Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor - Episode 26: Ellie Taylor

Episode Date: March 22, 2021

This week I talk to stand up and soon-to be-published writer EllieTaylor. She went from being completely disinterested in children to,now that she has a little girl herself, finding new mums 'like catnip'and striking up conversations with them whenever she can. We talkedabout having a baby when you're not really maternal, performing onstage when heavily pregnant, and writing in a pandemic. Her first book'My Child and other Mistakes' is out in July. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello, I'm Sophia Lispector and welcome to Spinning Plates, the podcast where I speak to busy working women who also happen to be mothers about how they make it work. I'm a singer and I've released seven albums in between having my five sons aged 16 months to 16 years, so I spin a few plates myself. Being a mother can be the most amazing thing, but it can also be hard to find time for yourself and your own ambitions. I want to be a bit nosy and see how other people balance everything. Welcome to Spinning Plates. Hello, my fellow Spinning Platesters. That's what I'm going to call you from now on.

If we see each other in the street, it's just a high five and like a a nod and then spinning plaidsters and then a high five uh obviously that's post covid restrictions by which time I hope you'll forget I ever had this idea because quite frankly it'd be terrible to greet someone in that way and say spinning plaidsters uh how have you been? Isn't it nice that spring is on its way? We live next door to a house that has a beautiful magnolia which is in full bloom right now. It's gorgeous. Pink flowers are everywhere and we've had two days of blue sky and it is helping. I mean I'm not gonna lie I was really looking forward to spring. I thought it would make me feel like a lot more of a spring in my step.

And it's more like a little teeny tiny spring. But that's fine. I'll take it. It's still a lift, right? And what else is going on? My eldest is nearly finished. He's just doing GCSEs at the moment. So he's figuring his way through the last bits of work without the exams which am I allowed to say I'm quite happy about that I was always dreading the exams for him and what else uh oh I had a lovely thing where I might sort of went through the telly box into a program I love which is Grace and Perry's Art Club um I don't know if you would have seen it but we love Grace and Perry and his wife, Philippa Perry, in our house. And I'd never met them before, but I really love the programme that they do

because it's all about art for art's sake and it's not at all elitist, which I think is exactly how creative stuff should be. It should just be something where we all encourage it with each other because it's so good for the soul. And that's exactly what his programme is about and about how art creates the narrative for whatever's going on in your life and the importance of that. And we did a show together

where he was talking about his dreams and ended up singing the Sex Pistols version of My Way where I was in my kitchen and he was in his studio and I thought we gave it a pretty good shot. And what else? I think that's kind of it really. I'm just trying to finish my book

I've been writing an autobiography and I honestly have no idea if it's any good or not which I know is not what I should say while you're listening to me I should be giving it the big it's going to be amazing guys but I'm actually just writing and writing and I haven't read anything back I do know that I've told you a lot of stuff anyone that it, you're going to know a lot about me by the time you finish. And, you know, I'm okay with that, actually. So, this week, I am speaking to Ellie Taylor. Now, Ellie Taylor is a very funny woman. She's a comedian and does lots of stand-up in her own right, as well as appearing on panel shows and being funny in the process. And it's funny because I watched her years ago, actually, at one of the big comedy shows they do at Hammersmith, the O2 venue down the road,

and I hadn't really realised until I was looking back over stand-up how much of her stand-up was about mothers and kids and essentially saying she didn't want any of it. Well, now Ellie is a mother herself. She has a little girl who is two and she has had things so turned around that she's now written a book and it's called My Child and Other Mistakes. And she said, as you would have seen in the clip for this show, she's now a little bit obsessed with new mothers and with parenthood in general. And there's something that she said, which I thought was really beautiful, because I think

she struggled a little bit when she had a baby and didn't really know which way was up for a while and she said that every positive thing that other mothers said to her was like another breath into the lifeboat and it was just enough air to kind of get her across the choppy waters so that was really lovely but she also made me laugh a lot and that's always a good thing although it doesn't mean you have to listen a lot to my giggling. Sorry about that. Anyway, I am actually going to... Oh, that's my bloody doorbell. Did you hear that? I don't even know. I bet it's another delivery. Honestly, we get so many packages around here.

I got something this morning. It was some toy I'd managed to buy for £1.70 on eBay. It's just constant. I'm trying to listen to it. I don't know. Anyway, you're not interested in that I'm not interested in that gonna have a cup of tea and listen to Ellie Tay

I'll see you another day bye well thank you very much for talking to me oh you're very very welcome I've really loved doing the podcast mainly because i do get to have conversations outside of the people i see all the time

which has been so nice oh god i know yeah and also because uh it's kind of work saying that with inverted commas um i'm allowed to shut myself away and not be interrupted for a bit so it's all good um because you have one small person and she is about the same age as my smallest person but she's been in nursery has she yes so yeah so uh she was she started nursery just before lockdown so she just got settled in the original lockdown do you remember that um way back way back in the day um yeah so she just sort of got settled in and then we had to pull her out so she was just over one at that stage. And then, yeah, it was into full-on toddler at home.

But, yeah, now she's back in nursery and she goes three days a week. And it is absolute heaven. Yes, that is. It's just amazing, isn't it, when you get that quiet house again and like, what can I do with the time? Oh, my God. When I drop her off and I wave goodbye and see her little smiley face and I just walk down the road little smiley face and I'll

just walk down the road like singing George Michael's freedom like I can walk over the road and I don't need to wait for the green man yeah it's just such simple pleasures I know because actually um with with the the lockdown situation with the five kids it's the toddler the little one Mickey that's been the most defining in terms of the mood around here and he's also busy and so that that's the thing if i feel like if i hadn't had a toddler this last year would have been a lot easier yeah that was really poor planning on your part so mine's just got to the age now where um she can watch a film which is amazing.

So she, I mean, it's the same, it's bloody frozen. Of course it is. Yeah. But she will sit and watch that happily. And that is quite, I feel like that's quite a shift in the sort of the family dynamic. And that's like, oh, you get to have like proper family time, which isn't just her sort of creating chaos in every part of the house. So just be able to sit down together and watch that. We got to watch Finding Nemo the other day. And it was probably the best Saturday afternoon i've spent in many a year yeah

um just really yeah really good fun yeah it's funny you say that because i have spent lots of time training up each of my kids when they get to that point to really get them into screen time yeah like try again try again with the tv you're gonna to boost your ability to watch it for a long time. Even if we just add on a minute each session, that's fine with me. I love that. It's not like learning the piano or the guitar or Cantonese. It's like, no, just learn to get better at telly. Yeah, just sitting still, being hypnotised by a screen.

