The Netmums Podcast - S1 Ep29: Camilla Thurlow: from clearing minefields to the chaos of new motherhood

Episode Date: April 13, 2021

Listen as the former Love Island star, shares the honest and conflicting truths about life with a newborn, and how to get to grips with a birth that didn't go to plan. Plus how she deals with social media trolls, and what she misses about life in the minefields.

You're listening to Sweat, Snot and Tears, brought to you by Netmums. I'm Annie O'Leary. And I'm Wendy Gollage. And together we talk about all of this week's sweaty, snotty and tearful parenting moments. With guests who are far more interesting than we are. All right, gang, who's sweaty, who's snotty and who's teary today? I am teary, but with joy, because this week, dear listeners, I got to meet up with Wendy in person for a very important work

meeting and it was blissful. We got mountains of work done, had lunch, chatted, had cups of tea and weirdly I slept like a log afterwards because I think I was so endorphined out. Wendell, how was it for you? You're gonna laugh but the best bit for me was being sat next to someone, obviously you, my darling, and writing ideas on an actual piece of paper together with an actual pen. Yes. Not having to write it into like Skype or a shared document online. Just, oh, dear listeners, the time is coming when you can meet up with people and it doesn't have to be for work reason and it's going to be marvellous. It is. And it's quite shocking, actually, what massive effect it had on me. I didn't know how much I missed you. No, it's turning into a love in. Introduce the guest quick. OK, I'm going, going, going. So let's find out whether our guest is in

as blissful a state as we are. We got to know her and her sweetheart on Love Island. She's written a Sunday Times bestselling book, Not the Type, and she's mama to the gorgeous Nell, who you may have seen on Instagram. Welcome Camilla Thurlow. Hello, how are you? We're good, how are you? I'm good, thank you. Pleased to be here. Great, we're pleased to have you. So normally, Camilla, we ask people first up whether they've had sweaty, snotty or teary moments in their house today.

But you've recently got engaged. So first of all, can we say congratulations? Yes, congratulations. Thank you so much. I don't think it feels real yet. It's so lovely when someone says congratulations, because that kind of makes it a bit more real. Yes. Have you still got that fluttery tummy every time you think about it? Just super excited feeling. Yeah, absolutely. And I've still got that thing where I wake up in the morning and kind of like see the ring and I'm like, oh, that's nice. That's new. We've got to celebrate all these little life moments, haven't we? They're so precious. Exactly. So precious.

And it's that lovely thing, isn't it, that, I don't know, I mean, lockdown, sometimes times felt a bit at a bit of a standstill, but it's kind of reflecting on little things like that, that things are still happening in a different way, but they're still happening. Life's still going on and we'll see each other again soon yeah it is quite reassuring that normal things like engagements and babies are still happening but back to the sweats not tears has there been any of any of those bodily fluids in your house so far today

there was definitely nearly tears last night um because our dogs thought they heard a noise and and yeah and they woke up woke now what time what time it was probably just after one no well it was fine she fed and then she settled back sleep and that was okay but because she doesn't normally wake up at that time I got myself in a panic about what was going to happen for the rest of the night because even though we're still yeah exactly even though we're still up quite a lot you know when it's sort of levels out into a bit of a routine that feels way more manageable than the unexpected yes exactly and I mean I really I went full ahead I was like what if she doesn't nap tomorrow what happens the next day like I had already worked myself up and actually

it was fine in the end I used to do that I remember I was gonna say you sound like Wendy I was like the most paranoid new mum in the sense of if my little girl my biggest little girl didn't have a sleep in the day I would then catastrophize the whole of the next 48 hours and how that one so if we went in the car and we were going to a shop and she didn't sleep on the way which was my plan for her yeah I'd totally lose it because I'd be like well she's not going to sleep tonight and in fairness she never slept at night ever so I don't know what I was worrying about, to be honest. Is Nell a good sleeper, Camilla? Okay.

