Spinning Plates with Sophie Ellis-Bextor - Episode 67: Melissa Hogenboom

Episode Date: June 6, 2022

Melissa Hogenboom is a Dutch-born science journalist, now working at the BBC. A mother of two, she is also a  documentary-maker and author of a fascinating book (which she astoundingly wrote during her maternity leave) called The Motherhood Complex, which mixes her own personal experience of motherhood with proper science. It’s fascinating, as is the documentary ‘A Mother’s Brain’ which is still on bbc iPlayer now. There’s so much that happens when you become a new parent and Melissa introduced me to the phrase ‘matrescence’ which is the physical, hormonal, emotional and social transition to motherhood. We talked about how your brain changes and improves with motherhood (the opposite of what we’re normally led to believe!) and Melissa also shared one of the most surreal post birth stories I have ever heard - trigger warning for anyone squeamish - the story she tells about being in the shower is NOT for you.Spinning Plates is presented by Sophie Ellils Bextor, produced by Claire Jones, and post-production is by Richard Jones. 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, thing 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 Friday lunchtime and Yeah of

I've sort of dipped in and out of Jubilee things. There's a street party on Sunday. What's the weather gonna be like? I mean, I suppose it's quite fun to take kids along isn't it it's funny because we've just come back from a boating trip for half term and we saw so much jubilee things including windsor castle uh so obviously kids all waved to the queen on the way up and on the way back mickey my three-year-old was naked and he did a very special sort of body dance facing windsor castle especially for her majesty uh it wasn't a political statement he's just three and likes to do that kind of thing anyway how are you getting on i'm feeling i'm feeling pretty good a little bit wiped can i be very boring i have some sort of weird sinus-y cough cold thing that I've had

for nearly two weeks and it's really starting to annoy me. You know what it's like. Obviously, with a cold, you're not like, there's not seriously anything wrong with you, but colds are just that thing where you're trying to do all the things you normally do, but you just can't quite forget about it. I've never had one quite like this before. I wake up in the morning and it's like my whole face hurts. What is that? Is it sinusitis? Maybe. I've never had it quite like this before. I wake up in the morning and it's like my whole face hurts. What is that? Is it sinusitis? Maybe. I've never had it before. I suppose I should be excited to be experiencing a new ailment. Well, anyway, I've had enough of it now.

It's been five days of this particular phase of the cold. Anyway, sorry, I told you it was boring. And what else is happening? I can hear Richard in the studio. He's listening to live mixes of the tour that we did because i think we're going to put it all together and bring that out at some point on a final album so that's quite fun i said it's fun it means i'm listening to him listening to my voice which i find very difficult to listen through i'm not very good at listening to mixes because it's got me in it what is it about our own voices that

means we don't like hearing them recorded and played back? That's strange, isn't it? And this afternoon I've got a gig. I'm off to Witchwood Festival where I'm playing alongside Boney M. So that's exciting. I think that'll put me in a good mood. So I'll pack my sparkly bits in a little while

and get myself all ready. And then this weekend I've got the kids by myself this weekend because Rich has got another festival on Saturday and another one on Sunday and I haven't I'm home so that's fine we'll be fine so long as the sun is shining we can get out and about and do some stuff for the end of half term and it's funny because this boating holiday was really cute like we had lots of fun but we also always seem to time it where one of our kids is at an age where they're sort of slightly growing out of it. That's what it feels like anyway. So Kit, who's 13, was struggling a little bit with the concept of essentially camping on water with his family 24 hours a day for four days consecutively.

He was quite happy to get home. But of course, he also had fun. He jumped in the river and swam about. We did some late-night playground action in a local park when it was just the kids, which was quite cute. We had some yummy food. We poodled about. He got to do a bit of steering.

Even Mickey was quite into the locks. And Jessie and Ray, they had a little bit of swimming time too. And it was all very Nuts in May, which is a Mike Lee film, which if you haven't seen it, go and watch it because it little bit of swimming time too and it was all very nuts in may which is mike lee film which if you haven't seen it go and watch it because it's one of my favorite films and in nuts in may it's about candace marie and keith her husband and they go on a very earnest camping trip in the uk so it's set in the i think it was done in the 70s sort of mid 70s and so whenever richard and i do a half-term break with the kids in May, we always think of it as our nuts-in-May holiday. It very much is. Anyway, I'm sure you're already tiring of my

slightly bunged-up voice. So I will get on to this week's podcast guest, which is brought about by a documentary I saw on the BBC iPlayer. It's not very long. I think it's about 25 minutes long, and it's called A Mother's Brain. And I was intrigued, and I watched it, and it's completely fascinating. It's about all the changes that go on neurologically, socially, emotionally, physically, hormonally, when you become a mother or primary carer, or basically when you begin raising a child. So it talks about all the different stages and how some things affect, you know, whether or not, you know, you're the person who gave birth to the baby,

you can still be affected neurologically and other stuff is about the natural social and emotional changes that happen when you're a mother. And I found like, for me, I thought the documentary articulated a lot of emotions I felt when I became a mum that I wasn't able to articulate. I thought, yes, no wonder it's such a big deal it's affecting you on sort of all aspects of your sense of self really so I looked up who'd made the documentary and the woman who presented it she's called Melissa Hogan Boom and then I found her book uh called The Motherhood Complex and

started reading that and I just sent an email out into the ether to melissa and said i'd really love to talk to you as i said it's an email it wasn't an email i remember now i dm'd her on instagram uh i've got a bad habit of sliding into dms if i want to introduce interview people for the podcast it's a good job my teenage children aren't around to hear me say sliding into dms because i know they would have cringed and laughed at me saying that and i do understand that normally the context of that is different um anyway melissa got back to me and came around and we had a really fascinating chat she's a really exciting thinker and has that wonderful ability to take lots of bits of information, sort of scientific and lots of different studies, and then clarify it into a way that makes the information really open and easy and digestible.

Because even though she's super smart, she obviously has a generosity about her that makes her want, she wants other people to get excited about what she's super smart, she obviously has a generosity about her that makes her want, she wants other people to get excited about what she's learning about too, which is what all the best teachers are like, isn't it? So yeah, we had a lovely chat and now you can listen to it and I will sit back

and I might not go for a cup of tea actually this summer. I might go for just a hot drink. I think I just need something a bit herbal and boring just to kind of try and soothe me a little and I'll see you on the other side all right see you in a bit so why don't we start with the here and now, Melissa? What are you up to at the moment?

What's going on with you? I am... What am I up to? Right now I am making quite a lot of films for my team at BBC Real, so making a really interesting piece about the science of nature and nurture, so what part of our um behavior is defined by our genetics and what part is defined by the um way we grew up and scientists look at that using twin studies and it's actually really fascinating and it's got me thinking a lot about the way i'm um raising my

children actually because there's there's a lot of research that shows um genetic genetic twins raised apart are more alike than fraternal siblings raised together so that shows genetic twins raised apart are more alike than fraternal siblings raised together. So that shows the genetics has such a huge role in how children grow up. So even two of your boys would be more different than say genetic twins who are not raised in the same household. And so in some sense, it kind of justifies,

like we often say, our children are who they are and they'll be who they be. And parents often think we can mold them into how we want them to be. And it's actually really, really reassuring. Like, of course, we have a really important role. We teach them a lot of things. We give them a lot of structure. But we can't mold them into being who we want them to be.