Yeah, be a zombie. Be a TV zombie. Yeah. It's a wonderful sense of achievement, I feel. I've got to that point. When have you been writing your book, then then in the last half of a long time? Yeah, so I'm doing the sort of, oh God, I can't even remember. It feels such a blur now, isn't it?

I remember when, say when the first lockdown happened and my husband has a grown up job, he's like a salaried employee. So he had to sort of take priority work wise and me as a self-employed show off for hire had to just do childcare. So I was purely parenting. So obviously I couldn't really do anything. I found that really, really hard not to be able to do anything and having no time for myself. That was really tricky not to be able to have the space away to like create, which I always think sounds terribly wanky but it's true for someone who is like so I'm a stand-up comic um I'm a writer I'm an actor to not be able to do any of that

felt really stifling and I felt very resentful against my husband towards my husband I should say because uh I mean it wasn't his fault someone has to pay the mortgage but um it just it was infuriating for me so when I think it was sort of the as the lockdowns was it two I don't know is that your favorite two who knows um when it got a bit easier and when we were allowed to have a babysitter come in then that's when I started my writing my book so I saw it was in the summer I think so it's taken about uh probably about six months or so to write um but when I got that chance again when I the babysitter could come and when she could go back to nursery just to be able to put her in nursery

put her where she needed to go and to be able to know that the whole day before me was just me in my little office tip-tapping away with headphones in felt just like such a beautiful present lay ahead for me for that day just to have that space and that ability to just create something uh to do something I've I've really enjoyed the process actually of writing a book um which I wasn't quite sure how it was going to be but I've bloody loved it well there's so much you said there that really resonates with me um especially that bit at the beginning about the resentment of I kept feeling like you know when you see those cartoons where there's like a kid and then a much older kid or a grown-up is holding

their head like this so they're trying to run somewhere but their hands on their head and that's really how I felt at the beginning of last March because I felt like I just had nowhere to put any of the things I normally do to make me tick because like you my is is a big part of just what makes me function it's not like going and doing a job just to pay the bills you know we're really lucky that we have a job that does that for us but it's it means that when you haven't got that outlet it's a huge part of you that's just put on hold and I struggled so much with it and was hugely resentful of the fact that Richard had an office actually that was the thing I found he's got a studio at home I had no space to go to um so I really get that and so with your husband's work this he's a journalist is that right yeah he's a journalist so he would be working from

home and then going away for shoots as and when he needed to um so yeah it was it was it was full on for a while but once I sort of and I think quite often this is the case in regards to many aspects of parenting once I sort of lent into it to use that phrase once I stopped sort of resenting um the fact that I had to mother all the time and once I threw myself into it more then it was just more inevitably it becomes more joyful when you stop like resisting it and just go right this is what we do now this is this is what this is your job for the moment um it became much easier and it's definitely been she's had my child's had such a lovely year because she spent so much time with us and had had so much attention from us so she's only ever really had the benefits of it um so yeah and and i and i did and i have managed to get a book out of it as well it's so funny because I remembered when I was in that real peak of,

God, I can't do anything. I just want to sit down and write for half an hour. My friend, Brona, who's a writer, said, Ellie, you've got to remember, this is a global pandemic. It's not a writer's retreat. And I was like, that's so bloody true. And then obviously I took that advice and then wrote a book. But the book, my book's called my child and other mistakes and it's all

about uh having a child uh you know making the decision to have a child and getting pregnant having the baby um and i think uh you know i suppose the thing the thing is about that subject that the the topic and the material is generating all the time so being stuck in lockdown while i couldn't do much there were still lots of things that were happening that would eventually become things that I could use and work with so I suppose in a way I don't want to look at it as wasted time it was just different time yeah well it's like I felt like even when with my own little sort of raging I felt like I was kind of it was like death throes of something that I knew really if I was being a bit pragmatic

like there's no way, you know, we are, as you said, in a pandemic, you can't really get frustrated about these things. I sort of knew I was almost having a slightly petulant, like, I want to, and I knew it wasn't really going to happen. But I suppose for you, what's interesting is that when, so your daughter would have been about 16 months, I guess, no, a bit older than that, but 18 months, I guess,

when the pandemic thing was all kicking off. So to be thinking back to the time, you hadn't really had that long since you'd had the bit where you'd only just had her and taken time out of your work and had that time when you're not doing your work. So it's kind of quite funny. You probably felt like you just started to get back

into feeling like yourself again and then go back on hold. Yeah, exactly. I think especially when they first got going into some kind of child care that's you feel like you found your freedom again and like wow things are opening up and you have these whole days where you can do what you want uh well work but do what you want with your work um yeah and then for that to suddenly all close down again yeah it felt like you sort of I was just getting momentum up and getting used to it and working out how to be a working parent and then oh no sorry that's not happening for a while yeah and what was going on when you first got pregnant

did you did you always want to have kids uh it was a real um no not really I I think I I was I've never been maternal I'm not maternal I don't really I didn't really like babies I had no interest in babies I had a niece and a nephew who i couldn't really give monkeys about they were fine but my sister i remember my sister being so upset with me she was like why don't you want to come and babysit the children all my friends just want to come and babysit and i was like i just don't because i have a nice life where i don't have to deal with horrible little psychopaths so why would i want to give up my weekend i used to feel like i was doing her such an honor to look after her children um it was a real like i was i was always very pissed off about it um so yeah just not interested in it and if i saw a baby i had no

visceral you know like i didn't have the broody oh i just want to smell it i never wanted to sniff a child thank you i always felt that way around and I've spoken about this in stand-up a lot. I felt that way around cats. I've always loved cats. Cats make me do silly voices. I don't want to do that voice. Babies absolutely couldn't give monkeys. But then it sort of got to the age.

