling

well I was feeling very dizzy and like my guts were getting kind of like twisted up which now looking back on it I absolutely had COVID because that's what happens to me when I had COVID and I just I really really really really wasn't feeling well um and then when my partner went to the bathroom I I farted so audibly that everyone in the relation in the relationship in the relationships not relationship that was such a uh I'm so embarrassed I've lost my ability oh i can tell everyone in the restaurant heard and looked at me and rather than just being able to firm it and create some kind of ambiguity about who it was i just like immediately put my head in my hands

so i can never go back there i can never ever ever go back there that's a incredible story so please renee tell me now that i've opened up to you i don't i can't do that story because i'm a very awkward person so I feel like just every time I go outside is just a bit cringe because there's always some kind of awkward interaction and it's just I'm just very awkward after Covid I got even more awkward so it's worse but like it's pretty much my whole life is just a bit awks you know why did you walk away and you're like why did I say that do you reflect on it to stay sometimes I'm like why I have conversations even just with my neighbor outside you know you leave your house and your neighbors

there you're like and you have a chat and you're like why did I why am I saying these things like what's going on I know exactly how you feel like that's exactly how I feel having any conversation ever it's just you leave it and you're, why did I say those things in that manner? Why can't I just be like comfortable and relaxed? It's crazy. There's only like five people that I can feel comfortable and relaxed with on that level. I don't think I have a faux pas as bad as yours, Ash,

but I did, there is a colleague of mine. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I mean, from like recent years, I did exactly that when I was like a kid. I did have one look just like that when I was a kid, which I still can't talk about to this day no one's making me feel any better about this I thought by sharing it like you guys would be like oh I've done no I did I did deal with both of you I did do that as a child and I remember it so clearly it still actually haunts me to this day

and I actually can't talk about it because it's such a traumatic memory if that helps you yeah imagine if you were 32 yeah but I think I'd be better when i was 32 like i don't mind as much like i'm just gonna go out and say like i don't mind farting in public as much as i would back then it was much humility now now it's like who gives a fuck in the same way i mean for you it's very embarrassing yeah my mistake was i think i also tried to really like absorb it back into my body yeah like have it not not you know i really really tried to like just not fart which made it worse because anyway my friend my friend has a great um farting in public story which he did share on twitter so if you've seen this this is just the same guy but it was um

he was walking late at night and this guy is like behind him and it's like getting closer and he's like fuck this guy's gonna come and this guy's like, fuck, this guy's gonna come in. And this guy's like catching up to him, crosses the street to like get to him, comes up and he goes, and the guy goes, mate, that fart you did back there.

I walk straight into it. Horrible. Which is a fantastic story and I think leads us very nicely to our next section. Okay, so this is our middle segment and today I'm going to do an intrusive thought because we haven't had, I don't think, an intrusive thought for a while. And I'm just, I'm not going to lie, this one's been bugging me. just I'm not gonna lie this is this one's been bugging me um and part of the reason that I really wanted to talk to you Renee is because you have experienced this I think um I might as well just

say the interesting thoughts if people know what I'm talking about so this has been bugging me and it's annoying it's bugging me because I've become a cliche so my biological clock is ticking my biological clock has started ticking so I've hit 29 and I'm pretty sure I don't want a kid but also I'm only 20 fucking nine so how do I know um but now my biological clock is starting to tick a bit differently so I'll be around children and I don't think I feel the same way about them as my friends do like they they're like, oh, my God, a kid. That's amazing. Whereas I'll look at a small child that looks a bit like me and I'll be like, hmm, might be nice to have one of those. I'm thinking of my little kid being like, yeah, we'd ride together. Like we'd be out on the streets just like having a ball.

And then I'm like, no, you don't have the facilities for this. So the question, I guess, is how do you know whether you really want children or not, or whether it's just the other pressures and lack of like parenting options? Because when I think about having a kid, I'm like, there's no way in hell I'd want to be able to afford that. Like the idea of going, you know, I love traveling and stuff like this. I wouldn't be able to do that with a child. I can't envisage in any of my, I can envisage actually having a kid sometimes, but I can never envisage having a partner that i've raised that child with there's no you know man woman they there's no one there by me i'm like separate please even even even if i had someone who obviously had to impregnate me i'd still be like i don't want to see you i don't want to know you so i i don't know how to decide

whether it's like the economic pressures lack of relationship options that make me don't want a child and whether deep down i actually maybe do want to reproduce and have a like a little moya running around um and yeah so I wanted to talk to you Renee because you have done motherhood solo once at least uh and in a way that lots of people I think talk about but don't actually pursue so you know as I said I can't foresee a world where I meet someone have a kid but does that mean I can't have one what are your initial thoughts so I would say you there's some people who always know they want to have a kid so I always knew I wanted to be a mother always knew but I always knew I wanted to adopt which is the interesting thing um so I

always wanted to adopt I think you can as life goes on you can just enjoy life so I only stopped to think about my life when COVID happened because basically we were all forced to sit and think about our lives um but had that not happened I don't know if I would have a child now because I would have just been like here there and everywhere as I was um but I knew I always wanted but I also didn't have the knowledge of what my actual body could do and luckily COVID happened I tried to adopt they were really discriminatory against single people so then I was like fine I'll go and have a fertility test luckily I did because I found out then I had really low AMH and basically only had a couple years left um so I just basically went in and just did it but I knew I was ready because I'd

gone through the um adoption process you have to do tests and like training and um you have like a social worker and things like that so I'd done that for a year so I'd know I knew I was ready um and so I went and basically I got pregnant, the equivalent of having sex once and was pregnant. So it was very lucky, but I was ready cause I'd gone through that whole thing and I'd sat down and I thought, yeah, now is the time. I think when you're, I mean, an RN, I think it's actually good to understand what your body is capable and have fertility MOTs I think everyone should have them anyway because actually your fertility at 29 yes they say on average it's great but everyone is different you just don't you genuinely don't know so it's worth going it's just worth knowing these things and then just have them every couple

of years because also they show out they show cysts they show any uterine problems they they bring up any anything and you don't get anything like that on the nhs unless you're trying to conceive and you haven't conceived for a certain amount of time so all this could be happening in your body and you have no idea so i would just encourage that and I think as time goes on you'll just know there'll be a point and you'll be thinking do I want this as my life or do I want something different and if you're like yeah I want this then it's like don't have a kid but but if you're like actually I could see myself with some little things, you know, around my ankle and all that stuff. You're like, yeah, let's have a go. You can still travel.