How old is she? She's four, well, she's four months and three weeks. So she's nearly five months. Oh, bless. Lovely age. Yeah. And she, it's not that she's a bad sleeper she would at the very beginning she she didn't sleep at night at all because she was cluster feeding and she liked to be held and so now getting a few hours between feeds feels like I'm like oh yeah she's the great sleeper but then someone else will say oh well my baby does this my baby does that seven to seven and yeah you're like never listen the first rule of mum club is don't listen to all the people who telling you their

babies sleep through the night because they are lying well and even if they're not and they got lucky trust me they'll have another one and get really unlucky no one no one gets a straight run of good sleepers no one I was speaking to my mum because I'm one of four and everyone had been telling me about this four month sleep regression and I was again panicking in advance and I said to my mum what happened with all of us and she was like well you were all just such bad sleepers you never really regressed so I didn't even notice it happening so I think it yeah I mean I just try now and go with the flow rather than try and predict everything.

But that's so much easier said than done. Oh, it's so much easier said than done because all you really want is a pattern. Like you just said, actually, if there's a routine, whatever it is, no matter how bad it is, at least you know what's coming next. But it's the not knowing that's horrible. It's horrible it's horrible so you had baby Nell your first baby during the pandemic tell us a bit about what that's been like what was being pregnant like what was having a baby like in a pandemic um so I found out I was pregnant right before kind of the discussion of COVID became the big

news story and um you know a good month before lockdown came in and I I think I was really fortunate I know some people didn't have great experiences with it but I I can't say that I had a bad experience with it at all of course there were things that it was sad to miss out on like having both of us at scans and um we had one kind of iffy scan where you know it was tricky being there on my own but that's we felt very lucky to be honest um and we still had a really good experience during my pregnancy um and can you tell us about your birth what happened I love a good birth story me I know you love them don't you I know listeners I'm sorry if you don't but you're always going to get me asking so I just get a lot so I'm probably not going to go into too much detail

just because I'm really conscious of I know when I was pregnant everyone said people tell you the people always tell you the kind of bad stories because that's you know the drama exactly and mine didn't go according to plan there was none do no exactly and especially not you know first time like it's it's a whole new thing there was just a tiny bit of info there was meconium in my waters, which is why it became so different to what was expected. But at the time, right after the birth, I was very upset about it. I found it really difficult and I kept replaying it in my head and I was really upset. And I just want to say for anyone who does have a birth that is different to what they expected or is currently pregnant um definitely surround yourself with positive experiences but if it doesn't go according

to plan it's actually I think I reflect on it now and the first thing is that nothing I do today would be any different had I had a different birth experience I still spend the day with my lovely daughter I have the best time I'm so happy and when we talk about my birth not going to plan that was a plan I made in terms of like the mechanics of birth but the whole thing is the plan for my birth was to have a lovely baby and I have a lovely baby so it did go according to plan and I got the best piece of advice actually from a lactation consultant which is just that time that you spend with your baby naturally and the hormones that that produces the love hormones the oxytocin over time that gently heals any kind of trauma that you might have

associated with birth and it takes a bit of time but now I'm nearly five months and I reflect on it in a very different way so just for anyone who's concerned about that you know it's definitely not the end of the world and um yeah and it can come out as a very positive thing I learned a lot so that's a really lovely way to think about it actually I've never thought of it like that before what do you think you learned camilla i think i learned that as much as it is nice when things go according to plan sometimes you don't have that control um and it's not worth berating yourself for something that you didn't necessarily have control over you know like the kind of repeated going over of it in a negative way isn't helpful the other thing that um that same lactation consultant told me was was talk to people about it say it because otherwise you build up a fear of the story in your own head and that needs to be people that

you're comfortable talking to but you know let it out like don't hold it for yourself and the final thing was that it really taught me to trust my own intuition all the way through pregnancy I second-guessed my body and to be honest the same thing happened during my birth I there are times where now I wish I'd said something when I didn't because I didn't trust myself as much as I trusted the people around me and so when it came to breastfeeding, I had a really tricky experience the first few weeks, as so many women do. But something about it felt really right, even when it was very painful, even when it was very difficult, I felt like I was just around the corner with it, that it was the right thing for me. And she

responded really well. Nell always tried to feed so there was no obstacles in that sense she wanted to feed she gained weight incredibly well so I it was just people looking at me being like why are you putting yourself through it but I knew inside it was the right thing to do and I put my foot down and said I'm going to do this just in terms of like saying I'm happy to consider other options but at the moment I want to do this because it's right for me and it ended up being the best thing that I really pushed through with that and trusted myself and so I'm glad that I've had that experience now that I've got a bit more faith in my own understanding of my body. That's a really hard thing to do as well.

