The Netmums Podcast - S16 Ep4: Women Shouldn't Have To Advocate For Themselves: Leah Hazard's Realistic Take on Midwifery and Motherhood

Episode Date: May 20, 2025

In this episode of The Netmums Podcast, Wendy and Alison are joined by Leah Hazard, an NHS midwife, author, and advocate for maternal health. Leah shares her journey from television to midwifery, revealing the profound impact her own experiences of motherhood had on her career choice. As we delve into the realities of maternity care, Leah discusses the emotional toll of being a midwife and the importance of self-advocacy for expectant mothers. The conversation covers: - The Journey to Midwifery: Leah’s transition from a career in television to becoming a midwife, driven by her own challenging experiences during childbirth. - The Reality of Midwifery: the fulfilling moments of connection between midwives and their patients, alongside the stress and burnout that can accompany working in the NHS. - Breaking the Silence on Mental Health: addressing mental health challenges faced by healthcare professionals, and Leah’s own struggles with anxiety and burnout. - Advocating for Yourself in Maternity Care: practical advice for expectant parents on how to advocate for themselves during pregnancy and birth. - The Reality of Early Parenthood: the often-overlooked transition from pregnancy to parenting, and the need for honest conversations about the challenges of early motherhood. - Embracing the Teenage Years: Leah’s insights on parenting teenagers; cherish the journey and don’t fear the transition. Stay connected with Netmums for more parenting tips, community support, engaging content: Website: netmums.com / Instagram: @netmums  Proudly produced by Decibelle Creative / @decibelle_creative

You're listening to the Netmums Podcast with me, Wendy Gollich. And me, Alison Perry. Coming up on this week's show… Women shouldn't have to even think about advocating for themselves. It shouldn't even be part of the conversation and yet it has become somehow the central plank of the conversation around being pregnant and giving birth. Hello everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Netmums podcast. Wendy, how are you doing this week?

Oh, I'm feeling a bit like the juggler's wheel at the moment, Alison. Oh no, Wendy! Oh, tell me why? Do you ever get that thing, I call it shaky hand syndrome, where you've got such a big to-do list that you end up with your hands kind of poised over your to-do list just not sure which bit to do first. And so I, oh it's all just a bit much. We go on holiday next week and so there's lots of juggling work and home and I just, I quite like a little nap if I want to. Oh I don't blame you. Do you know what I do in that situation? I start adding things onto my to-do list I've already done. And also things like take the kids to school and then I'm like tick! Honestly it makes me feel so much better. Okay I wonder

if our expert today has got something to help us with the juggle? I suspect she has. I mean she juggles a lot I'm telling you. So today we are joined by Leah Hazard, an NHS midwife, author, mum and advocate from maternal health. Leah has written several books including her debut novel, an audible original called The Anatomy of Us, which is a moving story about medicine, self acceptance and the messy reality of falling in love and caregiving. Born in Connecticut, Leah has called Glasgow her home for the past few decades and we are delighted to welcome her here today. Leah, welcome to the Netmums podcast. Thank you so much, it's an absolute pleasure. So let's start by rewinding a little. You were working in TV in your twenties and then decided

to retrain, first as a doola and then as a midwife. What was it that drew you to Midwifery? Well I think the short answer to that question is it was having my own baby really and that's the case for a lot of midwives. We're a little bit unusual, well we're unusual for a lot of reasons, but one of the reasons we're unusual is that many of us come into this career as mature students because generally we've either had a really rubbish time having babies and we want to, you know, help other people have a better time of it, or we've had an amazing time. I mean, we'd like other people to have a similarly empowering, uplifting experience.

In my case, yeah, I was working behind the scenes, not in a very glamorous job, but yes in television, and my first daughter was born in 2003 and I had a really rubbish, kind of unfortunately classic rubbish first birth where it all went a bit pear-shaped and was a bit shell-shocked afterwards. And a lot of the other women I had met in antenatal classes and around the same time also had a terrible time. And I just thought, why has this happened to us all? You know, we were very lucky in the sense we were generally a group that was fit and well, had various kind of layers of privilege, and expected to have a pretty easy healthy time having our babies and we didn't.

And I kind of became consumed and preoccupied by this dilemma. And at the same time I did go back to work part time, I was getting really disillusioned with that industry whilst also becoming very preoccupied by this thorny issue of maternity and ultimately I left my job in television, wasn't ready to go back to university at that time to retrain in midwifery because I had just done a lot of school, but I found out about the role of a doula who's a lay birth companion who provides support in the perinatal year and I ended up doing that for about six years, had another child, which went better, I'm pleased to say, and then finally did decide to kind of take the plunge and retrain. So I've been a midwife now since 2013.