And I think that helps me as a parent. So even though this film is not about parenting at all, actually researching it has been really helpful just on a personal level as well yeah that's so fascinating and actually I think it's a sort of if I'd had to uh come to my own conclusion I would have come to the same one but I think it took me uh getting it wrong over the years to understand that because I think especially with my first you're putting so much emphasis on what you notice about them and like oh that's a little bit you and that's a little bit me and what about if we do this that and the other and I think you know you think a lot about your

own childhood and the things that were formative and you think I want to give you the same tools so that you can reach the point where you know you feel good about everything and yeah and then you soon realize actually what am I doing they're not they're not me they're not a miniature version of me this is a new person and they have a new take on things and I've just be a bit more reactive but um that's good for taking the pressure off yeah I think that's what the scientist interviewed said parents of one child are environmentalists parents of two children are geneticists because you realize oh wow my second child is so different um and then like like my daughter sometimes says things like i'm like why don't you wear this today you know it's a it's a nice day of celebration she goes i will want i'll wear what i want because i know what

i know and i'm like fair enough so like she's got this really strong idea of what she wants and actually i i try and respect that even though it can be really difficult yes i know that's the thing you're like encouraging the spirited independence and then suddenly it comes back at you in spades you're like encouraging the spirited independence and then suddenly it comes back at you in spades you're like yeah a little bit too spirited a little bit too independent um so the reason I wanted to speak to you is because I watched well I've been reading your book and I've watched your documentary um which was Mother's Brain and I found it so completely fascinating and you through your book and the documentary have articulated

a lot of things I felt without being able to articulate any of them um so yeah I want to really what came first in terms of the site were you always interested in how motherhood affects people not at all um actually I'm I'm a science journalist by background so I've been reporting on science for a lot of many years, and I've always wanted to write a book, lots of journalists want to, but it wasn't until I'd had my second, and I was three months in, so he was three months old, and I was like, why is no one writing about how overwhelming and strange this is? And it's like I needed to articulate as well what I was experiencing

and then I thought there must be um a lot of science that explains how mothers feel this shifting identity and when one side takes over um and then the more I looked into it I found there was loads of stuff that backed it up from brain science to biological changes to social expectations and I was like wow okay I really I really want to write about this to validate um what mothers like myself are experiencing and it was actually surprisingly easy to write because every little research paper I found or every scientist I spoke to just opened up this understanding I was like okay this is why it felt so overwhelming coming back to work this is why I I really struggled when I became a mother, not in terms of mental health. Like I loved it.

I loved being a parent, but I definitely had these two competing identities. And I don't know if it's because, you know, I'd always identified as a journalist, as someone who's ambitious. And then suddenly I had this child and people saw me in a different light that I might've seen myself.

And that's fine in many instances, but it's not when one, how people see you is different than how you see yourself and that often happens in motherhood so you know you're just mother or oh you're a mum now you've got different ideas or you might not get invited to the same events and they're all like small small instances over your day or your week but they add up and it's why mothers often feel kind of overwhelmed or why they lose their sense of self a little bit yeah completely and I think like you my overwhelming feeling about being a mother is really positive but I still found all these strands that made me feel like the edges have been knocked off me a little bit and that you have to sort of re refine those edges again and sort of set out your stall again.

And I think, yeah, with your books, it's called Motherhood Complex. It feels like you've sort of taken all these many nuanced things, pretending on it that it's physiological, neurological, you know, physical changes or perception and, you know, cultural things and how we think of what a mother should be, what a parent should be um and it's really fascinating and it's brilliant to have it all in one place

and i love your very sort of pragmatic clear way of looking at it all so you just distill it all in this way that's never you'll have your your personal take on it but it also doesn't ever feel like it's being sentimental or it's just kind of like quite a clear I suppose very scientific approach of just okay yeah that explains that and that makes sense of that and the reason why I was then not traumatized by those events is because actually I had these elements that weren't part of that but I think it's so brilliant it's like really real clarity in that thank you yeah that's why I always try to bring an evidence-based approach to the way I was writing it both because then you can understand it from a factual point of view it's okay well this is you know not only validates your experience but actually there's evidence to

show why we feel the way we do but also just to dispel some of the myths or the like like the opening chapter and what the documentary was called about the mum brain, I was so frustrated at how motherhood or when you're pregnant or when you're a new mum, we like diminish our competency. We're like, oh, it's mum brain or, oh, you know, I'm just a bit tired because, you know, pregnancy brain. And I was like, wait a minute. Like, I felt like I was overachieving after I became a mother, maybe because of some of the expectations. And I felt like my brain was really clear. And obviously, I was tired some of the time. And then it was just amazing to find out that the neuroscience shows that our brain is actually being optimized in these really beneficial

ways during pregnancy and motherhood, and it's lasting. And if you look at brain science, that's not particularly surprising. Like you're a musician, your brain will probably look different to a non-musician because you've specialized in a way that you know it makes your neurons optimized it's like it's like when you weed a garden you know you keep the good things and weed out the bad that's what's happening in your brain a little bit you're the neurons that you're needing are getting strengthened and so that really happens in a a huge way in the shift to motherhood so much so that if you scan the brains of non-mothers and mothers you can actually see the difference which is amazing and so rather than think of the mum

brain as something detrimental it's actually something to you know celebrate and to I think something we can we know we're optimized for motherhood in a way that's beneficial for us and it means that um you know we were doing more than ever before and what i really always want to get across in this is it's not just biology in this instance um it's so of course when we're pregnant our brain or our body is being primed for motherhood but the there's a huge important part from experience as well and it shows why um you know same-sex male parents also have like different brain changes that occur or non-biological parents um and that i think that's really important to highlight

because there's so much expectations put on mothers to be the biological carer this is what we're meant to do this is what we're made for and that's actually a quite an it can be quite a negative um attitude if you're then put into this hole that this is what you're made for because then you will do more and you'll be the more of the primary carer and you'll do more of the mental load um but actually you know anyone can do a lot of the things that mothers do and your brain will adapt it's just biology sometimes gives us gives us a bit of a head start yeah absolutely i think you're right that whole thing about the primary caregiver and how your brain adapts just purely by spending time with your child is really important for people to to hear because as you say so much of that expectation

of mothers to take on the mother loads is is cultural and passed down and I suppose we're still dealing with so much in terms of it's very recent that women have felt able to be pregnant publicly uh adapt their workplace to suit the fact that they are raising a young family that the aspects of it that are we haven't quite got to the bit where we can then delegate again because we're so busy still trying to make sure we've got that all how we need it first absolutely and part of that is because women are judged for things in a way that men just aren't like there's really interesting studies to show that like if you go into um a room that's messy and it's attributed to jennifer you judge her personality traits or if it's john you don't and that's kind of just shows and you

know people people expect certain things of women that they don't have men and that filters down to the carer level and in the workplace as well and there's there's a reason there's still a motherhood penalty that's what sociologists call it the fact that women's earnings um decline as soon as they become children if you look at the average and the graphs and they never never um and as soon as they become children, if you look at the average and the graphs and they never match up again. And so if you're constantly on a back foot and sociologists also call this,

they call it a structural lag. So society is aware of the inequalities and by being aware of it, it's like, oh, you know, we're aware that women are paid less, we're going to talk about it, but there's not actually that much being done and there's still a lot of biases.