How old was I? I was like 34. And me and my husband had been married a bit. And there was a lot of pressure from everyone around and all my friends were shooting out children all over the place like baby nerf guns and then um i basically made the decision that and it's very bleak that i didn't think i wanted to die having not ever been a mother that was where I ended up and I was like well in that case gotta have a baby in it so um yeah then we were very lucky to fall pregnant quite quickly

and then once we got to that point I was very I was very into it like I I you know was all over mumsnet forums and stuff I was like really interested in the whole process yeah I went deep and I so for someone who wasn't interested in babies I then totally you know dive cannonballed into the world of sort of pregnancy um and wanted to learn everything I could possibly learn about it and I think now I've had a child now I get the baby thing because I think but it's not just about the pure baby I think I get what other mothers have been through and I get what it has taken to, you know, be in a cafe and having lunch. Like, you know, there's the whole backstory of that woman going through the pregnancy, having the birth, doing the first newborn bit. And there she is today having a sandwich while her child sits next to her.

today having a sandwich while her child sits next to her you just I don't know there's just so much sort of more respect and understanding and I just love mums so fucking much Sophie like I just especially new mums they're my absolute catnip I will chat up new mums everywhere if I see a mum with a newborn baby oh god I'm in there like like a very upper trouser leg i just and i always have my gut and i have a go-to line of picking them up i always say to them that one looks fresh and then they laugh because they're like don't even have a baby yeah they have to talk to me because they're emotionally vulnerable and someone has paid attention to them so then i'm in then we have a chat and i tell them how amazing they look even if they look like shit I tell them they look amazing I tell them they're doing amazingly I tell them it gets better that's what I think is key you have to hear that it does get better and

these first wild months are not a good illustration of what the rest of parenting is like it is not like this it is not as mad and crazy and as unpredictable as this it gets so much better and I think just to that's what I really need basically I try and give the talk that I wanted when I was a new mum so I try and just chuck that at women my favorite hunting ground when it is open is John Lewis baby department there's lots of very vulnerable women there that I can talk to um so that's that's why I'd recommend I wish I bumped into you when I just had my first baby. I think you're right that those are lovely things to hear when you've just had a baby,

but also I feel like actually we don't necessarily hear that much of that at the time. Yeah. Especially the first one is the one that knocks you for six, I think. If I'd seen someone like me doing sort of gigs pregnant and having the kids all over the place, when I was having my first, I would have thought, I'll never feel like that, actually,

because I didn't feel like that for a really long time. And it's so funny to hear you talk about all that when you used to not be at all interested, and now you're not just interested, just slightly stalking. People you used to of zero interest in. Yeah, yeah, I think, yeah, I just, yeah, I just, oh, just, I know what it takes. And I think I had quite a hard newborn period.

I did not enjoy it. I much prefer where we are. I'm in a toddler station and I much prefer it. And not everyone, I just, also where I don't want to like terrify any pregnant women listening not everyone has an awful newborn stage i mean their degrees are awful it's hard at some points but some women really flourish and they love it that it was just not me and i just always want to be very vocal about the fact that i found the

newborn days a big pile of bum they were awful i hated it i wanted it all to go away i thought i'd made a mistake and all saying all of that i still like i don't know if i loved my child at that point but i liked her didn't want any harm to happen to her um but i think you can you can say all those things about absolutely how dog shit those days are and still be a good mum and still love your child the two things are not linked you know it doesn't mean that you dislike your child or you're a bad negligent parent to say that you found those days really really hard yeah no I don't think it means that at all in fact if anything I think probably that's more the norm actually because the books don't they talk you through the physical side of things and about these emotional connections you're supposed to feel very much

straight away and that doesn't happen for everybody and I think my most unhappy moments not just actually with my new baby but just across the whole parenting spectrum have been when I'm trying to fulfill some sort of version of a mother that I don't feel I'm obtaining that you know some sort of perfection of being able to I don't know teach them how to manage their own anger and never modelling any bad behaviour in myself or how to get them into routines. It's just one hurdle after another that I never fly over those jumps. So I think that's definitely more the norm, but you're not really...

It's always quite taboo, I think, to talk about a lot of that stuff sometimes. Particularly when you're sharing stories with other, other new parents at the time. Yeah, I think that's why I was so, I've been, I wanted to write my book, because it was, it's basically the book I wanted to read, I would have liked to have read when I was deciding if I wanted to have a kid. And, you know, pregnant, pregnant, or had a new baby, I would have really liked to read it because it's not, it's funny, obviously, but it's really, really honest. And it's, you know, there's not a guide on positions during labour

or 37 ways to safely serve your toddler a grape. It's not none of that. It's not very helpful, but it's just um i like to think of it as just a it's my very ordinary story of having a child but that is the story of so many women so many women if you are fortunate enough to be blessed with a healthy child and you have a reasonably uncomplicated pregnancy and birth that's their story it's so it's so commonplace and it happens every day and it's like people sort of think of it like shelling peas or she's just had a kid she just had a baby but for every

woman for every birth having that baby is seismic like your your life has shifted the tectonic plates that you stand on have moved it's massive but it's so commonplace at the same time and that's that's what i wanted to reflect back in the book, is that it's just, you know, my, like I said, my ordinary extraordinary story. And I hope that it resonates with other people just to give sort of a true tale, an honest account of the front line of parenting.

No, it definitely will be something that people want to hear about for sure. And it's funny because looking back at some of your stand-up and I've actually seen you live before at Hammersmith Apollo and so it's really funny but I sort of didn't really take on board when I saw you first until I was looking back again how much of your material is about um either not wanting kids or sort of fascination with you know how people have managed to have kids like accidentally or there was a whole thing about I've forgotten you did this back at the time but they did that silly thing on Instagram I think it was where people were sharing what was it

the motherhood challenge the motherhood which is nonsense anyway but it's like four or five pictures of you looking proud yeah um and what you did I actually thought was really funny and I'm surprised so many women mothers got um offended by it but you basically sort of took pictures of yourself doing all the things you can be proud of as a non-mother like sleeping and it was all it was yeah before I had kids it was just me sleeping five pictures of me or four pictures of me asleep one me asleep with a bottle of wine that's still funny now isn't even though you're not the other side of it right yeah that's the thing yeah I think why would they don't worry um yeah um I suppose the stuff you would have seen is all sort of when I'm in my uh 30s and it was all when that sort of um you know those you start asking yourself questions if you haven't got children because

it is such an expected yeah path to take so So even if you don't end up having children, you consider it because it's sort of shoved down your throat so much. Yes. Well, as you say as well, when you got married and then people ask questions, questions, I'm always quite surprised that it's such a normal thing people think they can ask you about when it's actually incredibly personal.