You can still do all the other things, but it's just ruined. It's just ruined. I went on holiday last week. It was the most, I don't think I've ever been so stressful stressed in my life and I came home I took I had then when we came back I had my daughter for four days when she went to nursery I actually just slept all day because I was that exhausted from the holiday the worst thing is you just confirmed every fear I ever have when I see parents out I'm like wow how are they doing it like they must they must there must be great joy somewhere in this experience

of like pushing the child up to the bloody amphitheater that we're in and you're saying no actually it's all just stressful but you you did you know you wanted to be a solo parent like how did that come about because you're also your process to be a cell phone was really interesting no I didn't I just assumed like everyone you'd meet someone um little did I know I'm the problem and I didn't but um I knew but I actually quit dating I don't know when well COVID happened so that kind of made it easier to quit dating but just before um covid I was like kind of sick of the dating app so I was kind of sick of like I find it really annoying to meet new people in that in that situation I find people annoying in general so I was like do you know what I have built a life for

myself now could I genuinely see myself sharing that, I can't even imagine like calling someone and being, Oh, what do you fancy for dinner? Like, I, I don't care what you fancy for dinner. What do I want? Cause that's how I've lived my life, you know? And, and I can't imagine being like, Oh, I'm not going to be home at this time. Like check in with someone. I left home at 22 21 that's when I stopped checking in like why am I checking in now so I knew that I just probably wasn't the right person to share a child with um because also child like that's one of the biggest issues in any relationship um how do you raise them what schools are they going to be christened what religion um you know what after school clubs you know all these things should they stay at their

friend's house should they not all those things cause huge arguments and I'm like I can just decide all my own on my own names I just decide myself it's all me so yeah so I mean I've got I've got a question about that moment where you were switching over in your head from the expectation of adopting to a process which involved being pregnant um how big of a shift was that for you to get your head around and to be all right with it was more anger I was really annoyed because I'd gone through the process and I'd had a social worker who let's say it was pretend it was May May 2021 and she was like you will have a kid by Christmas and this was after me doing the first but that's what she said because I'd done the first training thing I'd done my they do home

visits I'd done the group therapy thing like we'll still go through that and she was she came around and she was like because I'm black you know I was relatively well off um I said I would take any black child because she asked me like would you take a child from East Africa would you because I'm Caribbean she was like would you take a child from Africa first of all and I was like yeah would you take a child from east africa and i was like yeah i said i will take any child that needs a home and she was like you will have a kid by christmas and she said you will actually have the choice of the children what child you want because normally my god it's like the social workers angel gabriel because normally it's the other way around the social the child social worker has a pick of families and they will then pick but she was like because I'm so rare

it was like there will be loads of family like loads of children social workers that want me and so I was like great let's carry on she then left for um she had you know social workers have a lot of stress and burnout so she went on indefinite leave I then got her bosses and they were so discriminatory when they came and did the home visit and were like who helps you with your groceries and I was like that as the delivery man and they're like who maintains your garden and I was like well I cut the grass every other week oh you have plants they're dangerous for the child oh your dog and there was so many stupid questions that you just wouldn't get

the final one that they asked was like what if you fell over and hurt yourself who would help you and I was like well I would hope my neighbors wouldn't hear me in pain and just ignore me because you know we're friends and it was just things like that um they said I had no child care experience even though my nephew stays over at that time every week. My family lived 20 minutes away. And they said, because I live in Walthamstow, my family technically live in Romford, Essex. It's a 20 minute drive. A bus to the other side of Walthamstow can take 30. And they said, that's not close enough. You need people in your area. And they said it, so my network didn't matter. So it more anger and kind of out of anger I went

and did a fertility test because I was like I want to I wanted to adopt it wasn't my I can't have children it was like my plan a was always I wanted to adopt three children that's always been my plan and I've got this woman asking me about deliveries and like stupid things that you do online anyway. And so I went and did the fertility test. They were like, really, if you're not going to have a child now, you should freeze your eggs. And I went, well, let's have a child now. And so I did it. So it was more a spur of the moment.

But I had done the process of like the adoption to the mentality of becoming a parent. It was just I had to adopt a swap to be like okay I'm gonna have one I'd never really wanted to be pregnant I hate being pregnant I think it's the worst but it's a means to an end it's really funny having this conversation with you guys now because um the other week me and my husband sort of had our check in about like, okay, do we still not want kids? Has the extent to which we don't want kids changed? And I think for him, it has maybe changed a little bit. Because he's got a niece now on, you know, a blood relative niece, he already had nieces and nephews from my side, but blood relative niece on his side. And he's just wild about her. And to be fair, like his mum's genes are so strong. Oh my God. Like this baby has just come out like an image

of her grandmother. Just like, it's like there were no intervening generations. And so I think like having a baby in the family who's interacting with and thinking about his relationship with her and how that's going to, you know, evolve as she gets older, that's made him maybe feel a bit differently about the idea of having kids. And also because his friends are like, yeah, I'm really certain about this is what I want. So we started having our like check-in about like, do we still not want this to the same extent? And it was a really great conversation. And I think it was

really honest. And one of the things that I really like is that we weren't just saying things to try and sell it to the other person or make someone else feel better. Because the thing that we really came up against is that when we don't have kids, both of us work, gender isn't so much of a big deal, right? Like we try and make housework fair. It doesn't always work. We obviously get snippy with each other, but it's not that big a deal. When we're thinking about having a kid and I'm not like you, Renee, I've not had this thing of like, yeah, I really want to be a mom. And basically like, it doesn't matter whether I'm with someone or not Renee. I've not had this thing of like, yeah, I really want to be a mom. And basically like, it doesn't matter whether I'm with someone or not.

This is something I want for myself. And my mom was the same as you. She really just wanted to be a mom. And boy, did we make her regret it. But like, because that's not how I feel about it. I'm like, well, actually there have to be these really precise circumstances for me to even consider wanting it you know I kind of need you to be a lot more of a house husband then

then you are you know I want to keep working in the way that I am and I want to keep earning the money that I'm earning and I don't want to be tied to the home doing loads more domestic labor and having you know a baby that's going to be like a lot more reliant on my body than it is on yours and so it kind of came down to this conversation about you know do you want this experience of having a kid more than you want your freedom, right? Not just for me as a woman, but for him as well. And we kind of arrived at this place of going, that's not something that we can see ourselves wanting right now. We're going to keep checking in with each other

and keep reopening this conversation. But for me, I really was like, I do not want to be left literally holding the baby because men men can check out when men go well this isn't how I want to live they they just don't yeah for sure I'm the living proof of men checking out we both are see that that's also very interesting in the way that we've considered like all three of us i'm presuming we're saying we all had absent fathers right and the way that we conceive of motherhood is on our own and like as you're like i don't want to do this because i know that i will be left with

child renee you're like i do want to do this i literally can't find anyone i want to do this with and i don't want them to have input into this child or the way they're going about it and I think I'm very similar to you in that when I think about having a child I'm like I'd want to do it on my own and that means and I'm just going to say that means we need to make the right amount of money and I want to talk a bit about finances because I want to get real because Renee like you also you you did it via a sperm bank right yeah which I want to talk about that experience too, because I think it was fascinating, the things that you found about the demographics that are donating sperm and who isn't.