Wow. And you have been very open about the realities of being a midwife, but what are some of the more rewarding things about your job? The rewarding things are, you know, it's probably not the sort of money shot that people think about of, you know, delivering or catching a baby. Yes, that does happen. It's amazing to work in Labour Ward and have an uplifting birth. But most midwives actually don't work in Labour Ward. You know, there's so many of us who step in other points of the process. I mainly work in maternity triage, which I kind of call A&E for pregnant people. It's where you come with anything urgent or if you are in labour.

And for me, it's just the simple moments of connection with people in my care. And it might be something as simple as a five-minute phone call that helps somebody feel really reassured, or you know, helping somebody who's post-natal move her bowels after a week and she's been really uncomfortable and she's incredibly grateful and more comfortable and that's great. You know, it can be really unexpected little things, or just comforting somebody who's having a rough time. And of course, you know, as I've said, seeing a birth can be fantastic, but that's not the bulk of my job really. So it's the little moments of connection with people and with my colleagues as well, who by and large are

a really outstanding group of people. So it's not scooping the poo out of the birthing pool with that little net that they use? Wow! We don't even... Because that was an interesting moment for me. It was a particular low pot. poo out of the birthing pool with that little net that they use. Wow. We don't even... Because that was an interesting moment for me. It was a particular low point. Yeah. Well, as all midwives will say or should say, we get really excited when we see poo because it means a baby's not far away. It means that that baby is pressing right down on your pelvic floor. So I don't mind that at all. I'm pretty much un-gross-outable.

So that's fine. But let's talk about the emotional toll that your job as a midwife has taken on you. You've talked about your own experiences of panic attacks and burnout. What were the signs that you were carrying more than you could cope with? That's a good question. I think probably initially I probably wasn't aware of the signs of stress and anxiety at work. Although now, I've, you know, through hard experience had to be much, much more clued up about that kind of thing. And I think the thing about working in our current health care system is it's kind of insidious. And, you know, it's like the old analogy of boiling a frog. You don't really realize

the water is that hot until you're croaked, basically. Because in our NHS, you know, we're all trained to deliver a really fantastic gold standard of care. We should be really proud of midwifery training in this country. It is by and large truly excellent. And almost every midwife will go into work of a morning or of an evening and want to do a great job because that midwife is trained to be able to do fantastic things. But what I found and what a lot of my colleagues find is that so much of the time our hands are tied, we're really restricted by the lack of resources in

our service, whether that's not enough bed spaces, not being short staffed with not enough midwives or other colleagues, and not enough doctors on the rota to kind of safely cover the unit. And just absolute overwhelm and overload. And the sheer complexity of maternity for a lot of women and requires a lot of skill, a lot of concentration, a lot of emotional intelligence, especially in an area like triage, you know, it literally is a roller coaster from moment to moment. You never know what's coming through the door, which is part of what makes it exciting, but part of what makes it incredibly stressful as well.

And so for me, I think I just kind of soldiered on and it's in my nature, like so many healthcare staff, to just give and give and give and give and to just rise and rise and rise to the occasion until, you know, ultimately you will crash and burn if you're not looking after yourself. And sometimes even if you are looking after yourself, you know, it shouldn't be up to us to be infinitely resilient. It's the system that can break us sometimes. So yeah, I wrote really candidly in my memoir, Hard Pushed About Having a Panic Attack One Night at Work and Having to Leave, which at the time was incredibly humiliating and shameful and disappointing. And I actually hadn't planned to write about that at all because it was so personal. And then I realized as I was writing the book

that I really would be doing my colleagues a disservice if I wasn't honest about how difficult it really is. And so now, yeah, I talk about it all the time. I've had other kind of episodes of stress and kind of mental health challenges, partly work related, partly just the joys of being perimenopausal and a person in the world. But yeah, I'm very happy to talk about it now and it's become a big component of what I do and so it's also a big theme in my debut fiction as well. And it's so good that you are talking about it, both in your memoir and your fiction, but have you ever had a moment where you've been worried that sharing these honest views could get you into trouble with your bosses? Oh my goodness, of all the things that could get me into trouble with my bosses, that is

the least of my concerns, I have to be absolutely honest. I mean, I've learned, you know, as a midwife, I am registered with the NMC, the Nursing and Midwifery Council, and we have a code of conduct that we must adhere to. And I am very mindful of the behavior that's expected of me and that incorporates professionalism and confidentiality and so on. So I've had to be, learned to be very very careful in what I write and what I say to uphold you know, my profession and my duty to the people in my care. So that means I really can only speak very generally about, you know, where I work and the workload I encounter day to day. But, you know, my feelings and mental health are my feelings and mental health, and I have every right to talk about them. You know,