Yeah, yeah. You realise the more, you know, you have friends who are having problems think they can ask you about when it's actually incredibly personal yeah yeah you you realize the more you know you have friends who are having problems or you suffered baby loss or something and you realize how awful the question it can be it's so loaded and so often it's just used to fill a gap in conversation just like you know you're going anywhere on your holidays it's just like that shoved in and it's so not any of your business and i've done it myself and i still find myself doing it and as i'm saying that question i think what the fuck are you doing shut up you're doing it's none of your business but it's just like a sort of social tick and it comes out are you planning on having any more

kids do you want more kids i mean i get that now because i've got i've only got one um so yeah you're gonna have another one and it's such i find that a really loaded question because it's something i'm really i'm not sure about if anything it feels like a bigger decision than having the first one yeah um and i just i keep i increasingly keep thinking like i keep seeing girls from school or uni or whatever or people from uni going uh surprise guys we're having another baby and i'm like that's your third child and I get I get like angry because I'm like how are you so certain that you want another child I'm so jealous of your certainty and how can you actively want to go through this awful stuff again and I like I

look at you safe and I've just thought I can't get my head around how you can function with five children. What makes you think I'm functioning? You're in a quiet room and you look like you've brushed your hair. Yeah. But it's quite, it's extraordinary what you've done. Like to any woman, I think you've had more than one child. I just, I mean, I'm fascinated and in awe and I want to know everything yeah it is interesting a lot of that stuff I mean I think um for me I sort of felt like we could

have had just one or lots it's kind of weird because my eldest is actually nearly five years older than my next one along so I think there was a long time when I wasn't thinking about it at all and the adjustment to being Sonny's mum was enormous to me enormous in loads of ways just how to still find for my time for myself I got married when he was about one as well so I was sort of factoring in my feelings about being in this very adult committed relationship where you know I didn't even know if I was necessarily going to get married I think think, because my parents' marriage didn't work out. So that I had to sort of think about that. And then, yeah, about being his mum. And then also making my third album at the time. And I didn't know how to be a pop star anymore, a pop star with a baby. That felt weird. But

to be honest, what you've done with stand up to to me is like my next level phobia of stage stuff. I watch stand-up and just... Do you remember that programme Quantum Leap? Yeah. I always feel like if I by accident make eye contact with the comedian, I'm going to do a Quantum Leap and I'm going to have to know their material. Honestly, so much is this paranoia that I often prepare a little anecdote that I think might be mildly amusing to tell if I find myself up on stage.

Sophie, that's absolutely bats. I know. Now that I've said that out loud, I do realise that. That's amazing. It's not even very good, the stories I tell. They're not that funny. I bet you've got some stories, mate. I think it's just funny sometimes the little quirks in your own mind the little loops you can go on so i've got that one and the other one is i once heard if you're being attacked like if a burglar breaks in to break the um sort of uh the energy of their

adrenaline you're supposed to quote song lyrics back at them because the emotional intensity of it will kind of disarm them and it could even make them cry. And I think I probably heard about that about six years ago and I spent the last six years trying to work out what song I'd do. What have you settled on?

You haven't decided? Everything I think of is wrong. Yeah, maybe not Murder on the Dance Floor. That wouldn't help in a breaking situation. It's not an emotional song. I don't know. Everything I think of is like, no, not that.

It's like my brain has decided to form a file of songs that wouldn't work like Jolene and stuff is just wrong I just love the idea of yeah you getting yeah coming across an intruder and start like doing something by Adele or something hello yes there you go but you've done stand-up since you've had your baby yeah yes I've been doing stand-up for like 10 11 years now so um I loved I actually loved doing stand-up when I was pregnant I found that probably the most enjoyable bit of my career because I found it so uh strapping for a cliche empowering to be um a really visibly massive pregnant woman holding a microphone being in charge and I just think it's it's a visual you don't often get um and I really enjoyed it I found I also found that I felt so physically funny like pregnant women look hilarious you're

like look at you you've got a massive stupid bump like not yucky or awful I love pregnant women but I just think they look so satisfying and silly um and I really enjoyed I'm quite physical in my performance anyway so I really sort of enjoyed playing on that um so yeah I absolutely loved it and then subsequently I've done um a tour uh about uh having my kid and about agreeing to do a tour with a newborn which is a very stupid idea um so I've still got tour dates actually that have been inevitably I'm sure you've had this I think they're being rescheduled again for the fourth time um to finish that tour I mean there's stories about having a newborn my child is basically old enough to do the bloody show herself now because it's been delayed so long

how old was she when you did your first tour then uh she was about nine months I think nine ten months so I had to start writing it when she was about three months which was I just shouldn't have put myself in that position to have, you know, obviously, you know, you put things on sale. They go, they sort of go, people buy tickets long before the thing exists. So I put the tour on sale when my child was eight, when I was eight and a half months pregnant with my child. Oh, wow. And then suddenly, yeah. And then I got, you know, I was maybe I was like, I remember just crying to my sister when I was maybe had a six week old.

Like, how am I going to write this show? I feel mental. I am. I don't know who I am at the moment. I don't feel funny. I know that. How am I going to write this? And she was like, well, just cancel it then. You're not exactly Michael Jackson, are you? Which was very true. She has a way of grounding me, my sister, which really made me laugh. But I still I did it. I did. I didn't feel like I could. I think I'm too proud to. So I struggled on and I did it I did I didn't feel like I could I think I'm too proud to so I struggled on and I did it but I certainly wouldn't recommend it again I just think you can't you just underestimate I think I underestimated how impactful having a child would

be on me like to get your head around this only concept of being a mother it's it's enormous so yeah I wish I'd taken a bit more maternity leave have you I bet you've sort of dabbled with different amounts different amount of maternity leaves then what would you what's your preferred um my favorite thing to do is just stuff I suppose that's kind of on my own uh time frame and that I don't I think having to be glamorous is really hard when you've got a tiny baby. So I've only really done that with the last one, where I went on tour when he was, so he was born in January, and I went on tour in May. So he was four months old.

Wow. And to be honest, I felt pretty great. I was like, I've just had my fifth baby. I'm 39. I was like, I've just had my fifth baby. I'm 39. I was on tour with an orchestra. And I felt quite clever. And I also felt really wholesome because the sound checks was a 21-piece orchestra. So the strings, song and it just felt yeah it felt really wholesome it felt like being sort of in this musical walton sort of world where all the edges are all kind of blurred and it's all in soft focus i think if it'd been a really big rocky tour i might have struggled with it more with this little newborn and richard my husband is in the band so what was happening is the first half of the gig was just orchestral and quite growing up, I had a conductor, and that was really kind of careful. Then the band would come out, and we'd go full-on disco,

sort of Studio 54 vibes, all the old songs, but with loads of the orchestra on top. And then I'd walk off stage, and there'd be Mickey, so I don't know, say 17 weeks old, and I'd give him a feed if he needed one, or he'd be in his little Moses basket all wrapped up waiting for me. And I just thought, this is great. But I don't think I could have done that with any of the others. The one at the time I made a mistake was when I had Ray. So that's my third baby. And sounds silly to say it now. But my first two have been quite premature and two months early. So I wasn't really expecting to

have a full term baby. So I'd booked this. we had a DJ gig in Serbia, I think it was, that Coet was when he was about six weeks old. And I'd sort of forgotten I'd said yes to it. And I think I'd thought he'd be probably a little bit older than he was. That shows, again, the craziness of my thought process. But yeah, then I realized about two days before we were going to go, oh, no, it's coming up. It's the night after.