But also like all of this costs money. The fertility test costs money. Raising a child costs money. What kind of ballpark are we talking to be able to be a single mother who really can still preserve the amount of autonomy and raise a child on their own? Like, what are we saying here? Six figures.

Six figures. You need to be a six figure. A six figure. So my first child I had via, I'm sorry, I'm pregnant now. I didn't know whether to say it or not. Congratulations. I'm calling this one my second child, even though it's not out yet, but I'm 22 weeks.

So my first child cost four and's not out yet but i'm 23 weeks um so my first child cost four and a half thousand pounds to make um luckily i think it was i just had that in saving so i just went and did it and i was ready so it's fine my second because i had to do two rounds of ivf cost twenty thousand pounds and that's and the thing with IVF which I think isn't emphasized enough is that it's a chance it's not a guarantee so I did two rounds I had one egg out of that one egg one frozen embryo that I could use so I could have transferred that and then nothing happened that's 20 grand gone um and I had luckily had that cash that I could spend to um do it and I think about this all the time like I really feel like I am a privileged person I understand like I was earning

good money I'm kind of going like having a child does change your it does it change your career trajectory it does um and going into a second one I'm being very realistic now like that i cannot really go and work for anyone um because they won't they won't understand because yes child care and your kid goes to nursery but do you know what guess what your kid gets sick every other week and half the time nursery tries to send them home and guess who has to be home with the kid and guess who has to still pay for nursery when the kid's not there so it's like a new job will not they you know everyone says they're kind of like yeah liberal most companies aren't and you're either annoying the younger people who have to cover for you or they're just or the bosses are just being really like passag and

kind of making you feel guilty for looking after your child so you do have to take a step back in thinking what can i do for you um your career in like i'd say maybe for four to five years and while they're at that priest before school situation because school's even worse like who finishes work at 3 15 right how does that how does that even make sense but that's how i'm not there yet so i'll discuss that when I'm there because that doesn't even make sense but like the pre before school is hard it costs money like my fees just went up five pound a day and they went up five percent they went up five percent last year um it's it's this is just a lot of money and luckily I was in a job where I could earn a decent amount of money.

And actually I'm completing on a house next week because I was like, I need to do this now because I feel like in the future, obviously like having a kid is like, you know, mortgage companies, that's like a, they have some kind of imaginary cost. It's not an imaginary, it's a real cost, but we don't know these figures.

So the mortgage you add, you can't even adapt to it because you don't know what the figure is that each bank puts on per child. So I knew once I had two children, it would pretty much be maybe near impossible for me to get a mortgage because I am self-employed and I don't plan on working as hard as I did previously yet um so I was like I need to do this now or I'm not getting a house so luckily it's all

happening um and we move next week but it's expensive and as a single person you need to earn what two people earn the only benefit of the, it's not even a benefit, the only kind of acknowledgement that the government give or councils give to single people is 25% of council tax. That is it. Everything else to live as a single person, you need to earn what two people earn. And so that is, you need to do a lot of money. And then if, say for example, what two people earn and so that is you need to do a lot of money and then if so for example if two people were earning 80 000 pounds um a couple both were earning 80 that's 160 000 you get taxed less than one person earning 160 000 so there's just no the government do not even acknowledge single people exist um the way child any of the child benefits or anything like that

are calculated it's on um per income so you could be on 60 and get tax-free child care your husband can be on 120 they don't care you still get tax-free tax-free child care if i was on 105 i don't get tax-free child care so it's like it's yeah so I'm this is very privileged problems because I'm talking about big money here but like it's I just wish someone would acknowledge single just even not single mothers or single parents single people single people deserve housing we do this is such an important point like such an important point that you're making like you know the kind of like big picture um context that we're having this conversation in is one of declining birth rates in this country and why is that well once upon a time you could raise a whole family on one income

so you'd have one person working and another person or more than one person in the case of extended families at home and that was what was considered necessary to bring a child into the world right one income plus at least one full-time carer. Now we're saying, no, it's got to be two full-time earners to raise a child, right? No wonder the birth rate goes down. And you're also saying, okay, everyone's got to go to university. Also lifelong learning, that's not a thing. um you know housing accommodation that's eye-wateringly expensive also child care eye-wateringly expensive um and then we're surprised when when people aren't having kids or having fewer kids or having kids later in life

what is interesting to me within my own circle of friends is that i've got one friend who kind of bucked this trend. And I remember it so, so well. So it was New Year's 2016 or 2017, can't remember. And on New Year's Day after we'd all gone out, it was me, this particular friend and another friend just all like having a calm down on the sofa um and it hit me like a premonition I was like Simon you're gonna be a dad and he was just like you're just talking so much shit within the year within the year it happened um and part of like how him and his partner have been able to make this choice and to raise this like absolutely gorgeous but like you know very very very full-on kid like super energetic is because they've got a council house so they're able to make the decision to like we're going to you know have this baby number one like you know our relationship isn't that well established they hadn't been together very long I don't think they'd even met by the time I had my like new year's day premonition um and then yeah within

that year having a kid council housing made all the difference it took something that was like impossible and made it merely really quite difficult but like that's actually like um a massive improvement but the only reason i was able to buy the flat i'm in is because i sold half my company to sony music had that not happened i would still be renting and i would have no hope of ever buying um a house to live in um it's yeah because i i was paying 1600 pounds maybe no maybe 15 14 or 1500 pound in a flat in Dalston sharing oh my gosh I wish yeah sharing and then I um I sold my company and I was like right I knew I was like that's a deposit let's go and I and the funny thing was the mortgage payment was way less

than the rent but I said to my mortgage broker I have been paying this in rent pay this do this for my mortgage so basically it meant that I only had got um 13 years left and so I had a huge um deposit again equity in the flat which meant I could buy a house and I think I I say to my mum all the time now I'm like it's made me realize because I was discriminated against just now this year when I was trying to get a mortgage um by a bank because they were um I think they don't like single mums um they were like what are you gonna do how much is child care gonna be like in the holidays during school time and I'm like well that's three years away like I don't know and I could you know you could die like tomorrow I don't you know like why are we

planning that far but um they were like really really like trying to nail in like how much things I just had no idea but I said to my mortgage broker I was like they're discriminating because I I'm a single mum like let's try someone else and within four days I got an offer whereas the other one would four weeks of just jumping through hoops so banks do discriminate and that's why I was like with two kids forget it um unless Unless you're a millionaire. But I genuinely don't know how it's done now. And that, again, needs reform. Because I'm like, if you can pay certain amounts in rent, there should be some kind of crossover that proves that you can pay the mortgage payments.