Like the, you know, women who are mothers it but there's not actually that much being done and there's still a lot of biases like the you know women who are mothers are often like given a lower um starting salary than non-mothers there's there's you know studies that show that and they're judged as being less ambitious less competent less focused and there's no evidence that shows they are and you know like I would argue that when you have a finite time, you actually can be much more productive. Like I know I have to leave at five to do the pickup, so I make sure I hit my deadlines to get my job done. And I do, and I never struggle with that.

But yet, I think the reason why many people feel that kind of competing or negative clash in their identity is because they're aware of these expectations. Like a journalist friend of mine was like, oh, I'm not gonna um tell my team I'm pregnant yet because they won't give me the big stories and I'm like well that's not how it should be like yeah but it's just it just is it's how it is yeah I suppose yeah I mean even just laying it all out like that sounds exhausting and like a little bit of a hand and on your forehead when you're trying to move forward and as you say I think part of the reason why I loved having these conversations is because of how the moment I became a mother it did change my relationship with work really significantly

in terms of making me actually like sort of focus my ambition a bit more and just made me think well if I'm going to spend time away from my baby it's got to count I don't want to come home having just not really done very much of my day it's got to be have a bit more value to it so I feel like I sort of edited a lot of stuff out you know yeah but sometimes that's detrimental too yeah I think I think I did the same I didn't want it to define me which is why I felt like mixed about writing about it because I was like I'm writing about the very thing I don't want to define me I don't feel it so strongly now it's like almost embracing it's helped but I think I became more ambitious after I became a mother as well because I was determined to prove that that wouldn't affect me but I think that's quite unhealthy and I think that's a cultural pressure it's like the

culture expects you to not come back full-time to take a full year off to to then not want to promotion or not want to work overtime and so I was like no I'm going to prove them wrong do this but I was kind of denying the fact that my life had hugely changed I was exhausted I wasn't sleeping but I just pretended everything was fine um and it you know it did get easier when my daughter started sleeping more um but I definitely felt I had to like put on this brave face and I wish now that I'd known what I know now and I could be like no you know you can be vulnerable it's important to show that not only just for yourself but also for younger colleagues or people who don't have that experience because

until you explain it or tell people about it they they don't know what you're going through yeah and also the energy you'd need to put into getting making changes happen at that time that's like the last that's so far down your priority list to have the energy to say actually I think this isn't quite right how this is set up you know you're too busy adjusting to new motherhood and then by the time you've got past it and feeling better about stuff um it's all a bit of a blur I know it's it's it's all such a blur but I think I'm sure that that must be evolutionary right like why would you have a second child if you remember how crazy the first one was or a third or a fourth yeah I know it's interesting all of that what you were saying when

you found your mum's diaries that which that so that the chronology so you wrote you started writing your book when your second was little, is that right? Or researching it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then after you'd finished your book, is that when you did more of the documentaries? Yeah, I think writing it and telling my mum about it unlocked memories for her, and then she started sharing kind of screenshots of her diaries.

But it was actually a really supportive boss when I came back to work, and I was really open about the fact that I'd written this book on mat leave and I wasn't quite finished. So I came back. Which, by the way, is pretty impressive in itself, isn't it? I've also written a book. We get to read it. It's a really complex, very researched book. Let's just say I didn't go to any mum groups, didn't meet up with anyone.

I was in almost isolation before the pandemic happened. Came back to work in 2020. And then six weeks later I was uh working at home again but my um my boss Mary she's called she she's a mother as well but she um was really interested in my book and encouraged me as soon as I mentioned it she's like oh we should do a documentary about that and I didn't think that would be allowed because you know like obviously journalists often write books but you're not if you work at the BBC you're not meant to promote your books to obviously you're allowed to talk about them but you know she

was like you've done this research for a whole year and it's it's a unique angle so we should make a film about it so she encouraged me to do it and gave me the freedom and headspace um and then because I commissioned films for my own team and I'm in charge of the commissioning it's kind of up to me how to use my time um as long as I'm you know all the other works getting done and so it was just amazing during like lockdown to be able to do this documentary and like I had to piece it all together by finding filmmakers in different countries getting them to the the experts I needed one bit of traveling which was going back to the Netherlands to um see my mom and it was actually my director Pierangelo he's called he's brilliant creative genius who

said oh let's just tease the fact that she's your mother and not mention it to the end because you know you've got a reason to speak to her she's she's been writing about motherhood 30 years ago and what was so interesting about it she felt the similar pressures that I did so she was training to be a GP had to stop her training when she got pregnant and she was like how can I just be a mom and not a doctor how can I combine these two things and that's the exact feeling when I first came back to work but I couldn't quite articulate it I was like how can I how can my two identities collide because I felt they were split and I was keeping them separate because we have such a different home working life a home life and a work life those

are two very different spheres and they don't align especially in the UK you know we are kind of applauded when we work overtime it's encouraged it's seen as a marker of success we value ourselves based on our work and our jobs and our home life is not respected which is very different to the Netherlands where people clock off at five and if you're staying late they're like why haven't you gotten all your work done today are you not you know working hard enough so it's just a it's a very different um that's actually a massive different thing isn't it yeah it's just a huge cultural expectation and it you know it filters down into happiness as well and uh gender equality in the mental load like if you've got the higher

earner and i know you spoke about this in your podcast before you've got the higher earner coming home later because they you know they have more responsibility to earn money for the family then who's gonna not prioritize their career the lower earner and that statistically is usually the woman so coming up against all these things I think it's just so it's so challenging and therefore so important to talk about it with your colleagues your team your bosses and that's why managers also have to understand that, which is now that I'm in a position where I manage a team, I'm so aware of what people have,

or how important it is to respect what people have going on, whether they're carers, whether they have other things that take up a significant amount of time. You need to give people space to live because people aren't just living to work. They're, you know, also working to live. And I think the pandemic has reset that a little bit. Yeah, I think, you know, it's also, as you said,

it's not just about if the life outside of it is family. It could be, you know, your hobbies, your pets, anything that's in your life that's significant that you need to give space to to make you actually work better and be focused on work when you're there and then have time for that. You know, that balance is really, really important. And actually, I would say that, yeah, is it... Did you say his name, Pierre?

Piangelo. Piangelo. I think the fact that he didn't say about it being your mum in the documentary means that this's this really moving bit. I'm trying to remember, as you ask your mum, you say something like, was it, were you glad you became a mum? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And she just cups your face and says, oh, darling, it's the best thing ever. I was like, oh, I didn't realise. And it's really moving. But also the fact that there's, you know, you were reading her diaries written 30 years before your motherhood started and yet there's so much that resonates and so much of that time when you're just thinking hang on a minute how do I how do I anchor this and what is happening to me and is this normal and I just love the fact that there

might be better conversations that go around it about the significance. Can I ask you something? With the brain change, is that something that stays? I think, well, the studies are so emerging, but they found that two years later it was still, you could still notice it. So they haven't, I think they're working on the follow-up scans, but that suggests that it is long-lasting.