It's in two days. And I just sobbed. How could I leave my baby? I didn't have time to sort his passport. So we had to go away for a night. And I found that horrible. It was like Velcro, you know, and you're like, like pulling you away from him.

Yeah. Oh, sorry, yeah. I was reminiscing about times when I've worked with babies. No, please, go on. It's so interesting. I know what you mean when you say, like, wholesome and you you felt really good not that I've done a big tour with an orchestra but I suppose there are aspects of as hard as it is being a working mum sometimes when I do I've done some work and then you do return back to the fold and you are sitting on the floor playing dupe play I do think

good I did really well today I've done it today today I won. I've done some work and I've made it back and my child is there and she's happy. And sometimes I feel really proud of myself. And I think that's quite important actually to celebrate those little wins. Definitely. Rather than constantly just being like, oh, I'm so torn and I'm so tired

and who's picking her up on Thursday? Just to, yeah, like as hard as it is, there are sometimes you just feel, you can feel that lovely moment of pride. Yeah, definitely the other thing you've done which i think is really brilliant um is that when when i had my first i was only i was 24 when i got pregnant and my mum said to me oh the great thing about being a young mum is that you're you can still be quite selfish and i suppose what i took from that is that inferred that sometimes when women aren't young super young mums they've got the the event of having a baby makes them think they have to rejig everything to sort of factor it back in but actually I don't think that's true so I think the

other thing you should be really proud of is actually the fact that you actually did something for yourself quite soon after having a baby I think is really impressive because you know the fact that you had this small baby and then still the tour when she's like nine ten months old I mean that's yeah I think that's amazing especially with your first baby yeah but I don't know because I think what I arguably doing something for myself then would have been not doing the tour do you know what I mean and it all it's tricky because it all worked out well and the tour was good and everyone enjoyed it apart from people in Epsom they didn't like it but that's not the story but and it's a success story but

then you look back and you go yeah it was a success story but did it need to happen do you know what I mean I survived it and we all did okay but if I had another child I certainly wouldn't be doing I think I'd want to take proper do nothing for six months just to take the pressure off just because it's not even just doing the work it's having the work hang over you yeah you know like a black cloud knowing there's a shadow or god I've got to do that in this week and you know counting down the days is quite stressful um but uh I definitely I never wanted to stop working um it's just a matter of, yeah, trying to factor in, just spinning plates, really.

Isn't it, Sophie? It is spinning plates. So when you used to make your jokes about not having babies when you were sort of in the lead up, do you think it was this sort of, does it surprise you you've become quite fascinated now by new motherhood? Or do you think in a way those two

things kind of they're probably a bit more of a fast you know it was a bit more of a topic because it was sort of lurking there yeah I think I did I you know I did a lot of I do a lot of research and things I'm a little geek and anything I want to do I do a lot of homework on and having a child was no exception so I suppose I don't think it is necessary necessarily a surprise that I'm now just in passionate love with new parents I could talk about being a mum and I could talk about pregnancy and birth and babies and children forever and I never thought I would be like that I never get bored tell me about your child being on the milk ladder. I'll sit down and listen, babes. Like, I love it. I've got so much time and patience.

And I don't know that I'd expected that. But I suppose, I don't know, I just feel like my child is now my specialist subject. And I feel part of a sisterhood now. I just feel like I get women who've had children. I just, we're all in it together, even though sometimes it's a bloody bitchy sisterhood. And, you know, that's another topic, isn't it?

It's so passionate because people feel so, well, passionate about their child and their child rearing. And if they did something one way and it worked for them, then it's, well, that's the right way. And it's quite hard to sort of see past that sometimes and remember that your child isn't the child of the world that represents all children, and nor is your experience of parenthood.

I think I have to kind of remember that sometimes, especially having one child. So I've got no point of reference. I'm sure with five children, you're very much aware that not all children react the same to the same things. with five children you very much aware that not all children react the same to the same things yeah um but yeah i just i just i just bloody love mum so so much i get it and i get do you know what i get now is i always did that cringe when i'd see mothers wearing like t-shirts with mama on or like necklaces with like you know mother or mom or whatever anything like that i feel like so cringe

why do you like you have to show everyone that you're a mum? Who cares? But now I'm like, I get it. You want to flag that shit. You are proud of it. It's like the medal you are buying yourself that no one else will buy you because you are part of something so big that you want to flag it, you want other people to acknowledge it, you want to know other people who are in the same group as you and I and I get it and I it's been really eye-opening I think it's so interesting not just having a baby is not just about the baby I think it's just really opened my eyes to parents and mothers and what what it takes to be a parent really and do you feel like you found you kind of feel like yourself we're in amongst it all now do you feel like you've of feel like yourself, we're in amongst it all now, do you feel like you've kind of recalibrated yourself?

Yeah, yeah, I do. And it's so funny because I feel like I know exactly what that question means because, yeah, at the beginning, I did not. I didn't know who I was. I couldn't understand how the world was still continuing when everything I knew had imploded. Like, how can anyone... I remember watching Gogglebox, like, how are Giles and Mary making jokes about the chase?

And I am, like, I don't know how to be. Like, I'm having a lot... Who am I? What's going on? And how... Do you know what I mean? How can anything continue while my life is in tatters? And yeah, and I think to piece yourself back together and work out how you now exist with this new human that's in your life is,

you don't teach you that in NCT. No, they don't. And who did you turn to? What did help pull you out to feeling better about things it was other mothers which is probably why I'm so annoying to new mums because I know that all the women in my life my mum my sister my friends who've had kids and a lot of the time it was people on you know social media who I've maybe I've met once or twice or I know vaguely from work or and a lot of time it would be complete strangers getting in touch with me and it was those little messages a little dm

I remember you know a lady down my road who I'd never spoken to before had seen me on Instagram she obviously knew where I lived because we lived two doors down for each other and she saw on me putting on Instagram how I'd had mastitis for the 3000th time and she dropped a little card in my door and it was so sweet and it was just a real example of women who've been there and done that reaching out and saying do you know i know what you're doing and it was basically it made me go you've survived so i know i'm going to survive too yeah and it's just it was those all those little bits of gorgeous bits of humanity it was like they were little breaths of life

in a little life raft and that got me through to the other side. And I didn't even really think about it at the time, but they were so important. And I had a wicked partner. My husband was amazing. And I just can't, to any woman who has had a child by themselves,