Because rent is more expensive than mortgage payments. Maybe not now because of the high interest. So it's probably about the same now. But you're paying more in rent than you would if you had a mortgage and it just doesn't make sense because they don't take any of that into consideration like that should show on your experience or something i don't know but the other thing you mentioned there was discrimination i just want to talk quickly about you're exclusive like navigating both health systems and i guess the financial systems, all of these places as a single mother who is also a black woman, because we know that

these things all count against us when we're going through these spaces. So I wanted to know what that's been like for you, whether you have faced any sort of like obstacles, anything so you've been like, fuck, that was really, that was actually really discriminatory um or whether it's just you've been surprised by the reception you've had these in these different spaces so it's it's been it's actually been fine but it was just more what they make um everything's just tick boxing um when you're so like oh she's black tick um oh she's fat tick oh she's this tick so you just so they don't actually look at you or like anything so like um i just kept getting um sent on digest digest digest digest the diabetes test and i think it's gestational gestational like gestational demon word everyone has a demon word and gestational

is yours and my demon word I can only say very very slowly it's trajectory trajectory's yours because when I try

and say it when I try and say it quickly it's trajectory me it's just hard but like I kept getting sent on the oh my god

gestational gestational diabetes tests because i was black not because i have diabetes or it's in my family and they kept saying i guess one day i had like a rubicon mango and i didn't know i was gonna have a blood test the next day full of sugar um i didn't know i was having the blood test so they did it and oh your blood test like another gestational diabetes test i was like no but it's because i had the juice yesterday and they just it was like it's like what i was saying didn't matter i was black so i must have gestational diabetes so it's more things like that just being sent on like marked as high risk and just not taking my

actual pregnancy into consideration just the tick boxes of you were this you were that you're that but the actual process I found quite interesting because I I did like take part in the um you know the NCT classes and I did um because I have how I got pregnant I was very much on the Instagram and TikTok info kind of learnings about pregnancy and all the different things that happen. And so I was very engaged and I understand that it's really hard to advocate for yourself. Also, I'm not one to not advocate for themselves, but I understand it's really hard to advocate for themselves because they don't see you as a person i don't know i happen i imagine this happens to all women i can't talk for other women but like for black women you're not being seen as a person so you're just being seen as a box like what how many of these boxes are you ticking

and then you're a problem so people aren't necessarily listening to you so you really have to be able to push through which I could because I don't mind speaking for myself um but I think that's where you could get the issues um but I I'm having this baby at the same hospital um and I just ask a lot of questions I just keep and I might be the annoying person at an appointment but like I think it's good to ask questions and to have knowledge oh my god no within healthcare systems like you absolutely have to and I think that like it's definitely impacted by race class gender all of these kinds of things and like you've got to be that sharp elbowed person if not for yourself

then your loved one who's in like a healthcare setting and this is actually something that like me and my me and my husband were talking about because my mom can be that person like she was a social worker she's used to navigating these kinds of institutions and you know she knows how to like stay on the phone until like someone puts her through to the right person and so when my sister was in hospital recently like my mom will like she'll be like I will hassle every single one of you I will follow you home after your shift if I have to like you're going to get me to the right service for my daughter like she'll be that kind of person whereas my husband's parents are just you know they're very polite people they're very very polite people and they

hate hate hate imposing on other people and within a healthcare system that just means you sort of slide down the priority list and I think it's one of those things where like you know that's And I think it's one of those things where like, you know, that's scary enough when it's, you know, you who's, you know, in a hospital or something and you've got loved ones there or it's your loved one in the hospital and you're there doing the advocating. I think if you added to that, like being pregnant or like giving birth and especially if it's your first child, right? You don't know what to fucking expect. You don't know if this is going well or going badly i i don't know how good i would be at managing my own fear plus the responsibility of having to be your own advocate i really don't think that's where like people have dealers but that's exactly what happened to me and I think all of my knowledge that I gained from Instagram and TikTok came into play because I went into labour and I was doing that and then I think what 12 hours later they moved

me down to the labour ward but I was only still four centimetres dilated so I was like why am I going down here because the baby's heart rate was not steady um they broke my waters it was brown and I knew I was like look um they you're if you're gonna you're gonna say let's wait and let's see what happens and I knew then you get all these interventions you know I'd had forceps I'd have like cutting all this I was like let's do the c-section I was like let's do it now I was like I can call my sister now she this is at midnight I was like call my sister she will be here in half an hour by the time she's here we'll be ready and they're like no no but we can wait and I was like no let's just do it now because I'd known how when the when the baby wants to come out if you're not

ready to come out that's when it kind of you know when you have been when you've been induced when that's when all the um forceps and all that stuff and more trauma happens and i was just like kind of c-sections is the mum taking the hit a vaginal birth is the baby taking the hit when it's when it's a high stress situation and i was like let's just do it now because the baby's clearly in distress and i'm fine with it i wanted an all-natural birth but i was like let's just do it now because the baby's clearly in distress and I'm fine with it I wanted an all-natural birth but I was like let's just do it and I could advocate for myself because my sister was my birthing partner but she'd gone home because I thought we both thought I'd be there all day because it's like you know you might as well go it's midnight let's go home

but I could because of all of the things I'd seen on Instagram and and just all the you know I followed IUI journey IVF journey trying to conceive like I'm very like I've seen what can go wrong what can go right how you and there's lots of midwives and doctors online giving advice and so that's why I could and I think it is a high stress situation everyone's different so you can only speak for yourself but I think it is a high stress situation everyone's different so you can only speak for yourself but I think if you feel if you're a person who feels like you won't in that moment be able to advocate for yourself have someone there who will and have that person there and tell them exactly um like give them certain scenarios and say in