But, you know, science has still come out of that that and i reckon your brains continue to change as your children yeah grow up and then um but yeah it was it's i think the benefits you feel from that kind of hyper optimization continue and some of this stuff would be things like in pregnancy i mean i'm trying to remember what i've read but that the your your ability to empathize grows yes that's what they the the changes they found were in areas important for empathy and theory of mind so understanding the um the thoughts and process of others because you have to switch to you know caring only for yourself to suddenly knowing where the food is knowing when someone's hungry being attuned to their cry like this study that show you know you become more attuned to a

baby's cry as soon as you become a mother your hormone activation intensifies especially to your own baby's cry and so your emotional effect is just hyper attuned and that's so important I mean you see with women who suffer from postpartum depression lose that ability so it just shows that the support is so i mean this is a different slightly different topic but the support that enables them to be the mothers they need to be is so important to that mother-child bond yeah which is why i think recognizing it and recognizing the signs of um a good bond and having a support of community and family is so so vital because you know it's the next generation they're not just a baby you're not just a mother it's it's like it's huge it is and i think i mean i agree but the

postpartum depression is obviously its own conversation but i suppose that all falls under this umbrella of just significant things happen and you're going to feel this whole realm of emotions um some of it you might be anticipating and quite a lot you just won't be and I mean I remember I was lucky that I had my mum just down the road when I had my baby I wanted to be a mum I was very happy to have Sonny but um I still found it really isolating I felt I felt quite early didn't you so I had him I was just past my 25th birthday, but I also had him, yeah, two months earlier. I was supposed to have him in June, and he came in April.

So I missed out a fair bit. I didn't have him. I'd signed up to a kind of NCT type thing, but the classes hadn't started yet, so I hadn't met anybody else that was having a baby at the same time as me, and none of my friends had kids. So a lot of that was quite different and um and i think as well because i was coming from music where i didn't feel i felt at the time that there was a

bit of uh what's the word looking a bit down their nose at the fact that i was about to be a mum it would be oh well you're not going to be able to you know good luck with keeping going with the singing because you're going to have a crying baby at home and you're gonna be changing nappies now it's not going to be singing and putting on your nice frocks and wearing heels and I just thought oh is this it I'm frumpy at 25 and that's sort of game over for lots of stuff um and I think you know I think people feel like that in maybe in not such an extreme way because it's not so closely related to their day job. But just that sense of who you are and what you might have lost and where you, yeah, where are the edges of you now?

What am I supposed to be doing now that I'm a mum? I think for me, the place I always think of really is soft play. Because a soft play is for me the place where I feel the least of myself. Yeah. soft play is for me the place where I feel the least of myself yeah you know I'm just sat at one of those plastic tables with a little pair of shoes next to me trying to spot my child running through tunnels it's noisy and I just feel like what what is where am I you know like spin the globe there am I sat like I feel like I've just lost all sense of the things that make me feel like me. I think, I think that's so, that's such a good analogy. And every, like, a lot of mothers I've spoke to have felt this as well, but most people don't talk about it or they don't know how to

articulate it because I think it's so expected, like you're expected to become a mother, you know, little girls are marked as dolls from a very young age in a way that boys aren't it's increasing but not as much um my daughters even said to me oh mommy when I am bigger I want to be a mommy I want to have breasts and your bras like it's so like it's we're in such a gendered world so if you think about how early it starts these expectations of the caring roles we'll have so then when we do become mothers there's an also like this idea that we should just well you know you chose it so enjoy it and this is you now whereas we have a whole other life before motherhood that you can't just forget about or hide and I think that's where this why this clash can be so problematic because if you're expected to suddenly put everything before your

child including yourself and your own happiness then that is like a huge risk factor for you know lasting relationship dissatisfaction unhappiness mental ill health so I actually I always talk about how important it is to put yourself first and to understand what you need and what you want because it's important for your happiness and if you're happy your kid's going to be too. So it's not about being selfish and not attuning to the needs of your child because obviously you will be doing that. And I think that's really important

to talk about more as well because I think that element of self-sacrifice is so unhealthy. And then what would you want your own children to think when they become parents? Do you want them to sacrifice themselves? You would tell them no, right? So why would you be your own children to think when they when they become parents do you want them to sacrifice themselves you would tell them no right so why would you be doing it for them and there is an element of you know like we we we are you know nurturing this new human we have to keep them alive but that doesn't mean you know that you can't you cease to exist so I think that's

that that's really helped me in my parenting for sure yeah I mean I think there's so many things I'm thinking about while you're saying all that i think going back to the gender stereotyping i think that's really dangerous as well because then it means you're basically into you've linked femininity and being a grown woman intrinsically with motherhood. And I was thinking before you arrived about, I've got loads of girlfriends that don't have children. And the majority are by choice. That's just not something I wanted to do. And then it's a question that comes up.

It's a thought process that they face. It's conversations they have to have. And we've made it so intrinsic to, well, that's obviously something you're going to want. And then if it's something that you are going to want then as you say you've got to sacrifice a lot of yourself because that's the life that you wanted to have and that's all really dangerous but then I suppose the sort of final of the whole thing is that when you are a grown woman and you are raising the kids you actually are trying to I sometimes worry that

I'm putting so much pressure to be across everything and then I'm like well how am I you know I've got five sons like am I saying to them you know when you if you partner up with a woman make sure she can be across everything like what am I trying to do you know what I mean where am I what am I what ideal am i trying to paint for them like what can i what can i let go what can what plates can i smash i guess it's it's so difficult though i think this is definitely tied to the mental load that's put on women even before they have children and to your point about um motherhood being expected like there was um i went to this talk where i think it was someone from the women's equality party said you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't.

So you're judged if you don't become a mother. And then if you do become a mother, you know, your idea of what you can achieve is also judged. But yeah, the mental load is such another thing that's tied into what it means to like how we're conditioned and socialized. And just in case listeners haven't come across it, it's like the thinking about doing, so the organizing, the planning, the thinking about the meals, the doctor's appointments, the nappy sizes, the holidays. And you can't, it's invisible, which is why it's called mental load. And you can't switch it off, you can take it to work. And it often increases during the shift to motherhood, largely because of the lack of paid parental leave for fathers.

And then there's no handover. So even in couples where you anticipate doing everything equally, if you don't have an actual conversation about it, it's the person who stays at home that does the most because they know where the clothes are, the nappies, children um the the doctor's appointments because they've done it all and um I remember there was this one instance I went to Berlin for um a work thing and I'd left a list for my husband of what to feed the kids because I was just across all the meal things and I'm like I'm never going to do that again because until someone else learns even by failure they're not going to need to do it and then it even so it continues to be your load another scenario is often like oh yeah the the dad will take the kids on a play date the

mom will pack the bags and pack the snacks because they know they're like oh don't forget this don't forget that and um it's a time thing so it's not it's it's never a thing where it's often the fathers want to get involved but then there's also tied into that there's an element of maternal gatekeeping women are judged for ways that men are if they're chilled like if you're if your kid's hair is not brushed it's funny if the dad's brought him to school but you know oh if a mum does it I can't believe they're not wearing matching socks and um so it's you see there's this double expectation and then if you're judged on how your kids turn out then of course you're going to take more care

and control of it which is why the mental load continues so there has to be a handover it has to be end to end and I think that's why that's part of why it can feel so exhausting and it ties into kind of the yeah it ties into all the things we've been discussing so now so how has your writing this book and doing how has it helped or what's it, how's it changed your relationship with raising your kids? It's definitely validated what I've experienced and it's made me let go. Like I call it the motherhood complex. I've definitely feel that less. Like I still don't fully feel like a mother, if I'm honest.