I salute you. And when the world, when Armageddon happens, I want to be in a cave with you lot because you're kick-ass yeah to do it by yourself is unimaginably hard and I cannot yeah the courage and strength it takes in every sense is incredible um so I felt very lucky to have such a good support system but yes basically if I've ever met you and I hear you're pregnant well sorry because I'll be in your inbox quicker than you can say get some anus off like I'll be in there um was it quite weird do you think for your husband to see you sort of going through all this and questioning

yourself like that yeah I don't know that he knew so much to be honest he's currently so I've just um he's currently reading my book for the first time really like literally right now yes so it's interesting yeah like it'd be interesting to have a chat with him because when I spoke to my mum about it she was like I didn't know you felt that bad and I don't know if he ever knew I felt that bad I don't think I knew I felt that bad at the time. It's looking back on it, it's quite tricky. But I found another thing I found hard with having a kid was this sort of, which I hadn't expected,

was the change in your relationship with your partner, if you have a partner. I found that very tricky to navigate that, to suddenly not, it wasn't't we'd been us two for so many years and then suddenly it wasn't and we were sort of just ships that passed in the night it was like we were shift workers on opposite shifts and you would pass the baby between you and then I just it was like we were in the same house all the time but I missed him and it was that was a another sort of thing to navigate again which they don't teach you in NCT um so it's um I don't know

it's just having a kid is just massive on so many levels that you can't predict until you have a kid it is and I think the other thing that happens is it sort of unlocks all these feelings that you had about your own childhood what worked for you with what your mum did your dad did or whatever situation you were in and the things that you end up mimicking the same and the things that you think I must make sure that's different I mean do you think is your was your childhood quite similar do you think to what you intend for your daughter yeah I think so my I had a I had a such a wonderful childhood I feel very lucky now it was always very happy and silly silly I think that's such a lovely word yeah isn't it and that's that's definitely something like I prioritize silliness above anything else with my daughter which I think my husband always

thinks is a good idea but I just it's like she has a personal jester um and I love that I love being silly and I love now she's at the age where you can do like imaginary games and stuff that's really great that's all really fun isn't it yeah it's really toddlers are really fun for that yeah they're like out there with their thought process and I think I've got that from my mum she's very silly um uh and I think my my dad worked a lot so he wasn't as involved um with us when we were kids and I'd hope that that wouldn't necessarily be the same with my husband I think generation generationally I don't know if I'd hope that that wouldn't necessarily be the same with my husband I think generation generationally I don't know if I've said that right um my uh my husband is likely to be more involved I think men these days tend to be doing sweeping generalization um and so I would hope

that um yeah he's around a bit more I tell you one thing I've really found really sweet is there's been some times where I've been doing things and my mum said oh I used to do that and I was like oh I don't I don't have a I don't think I have a memory of that but I must have like I was putting my daughter in I put putting socks on or something and I was putting one sock on I said one potato and I put the other one on said two potatoes and my mum said oh I used to do that oh it's really sweet it's like all these strange little things in the back of your brain that you link to childhood. And they sort of come out.

And sometimes it's the things that you found quite, your parents said that were quite annoying that you ended up doing, which I've done. I've done a lot of that. There's a lot of stuff that my dad used to do. Like when we'd walk home from school and we'd go down this little side passage and he'd always go, this is the secret way. one else knows this and i'd be going dad loads people

know it around here there's loads of those people they know it you know it was just a running joke and i do exactly the same thing whenever i go down it's just so strange what pops out um or when i'm crossing around my dad used to do things like well across the road it's like a little hamster who's just spotted a friend hamster on the other side and he wants to get as quick as I can like things like he'd do it when I was a bit too old really because I'd be like 12 going that's talking about hamsters yeah but I do all of that stuff but I think you're right about the silliness actually that's a brilliant thing to have in a home and something that I think it's great for young childhood and it's brilliant the other side but I do warn you that if you do what we've done in our house,

and I think families are like this, I think families have got personality traits and things that get celebrated. So, for example, some houses might put big emphasis on academic achievement, sporting events, being very up on current affairs. There's all sorts of things. You know when you go into a house and you're like, oh, they're quite serious, these children children and i've done the same as you i've got quite a lot of silliness and we think anything funny anything to do music dancing quick witness

all like that's great we'll talk about it we'll have good luck that's great yeah but it does mean that it's quite hard to keep when you're outnumbered like i am it's quite hard to keep any sort of um rigidity because you spent so long going oh look he's up on the table and shaking his hips it's great so it comes back to bite you a little bit I would say oh okay that's a good warning okay I've got another three years yeah three years of silliness and then I'll rein it in you won't be able to rein in it's happened oh no oh I've balls it up already yeah. Like my kids can get around me like that if they just make a joke.

I spent a long time being pretty relaxed about school stuff and, you know, slagging off bad teachers. That comes back to bite you if there's ever going to be another pandemic. Don't recommend that one. Yeah. It turns out I've done quite a lot of things

that have not helped me but but overall i do like having a creative house i think having a creative silly house where you're allowed to dress up anything goes is a place where they feel quite safe to be themselves do you think your parenting has shifted as you've had more kids like did it have you got do you think you've got better um that's an interesting one I think definitely I'm learning a lot along the way still and my oldest is going to be 17 next month which is just wild and um you know I do think for him poor sod he's had to teach me a lot about how to parent a teenager because it is quite a different chapter um and luckily he's quite sort

of patient with me really and he does you know i do come to a lot saying i think i got that bit wrong what should i do you know how do i do the situation but then they're all really different and the next one down he's 12 now and when he discovers alcohol it's just i don't know how i'm gonna steer that ship like it's gonna be a nightmare i think it must be so interesting because you've got such the age range to have you've got these sort of different parent brains on because the parent brain for a 17 year old is very different from a parent brain you need with a two-year-old yes it is and the way i think of it is different planets i feel like i've got in the sort of family solar

system there's the five different planets and i have to land on each planet you know for a decent amount of time ideally once a day just check how the atmosphere is how all the shoots are going adjust what needs adjusting and then shoot off and land on another planet it's like that and sometimes i'll be standing on one planet and i realize something's gone wrong on another one and it's like that that's how i feel i feel like I'm a little maternal astronaut. But all the planets are slightly different. So, you know, my instincts as an astronaut are the same, but they all have slightly different ways of, you know,

how to take the devil's right to encourage growth. That's such a good analogy. It's really how I feel when I think of it like that. All the planets are different colours, different shapes probably. Yeah, I think that's the hardest thing really. And it's the quiet ones you have to watch as well. That's quite hard. We're quite a demonstrative family.