I'm not blaming my employers for issues that I've had. And again, I also think it comes back to the fact that I am incredibly lucky and privileged to have a platform of some degree to speak on behalf of my colleagues. You know, time and time again, surveys and research demonstrate how incredibly stretched we are. You know, a majority of midwives at any given time are thinking about leaving the profession because burnout, anxiety and overwork are so prevalent. So if that gets me in trouble with my bosses, that would, I think, reflect more poorly on them than it would on me. And often other healthcare professionals feel unable to speak out about their struggles.

Why do you think that culture of silence still exists? I think healthcare professionals are afraid to speak out in general, especially midwives and maybe nurses as well. Doctors have become quite vocal over the last years about the challenges of their profession. They're generally pretty well protected. Unfortunately, there's a bit of a toxic punitive culture amongst midwives and nurses, and there are complex reasons for that. But I think on the whole, healthcare staff have been reluctant to speak about mental health challenges because the public expect us to be, you know, the old sort of narrative of the healthcare hero, the frontline key worker who is unflappable, who works tirelessly.

And I hate that word tirelessly because we are not tireless. We are very tired, full. We are very, very, very tired, all of us, most of the time. So I think to sort of go against that stereotype risks losing a bit of public trust, maybe. I don't know if maybe people don't like to think of us as human or fallible. But I think that it's reached the point across the NHS where if we don't actually show the public how difficult it is, nothing will change.

Conditions have to get better for service users and service providers. We are all kind of swimming in the same water. So I think we all have a duty to present the reality of how tough it is and how broken the system is. That word tirelessly. And when you think about it, it's so often used about women, isn't it? Like mums working tirelessly. We're all so tired. Let's just ban that word altogether. It's just, no, there's no room for it. You've already explained how the NHS is under huge pressure. And as someone who works inside it, what do you think needs to change for the next generation of midwives and NHS staff?

Well, I hate to be really mercenary about it. People do ask me this question a lot and the answer really is money. And yes, of course, there are a lot of things that can be fixed without money. You know, we know that enormous harm has been perpetrated by maternity services. We see inquiries and scandals and reports all the time and I am absolutely not excusing or apologizing, you know, or rationalizing poor care, disrespect, abuse, anything like that. So, you know, people absolutely, attitudes and culture can be fixed, you know, without money. But at the end of the day, if you're trying to run a labour board that should have 12 midwives with only six midwives, you know, a good attitude will only go so far. Something's not going to work. I am telling you that from real life boots on the ground experience.

You know, I can be the loveliest midwife possible. I really do try to be every time I go to work, I can be respectful, culturally competent, kind and cooperative, but if I don't have the resources I need to care for you safely, you will come to harm and people are coming to harm because of the lack of resources. So yes, absolutely we need a massive cultural shift, we need more cultural competency, we need to recognise that marginalised women absolutely face worse outcomes and have been treated appallingly. I'm not here to kind of justify any of that, but what would really, really help everybody to be safe, you know, the rising

tide lift all boats would be more money. We just need more staff. That's it. So your new book is called The Anatomy of Us and it's a bit of a cross between Grey's Anatomy and One Day. So I would say it's kind of like a love story but it's also about mental health struggles that you faced as a healthcare worker. Tell us a bit more about it. Yeah, so the anatomy of us is the story of Becca, who's a registrar, a junior doctor in accident and emergency in a fictional hospital in Edinburgh. And she falls in love with a fellow doctor just as her life is beginning to fall apart. She's dealing with, you know, shifts from hell, pressure from bosses, patients. she's really on the edge of burnout and she meets this other seemingly perfect doctor called Andrew and she attempts to kind of keep things going by weaving a web of lies to present herself as also perfect and very highly functional