Like I still have this kind of slightly compartmentalised view of it. Like when I'm with my kids, I'm in the moment, but when I'm at work, they feel a little bit abstract. But it's definitely like now I feel much more confident in the fact that it's not going to hold me back by talking about it. It's part of who I am, but it's part of loads of people's experience. And I think those early years is when the shift is so it's most dramatic and now you know it's just it's been part of everyday

life for five years so it's and I talk about it a lot now right and I think that helps so people know more about it and I think raising awareness is part of the first hurdle to making people understand that you know and I like when I I also remember a conversation I had with a colleague when I came back to work I was like oh I know it's ironic that I'm writing about it because the reason why is because I didn't want people to think of me as anything less and she's like oh I've never nobody thinks that no one's ever thought that so it shows an element of it is in your it might just be in your mind as well so obviously like the societal expectations are definitely not in your mind but the feeling of needing to prove yourself like if you are you know if you're a respected employee within a nice team

there's you don't necessarily need to go out above and beyond I definitely I think it's helped and it's made me want to write about it more and I've continued to write like columns about it and I do blogs and talks and I want to do follow-up books. So I think it's definitely an area that is worth exploring. Yeah, and it's so rich. And there's all these, you know, studies and all this research, but actually bringing it on, I suppose it all ties into the, as I said before, the sort of, you know, the fact that it's still such an evolving place

in terms of how we handle parenthood, motherhood. And, you know, it makes me think a lot about, you know, if I'm flicking through Instagram, I think, generally speaking, new motherhood is so much more visible than it was when I had, like, 20 years ago now, nearly, when I had Sonny. But at the same time, there's so much of it

that's still on such a pedestal and seems so hard to you know live up to so I think these conversations are so good for people to be able to understand that actually it's really complex and there's loads going on and this is why you might be experiencing this that and the other but so I was reading your book in the studio last week and um it starts with what happened to you after you had your first baby, which I read out loud to everybody in the room. I mean, I'm someone that I've got quite a strong... I'm really interested in medical stuff, and I've got quite a strong stomach, but what happened to you when you had your baby is pretty shocking, Melissa,

I have to say. It's a good story. Bloody hell. Do you mind telling me again of course it was actually really therapeutic writing about it um so yeah I had a an emergency c-section with my first um it was very jolly is that the right word probably not but you know like my water's broken it it was emergency in the sense that I was in labor um and she was breached so she was the wrong way around um and the doctor's like do you know what that means I'm like yeah yeah it means

c-section but it wasn't it was nobody was at risk so my daughter was fine I was fine um so you know they still got her out in four minutes after you know I went in thinking I'd be sent home again because I was only three centimeters dilated and then within half an hour she was out and like I hadn't even told like I don't think I'd even told my family I was um in labor so suddenly like I text them all a baby photo and they were like what wow she was a week early as well um and then I went home and I had like this bulge I'd say um and I was frantically googling it and the way I do and I was texting all my friends that had c-sections and they're like oh yeah yeah it's normal to have a little bulge that's fine I was like okay and I remember them it was four days afterwards the midwife was due to come and um I was like I better check because you know it feels a bit tight and sore

and then I went and had a shower and it just completely split open um and I didn't I think I just looked at I mean if you're eating please look I remember look yeah I looked down just a tiny bit and I thought it was just pus coming out and then my body just went into shock and I was like standing naked in the shower just shaking and I apparently had like just this really tiny little voice and luckily my husband was right we lived in a flat at the time he was in the kitchen which was really near the shower and he said he could just just hear there was this urgency in my voice I was like Stephen please help um and then he just said Melissa don't look and I was like just standing like hold he's like just don't look and I was just standing like on um against the shower

with my head with my hands up just shaking um it wasn't painful or anything but yeah like my insides I think well he doesn't talk about it which't painful or anything but yeah like my insides for him I think well he doesn't talk about it which is probably not healthy but yeah my insides would come out basically um and so what poor thing I'm so sorry well I mean I'm fine I know you're fine that's quite like I can talk about it in a really like I don't feel like it was me it's like I'm like telling a story of a film I've seen or something. And then a paramedic came within. I think they made my husband stay on the line. Like when it's serious, they make you stay on the line.

And he came within eight minutes. But then it was a Friday night. So the ambulance took really long to come. And nobody had ever seen anything like it. They didn't know what to do. They were just like, just try and, yeah. And luckily I hadn't sat down or luckily wasn't yeah luckily I wasn't wearing clothes so it didn't touch anything because yeah I was standing up

but they he just and it was one of those bath showers so I couldn't easily get out of it um but he just like wrapped me wrapped me with this um clinical gauze stuff and then yeah and then I just remember coming in and I just remember being really worried about my daughter she was only four days old and I my milk had just come in I was breastfeeding and I just kept saying to the ambulance but what about my baby but he um my husband just grabbed everything from the hospital bag that had just been unpacked and we all came to the ambulance together and yeah I was just lying on this bed for three hours while they called this emergency bowel surgeon on a Friday night out of his bed or whatever, and at midnight they finally operated.

I think they needed, like, a specialist bowel surgeon and an obstetrician because nobody had seen anything like it and they weren't sure and had to investigate. There was nothing wrong. But, yeah, it was just so surreal. It wasn't that painful at the time. If I just remember my husband didn't know what to do because my daughter was breastfed and he didn't have any milk and she started crying and he was like wandering around the hospital in the dark with a newborn and no one like people like what where's the mother why are you so I

think he was quite traumatized by the whole experience and luckily someone like I think the surgery took a couple of hours and someone called him and then they were like you're fine I was like great um and it was obviously a long recovery because I had two surgeries in four days um but yeah I healed I healed amazingly and I don't I think because and that's why I investigated kind of the psychological aspects of it, because the event wasn't linked to my daughter's well-being, and I didn't perceive myself to be like at risk. I kind of thought, oh, this is really, really bad. But I didn't link it with the birth, so I didn't have like a psychological effect of it because, you know, they offered me counselling.

And I was like, actually, because because she's fine I've been fine um like it would have been a different story if like they literally made me sign the document saying you might have to have to need a stoma you know if we can't fix you which is when you have um you know a poo bag I think they're called and there's a lot more awareness of it you can imagine like being told that before you go into surgery so it yeah it was it's very traumatic and it definitely affected it um going into a c-section the second time but because I told the doctors what happened they gave me like extra care and I had like a top surgeon doing the second c-section and so I wasn't worried it would happen again it was more like oh I don't want to

be cut open again really yeah well I think it's very much part of your scientific approach to then research that why is it that I seem to be able to talk about this now but actually that whole chapter about um this you know the trauma that can be associated with birth and I think I actually think there's a whole thing in that just on its own because I know so many women that have had really quite significant health implications, and it's just a little bit swept under the carpet and maybe not really spoken about that much. It sounds like your level of care was very good, and it's brilliant that they took all that on board when you were having

your second baby. But I feel for some people that maybe their, any complications are a little bit more commonplace. It's not really spoken about in the same way and they're just sort of left like, well, your baby's here. And you get, you know, especially women who had babies in the last couple of years, they just had their six weeks checked on the phone. Like, are you okay? And, you know, we don't really have that thing

of keeping an eye on new mums in the way that maybe, you know, you would have, if if they'd had any and if they'd operationed all these things that happened in any other way other than childbirth quite extraordinary yes it's it's awful really because it's huge it's like even if you have a what you call a standard vaginal delivery like there can be so many painful experiences or when no one tells you what's going on and um and that's that's a huge trigger for you know stress and anxiety and lasting effects years later um and just an awareness of what might happen I think like I like you I signed up to those classes and um I did hypnobirthing of course because you know it was trendy I thought that