this scenario like obviously way before birth but um or labor but give them certain scenarios and say in this scenario i would want this and let them know and say that's what i want and then they will make it happen if you can't make it happen but i could make it happen because i knew i i'm just that type of person i could just do it take it take it back to conception for a second i've got a question for you um how did you choose the sperm because I guess for me I'm married all right I don't have a lot of other options anymore right I made my bed so if I'm gonna have a kid I'm gonna have to be your sperm um unless I tell some outrageous lies um but how did you how did you choose from the sperm bank I was like I'm a solo mom I'm black

so I was like I will go for a black person and i i had like in my mind before i even got on sperm banks i was like black tall because i was like if i'm choosing and i i didn't go to um university so i don't know nurture nature i don't know but i was like degree because i was like they're not gonna get that from me um so i they were kind of my things it was height race and education when i got to the spur banks there was one black person and he they were like okay we've got a serial killer but he's

no he was five foot four oh so it was a no from me but like there was no black sperm why is there such a shortage so this is what i'm trying to figure out so in america like you can so in england there's this thing called the cryobank network so you can get direct but you can also buy from abroad and they send them to the registered um cryo sperm banks globally there is a shortage of black sperm so if you're a black person who wants a black child there's a good chance you can't have one i mean the child's august my daughter's black i'm'm black. She's black. But she's actually also half Chinese. Because I then, for me, I then chose what was my next largest choice. And the largest choice was East Asian. So I was like, fine, I'm going to have a half East Asian baby.

And so I got a Chinese donor. But there is a lack of black donors. And I want to figure out why. And I want to encourage black men Chinese donor, but there is a lack of black donors. And I want to figure out why. And I want to encourage black men to like, I want to speak, I've spoken to some and most of them have all said no. So I'm like, well, this is why. But like, I want to know why there's not more black donors,

but there's also, so as a black woman, you're competing with white women because mixed race children are very fashionable right now. So there's a lot of white women. there's a lot of white women solo mums choosing black sperm which i kind of think is outrageous that's kind of fucked up but because i'm like you're so like your child is never gonna look like you like yeah what so yeah that's a thing so you're competing literally against everyone as well politics here is so interesting because i i have to admit that if i had a kid i think like i feel about fostering and people always like to me you should foster one day like you should do this i'm like really i'm so i'm such a perfectionist

i feel like that's the worst thing to do to a child like bring them into a house where someone's going to be like no you're going to be the perfect child um but like apart from the fostering stuff when i think of a kid i think of a kid who looks like me and it's it's difficult because it's like you're trying to choose the ethnicity of your child right and it's it's like i don't think i want to procreate with a white person and that to me is really weird because it's it's like i am half white what's wrong with you know being a white kid or whatever but it's just like because the child i'm like in my mind's eye i'm like and i know what i'm saying is like mad and problematic by the way but this is our podcast so i feel like i want to be real with the listeners are you saying

that like i don't want my kid to come out looking like adonis graham who's adonis sorry right now i look like adonis graham with my little blonde hair like a slight tan um no it's it's it's really odd and it's something i've thought about when i have had white boyfriends because i've had partners of all different ethnicities and when i'm with the white ones something in my head goes I don't I don't know what we'd do if we started talking about like kids if this got like really serious what was what would I do because I'm not sure I want to have a totally like white baby my baby would be you know mostly white because I'm half white and it's weird like why don't I want that why don't I think there's probably some resentment there around you know the experience of moving through the world as a white person even that's not necessarily based in like any sort of like reality apart from obviously

the structural knowledge of how racism works but I just am like and then also I know that my kid would be so annoying and be like trying to claim like brownness because they had like a brown mom and I'd be like you'd be the fucking irritating kid who's like no but i am actually of color and it's like shut the fuck up like all these different fantasies in my head what i will say though is that i most of my cousins are mixed race and pretty much all of them actually and they've all had white partners what i will say is there's no guarantee of the color of the child because some of them some of them are really brown some of one of their kids is browner than my daughter wow um so it's like you know it it yeah it just doesn't it you cannot predict yeah you cannot predict so it's not that but i actually also didn't want to choose

white sperm just because i was like if i was going to have a child with a white person i'd want to meet them that was just even though i've had a kid with a donor i was just like with a white person i have to meet yeah that's really why don't you meet them um because it was because i was like they don't know what it's like to be a minority and i was like i have to have a minority because again like i said i don't know nature nurture. But I'm like, if you're a minority, if it's in you, if it's in us, we know how to navigate the world as that. So I was like, I want the sperm. If I can't have black sperm, I want it to be another minority

so that at least we're minorities together. If it was a white person, I would have to meet them and have a conversation I mean for me so my partner is um you know he's white British he's from Yorkshire so it's a minority of a sort um and if you know thinking about this obviously it's so so far away because where I am is like like 99.9% of me doesn't want kids but I'm kind of entertaining this like 0.1% that's curious but thinking about what it would mean to raise mixed race children within a world which is like still deeply racist um and how i would socialize my children who would probably be a lot lighter skinned than me to think about things like beauty standards the way people would relate to them as mixed race

kids and there's all this like fetishization that goes on it's like you know i'd want to do an awful lot of reading um but i think to like instill them with a really strong sense of their culture every single kid regardless of gender is being called abdul like every single one it's like abdul one abdul two you are all getting called abdul i want you to be so strong in the sense of bengali heritage like i swear to fucking god um and i suppose like you know seeing as you chose a East Asian sperm donor, a Chinese sperm donor, what is your thought process about raising your child with a sense of this other cultural heritage that is within them? And how do you do that in terms of, you know,

the social world you create around them? So there's actually a Mandarin school in Islington where she can go on Saturdayurdays to learn mandarin because um the dad speaks mandarin um the donor sorry not the dad um and um i've started doing like there's this thing that um chinese well east asian babies do on their first birthdays in english it's called the grab like to see they would go and crawl to a or walk to an item to see what they do so we did that um and we had longevity they've got that in hinduism as well so when they eat

their first rice so their first solid food then it's like a pen a coin yeah and it's like things represent different industries isn't it so we did that and we had longevity noodles at her birthday and we will hurt them at the birthday and i now do luna new year um so i'm trying to like be like she you know she's half asian um she she will i imagine just be a black girl because i'm her mum but i don't know as she grows i she may just start looking asian and then i may be walking with her. They'll be like, who's that? Is that the nan? Is that the nanny?