Not all the kids are as good at being open about how they're feeling about things. I have to keep an eye on who's not said much recently, which can be tricky in a noisy family. Yeah, I bet. We were quite a noisy family. and i remember deliberately being really quiet sometimes just to get my mum to say are you okay ellie oh is it just you and your sister just me and my sister yeah yeah and you're the elder or the younger i'm the younger one she's just moved to australia actually which is interesting yeah so she's emigrated with her family. So that's quite interesting to see how my,

because I've been writing the book, been thinking about my parents and how they view us. And obviously to suddenly have one of your children on the other side of the world is, what do you think about your kids leaving? I say to my daughter, never leave me because I'll find you. Yeah, yeah. I'm like, you're not allowed to go

to australia like that's just no which means probably made it inevitable um for some of them i mean you can't really control that stuff unfortunately i think my eldest might stay close to home but the next one down he's gonna be gone yeah he was once doing a project where he had to take pictures of things for a memory bank and it was like little objects and then he took a picture of his brothers and i said why are you taking a picture of them well after I leave home I'm only going to see them at like birthdays and Christmas he's planned it all um but is your husband Australian he is yep so me and my sister both married Australian really very weird hey it is weird watch too much neighbors it's far too influential are they from the same

part of australia no different parts of australia which is unhelpful yeah so it's not like you can go and fly over and see the same lot how far away will your is your sister from your in those they are about four hours oh no uh maybe an hour about a 10 hour drive or a hour flight yeah oh yeah that's inconvenient can she move a bit closer you just say you can do both at once it's inconvenient on many levels it really is actually oh god what a witch how do you find keeping in touch with her well fine now because it's just you know it in a way i've never been more involved in her life we message all the time we uh facetime in the mornings a lot but i still sort of it's kind of like a grief in a way like i suddenly have pangs of oh she'll she'll

never go i was gonna tell her about the yellow lines outside tesco she won't go to that tesco she doesn't need to know about the yellow lines and it's sort of this i forget that she's not ever she's never going to be here again for me to just drop in because i've moved i've moved to the area that my family are from back to where she was before she went and i'd like that's quite hard to sort of comprehend and i feel very sad for my daughter not having her cousins yeah and now if she is an only child she won't have any she doesn't she doesn't have anyone here she's got such a little family and i feel a bit sad for her about that so i'm very interested in talking to people who have only children because i want to try and I want people to say it's okay and she won't be mad oh no it's fine it definitely is fine I am friends

with lots of only children and I know lots of people who only have one kid as well oh do you yeah I need I need to seek seek these people out but you're sort of taught encouraged to think it's a bad thing actually but I don't know I think people are way too tactless with that I mean I was an only childhood I was eight and it was so basically my my young childhood was all on me on my own and it was fine you're fine you worked out all right fine um I think you get quite good at adult conversation if you spend a lot of time growing up with other kids and also if your friends have got kids then she'll at least you have people play with. I didn't even really have that. How come?

My parents just didn't really seem to have any kids. I think my mum had me at 23. Not mega young, but in her group of friends, I was the only child, basically, at parties and their birthdays and that kind of thing. I just don't really remember there ever being any other kids around. Maybe there were, like, one or two sometimes. Yeah, I've heard that a lot, that if have uh yeah they're good at they're good at talking they're good conversationalists because they've just spent so much time with adults um but I think

yeah with me I chat a lot and obviously my husband's a journalist so yeah I think she could be a right precocious little rat so I look forward to that and just going back just think about something you said before when you were writing your stand-up just after you'd had her and you're saying you didn't know how to be funny was that I suppose I didn't really think about that because that's quite a that's quite a big deal to not feel funny yeah yeah was that just not finding just life in general just a bit too intense to find humor or was it just literally in the way you would normally write? I think it was that I just had my stand-off is always very much around what's happening to me and what I'm up to it's very inward facing um and I just felt like my whole head was full with a child I couldn't have I couldn't have think about any funny anecdotes or observe anything that had

happened outside of having a child because that was what my brain was for and I remember I remember so specifically like feeling like I haven't posted on Instagram for a while I need to put something on Instagram and I just couldn't think of what to do and then I remembered oh I've just bought some little um like succulents like little cactuses that live in and the plant pot they were in was the shape of a plastic dinosaur and i was like oh i can do something about them and i felt absolutely elated that i was going to post something that wasn't about being a mum or having a child i think i felt the pressure yeah to not just talk about that whereas i think now if i had another one i'd be like well no i just talk about that whereas i think now if i had

another one i'd be like well no i can talk about that because that's what it is that's what my life is right now that's okay don't feel worried about that but yeah i did i did think i will never feel funny again i just felt like my brain would always be consumed with how long she's been asleep how long until the next nap what she's eaten do i need to do some washing what do we need to get more nappies just that sort of thought i just thought my brain is it's just not there's just no capability to have anything else and that's all to do with finding like you said finding who you are again and working out how you work um and now yeah it's fine again i do feel back to i do feel back to me but um and i still worry when I stand up I'm like I don't want it to be all about having a kid but that is it is a big part of my life yeah and they're really funny it's a pretty

rich topic as well for humor yeah yeah there's a lot of scope there exactly and I'd be a fool not to use it so um as we went for a walk yesterday down the local high street and three times in the middle of the street she pulled down her trousers and knickers and said need to do a poo please and i was like you can't not in the high street we will be banned from wh smiths if you keep doing this um and just like that kind of thing it just keeps keeps you on your toes doesn't it want to go puppies it definitely does it's funny because um i saw a clip of you doing stand-up when you were pregnant with her and i think you must have been probably i think you're probably about six or seven months

and you're like in this mini dress covered in diamante and you look incredible high heels so it must have been quite quite strange when you'd had the baby to sort of look think back to how you'd felt then and just thought where's that really like empowered woman gone but it's so nice that it came back relatively quickly because I think some women can actually feel like that for you can go on for years you know that feeling I spoke to a woman not so long ago who felt like that for about seven years she just said she was really angry just cross just didn't really know who she was where she was up to and I think feeling like you can it sounds a bit um a bit Oprah but being able to sort of look at yourself and say I actually love who I am now rather than slightly sort of feeling like I don't recognize

who that woman is anymore is really a significant thing and I think some for some mums it does take a really long time or they make maybe doesn Maybe they're not even realising they're not feeling like that, actually. Yeah, I think a lot of it is reflection, isn't it? When you look back, you go, oh, you can't quite clock it at the time. No. It's quite easy to be invisible with it, too, actually. A lot of parenting, I found, shockingly homogenised who I was. And I still hate that now.