But it's kind of vital for life as a human, I think. One of the things I think we all kind of need to get to grips with is learning to trust our gut and learning to trust ourselves a bit, don't we? And especially as a parent, because there's going to be moments when you have things like, oh, shall I take her to the hospital or not? Or is she really stressed about school or is she just overtired and needs an extra bowl of pasta do you know what I mean like parenthood throws up those challenges so if you can get to grips early on with the trusting your gut and and doing what you believe is right I think that's a really powerful thing that's a perfect sum up of it because I think all the way through my pregnancy I was like because I didn't understand my body I was like do I actually have mother's intuition am I missing this essential piece of the puzzle that everyone talks about

because I just didn't feel like I had it and then since everything happened since the birth and since like really committing to feeding the way that felt right for me suddenly I'm like maybe yeah maybe I just need to listen to my yeah my my voice a bit more and it it's not like I don't think you know like you're saying all those dilemmas it's not that I don't think that I'll be overthinking things or laboring over decisions as as time goes on but I'm glad that I feel in some way that it's there it's in me um It's just given me a bit more, bit more courage for the, for the future, for the years to come. This is a really interesting, like, juncture in the conversation to ask my next question, because it kind of segues really neatly, but you've been really widely praised for telling

it like it is with parenting so far, and sharing your lows, not just your highs, which is kind of exemplified in the conversation we've just had is that something you've been determined to do since the beginning or just something that's come naturally or is even as part of this process of learning to trust your gut and just and just sort of go with the flow more um I don't think I ever set out to do it actually to be honest it came kind of naturally in that I think one of the things that people responded well to was at the beginning, I would share stories when I was feeding at night. And that was literally just one night I put up a picture. And so I've never had a response like it into my private inbox, like the number of people that Oh, my gosh, you're up as well. This makes me feel so much better. Or, you know, thank goodness there's someone else out there. It was almost unbelievable. And,

you know, I've never, never seen anything like it in terms of anything I've ever posted. And so I kept doing it because, you know, it was helpful to me. It helped me feel so much less lonely. And, and it was so lovely that you could sense this community. And so I just kind of kept going with it. And I guess when you say sharing the highs and the lows, for me, those two have gone so hand in hand. You know, I sit and feed her at night and look down and just adore her. At the same I'm like oh my gosh my eyes feel so heavy I am so tired um that is kind of what those early weeks and I guess what you know motherhood is like in general that the highs and the lows are so tied together that I can't see how you would

not be able to share both of them um again that's just something that's happened naturally it wasn't thought out it was just what was actually going on it's just the honesty of it I guess people relate to we've all sat there at two in the morning and just felt like the only human in the world who's awake and tired and whose baby won't stop crying so when someone else is kind of sharing that it's really comforting yeah and I guess like it's very easy to um kind of fill in the gaps when you're not seeing that so you know you see someone else's newborn baby and it's just a picture during the daytime it's really easy to go well their baby

must be sleeping I'm the only person whose baby isn't sleeping I'm doing it all wrong um and so you know and that's not what's happening but maybe for me it felt like if I shared a bit more that then I would be giving I don't know a bit more of the picture because otherwise we do I mean I have a tendency to do it as well I just fill in the gaps of other people's lives and I make them perfect and I think we all do. But even pre-Love Island, you were no stranger to challenging things. You were working in Afghanistan for a charity, weren't you? Clearing landmines. was 23 and then I went to sort of several of the countries I went to Zimbabwe and Mozambique and Nagorno-Karabakh and plenty of other places and then I did a contract for a different charity in Afghanistan right before well actually when I first got back from Afghanistan that's when I got a message from a casting researcher about Love Island.