Because she is the more she, because she's quite light skinned as well. So I thought she'd be darker, but it's just genetics, you know. Mine didn't put up a fight. It's Punnett Square. Yeah. So it's like, I don't know how,

what she'll look like. So I'm really trying to instill, but there is the fetishization. So many people, when they found out she was half Chinese, they were like, oh, she's going to be so beautiful.

It's like, well, not necessarily. There's ugly half Chinese, there's ugly mixed race people, guys. But like, I had all of that.

I've had the, like, Blasian, like, just talking about that. And I don't know,, like Blasian, like just talking about that. And I don't know, that just makes me uncomfortable, but maybe that's at me. No, it can't make anyone uncomfortable.

I've had, so I've told my family not to, she is gorgeous, but I've said to my family, don't emphasize that. If you're going to give her descriptive words, give her, she's so intelligent. She's so funny. She's so smart. She's so, not just, it's so intelligent she's so funny she's so smart she's so not just it's so cute and beautiful because she is but like that will come she'll know that

already and I'm just trying to because also I know colorism she'll navigate the world in a totally different space to what I did um but also yeah I'm just and I talked to a lot of white parents as well who raise who are raising mixed race children and it's I realize it's like a different world like we just see the world completely differently because they don't know what it was like to go to school as a non-black non-white person so for me and when I talk to black mums raising mixed race children or black children we're on the same page like just educate in London school is so important and things like that so yeah the colorism thing though fucking hell so my sister's got the most I mean I know everyone says that their niece is the most beautiful baby in the world but it's objectively true with my niece

um she's so so so so gorgeous so confident ridiculously tall. Like she's just like a very, very long limbed toddler. And she's Bengali on both sides. And the colorism in the South Asian community, like there'll be lots of our listeners who won't be familiar with it, but it is fucking crazy. And it's a combination of casteism, internalized white supremacy,

and also anti-blackness all working at once within south asian beauty standards and it's so so toxic um and so my mum um is quite dark-skinned even though i've got a ring light in front of me like you know fairly dark-skinned in south asian terms and the things that other south asian people would say to you about your skin color are just so hideous. And even from the very, very start when a baby is born, you know, all the compliments are synonyms for being fair skinned. super politically conscious, wanted something different for me and my sister and really wanted something different for her granddaughter. So for me and my sister, she made these like picture books for us to teach us how to read where she used either photos of us or she'd hand draw like dark skinned heroes and heroines and children who'd be having adventures so we could see it. What kind of happened with my niece is I wanted to give her so many compliments about dark skin

because she's got gorgeous like milk, chocolate, Cadbury's buttons, perfect, perfect skin. But when I started doing that, some other family members from the dad's side were like, "'Don't say that, she's not that dark.' And it's not my place. It's not my daughter, but I was grinding my teeth in anger. I was just like, what you're reinforcing for her is that dark means ugly, right? Whereas what you've got the opportunity to do is to like create a kind of, you know, familial social world where you are just, you're slathering compliments on that skin like

it's cocoa butter so then when she has to go out in the world she'll have a kind of like psychological protection from all this horrible shit that quite frankly other south asians are gonna throw at her um so yeah i i cannot stand that shit but that's's what I think. I think it's our job, like people who are aware, it's our job to raise children or the children in our lives to understand like the privilege or the non-privilege and to help them understand they are beautiful, but how they look, what I'm trying to emphasise is how you look isn't the be all and end all, basically.

Because I have like children in family where it's like you know the kid was clearly told they were gorgeous um and it's like cool you are but like that shouldn't be everything um yeah so it's like it's about us I we know we I understand colorism we know colorism so I understand what will happen in the future and so I'm trying to not I'm trying to just level it out so that she understands I don't yeah I don't know it's so no you're so right because as kids me and my sister my mum told us all the time that was the thing we we got so like fresh eyes and people like wow beautiful children. And I know that for my sister, she was really, she had a little blonde afro and everything was about how beautiful she was.

Everything was about, and I think it really has impacted her and impacted her life ever since and her sense of worth and what she can bring to the table. Whereas I was luckier, even though I was like the epitome of like the very light skin mixed race baby

with the big brown eyes. I was also told from an early age because I was so loud and outspoken, like how intelligent I was, how smart I was. So that was a value that I took and held onto and was just like the smart kid. But when all you're told is that you are very beautiful and there's that sense of the exotic as well,

which really surrounds it, it fucks up your sense of what you can bring to the table who you are and your self-worth and especially if you're a mixed race child who maybe looks like one more than like even more the white side as well your sense of identity when you you're cut off from maybe your own you know your half your culture or half the culture that you were born with and it doesn't come with you so we didn't have much we weren't in touch with our jamaican side i wasn't taught about that um but i know for my sister i think it has been very difficult working out who she is and what she brings to the table beyond the fact that she is she grew up beautiful um beautiful and conventionally beautiful and also as we've moved into this era the noughties uh the mixed

race has become you know a mixed race child has become the most sort of like beauty ideal and it will go out of fashion again it is going to go out of fashion but at the moment we've we've when i've been growing up it's i watched myself become an ideal and that was fucking crazy to see and how to like how your opportunities change, how the way people treat you change. And nothing about you really has changed. What you can do and what you can't do hasn't changed. But whether you're in fashion has changed.

And that, even though it gives you loads of stuff, it gives you loads of opportunities. I always say that people say, you know, how do you deal with, how do you talk about colourism? I'm like, yeah, I know I wouldn't be here unless I looked the way I looked. Like, it's not that I don't have the talent talent but i've been given the opportunities a lot of the

time because of the way i look and where i'm allowed the spaces but watching yourself be a trend is is it's fucking trippy and you do have to make people aware of that's what's going on because otherwise they start to really buy into thinking that actually the this establishment and this culture really prizes them for who they are and they will get a very hard lesson when they're out of fashion again and that is something you need to you need to instill a self-worth sense of self-worth so i really agree with the whole like teach your kid that they are intelligent first and foremost it feels funny when you're doing what you'll be like wow because you will look at them be like you're so cute and you're like you're so smart you're so smart but it it pays dividends it really pays fucking dividends in

the long run i will i will say that you've made me want to have a child i think i think that's important i think that's important but i think when a child is in possession of physical attributes which are looked down upon denigrated um within the broader cultural context you've got to build up the sense of no I really really love this thing about myself yeah so I've got fucked up body image problems but to do with skin that is not one of them yeah right absolutely not one of them and that's because my mum just went all in on being like you are going to celebrate and love the fact that you've got dark skin to the point that like you know because there weren't very many south asian like fashion models or like you know certainly no dark skin south asian women in body work there