sounded great it sounded great and actually it did help me with the breathing when I was in the ambulance I was like and and when I was having contractions I was in a taxi to the hospital and um I just apparently just closed my eyes it was really painful but it didn't help with the pain which is what I said it would but it meant I could just be calm but I don't know if that's very helpful but I think yeah the expectation of like um the fact that you know everyone does it so you'll be fine I mean lots of women died in childbirth before medical intervention so it's really it's like a huge dangerous undertaking and recognizing that before during and after is just it's so important for the well-being but I think um a lot of people

that have like post-traumatic stress disorder they say they felt like diminished as like everything's about the child not about the mom and it's it can be really challenging to then come to terms with that and feel like you want to be looked after as well but you don't you know the baby comes first and I mean even like even though I was well looked after I didn't go back to the same hospital um they almost admitted they kind of admitted it was a mistake like essentially they just didn't sew up the right bit and so it just like there's three layers when you have a c-section that they sew up and the first layer had come apart or was it the second anyway one layer had come apart but they couldn't really

tell because once it's gone it's gone um but they did they did really want to find the right answers but then every step of the process there was like sent to the wrong person for the feedback and then the doctor wasn't there and it was just it's just such a mess and i think you know like it's obviously the nhs is under huge um it's it's not an easy problem to solve because the infrastructure is really it's a lot of strain yeah and Yeah, and the people there are so amazing and they really care. But then it's, I think, the fact that women are just left to it.

But I think it comes down to the expectations as well. It's like, remember those tapes I was listening to? It's like, your body was made, your body knows what to do, your body was made for it. My body didn't know what to do. My body didn't know the baby was breached. I had no idea what, like, water's breaking would look like it didn't look like in

the movies for one like it didn't it just like trickled out initially and you know over the next few hours it just kept water kept coming out there wasn't like this big splash um and I I didn't want to know too much about labor before going in it because of the hip birthing I was like I don't want to hear any horror stories just want to keep it positive but actually I think it would have helped knowing a bit of the the truth because then um when it happens you might feel more you know ready to deal with it I don't know how you felt when you if you said your first was very premature yeah I missed out on labor I never had labor with any of mine because i had the first two um two months early and i was had something called pre-eclampsia both times and i for a little while was completely

fascinated by labor i used to watch all of one born every minute and just think could i have done this could i have coped with that how would i have fared um and i think you know all the pregnancy books were so caught up with you know the final chapter is labor and birth you know that's like the big the big ending isn't it and you know I basically just missed the last couple of chapters and I just felt really unfinished like I'd missed some really significant punctuation and like you my body definitely didn't I thought I was I mean I was quite glad when I had diagnosis because I thought I was, I mean, I was quite glad when I had diagnosis because I thought I was maybe just really rubbish at being pregnant.

I looked bad. I felt bad. It's hard. Yeah, especially with the first. I felt like I got a bit better at it and a bit more confident, funnily enough, with pregnancy and with what I was capable of. But that first one, I got really puffy. I got lots of headaches. Just felt a bit meh, which I now know part of it

was the preeclampsia but at the time I just thought oh I always wanted to be a mum and and I'm actually really not very good at this this doesn't this isn't my thing so yeah I did find that really um a bit of a disappointing start really in terms of that um and then you know you worry a bit about well has the stress of what I've been through I was dealing with quite a lot of stress with with work and a personal situation while I was pregnant and I was like well this was that bad for my baby and then you know how does that affect everything too so it's yeah it's probably part of the reason why again why I love having these conversations because I think at the time I can make sense of a lot more a lot of it a lot more better now than I could could back then so you know sort of

reaching back to yourself really and giving yourself a bit of a hand up but your book introduced me to a couple of new terms my favourite of which is matrescence so for people who don't know can you tell us what that is? matrescence is the birth of a mother so we focus on um childbirth as you know new child coming into the world which is obviously what actually happens but a mother is born as well right like on your first child's birthday that was also the time then you became a mother for the first time obviously starts a lot earlier in pregnancy um but it's the recognition that you are suddenly you know this new person in one way as well for better for worse like you're no longer the first time you have a child you're no longer the just the Melissa who who is an

independent person you are suddenly someone is dependent on you and recognizing that that is a new beginning i think is really important because it's you can then recognize the challenges that come with it um and it i think it again ties into the things about mental um well-being and recognizing the huge change because when you recognize it rather than oh well you know you know half some some you know half the world's population might become mothers or are mothers or have the potential to be um so why is why am I any different actually it's you know like you're suddenly birthing a new human in this world so recognizing as extraordinary that your experiences are valid I think really helps you

come to terms with it um and I think that that definitely did for me as well yeah no I think I agree with you like I said your books articulated things I didn't really know I was feeling but like put it all in one place like aha yeah of course it's a really big deal in every every direction and the other term I'd never I'd heard a little bit about it but I didn't know about it properly and I'm probably going to say it wrong but is it microchimerism yes microchimerism oh there we go i knew i'd say it wrong so say it again microchimerism right microchimerism right i put the emphasis on one word and i said the wrong vowel sound as well i love i love this it's difficult it's complicated so chimera is like from greek mythology so something that's two two creatures um i love this finding because it like there's this research that shows that anyone who has been pregnant whether or not the pregnancy comes to term

has bits of their child's dna in their blood body brain for life so they did these brain scans of these women in their 80s and they could um recognize fetal male fetal dna in their brains so they um because because the male carries the xy you can recognize that you can recognize the woman's one and it's what's even cooler is it's bi-directional so you um would have your first child's fetal dna floating all your body, even your breast milk, it kind of goes to sky for you. Um, women who've had C-sections, they can find it in the scarring. So it might help with healing. And then your second child might have some of the DNA of your first child because it kind of transcends. Um, and they don't really know why it happens, but they think it could be all these linked to all these positive things like helping um they

they they said you know women who had it had less instances of alzheimer's it could help with um prevent certain types of cancer but in other areas it caused it not caused but it was found more prevalent in certain cancers so there could be like they scientists call it like a tug of war in your body and you can kind of imagine why this is. Pregnancy is such a huge undertaking. It's like your baby is taking all your resources on your body and it can be massively damaging. So there's these like positive bits of DNA that are giving you a helping hand in one sense,

but they could be toxic on another sense. But it's just, to me, it was like, oh, wow, okay. So there's a part of my baby's DNA that lives in me forever. And I found that really kind of quite poetic. It is. I mean, do they know how that might actually change you? They don't. They think there's loads of different hypotheses.

So it might influence your psychological well-being. It might be beneficial for breast milk, for healing properties. It might help against cancer cancer it might contribute to some cancers different ones they found links with different ones so there's and it goes into all different parts of your body um at different stages so it's such an emerging area of research um and there's quite you know small group of scientists that look into it and it's really hard to find out what actually happens because they couldn't you know they couldn't find out that it was it transcended the blood brain barrier until they did these brain scans of women who

died so it's quite it's absolutely extraordinary as an idea i must have quite a fair bit five different male dna's so i do so we're all like just this mix of beings which is i i just think that that was like like the kind of creative in me is like wow that's so just brings it all full circle. And, you know, we're all a mix of everything, influences from day to day, from nature and nurture. Yeah. And I just, I love it.