They didn't tell me it was Love Island then, actually, but they just sent me a message being like, would you like to hear more details? We'd like to have a chat with you about this show we're doing. And yeah, and that was how it all started. How does going from something like that's such a desperately important thing to do how do you compare that how do you reconcile that with being a celebrity which you went into via Love Island but is quite a different experience yeah for sure actually that's a really interesting question and to be honest and I talk a bit about this in my book Not The Type I really struggled to try and reconcile that um and I I was struggling with reconciling life as I knew it

back in the UK with what I'd seen abroad for a long time even before Love Island that was one of the reasons I became very socially dislocated. And the truth is, there is no reconciling it. So when I was working for the Halo Trust, I was obviously seeing people's lives that it was just so desperately unfair. And the main thing I was doing was clearing landmines and landmines are usually left behind after conflict, but they obviously don't stop working. And they can work for decades after they were laid. And so they are in people's gardens, on the path to school. Can you imagine, you know, like sending your child out each morning and knowing that the path potentially has a mine in? Yeah, and it's so, they have to live with that ever-present danger until someone comes and clears the mind so

for some families it was such a desperate choice like do we try and farm our land because we need food to eat or do we not because we can't afford for someone for the you know for the father to be injured or worse killed it's just these terrible decisions that people have to try and make um and you know that that luxury of there being a right decision that's something that now I realize it's a luxury that really is a luxury that's something that that I had grown up with thinking that there was a right and wrong way to do things and actually there's often just two really difficult options and you have to try and I don't know try and figure it out somehow so anyway yeah I was going abroad and seeing these awful situations and then coming back and I really struggled with

speaking to my friends and my family and actually when I was away I wouldn't really keep in contact or check Facebook or any of that stuff because I couldn't piece these two lives together. And as much as I can understand that was partly because of what I was seeing, it was also very unfair on my friends and family. And I would come home and I just didn't know how to have a conversation. But also, I noticed that people didn't ever want to come to me with their problems, I guess, because they felt like I would be like, well, you know, that's not really a problem compared to the problems you could have, which is never how I saw it. Problems are always valid. But I was becoming increasingly isolated. And so Love Island, actually, the decision to go on that was more to do with it seemed like I was

just going to be forced out of my comfort zone and forced to socialize. And that's what I was struggling so hard with at that time. And our year was a year where that show kind of changed in terms of the viewership. I think it got a lot bigger that year. So I didn't go in with any kind of sense of what it would be like afterwards. Exactly, exactly. And, you know, I stand by my decision. It was the right thing to do. I came out of it much happier and much more able to engage with the people around me. But at the same time,

I won't deny that I really struggled with those first few months. And, you know, it's still ever since. It's kind of figuring out how to feel about it all. But I really do believe that that would have happened whatever walk of life I took. I think whatever walk of life you take, there will be ups and downs and struggles. And that this was just the one that I went on. Do you miss it? Like, do you miss your old life?

Or were you very much ready to make a change at that stage? I do yeah both yeah I I'm such a sit on the fence person I think because I'm like yes both to everything but really it is both I um I missed the work I loved the work I found it very rewarding and it's so tangible my influence because like I said it's you know you're clearing mines from families gardens from areas where they could build schools so you go back six months later after clearance and that that family's life has transformed um or there might be a school there and suddenly you see all the kids in school it's just it's a very tangible thing to be working on um and you really see it making a difference and I do of course I miss that I try and be involved as much as possible so I'm I'm an

ambassador for Halo great um but it's still not the same as boots on the ground it never will be and when I first came out of Love Island I really struggled with with that. I was, yeah, I just didn't know how to deal with it. But at the same time, now I'm so much closer to my friends and family again, I feel like I also found a bit of myself that I'd been suppressing. And I'm a much more well rounded person now. Yeah, you know, I'm happy that I missed something because that means I loved it and I was passionate about it and I'm also happy that I've progressed and I have developed and I've learned from other experiences um so yeah both but how what do you what's the Camilla life plan how do you marry up this you said you found it very rewarding so I'm guessing you have a desire to lead a rewarding

fulfilling meaningful life with also realizing that maybe living out in the field wasn't necessarily particularly good for you in terms of staying in contact with friends and family and feeling that you were connected to people what's the middle road what's the what can you do that fulfills both bits of you good question I mean for sure when I was living out in the field there that was exactly the right time in my life to be doing that I was 23 I didn't have any ties I did it at the time where I learned the most I possibly could and I could really throw myself into it obviously now I have a little baby, and it's not the same thing anymore. And that doesn't mean that I just stop altogether and stop contributing. But it just means I need to do it in a different

way, which is tricky. But I, you know, I feel lucky that I had that time in my life. And I feel very lucky now to have this new chapter with my daughter. And I think we create our own meaning, don't we? Of course, I want to keep doing my best. And Love Island, in some ways, does give you a platform to speak to so many people, mainly on Instagram, I guess. So it's trying to use that platform in a way that brings about some conversations that might make a difference to someone. And then with my daughter, I want to be 100% committed to motherhood and to doing everything I can to do as well as I can at this. That's all you can be. Yeah, exactly.

