The Netmums Podcast - From pregnancy to parenthood: Expert Tips with Marie Louise

Episode Date: September 9, 2024

In the final episode of this mini series, brought to you by Aldi Mamia, hosts Wendy Golledge and Alison Perry are talking about preparing for the arrival of a baby. It’s a journey filled with excitement, anticipation, and a fair share of nerves. Our guest on this episode is Marie Louise aka The Modern Midwife. Marie Louise is the author of The Modern Midwife's Guide to Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond, and has a wealth of experience and knowledge to share. Looking at the emotional and practical aspects, Marie Louise covers common feelings of excitement and anxiety, the importance of rest in the postpartum period, and the benefits of buying baby items second hand.  She also shares insights on the induction of labour and how new parents can manage their expectations and emotions during this transformative time. Grab your free pack of Aldi Mamia Newborn Nappies from Netmums here. The Milestone Moments podcast is brought to you by Aldi Mamia and produced by Decibelle Creative.

Welcome to Milestone Moments, a Netmum's podcast mini-series brought to you by Aldi Mamiya. I'm Alison Perry. And I'm Wendy Gollich. Aldi Mamiya is an excellent range of great value and award-winning baby and toddler products. Aldi Mamiya products include weaning essentials like stage one fruit and veg purees and biscotti fingers. They also have all the products you need for your newborn like extra sensitive baby wipes and newborn nappies. And they have brilliant buys to help you with your baby's bedtime. Mamiya Bedtime Bath has the most amazing soothing aroma. Plus with Netmums and Aldi new parents can get a

pack of newborn nappies to try absolutely free. So log on to netmums.com and let your friends know about this brilliant offer with Netmums and Aldi. In this series we'll be talking about a key milestone in early parenthood and chatting to an expert guest. Today we are talking about preparing for the arrival of your baby. So exciting and so terrifying all at the same time. We are joined by the modern midwife Marie-Louise who is the author of the Modern Midwife's Guide to Pregnancy, Birth and Beyond. Before we hear from our guest wendy i want you to sum up in one word what it was like for you preparing for your first birth exciting i think that's a good word how would you describe your experience in one word um i would probably say a bit nerve-wracking i just didn't know it's hyphenated

i didn't know i didn't know what to expect i was a bit like a bit bemused by everything that was happening marie louise a warm welcome to milestone moments thank you so much for having me so us ladies here preparing for the birth we found exciting, nerve-wracking. Are they common feelings that mums you've looked after talk about? Yeah they probably are the two most common and often most women feel both of those things and that can feel like a real roller coaster of emotions and I actually speak about this in my first book. When you have one foot in motherhood especially this in my first book um when you have one foot in motherhood especially when you're having your first baby you have one foot in motherhood

towards the end of pregnancy and one foot still in pregnancy and you're in between because you don't know when you're going to go into labor and have this baby so you're you know you've got everything set up everything ready and it can be a real yeah a real nerve-wracking and overwhelming time and often I would see mums that you know we have a 40-week appointment in clinic so they would come to see me in clinic when they reach 40 weeks and um and and often I would set that up as a crying appointment because I just know how emotional it can be I'm like like, okay, you know, this is the list of women that I'm going to see today. And you know, you, because I know it's likely that they're going to cry because it's very normal to feel like that towards the end of pregnancy. And as I say, you've got one foot in

motherhood, one foot in pregnancy, you don't know when it's going to happen. And it's all quite nerve wracking, overwhelming, but also also exciting it's the first time though isn't it for many women where you've had absolutely no control over something yeah because when your baby decides to put in an appearance nobody can control even if they induce you they often can't control it so as a woman often you're you've been striving hard to succeed in your career you control your life and then suddenly there's this baby coming and you have absolutely no control so of course it's emotional yeah absolutely and that's something i often talk to um expectant mums about like this is a good step up for motherhood because babies and children can be unpredictable.

They can take you by surprise and they take you out of your comfort zone and you lose a significant element of control because the control that you had over your life before and simply leaving the house is very different after you have children. So, you know, I often talk to them about this and they get quite frustrated. Well, you know, I thought I was going into labor and I was having these contractions and they all stopped and it's very frustrating and I you know I understand that that that same thing happened to me and when I was having my second baby so I understand it on a personal level but you have to almost surrender and accept that you don't have control over this just like you have to accept that there are certain elements of being a new mum that you don't have control over, i.e. your newborn baby waking frequently. And that's not something that you can necessarily change. It's a normal biological function, really. That's so true. So I want to know from you, Wendy, what do you wish you'd known about having a baby when you were at this late stage that Marie Louise is talking about? I wish I had known that it was okay to stay in bed and just get to know my baby.

Yeah. My oldest is nearly 13. So there's a much bigger trend now for pulling up the drawbridge. And I've seen some lovely memes about a week in bed, a week next to the bed, a week in the house, that kind of thing. But I thought that to prove that I was doing well, I had to be up and about, going to baby classes, going for coffees, showing her to great aunt Elsie. I was in Bluewater 10 days after she was born because it was my birthday and I thought we had to go and do something. That's what I wish I'd known I was totally the same like I think I went to Blue Water as well I feel like I feel like so many new mums head to Blue Water which for anyone listening who isn't in the southeast of England it's a massive shopping centre um but it's got so many changing and feeding rooms I feel like it is

like a magnet to new mums um Maria Louise what advice do you give new mums about rest versus getting out and about yeah so um there is a a great culture shift i think that we're seeing more and more now um as you've identified but um you know i talk about this actually in both of my books the first 42 days and the importance of the first 42 days after you have a baby because there is a school of thought that that that early postpartum period impacts the next 42 years um in particular not that i'm necessarily a follower of it as such but when i study different cultures around the world in ayurveda that is their firm foundation of postpartum recovery is we have to take care of this mum for the first 42 days we need to make sure that she