Yeah. And like the sort of complexity of nature and what it's capable of doing and how it operates, like endlessly fascinating. And I wonder, you were always scientific from when you were small. There's always been something that's interested you you I've always been fascinated by the way people and humans behave and why we do what we do and kind of the reasons behind that so I studied

psychology um then I wanted you know I've always wanted to be a writer so I've had these kind of two competing creative notions and I was like oh I could just go into journalism um but then I started in news and news was really depressing. Like it's really good at teaching you very quickly to broadcast or to write really important things and to get the facts right. But, you know, you move on from story to story. You're telling kind of really grim things happening. And so I was like, I need to get into features. And so I was just really quite lucky that at the time

there was a science reporter bursary at the BBC so I was already in the BBC at this point and I because I'd done a psychology degree and I'd had a few years experience I was eligible to apply and I just researched so much that when the time the interview came around I really really knew my stuff even stuff like some kind of astrophysics bits I'd been watching you watching lots of Brian Cox documentaries. So it gave me a really well-rounded way of talking about lots of things that I didn't know much about before. And that's what they wanted. I thought I was faking it, like so many women do.

I was like, oh, but they don't know I'm just a fraud. Actually, you're not expected to be an expert in physics and biology. You're expected to be able to tell it in a compelling way so that people understand. And that is what I'd shown I could do and then it's just such an amazing experience where I was thrust into writing for the web reporting on tv reporting on radio and I was like this is where I want to stay you know you get access to the top the world's top scientists you can ask them any question you want you can just like you know simply you don't want to ask too complex questions and then you you tell the stories in a way people understand and i just got addicted to it i think

but i've always gravitated to stuff about like human behavior and why we do what we do and how we think why we think whether we do and how that shapes us i've always been um that's kind of my passion points yeah that is like endlessly interesting basically um there's there's so much to keep exploring and as you say like being able to access talking to all these experts and just getting it all together and pulling together the story that is that is really interesting um and how do you find it because um you've got quite a big family in the Netherlands how do you find it being here are there I imagine your childhood would might have been a bit

different to the one that your kids are having very different yeah I grew up on this tiny um quite idyllic island called Tessel which is off the north coast of Holland um for the first six years and then moved to Scotland um so I've been away from the Netherlands for a long long time so I'm quite used to it and I you know English is now my better language and I'm you know I write for a living um so it would be difficult to like I feel I feel like a child when I'm in the Netherlands in some way in terms of my language um but I still it's so close and so quick to get there both my brothers live there now all my cousins and it's just really nice to be able to go there a couple of times a year see See, I still feel really at home there because I still feel that that's like a big part of my identity.

But, you know, now I have a British husband and British kids. So I don't see myself going back there anytime soon. But I like that it's close enough that I can still feel this great connection. And I'm trying to teach my know, teach my kids Dutch, that they have this ability to connect when they're older. And they love it now. You know, my eldest is always like, she tells people at school, oh, do you know that I speak Dutch?

She'll say, and like, she's really proud of it. And I've told her it's like, you know, her secret weapon. So I think kind of being able to continue that, even if I'm not there, is really important. Yeah, that's lovely. I always think raising your kids by the mobile is an incredible gift to give them. Absolutely amazing. I would love to have another language under my belt.

It's lovely. So if you moved home when you were six, do you think that's quite a significant thing to uproot and start again somewhere else? I think when you do it that young, it's kind of an opportunity and an adventure. So I remember being really excited about it um because you're you're young enough that you haven't built up like those really kind of strong connections like in a way a teenager might um and I just remember being like thinking it was like really fun that I was going to this new place and learning

a new language um and it also like it meant that I've got this like really idyllic view of what my childhood was like even though you know I mean childhood is magical in many ways but I remember those six years really well because when there's a division you kind of have better memories of it because you have a way to define this the before and after and then because my parents stayed friends with the kids that I grew up with I still know them so one of my um good friends Frauke she um had a baby six days after me her mom is my godmother we literally grew up together um and so we've like gotten even though we don't see each other that often we've gotten closer because we you know we were going through motherhood at the exact same time and we grew up together so it's like another kind of really poetic poetic connection and then there's you know another

group of three sisters who I grew up with and I know their kids now and we still keep in contact we have like a whatsapp group where we chat so it's like a really special part of growing up and I think because um I still felt connected to the Netherlands in some way I'm still friends with them which is like quite it's quite rare to be friends with people you've literally known from birth yeah that's lovely no you're right I don't think there's many people that do know people that long or if you do it's maybe someone you might like see once in a while but you know to keep it so present is really it's really lovely um well going back to your book what and your or your research what would be do you think a really helpful thing that people could do or to help mothers i know you're not on the campaigning

side but it must have made you think what would be helpful for sure um well i think so i wrote a chapter about motherhood guilt and i think that's one of the lasting things that i think we can have lots of take-homes from so guilt is kind of steeped into the idea of what motherhood is we feel guilty when we're working too much we don't see our kids enough we feel guilty when we put our careers on hold because we're like oh should I be working should my kids see me working should I be contributing to the family or like we feel guilty so every set everything we do if we give them sweets we feel bad if they're watching too much screen time and it's kind of like it's such a pervasive intrinsic feeling that

I think is also tied to motherhood in a really unhealthy way um and actually when I was researching it and speaking to these academics about it I realized that I just it made me stop or understand why it was happening in a way that made me be able to let go and like one of the biggest things is child care as well people feel really bad about sending their kids to child care because there's this like idea that a mother's care is best but that's absolutely not true like motherhood parental burnout is more prevalent among stay-at-home mothers than working mothers and the reason why is, is because we have these ideas of what we should be doing all the time,

the kind of perfectionism. And you can't do that for 12 hours a day and have a life and do the admin and the housework and depending on how much help you have, of course. And so it's easier to like very quickly be at the end of your stress levels if you're home all day. I always like liken it to a

curve when I'm when I see my kids for an hour in the morning my love level is like really high um at the end of the day after spending 12 hours with them obviously the love's still there but my ability to like put up with the whining and the patience is really really low and so the graph of like your happiness and stress levels goes like declines throughout the day when you're with kids all day um if your kids are like mine anyway whereas when I'm at work my mood kind of stays similar I don't have the same highs I'm not like I love you guys in the same way you know to my colleagues that'd be a bit weird um but it you don't have those ups and downs of emotions because there's not somebody constantly tugging at you and calling your name and asking you like you know like it's it's as you know it's like literally every second

you're being asked to do something or being um requested or being moaned at and the snacks and it's it can feel quite relentless and then that's why I don't feel guilty about selling the child care because I know they're actually having a better experience there than the me that they'd get because it's just impossible to be like perfect all day long. So I think that's massively helped. And I think letting go of some of that guilt, obviously, the childcare has to be high quality and we're lucky that in the UK a lot of child child care is really good it's well regulated the same is not true for the US sadly but it's and it helps me be a better mother as well because I know that I'm better for working and putting myself first and then obviously you know lots of people have to work so it's not a choice people have as well so then the guilt feels even more difficult so I think that's my main my main take-home is it's okay to put yourself first and it's okay to feel guilty just understand that it's like ingrained into motherhood rather than something that any that you're doing wrong yeah I

think that's so true that's such a massive thing that mum guilt and as you say I mean I suppose there must have been times when you're writing a book and thinking oh I feel a bit bad now I've got to go and they're, what am I doing? I'm literally writing about my other guilt. Yeah. Well, I did feel bad because, like, you know, I was like, I'm not taking him to any of these baby classes. But then I also realized that those classes are usually for the parents,