and he ends up having some secrets of his own we find out and so it's sort of the story of how that relationship builds and unravels. And the book had a kind of interesting origin because I actually started talking to somebody at Audible last summer about the idea of doing a love story in a medical setting and I knew as soon as the idea was kind of pitched to me that it would have to involve mental health because most people working in the NHS are really not okay. And so if you're going to have two people falling in love, that's great. And you know, you can absolutely make it romantic and touching and bittersweet. And I hope it's all of those things and also a little bit funny. But, you know, what happens when the baseline of these two people is stress, anxiety, perfectionism,

overwhelm, that absolutely will affect how they fall in love, how they communicate or miscommunicate with each other, and how they relate to each other romantically, physically, emotionally. And we don't always fall in love at the perfect time. Becca falls in love at a time when she's dealing with the worst mental health crisis of her professional life, but she still thinks this guy is really hot and wants to make it work. So yeah, I knew that was always going to be part of the book, and I'm really, really glad that initially readers seem to have picked up on that and appreciate that

this is the story of an imperfect love with imperfect people. MS. I haven't listened to it yet, but I'm going to listen to it. The idea is amazing, and I loved one day. But how did you feel when you discovered that actual Hollywood movie star Jesse Buckley would be narrating the audio book? MS. Oh my god, I think, would be their feeling. I mean, it was it was exciting from the beginning because audible being audible. I mean, it was exciting from the beginning because Audible being Audible, I mean, love or loathe Amazon, they definitely have some big budgets to play with.

And I totally understand if some people don't want to engage with Amazon or can't or whatever, but how and ever, this book wouldn't exist without Audible and Amazon. So I knew from the start that they were pitching as a big project, they would attach a big name to it. And, you know, I would have some input into that, but it wouldn't be entirely up to me.

So we ended up after the book was written and came up with a kind of short list of actors. And of all the people on the short list, I mean, they were all phenomenal. But when I saw Jessie Buckley's name, I thought, well, she definitely won't do it because she is, we think of her as a very serious actress. She's won an Olivier, she's BAFTA and Oscar nominated, absolutely tremendous star of stage and screen. And I thought, this is just kind of my silly little fluffy rom-com, she's never heard of me, random audiobook, like why would she even? So yeah, I was absolutely floored that she said yes. She's done a beautiful job and I did get to go down to the studio to see her record for a little while and she

is just as charming in person as you would expect. LW So we have, listening to the Netmoms podcast, Parents to Be, Parents Who've Been Around's podcast, parents-to-be, parents who've been around the block, parents like Alison and I who are just entering the teenage years. So from all of your years as midwife, if you could give the expectant mum listening one piece of advice right now, what would you tell her? Yeah, well, I have my 12 years nearly as a midwife under my belt and also my children are now 18 and 22, my two gorgeous young women, who I'm proud to call my daughters. And so I guess my advice

as a mother and a midwife would be forgive yourself in advance for everything. Because I think as women parents, you know, we're incredibly hard on ourselves. Mum guilt is so real. It never ends. It never stops. You know, from the minute that baby is plonked on your chest to the minute you wave them off to uni or a job or whatever, we're constantly second-guessing ourselves and it's not helped by the fact that society is constantly sending us overwhelming mixed messages about how we should be, feel, behave and it's a really vulnerable and fragmented and kind of toxic time to be a parent or a mother in a lot of ways. So you know I have worked in the postnatal ward and my time as a midwife

I've kind of worked all around the system. And when I'm sending mums home with all their leaflets and their cracked nipples and kind of broken car seats and whatever, I just say yeah, just forgive yourself now in advance for all the mistakes you're about to make in the coming days, weeks, months, years. And I hope that some people have remembered that when they've been tough on themselves. Karly I wish she'd been my midwife. Maryam Aww, I'm here for you, but it happens again. Maryam It's not happening again. Yeah, it ain't gonna

happen for me either, honey. But yeah, that's part of the joy of being, I mean, I don't know if I could even say well known or whatever, but of being somebody on social media and things now is that I'm able to hopefully send that message of compassion to more people than just the ones that I care for in person. That's great. Now, so many mums really struggle to advocate for themselves during pregnancy and birth and even the ones that are going, I feel like I've gone into that situation being like, right, I'm going to make sure I get this or that or you know, whatever. What are some small but powerful ways that we can feel more in control and more heard in that situation? Yeah, this is always, it's a great question, Alison, but it's a really tricky question