It is all any of us can do now you lived a very peripatetic lifestyle obviously prior to Love Island which stands in such a massive contrast to lockdown like more than most of us to be honest how did you cope with that with lockdown yeah when you were used to like going off for months on end and yeah that must have felt particularly odd for you do you know it's interesting you say that because actually quite a few of the places where I worked there was some form not of lockdown it wouldn't have been called that but for example uh where I was in Afghanistan the week I arrived there was a kidnapping from another NGO and so

we had very tight security there we didn't leave the compound so you were used to restrictions yeah and I'm used to restrictions that were about safety that I guess that's the other thing is like sometimes yeah okay you you desperately want to go and do something but there is a reason why it's not the right thing to do um and so I was quite used to that and I am I have to say I'm quite good at um being told what to do well it's nice not to have to make decisions sometimes isn't it yeah and and of course like we all struggled during lockdown. I'm not, you know, I'm not saying that I didn't have my ups and downs with it. But I think we were very aware, Jamie and I were very aware of how lucky we were. And other people had a much tougher time. Did you miss that social contact?

Like, have you missed being able to join a mother and baby group or a parent and baby group and go and kind of like bemoan 2am with someone else and have you really or because you've never had it have you not missed it um no I think I have missed it I I you know that's partly why I ended up posting on Instagram during night feeds because I wish I had like a you know a group that I'd been with to to ask questions of I just think it sounds like such a helpful environment to be in especially in those early weeks I would have loved to have gone to a breastfeeding cafe and just picked up everyone's tips I just think I would have really benefited from that kind of social contact in those early weeks and in fact because we moved house when Nell was about two months we didn't have internet for a long time as well so it wasn't

even we didn't join zoom classes I just think I felt like I didn't know what I was doing I was trying to do the sensory stuff with her and Jamie would come upstairs and I'd be running around the room with a scarf and a pom-pom and he was like are you sure that's how you do it and I was like yes this is how you do it but I didn't actually know if that was how you did it so I just kind of yeah I just yeah I'm really looking forward to when things start opening up being able to meet some other mums and babies and I know Nell will love it. She loves seeing faces. So I think she will absolutely love it.

In terms of our maternal mental health, I think it's really important that we can see both sides of anything because in parenthood, we're going to get thrown so many curveballs, whether it's neither a right nor a wrong, but you just have to kind of choose an option and go with it and make it work don't you and and then not beat yourself up afterwards so we I think we have to see the grey otherwise we'll all go mad for sure I mean like

even what you're saying about maternal mental health the way I talk about having a baby in those first few weeks I sort of talk about this amazing love and happiness and all this amazing stuff that happened and I still also remember being called by the health visitor and her saying how are you getting on and not being able to say a single word because I was crying so hard because I was so tired but I look back on that time with so much love with so much joy things aren't as mutually exclusive as we're led to believe and we've got to entertain that idea because otherwise you're going to think the low means everything's going to be low and the high means everything's going to be high and we need to be realistic that there's going to be both yeah I think you're

completely right particularly when it comes to being a new mum, like you just said. Yes, it's exhausting. Yes, it's beyond challenging. Yes, it can be kind of lonely for some people. But then there are these amazing highs and you've got your amazing child. It just is a mixture, isn't it? And that makes me think about Kate Lawler this week as well. Yes, I really feel for her right now. So listeners, we're recording this in the week that Kate Lawler has just put a series of really strong posts on Instagram about being bullied, about the things that she's saying about being a new mum. And it really struck a chord with me. Have you seen them, Camilla?