eats really nourishing foods that are very easy to digest and there's a focus on healing recovery resting and lots of other women and that that mother is close to will support with caring for the baby and nappy changes anything that they can do if she's breastfeeding aside from breastfeeding they will do so she doesn't cook and you know when i studied and i had a real look into western practices and ancient wisdom that in every pretty much in every culture there was a focus on the first 42 days, whether they presented that as six weeks or, you know, five weeks, there was a real focus on that. And that being restoration and recovery, because after you have a baby, there's the biggest hormonal shift that we ever see in human lifespan. And often there's this focus on pregnancy and the

surveillance of pregnancy and the baby and the importance of that but once then that that baby has come into the world that focus really kind of shifts onto the baby and less so for mum but actually I always say if you want to look after a baby look after their mother because that's the best way that you can actually look after a baby um so yeah I am seeing more of that culture ship however i still talk to women all the time that do that they are going to you know blue water lakeside these shopping centers they're out in stanesbury's doing their weekly shop and like you say you know presenting yourself i am i'm you know i am coping i've got this i'm recovering or

there was you know a focus not so long ago there was a mum on the school run who had her baby three days ago today wow she's literally there with a baby and her little girl and i guess it's the last day term so she wants to take her in but i was like go back to bed yeah go eat a hobnob and lie down i know that's it exactly and i think that mums are, you know, we can be quite unforgiving of ourselves and quite critical of ourselves and feeling like, oh, if I don't do that, then I've some way failed, which is a shame. So we still do see that. But thank goodness you have got a lot of social media coverage on, you know, this whole one week in bed, one week by the bed and the sofa. And I absolutely love that as well because I think that that's actually really quite accurate so Alison your turn what's the thing that you wish you'd known before you had your babies um I mean I would say mine's probably less of an emotional thing more of a practical thing I wish I'd bought more stuff second hand because that we got new

cot new pram new bouncy bouncy chairs, new high chairs and I wish that we'd saved all that cash and got hand-me-downs or second hand stuff like going on like Facebook marketplace because so often like when we sold or passed on all that stuff eventually it was all in really good nick and you know you don't need to buy new stuff I guess it's normal to want shiny new things for your baby isn't it that's why you know I buy loads of stuff for the girls from Aldi because you'd have to break the bank and afford them but I don't know I see your point but I can see why you wanted new as well yeah that's so true um yeah I mean but buying budget is a good way as well but buying second hand or getting hand-me-downs I think is a pretty good way to go I think it's more so you have that focus on

shiny new things with your first baby and that sort of wears off because naturally the second baby hands the hand gets the hand-me-downs anyway um and I know that we certainly did that. So I do try to also encourage mums to, yeah, you don't have to spend like all of this money on a brand new, like you say, even a cot or baby carriers, for example, whatever. It all adds up. That's the thing. And very quickly it becomes so expensive. You can spend thousands on brand new products. Someone showed me a great facebook group um where you can buy secondhand slings and that was my saving grace because they cost like hundreds of pounds and then

you buy it and you don't like it because it doesn't work for your you that's it exactly there is actually a place oh what's it called the sling library you can go there and there's um sling experts and you're trying all different baby carriers and slings because obviously we're all built slightly differently we all like to distribute their weight slightly differently so yeah you can go and you can um like get fitted really for the perfect thing for you so i think that's a genius idea yeah that's really clever um finally marie louise what is your most asked question about birth and beyond from parents? Like what is the biggest issue that they face, if you can? OK, so I would say nowadays the most commonly asked question is about induction of labour,

because we are going through an academic really of induction of labour. Like our records are the highest that they have ever been. So many rams ask me about how to avoid an induction or what to do if they need an induction because a lot of women actually don't want to be induced. They understand that you enter onto the medical potential cascade of intervention that they would like to avoid if they're focusing on a quote-unquote natural birth whatever that may look like so that's probably um pregnancy and then how to get into labor naturally i mean that's you know off the back of the induction everyone wants to know that um after they have a baby i would say the most common

question or concern i hear about is unsettled babies why is my baby crying so much and what am I doing wrong um and there's I think that we've lost quite a lot of our um I guess that that sort of wisdom that perhaps would have been passed down to us or that community feel from like you know like other women in the village they would pass down that information or oh you know this is how you settle a baby but a lot of mothers now are sadly away from family away from that close network of women that had such rich knowledge about handling newborn babies and very young babies and they will often call their midwife and be quite concerned that you know their baby's upset because the baby's not settling in the cot by themselves but actually we present that message to people like you should you know wrap your baby up put them in the cot and

get them to sleep in a clear separate safe space but newborn babies don't want to do that because their whole existence prior to that has been rocked they've been in a dark environment the temperature has been consistent and they've never seen bright lights before they never heard the clear kinds of voices it's all muffled that the sounds that they can hear and then they and they're in water and they don't feed through their mouth they fed through their belly button and then they're born and their circulatory system changes they've got to learn how to feed there's no more water it's light it's loud there's smell the scent you know the sense of smell so you can imagine how overwhelming that is for a tiny human being

and then to want to tell a mother put them in a separate space you know but it's no wonder that they're unhappy with that so I think there's that sort of that that that disjoint and that creates a problem for new mums. Yeah. Sorry, that was a very long answer. Not at all. It's the perfect answer. We could talk to you for hours. Thank you so much for joining us on Milestone Moments. Thank you so much for having me. It's been a pleasure. Don't forget you can get all your baby and toddler essentials at great prices with Aldi Mamiya.

And head to netmums.com now to claim your free pack of Aldi Mamiya newborn nappies.