as well and one that I like almost hate answering because I feel like women shouldn't have to even think about advocating for themselves. It shouldn't even be part of the conversation and yet it has become somehow the central plank of the conversation around being pregnant and giving birth. I wish that every woman or birthing person could go into their appointments or the hospital or whatever in the full comfort and knowledge that their caregivers would do the advocacy and would listen to them and collaborate with them and provide them with the information they needed. But I know that's not the case, sadly, for many people. So it's a question I sort of hate answering because I feel like we shouldn't even have

to ask it. But I also understand that this is, you know, what people are looking for because they want to be prepared and feel in control. I mean, I guess, if anything, I would just say, you know, understand the kind of information that will be helpful to you. Seek it from sources that you trust and you know are responsible and factual and kind of jive with your mindset. But also know, be able to identify the kinds of information that are not helpful or not trustworthy, which is hard in this day and age, and understand when sometimes it's too much information. You know, I

have women coming in sometimes who've been tracking every single sensation, baby movement, you know, yes, it's very important to track fetal movements that I don't get that wrong, but like, you know, people who have sort of armed themselves with so much monitoring and apps and chat rooms and advice and accounts they're following in this that it becomes, it's absolutely paralyzing and overwhelming. So I would say just be selective about what you find helpful and positive. You know, use that information to inform whatever questions you ask or conversations you have with your caregiver. And also know that if

you are not happy with your caregiver, be it a midwife or a doctor, you can ask to see somebody else. And I know that's difficult and it's not always easy, but you absolutely have that right as a patient. S1EA I think that's where a site like Netmums comes in handy because you know that you have got completely balanced, most of the most up-to-date information from experts. So it's a really valuable resource for pregnant mums. LESLEY Yeah, yeah, it's super, super important to have a source that you can trust. And that's going to be different for everybody. But yeah, there are a lot of people online who would

like to advise you to do things this way or that way that are actually not safe and not knowledgeable. So it's important to be able to discern that. We talk a lot about prepping for birth. and I personally was very guilty of prepping to bring my first daughter into the world to within an inch of my life, but absolutely not prepping for what the hell you do when you then have this small person. And it completely floored me. Why do you think we so often overlook the fact that it's all about pregnancy and birth? We kind of forget that we're then going to have to care for a brand new human at the end of it. Why do we do that?

Yeah, it's weird, isn't it? I think there are different reasons. I think, I mean, we know actually that if we try and talk a lot to expectant mums and dads and parents before birth about what happens afterwards. We know they actually don't tend to retain that well. And I'm saying this as somebody who used to teach antenatal classes as part of my job and also somebody who's been through that system. We know that we have to sort of modulate the amount of information and the kind of information we give because actually people are so focused on this overwhelming, scary, potentially transformative event that it is difficult actually to sort of cognitively jump beyond that and think about what the day-to-day is going to be like. But also I think maybe there is a kind of

less healthy reason for it as well. I think as women, sometimes we kind of hold the truth of early motherhood like a kind of secret society and we think, well, can't possibly tell my pregnant friend what it's really like because she'll be horrified. If we really talk about how difficult and exhausting and physically painful and emotionally tumultuous it can be, then we will just put everybody off and give everybody a meltdown. But if you speak to anyone on the other side, they all say, Yeah, I wish. I wish someone had told me.

I wish someone had told me. I just wish someone had said, this is what you need to do. The best thing, a midwife said to my husband, go and buy two packs of paracetamol and the biggest dairy milk you can find. That was the only advice that we got. Yeah, maybe not so helpful. Not helpful at all. The dairy milk was quite helpful, in truth. Yeah. Yeah, I think maybe we're achieving a better balance because we used to say it when nobody

talks about this, but now sometimes it feels like everybody's talking about this you know where we're very candid in the media now about the the truth of early motherhood and what that can be like. So again I think you know as a pregnant person you have to sort of sift through how many of these brutally realistic anecdotes you you feel able to consume. And you may want to know everything, warts and all, you may be like, yeah, give it to me straight, I want to know exactly what I'm getting into. And some people for their mental health may just be like, you know what, I'm happy to hear a bit about it, but I want to draw a line under it, because I'm just going to suck it and see and kind of go through it myself. And everybody has a different comfort level with how much like real talk they're willing to take in. Yeah,

it's a really tricky one. I used to struggle with it when I taught those classes because I really wanted to prepare these people as best as I possibly could. But at the same time, if you tell them exactly what it's really probably going to be like when they go in in labour and what might actually happen and how restricted things are and how rough they might feel afterwards, you know, people kind of leave a bit shell-shocked and traumatised before anything's even happened. I remember after having my eldest, having my first baby, going into work, I worked in a magazine, I went into the office and I took her in to show everyone. And I was like, what was the breath like? And I