Yeah, I have. And I think it's this thing, isn't it? It's like when you get told constantly enjoy every minute. I can't, you know, I cannot. And I think it's this thing, isn't it? It's like when you get told constantly enjoy every minute, I can't, you know, cannot tell you how many... What a rubbish piece of advice. Yeah. I mean, and how many thousands of people will have been telling her that that's the other thing because she's got this huge platform. And oh my gosh, that means that when you're not enjoying every minute, as you won't't because it's just not possible yeah

you also feel guilty about that and to add guilt on top of what is already one of the hardest periods of time is just impossible it's impossible to deal with and like you said I just feel for her so so much and it's such a shame because we need to be representing what motherhood really is about especially those newborn weeks in the public domain without fear of people coming after us because otherwise we're leading other people to believe in a false dream as well and then they'll be unhappy it just speaks to that whole social media perfect life thing on on a wider level doesn't it yeah and I think that's why it is really important that you've been sharing your kind of your honest moments as well as your lovely snuggly cuddly moments the other thing is though because Rosie Ramsey there's quite a lot of celebs and people of note

on Instagram who've got new babies at the moment I think it's a lockdown thing and moving on swiftly and they're all being super honest about that newborn phase which my eldest is nine and that certainly wasn't the case when she was little and oh my god what I'd love to say to Kate is that for every troll who's having a go at her there is another mum who gets going oh my god thank god it's not just me I'm not abnormal it's okay to have a day where you think I hate this this is really hard and then the next minute you're going oh my god I love them so much and I feel so bad for her because she's doing something so valuable but she's being like publicly lambasted for it as well actually that's something I wanted to ask you Camilla is how do

you cope with any criticism that you get on social media is it water off a duck's back or does it bug you and you have to kind of fight to get over it because you are very public it's definitely not water off a duck's back for me I've just never been able to harness that power um Jamie's much better than I am with it actually so he can help me rationalize some of the criticism in terms of he'll sort of be like have you realized how ridiculous it is that they said that when they don't know you or he'll he'll find a way to make it into a joke and that's helpful for me. But I mean, this is why I feel so much for Kate in these early weeks. I found it so difficult when I was sharing some of the reality. When I got kind of nasty messages, it really, I mean, I really struggled with it.

It's probably amongst the most vulnerable times in my life, I would say. And I just would take it so much to heart. And I don't know, it's that horrible thing where it's like, it stops you wanting to share what the reality is or what you're actually thinking and feeling. But you know that that does ongoing damage as well. And also you're responding to someone who has chosen to go that down that route you're not responding there might be 10 messages of women being like thank you so much for doing this or gosh you've just made me feel really so much better about the fact that my baby didn't sleep last night either and then this one person will say something really horrible and you'll change your behavior because of that one comment as opposed to the

other 10 um do you think you would do it differently next time would you have a rule that maybe you didn't post for the first few months or that you didn't read the comments how like how would you do it differently with baby number two good question I don't think I would do it differently or have different rules but I think now I've seen other women do it um and it wasn't that I hadn't seen that before but I people are understandably cautious about what they share in that public space but like you said there've been so many um women recently who've been really sharing the reality of those first few weeks um online I I think I'd try and do it again and instead of

trying to change my behavior I'd try and be less bothered by the comments because some of it is a bit ridiculous like some of them now you know obviously those messages exist forever and once you've read them weirdly the negative ones are really hard to ever forget so I can still remember them but I look at them now at four and a half months and I'm like that actually wasn't as bad as I thought or that was just a stupid thing for them to say because it doesn't make any sense. Everything feels worse when you have two hours sleep you can't be logical about anything so it's almost the worst time to read those comments because you have no rationality because you're knackered. Yeah a hundred percent and I think I think it gets you questioning

yourself I think the ones I found hardest is when I was sharing those night feed stories that were getting this positive response in amongst that there were responses from people who would say things like you're attention seeking you're you know we don't need to see this. I don't want to see this. I don't come on Instagram to see this. Then log off person. Do you know what I mean? Why follow someone if they don't want to see it? It's so weird. Well, bizarrely, so one person put up, you know, it's just so repetitive, blah, blah. And I was like, well, if it's repetitive, then you know I'm going to keep doing it. Yeah, then go somewhere else. Yeah. But then I put up a poll just checking because I was getting all these messages positive messages but I just

wanted to check was it something that actually was useful and the you know a poll should I continue doing this and it was a resounding yes I think it was upwards of 90 percent well but I had written in it in the sort of question like I understand this is repetitive. And someone messaged me and what she said just really landed with me because she went, I'm so glad you're doing it because it is repetitive. And yes, it is. That's the nature of it. Exactly. And she was like, people don't see that they think I've been up once and then I've got the rest of the week off or something like the relentless nature of it is why it is hard and I'm glad that this is what people are now seeing and if they are finding it hard to see this often then imagine doing it this often and