not the kids, because a three-month-old doesn't need stimulation. Like, that's another thing I think that does have important take-homes. Like, we're obsessed with, like, enrichment for our children and giving them stimulating activities like giving them the black and white toys and you know making sure that they're learning at every step of the way that's just giving us more stress and our kids don't need it and it's setting them up for this like hyper overachievement um society where we put emphasis on all the wrong skills like like a heightened focus on academia actually is a huge reason for anxiety in children and it's not healthy it's not the best way to learn and so um like I I don't and it's quite a Dutch thing as well like I don't sit down and play with my kids that often because I want them to be able to be

independent and learn to play themselves like obviously I get involved if they ask or if they need help but I'd rather and also I'm really busy I'm like you know cooking for them or doing something so I don't have the time but actually constantly micromanaging their free time and their activities is doing them a disservice yeah it's really good for them to be bored and to like come up with their own solutions so that's another like huge take home that helped me feel less guilty and gave me more time to then focus on like the book and um yeah the the things that I think are actually important for kids that's so true everything you just said I think some of that come by having lots of kids I've sort of by default I cannot be all

things or people like you just literally have to say that I'm doing this you have to go and sort something and um I think as well sometimes because people are tending to have their children later than they used to they're in a different bracket of their lives where sometimes they put all these investments into their kids expecting certain outcomes to happen as a result of it so i think sometimes that kind of giving them as you say lots of enrichment things and filling out their world. There's an expectation there, isn't there, that you're going to be great at tennis and you're going to be really good at chess

and you're going to have all these extra things you can do that are really across the board. But actually, when you listen to your kids and they say, I'm not really enjoying that, but I really like this, and just focus on the bits that come from them, then I think, generally speaking, there's less pressure on you, but also you'll probably flourish easier because you're not pushing that boulder all the time.

But then this is a conversation I have lots of times with Richard so they're kind of, I'm quite chilled about all that but then sometimes I do feel like should I be doing more? But think about where the pressure's coming from. Like why are you sending,

like whose decision was it to send to gymnastics? Was it because the mom down the road did and you're like oh I should be doing that because there's a long waiting list or they should be learning swimming an hour they need to get better at maths like it's usually outside pressures that are like that think that you're already behind in some invisible race um and then yeah I think and I fall into the same traps and we can't help it we're a product of our society um but just knowing that it's like okay well maybe that's not best for my kid that's you know sending them to ballet at three isn't it's great for letting off some steam

but if you're then having to like leave work early and rush about in rush hour and ship them from activity to the next like that's not doing yourself any favors and yeah they might enjoy it but equally they'll love running around outside as well. Yeah, definitely. And finally, how has everything you've been doing changed? Has it affected your relationship with your mum, given that her diaries were so much a part of it? I would say I definitely am much more aware of how challenging it would have been for her because she had three kids

and my brother and I were like 14 months no 16 months apart and apparently like she couldn't leave us alone together he would push me off like tables he was like really jealous when I was born it was like testing boundaries it wasn't you know maliciously intended and so I think I appreciate how stressful that was and the level that I used to kind of think it was funny hearing these stories now I'm like okay wow and then also she had a really um I think my brother came out blue and couldn't breathe and I think he was was he breached anyway she had a really traumatic birth and again it was just it seemed like a really distant story and now I'm like wow okay that was a really important moment for you um I've definitely I definitely listened to a lot of her advice on certain things, but she's also of,

I don't know if it's a generational thing, but like things like, oh, you were all potty trained 18 months and you shouldn't like the little tiny pieces of well-meant advice. I am quite good at just taking and leaving and being like, well, you did that. That's fine. But I'm not going to do it that way. She also might be misremembering a lot. that. I think so, yeah, she said I never had tantrums. Although apparently I did sleep through from 12 weeks, so I have no idea how that happened. But there's actual published evidence to show that Dutch kids sleep better than other kids around the world.

Really? And it's to do with kind of like a much more relaxing environment that's built on like routine, not routine as in militant, like I'm going to make you do things at the right time time but just it's built into kind of society that certain things happen at certain times and it gives this really natural natural structure so maybe that that part you know but then you know i didn't really learn from that because my kids didn't sleep no i think you get what you're given with that actually i mean my kids will get different sleep personalities on yeah if you were to stand

on a table next to your brother now would he still try and push you off he would not no exactly we we're really close he's got two young kids as well and we we talk about parenting a lot now oh that's nice it's funny isn't it how it all turns yeah it's full circle exactly and I was you know we were at loggerheads all the time but it was really nice having like a close companion growing up as well yeah best of times worst of times it's always the way with all the busy household stuff thank you so much melissa this is so much and i'll definitely be letting everybody know about your book and all your documentary stuff because it's completely fascinating yeah i think everybody's gonna love it well thanks for having me it's been great ah so brilliant wasn't that i mean i just thought there were so many things

that were interesting about what melissa said and i realized i didn't warn you about the shower description of what happened to her but i did put it in the blurb so hopefully you saw that already and you're not cross with me that you listened to that without any warning but I do think I love Melissa's perspective on things and I find it an endlessly fascinating topic anyway as you know about all the changes in how it can affect people

so I love talking to her and I could have talked to her for a lot longer and there's an extra bit of that's quite a nice serendipity. After Melissa and I stopped our chat, she went off to work, where she works alongside one of my oldest friends. It's a girl called Becca Lawrence, who also works at BBC. And yeah, the BBC building's huge, so when I meet people who work at the BBC building,

in Wood Lane, I've stopped saying, oh, do you know my friend Becca? Because there's like 600 people who work there and actually she did know her and does know her and they work alongside each other so that was nice for me I've known Becca since I was 11 so that's really cute uh yeah I I think Melissa is definitely somebody to watch in terms of really interesting scientific um documentary making and book writing. I think there's a lot of scope with what she's uncovering, and it's really interesting seeing her join up all the dots of all the studies. And, yeah, I can't wait to see what she does next.

And in the meantime, I want to thank as well Claire Jones and Richard Jones, so husband Richard and producer Claire, because due to the boating trip, I was really last minute about getting over notes for the podcast. So thank you to both of them for doing a very quick turnaround job on a Friday, which is also a bank holiday. So much appreciated to them. I tried to be a bit organized, but recently I've been really relaxed about it. And maybe they're not feeling quite as relaxed. I don't know. Thank you to them both. But mainly, of course, thank you to you for lending me your ears.

And please do continue to leave comments because I read everything that you put after the podcast. And if you've ever got anyone you'd like me to speak to or someone you think I should know about, then please, please, please do send me their way because, as I've said before, a lot of the people I end up speaking to are people that have been recommended to me and it's good for me to to think outside of my my own perspective

on life so I've loved meeting some really interesting people that have been suggested to me it's been great and what else happens today well I've still got to go and pack for the festival and uh the sun is shining right now so I hope it holds I've done two festivals already first one rained, second one sun and it will come as no surprise to you it's much nicer playing to people in sunglasses than kugels anyway

I hope you've had a nice bank holiday week weekend if that was happening to you in the UK and if it wasn't then I just hope you had a nice weekend and I will see you had a nice weekend. And I will see you same time next week with more lovely chit-chats. But in the meantime, take care of yourselves. Lots of love. See you soon. Thank you.