was like, it was probably the most traumatic experience of my entire life. And I just felt like I needed to be honest and tell everybody. And I didn't realize it was a couple of girls there who were pregnant and hadn't told anybody. And it was months later, they were like, I'm so terrified after you came in and said it was traumatic. And I'm like, I'm so sorry. It's that thing though, just not knowing what the right thing to say is. Yeah, it's different for everybody. And in every context as well, because I think it is really important to talk about birth trauma and technology is absolutely a thing, especially in today's system, the way things are running or not running. But yeah, I guess it's about

like there's a time and a place maybe I don't know. Maybe the office water cooler isn't the best place or maybe it is sometimes. I don't know. Yeah, everybody has to gauge it and see, you know, where they feel comfortable discussing these things. It's great that we're being more candid about the reality of birth and early parenthood. But I think we've yet to strike the right balance with a lot of it. I think we have. So finally, Leah, as the mum of daughters in their late teens and early 20s, what advice do you have for those of us with younger kids and where we're feeling like it's all just a bit of a struggle? And as Wendy was talking about at the start, the juggle is just so much. What advice do you have?

Yeah, I mean, everybody's parenting journey is different, but I would say in my experience, it gets so much easier. I found early motherhood really, really, really difficult. And at times it just felt like a long dark tunnel with no light at the end. And people would say to me, I think especially with girls, which is a whole other podcast, they would say, oh just wait till they're teenagers it's gonna get so much worse. Oh you've got two girls, watch out. People are so negative about teenagers. And admittedly Alison and I spent quite a lot of time talking about teenagers because we're in the cold face of that. But everyone, no one ever gives you any balance.

They just say it's all bad. And it's not all bad. No, it's definitely not all bad. I mean, it's not to say we haven't had our ups and downs with two teenage girls. Of course we have. But it's nothing compared to the complete identity kind of meltdown and fatigue and exhaustion and grind of early parenthood. In my experience, again, obviously it's not different, you know, it's different for everyone and I'm sure there'd be people listening who go, oh, I thought, you know, the teenage years were the worst and it did get much harder. But for me, I think if you put in the work in those early years, you will be creating hopefully people,

you know, young people that you really love and enjoy being around. And although having teenagers can be, you know, you can be tearing your hair out, can also be really wonderful to watch your children thriving and discovering themselves and then going out into the world and achieving their dreams. So without being too Pollyanna-ish about it, I mean I would absolutely say, yeah it does get so much easier and don't listen to the people who say, oh you've got girls it's gonna be a nightmare or oh little boys just wait and you know that's just really unhelpful so hang in there. It's so unhelpful. I think for me that because I've got six year old twins and a 14 year old.

And so I have seen, you know, both both sides of it. But when I had toddlers, twin toddlers, I remember having conversations with with parents of teens who were like, just you wait, wait till they're teenagers. It gets so much harder. The teen years are so much harder than the toddler years. And for me, well, it's not helpful. But also for me, I feel like, I feel like, you know, you're basically just diminishing what I'm going through now and saying, however you're feeling, it's going to get 10 times worse in 12, 13 years time. And it was, and now with a 14 year old, I would rather have

five teenagers versus one toddler. For me, so much easier. So you cannot generalize, can you? No, not at all. Not at all. I think it's so unhelpful. It's a terrible thing people say to each other. And like I remember when my eldest was maybe a couple of days old and I was having a terrible time with breastfeeding and I'd had an emergency section and I was just like literally a shell of myself. And somebody said to me, somebody close to me who I trusted, I was sort of unloading on them and they said to me, well, don't worry, you know, it'll be hard for 18 years and then she'll leave home and it'll be easier.

And I thought, wow, that's like the worst thing you could have said to me that it's gonna be like this for 18 years. That was so demoralizing. But actually, I'm pleased to report it did get a lot easier and now both girls have left home and I really miss them because they're just lovely, lovely people. So yeah, it gets a lot easier. Well, Leah, thank you for joining us. It's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you.

Thank you. It's been a pleasure for me too. Thank you, Leah. Don't forget, you can get in touch with us on all social channels, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, just type in netmums and you'll find us. And if you liked what you've heard today, we'd love for you to give us a five star rating. Press the follow button and share the podcast on all your socials.