still aren't any um so whenever there was just anyone with dark skin like on the front of a magazine my mom would buy it including naomi campbell's playboy um which had been shot by i think like david la chapelle and she was wearing like some white latex and had a white phone. And so my mum bought this Playboy and like covered up all the boobs with like smiley face stickers so that it would be age appropriate. Okay, wait, wait, wait, wait. We have to get onto our problems in a second,

but I want to ask one question, which is, I guess to Ash and me, it's like, when did you realise your parents loved you more than maybe you could ever love another human being? And to Renee, when was it that you realized you were doing something for your kid that meant you loved them so much you didn't even realize it because i have a story that that exemplifies this is really disgusting and me and my sister remembered it the other day and this is when i when we when we talked about this we're like oh my god our mom loved us so much okay brace yourselves for this story i'm not even

sure i should tell on the podcast but it is really funny so when we were little you know when you lose your teeth right you lose your baby teeth yeah okay and so you put them under the pillow and the tooth fairy comes and the tooth fairy came for us for like 20p let's just say there was a sieve involved and rubber cups and those and those and those teeth were recovered but i don't know why she was doing this why was she she was jillian mckeathing us but i don't know why because she came up with the whole thing about that she could just be like yeah you get the 20p anyway or like oh i found your teeth or something no she had to physically

going through her pew to get the teeth out and that when i remembered that i thought if i never have a kid i will never love a human being as much as my mother loved me to do that yeah my mom doesn't love me that much she made a show maybe you just had a really loving she bought a playboy and covered up all the tits in the playboy ash that is love that is love oh yeah that was love i haven't got to the teeth falling out stage yet or the need in playboy um yes but um i i picked my daughter's nose and i was like do you know what i would never do this for anyone yeah like it's disgusting that is deep deep love when you do like i pick it yeah when you do something disgusting i still draw a line with because she tries to like chew food and put it in my mouth um and i i still haven't got there yet

whereas my her granddad and grandma does and i'm like i'm like i i can't i can't do it i can't looking in the eyes of your beautiful child being like you will not break me you will not but like i've picked her nose and like yeah but babies kids are just disgusting yeah i just remember like when i was pregnant with her on i was on the bus and i remember driving past the bus and her mom was at the bus stop and her daughter was eating chewing gum and i was like where did you get that and the daughter was like it was here and she she reached under the bench of the bus stop and i was like where did you get that and i was like it was here and she she reached under the bench of the bus stop and i was like and i remember seeing the whole scene play out

and i was just like kids are disgusting kids are disgusting kids are so gross but that's also the thing but as we get as we're adults we're all like oh don't eat this don't do that and i'm like do you understand what we survived as children do you know how hardy our stomach acid is like we were eating bust up gun i was pissing in the garden i can't tell you that me and my sister used to throw sheep shit at each other with sticks i cannot tell you how gross we are as kids anyway we have time for a problem so we're gonna we're gonna do one so this is our yeah renee this is our segment which we call if i'm i'm in big trouble see my i've got babies in the brain so it's gone scrambled i'm in big trouble and it's where our listeners send in their problems for us to advise and answer ash do you want to read out the first problem? I would love to.

Dear If I Speak, I have a one-year-old child and motherhood has totally humbled me. I've had my ass kicked in every way by the process of becoming a mum and I feel I'm a completely different person to who I was before. This is the thing apparently, the matricence. And I feel bad that I didn't get it when friends of mine had babies before I did and I expected them to be the same person as before now I'm in that position and my child free by choice sister and some friends just don't get it at all I don't feel like I can properly explain my explain myself all my struggles without sounding patronizing but I feel bad that I

can't really totally share what i'm going through or relate in the same way interested in your perspectives as you've both talked before about not wanting children thanks kiss i don't think that childless mcgee should kick this one off i think yeah renee i agree well i have a one-year-old too so um in the same boat it's really weird with non in the same boat it's really weird with non-child well child free people if they if you feel they're judging because it could just be you feeling that because I have lots of child free friends and it's just like if they invite me somewhere and because people will sometimes they'd be like oh yeah come for dinner I'll bring bring the baby, bring the kid. And you're like, no.

Because they just don't get it. It's like, hell, but everyone there. So you don't want to bring them. But, like, I think it's just them trying to just keep things just how things were. And it's more that we can, as the mum, can internalise that you just don't understand what I'm going through. Because we feel like, oh, what we're doing is so profound, and so amazing, and so time, which it is time consuming, but it's really our thing, it's, we're internalising the problem, and possibly making the problem bigger than it actually is, and if you just say, like, if they're

your family, and if they're your actual friends, if like ask you to do something or just like want you to do something that you just don't feel comfortable with or you're like i'm just a different person now you can just say no like i'm a very blunt person i guess but it's the relationships in my life would not ever judge that if that makes sense but what would also help what i would advise is if you didn't go to have some kind of baby club to join when you were pregnant like i went to bump and baby club and it's like anti-native classes and you just find people in your community and you have like people you can text who are in the same boat i would find people with kids your same age in your area which i know can be hard but there are loads of clubs um that allow you to join the whatsapp groups and you just find them in your area because it is someone who's like not got a

kid doesn't necessarily want to hear the ins and outs of kid life because it is boring to be fair but to us it's amazing no to me it's amazing like if i could my instagram would just be baby photos but like i'm like no because that's me and that's weird no i really like hearing about it from other people and i think that that's the thing is that like i really wouldn't you know i think it depends what it is I mean look like there are some there are some people who have a kid and they're like unable to um it's like they've become like a brand ambassador for their kid all right and like sometimes you're like okay I can do this for a bit I cannot do this all the time but I think when there have been friends who've shared with me what it's like becoming a parent and they've talked about it from their perspective

good bad wondrous frightening I'm like wow like I'm not going to pretend that I understand this but I am curious about this experience and like I want to I want to share that with you in whatever way you're able to share it with me I think that where the difficulty comes in is when people feel that like when I think some of those fears and anxieties about parenthood, because it's such a crazy, objectively batshit thing to do, it transforms into a sort of judgment. And I've definitely seen this where people with kids then take it upon themselves to judge people who raise their kids in maybe a different way they're like oh my god you don't have like a set bedtime oh my god you don't have a routine oh my god you're doing that like their own fears have been sort of transformed into this judgment of other people or there's a thing of like you know and again there's something which like some people with kids have said to me