so when she said that that just really reiterated to me how how many women have felt like early motherhood hasn't been understood even by the people necessarily around them and you know that's something that you want to feel part of trying to change I guess absolutely I think it's one of the most important things that we as this generation of women need to change now that brings me neatly onto my next question we always ask the last three questions the same of each of our guests ready how do you want to be remembered Camilla I'm guessing this might be harder for you to answer than a lot of people because your life has been one of such huge contrasts. How do you pick

what the most important thing about you is? Oh my gosh, I have no idea. I looked at this question and I was like, I just don't have a good answer. It's hard to see yourself as being remembered, isn't it? It's hard to see maybe the value in your own. I don't know. It's very, very hard. I think, you know, having written the book last year and had to go back over everything that I did when I was younger, I'm glad that even now that I've had the chance to remember myself in a more positive light because at the time I was so hard on myself. So that has been something that's been a really nice way to remember those times.

I think sometimes it is important to look back, isn't it? And a book is a great opportunity to do that, to sort of reabsorb where you've been and who you've been and who you are now. We don't often get an opportunity to sit and look back at that, do we? For sure. And I think it's so much easier to be kind to your younger self than you necessarily were at the time. And yeah, it was interesting to take stock of all of that. So, yeah, that's I feel very fortunate to have had that opportunity.

OK, so now we swing from the sublime to the ridiculous here. The next question, the penultimate question on the podcast is, Camilla, what's for tea and who's cooking? Oh, I don't know. I don't know what's for tea. I don't know. I don't know. I've got some potatoes.

Maybe I'll do baked potatoes. I don't know. Actually, Jamie is a much better cook than me. So we'll see. we should have asked Jamie yeah sometimes what I'll do is I'll make out as if I'm starting to cook so I'll get the stuff out and I'll start doing things but it annoys him so much to watch me because I like he can chop really fast and things like that so I'll start chopping like really slowly and it annoys him so much that he's like don't worry I'll take over I do that to my husband the other way around he's so pernickety and perfectionist

about it I'm like it's just a pepper just yeah I do even worse I'm a much nastier person than either of you clearly I deliberately get all the things out of the fridge say what I'm going to cook with it and then say oh I've just got to go and um and then I slope off and lie on my bed and read a magazine or something is that terrible no that's just testament to how nice Simon is because my husband would just walk upstairs and say what are you doing come back downstairs and cook I don't know about you but I just find at that time of day I'm just over my duties like I just don't want to be dutiful anymore. I just want to lie down. And now for the hardest question of the pod, Camilla. Harder than all the others. Yeah.

Sing us your lullaby. I can't. You can. I can't. I cannot tell you. The one thing that has become so noticeable with Nell is that, I mean, I can't sing. I'm such a bad singer. And Jamie can sing like you wouldn't believe. I didn't know that about him. Oh, my God.

He's amazing. He makes like Mary Had a Little Lamb sound like some kind of muse song. He is just phenomenal at singing. And it's so embarrassing because, you you know I'm there squeaking out like five little speckled frogs or something and in he comes and she loves it me too that's my favorite one yeah no one's sung that for us yet no one said that that's their song oh come on you can do it everyone does one five little speckled frogs sat on a speckled log eating the most delicious bugs yum yum one jumped into the pool where it was nice and cool now there are four green speckled frogs

oh my god I'm gonna have that in my head for the rest of the day now thank you I love that one the only thing is I realize that I get confused this is so embarrassing but with the maths like sometimes I'm like where am I in this song it's only five to one and I'm like I can't I'm at three

and I'm like what's next what number is next so yeah ladies and gents I give you sleep deprivation there you are oh Camilla

it's been a joy to chat to you I could have chatted to you all day to be honest yeah me too yeah I've been loving joy to chat to you i could have chatted to you all day to be honest yeah me too yeah i've been loving this i um if you want to do another half an hour so i can stay off tea duty that'd be amazing please carry on doing what you're doing the world needs more honest people and parenthood definitely needs more honest people well thank you so much for having me it's been so nice to have like an

honest chat and especially at this time where like we said earlier i haven't been able to go to the groups and things it's just so reassuring to hear from people who understand we will always be here for you camilla whenever you want to have a chat just give us a ring bye we'll do right go and have a lovely day take care camilla thanks very much thank you bye