For me, it's always a soft play I think of when I think of that feeling where I'm basically just there as a chaperone and I could be anybody and I've sort of lost, you know, anything I do out in the real world is just gone and it's just sat at a little table waiting for my kid to come back

and get their shoes back on. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's quite humbling, isn't it? It is. There's a lot of humbling experiences along the way. I mean, I quite like the gap, actually, between my day job and coming in. And, you know, back here,

it's just all about whatever's been going on there. I can go very quickly from, you know, doing a gig to changing a nappy, whatever. It's like, just like that. Yeah, yeah. It's like, just like that. Yeah, yeah. It's quite ridiculous, really. But you have to embrace that ridiculousness. The silliness will see you through, I swear to God.

Embracing the silly is a good thing, Ellie. I totally, totally sponsor it. Okay, thank you. Well, thank you so much for your time. I really am keen to know what your husband thinks of your book. It's too late now. He can't change anything. I know. Well, it's going to, yeah, I mean, that's the thing. It's going to a lawyer soon, so he's got limited time.

Is that what happens then? So you write the whole thing and then... You write the thing and then it goes to a lawyer to check that, you know, your mum's not going to sue you or anything. Yeah, to check that everything's OK. Did you just write everything in it and then let your publisher and the lawyer take things out or did you sort of edit on the way I edited on the way yeah and it'll

be interesting to see what the lawyer says but hopefully I haven't defamed anyone too badly so well I can't wait to read it oh thank you so much that's so exciting so it's it's called um my child and other mistakes is that right yeah my, My Child and Other Mistakes, How to Ruin Your Life in the Best Way Possible. So it's out in July. That's very exciting and I'm very impressed you've managed to write a book within the last year. So am I, Sophie, to be honest. Yeah, because I've been writing at the moment,

so for me this is like a new thing and I'm very, probably a bit like you are about new mums, I'm a bit like that about people writing books now. Just a bit fascinated by how people write. You said you had headphones in when you write what are you listening to classical music I can't have anything with lyrics or white noise okay so you have to have something there yeah it doesn't block out or sometimes I just put my um earbuds in and just have it on the block out mode just so I can't hear any anything in the background at all yeah just to focus on.

And is it very different to writing your standup or any other kind of writing you've done? I think it's, I find it, it's more, it's very, it's a big deal to do, but it's kind of less stressful in a way than standup because you know,

you would stand up, you've got to write a joke that is funny enough for people to audibly go, ha ha ha ha. Because when you're writing i can write something and i don't have to aim for that i can you know sometimes there'll be really funny bits but there are other bits that will just be a light titter do you know what i mean and um just yeah to not have the the pressure of having a standing ovation joke uh all the time because you can't possibly do that for a book that's 70 000 words long um

so it's it's different i've really i've just really enjoyed i've always been a writer first and foremost really so to be able to just yeah to be able to just oh just sit down and write all day it's just oh so lovely how long do you write for when you write how long were your stints oh whenever i've got time so sometimes quite long blocks yeah like days like well you know you do like a maybe a couple of hours then a break and a couple of hours it's quite draining isn't it it is yeah i think you do need to take breaks from it there's the have you heard of a technique now called the pump there's a technique called the pomodoro technique which is you do 40 minutes on and then you go and have a break um 40 minutes on yeah and then like 10 minutes off i think it is just to sort of shake you out of it it's got nothing to do with tomatoes don't think so that's disappointing yeah a tomato

invented it yeah i don't know what do you think your husband's gonna say about the book uh i think the biggest praise he could give me the highest praise he could give me is that it's well written um for him you know he's not my target audience but I think um it's obviously it's my story but it's kind of our story in there as well so I just really hope he likes it I just really hope that he does yeah he's the first person to read it who you know means a lot to me so I would love him to a little pat on the head from him about it would mean a lot oh I'm sure that's on its way I'll let you go and get your pat on the head thanks so much Ellie it was lovely to speak to you.

Pleasure, Georgia. Lots of love. Take care. Bye. See you in the real world one day. Yeah. We've never actually met in person. We've done two chats online.

I think that's kind of, yeah, but somebody will. One day. One day. All right. Lots of love. Enjoy the rest of your day, Ellie. Take care. Bye.

Bye. Do you know what's funny uh the other day i did a radio program and just before we went live the very kind woman broadcaster said to me do you know i've listened to some of your podcasts and i think you have something called hyperfluency because you never say um and uh and it's thrown me so much that I feel like I say it a lot and I'd like to apologise because I said um and uh quite a lot in my introduction to this podcast episode and I can only blame that compliment. It has tripped me up entirely. Anyway, wasn't Ellie brilliant?

And I actually think there's a lot to be said for her complete placard- support of other mothers I do think that motherhood often does feel like you sort of slip through the cracks of your own life a little bit and you can feel a bit homogenized and that your personality is sort of vanished and who you were before doesn't feel completely relevant to slip back into and you're also very much that small person's parent and their needs come first and so you can feel a bit swallowed up and I think reading between the lines of what Ellie was saying she's saying that that can happen to a lot of people and now she gets why people put things like

mother and mum on their t-shirt or their necklace or whatever just because you want to own it a little bit it's a big deal that you've done it but it's also not all that you are anyway I think it took me a long time to feel like that, actually. I think I did feel lost and amongst it definitely when I had my first. I adored being Sunny's mum, but I didn't really know how to find me again. And I think that's probably why I ended up talking to you guys and to the women I've ended up interviewing, just to see if other people felt the same.

Maybe you feel the same, or maybe if you're not a parent, you might have had something else that's done that to you. I think there's many things that can happen in life that can make you feel a bit like that. Anyway, I'm really in a very rambly kind of mood today, and I can only blame the fact that I'm in a quiet room sitting down. It's the fact that I have the freedom to actually just waffle on. And with that, I'm going to bid you adieu, and I'm not going to do what I did last week, which is to trail whoever's going to speak to you next week because I'll probably get it wrong. All I can tell you is I've recorded some amazing chats for this series and we're not at the end of it yet.

So don't worry, I have some treats in store, some lovely women, some brilliant conversations, lots of wisdom, some more laughs. And I'll see you all next week. Have a good one. Bye-bye. On each step with Peloton, from their pop runs to walk and talks, you define what it means to be a runner. Whatever your level, embrace it. Journey starts when you say so.

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