they're like you just don't know what it feels like to be responsible for something every single day and I'm like I don't know what it's like to be responsible for something living every single day I do have a job where people like really want to murder me though that's kind of frightening um and so I think when it's that I think that like when it's about the sort of status of parenthood and this sort of sense of like I've elevated into a different world that's the bit which for childless people is very alienating when it's about like no I am really different because of this and i want you to understand me that can bring you closer with other people they don't have to be going through the same thing to want to be a part of it yeah i'm quite interested in in what this dilemma is asking um i i i'm trying to

understand exactly what they're asking us because it feels you know they're saying I've had my ass kicked in every way and I feel like I can't totally share what I'm going through or relate in the same way without sounding patronizing and I don't know have they tried is my question I do think it might be something to what since what you were saying Renee about you know the the way that their sister and their friends might be treating them the ones who haven't got children and trying to maintain the same thing is because they're coming out from the point of view of like oh this person we need to show that nothing's changed and like we can still have the same friendship and this person's like well everything's changed how can

you not understand everything's changed and we need to acknowledge that but maybe there's not been a conversation about any of this because you're all walking around the elephant in the room or the cot in the room trying to pretend that it's you know there's no tension or there's not been a conversation about any of this because you're walking around the elephant in the room or the cot in the room trying to pretend that it's, you know, there's no tension or there's no there's no need to actually acknowledge that things have shifted in the friendship. But if you actually had that discussion, I wonder if immediately things would improve because you're actually saying what you want. And I think there's another resentment here that your friends and family don't seem to automatically be able to recognize some of the changes or no longer know exactly what you need because you're not in the same life position and it's always jarring when that happens because you think you have friendships you have a friendship that's so deep you're like nothing could you know alter this it doesn't matter whether we go through different experiences we'll always be on the same wavelength and then

you find out actually no that's not possible like if you have a very very different experience that changes your life in a way that your friends don't you won't be on the same wavelength for a bit you have to like tune back into each other and recalibrate like how you communicate and recalibrate like okay this you know i have i have a baby that's gonna change the way i see the world and how i navigate things you don't have a baby that's also gonna change like how you relate to me and that doesn't mean the friendship was weak and it doesn't mean the friendship wasn't as strong as you thought it was in the first place it just means if you want to maintain that level of friendship you have to communicate properly both ways um and it's yeah i think sometimes we're above we think we're above like i don't know the

fact that life changes will impact our relationship to other people but no guess what no friend every friendship needs maintenance on work it's not these like things that just exist in a vacuum that are timeless you can be like i'm right now i've just come back from a festival and i'm so close to the people i went with and like you know my best friend who i went with as well like we reached a new level of like understanding and wavelength if i had a baby tomorrow that would change okay and that doesn't mean that the friendship isn't strong that doesn't mean that we don't have that like level of understanding and sisterhood it just means i'd be going through a massive thing that she hadn't gone through and we'd have to then re-re like calibrate our friendship that's very normal so i think letter writer

there's there's a resentment that maybe your friends haven't been able to all the ones that don't have children haven't been able to anticipate your needs and you kind of don't almost want to communicate that to them for whatever reason but you need to otherwise they're not going to be able to because you have gone through a life-changing experience and like you said i think there's also guilt that before they didn't get it because they write i feel bad that when my other friends had babies i didn't get it and now i get it and it's like okay well that's fine like that's okay you don't need to punish yourself or your other friends who now don't still don't get it for that you just have to talk and make some new baby I think the key is new friends though as well yeah yeah um who are in the same

boat because the first well I'd say probably the first couple years of is very different for every single person some people just get a chill baby um I am one of those people I was very lucky but I've seen but people in my baby group have gone through it like they have not got that's why I just think this second one is going to be my test um but I think friends mum friends they people with kids your age you're getting the kind of a full circle experience and so there will be someone you can relate to and I just remember when my other friends had kids like 10 years ago I made new single friends who didn't have kids um but then they made their friends their mum

friends because it's just your lives are different and they this is we're still friends now we still chat but it's like you can't bring everyone along on the same journey at the same time and it like don't be afraid to like kind of check in less when you're not in the same position as you were previously i think that's that's just growth yeah yeah like friends friends your relationship just fluctuate and change if it's a strong friendship you can maintain it but like you say you need people around just fluctuate and change. If it's a strong friendship, you can maintain it. But like you say, you need people around you as well who you can relate to on a day to day basis too. And like have those discussions with.

Otherwise you will resent them more. But also just get your sister to do some more child sitting. Yeah, that's what they're there for. I don't know, as a childless sister, I'm like, no. You should never, you should never voice that upon child free people. We don't want to please don't please don't make us do this we will reserve that even more um I think unfortunately we're we're out of time we've talked so much because there's so much to say I found this

absolutely fascinating I kind of I kind of think I might be leaning more towards what a kid than I did you don't have to rush I don't want to immediately I'm just like I'm just like if I could make the money fertility mot fertility mot maybe after i've after i've learned to drive that's next on the list also if anyone listen get thee to a sperm bank moya get thee to a sperm banks around me it's all right oh can i give people an advice on the fertility mot please do if you are in england um your there'll be a like so in london there's the london egg bank um there'll be there's egg banks around the country um if you go to your local egg bank as a person who's 35 and under and you inquire about donating your eggs you get free

mot normally they cost 500 to 600 pounds if you inquire about donating your eggs you will get it for free and you do not obviously have to donate your eggs that's a that's an egg hack we've just found that's amazing okay well get these get these to the egg bank it's just i'd have to i'd have to get my um hormonal coil pulled out and getting it in there was a hassle I'm not taking my implant out ever no they don't have to take your implant when they have to come out but the coil probably

because I don't know if they can you have a smear with a coil I don't know yeah yeah you can have a smear oh so then it's the same thing I think it'll be the same it's an ultrasound

and it's an injection a blood test so it should be fine so long as I can keep my implant in for all the sex I'm not having that would be that's great um okay anyway renee thank you so so much for coming on if i speak it's been having me

it's been a delight and a pleasure and also revealed to me so many little things about the process of motherhood and solo motherhood that i hadn't even considered before so i'm really very grateful for this thank you i'm wondering how much bingoli sperm is out there in the sperm bag you know what there's quite a bit what i'm wondering quite a bit there you go quite a bit and on that note that's our mentor on that note i've been moylothi mclean i've been ash sarkar this has been if i speak we will see you next week bye and now they both know these things that i don't We will see you next week. Bye. time