The Therapy Edit - One Thing with Sarra Hoy on not feeling alone in motherhood

Episode Date: August 5, 2022

In this episode of One Thing, Anna chats with Sarra Hoy about how no mother is ever alone in their emotions or experience, even though it may feel that way.Sarra Hoy is the wife of Gold Medal Olympic cyclist, Chris Hoy and following their shared experience of becoming parents to a premature baby, Sarra became an ambassador for Bliss, the UKs largest neonatal charity.You can follow Sarra on Instagram at @sarra.hoy and you learn more about the work of Bliss at www.bliss.org.ukBliss exists to give every baby born premature or sick in the UK the best chance of survival and quality of life.

Hello and welcome to The Therapy Edit with me, psychotherapist's mum of three and author Anna Martha. Every Friday, I invite one guest to tell me the one thing they would most like to share with mums everywhere. So join with me as we hear this dose of wisdom. I hope you enjoy it. Hi everyone, welcome to today's episode of the Therapy Edit and today is a guest episode and I have with me Sarah Hoy. Sarah is a proud ambassador for Bliss, which if you haven't heard of it, is a charity supporting those who are affected by babies born early or unwell. And this came after her own experience of having her son Callum at 29 weeks and being plunged into that world of, you know,

what it means to have a premature baby, which I'm sure we'll hear a little bit more about. Sarah is, her passion is about raising awareness and bringing people to. together who've had that shared experience, but also giving those who haven't had that experience and may know someone who has some words and some insight and some knowledge so that they might know how better to support them. She often does public speaking. So she shares her experience and her and her passion through media and radio as well. So hi, it's so good to have you today. How are you? Oh, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. I listen to this all the time. So it's amazing that you have had me on. So yeah, I'm really well. Thank you. Well, no,

it's great. And I think we really value hearing different people's experiences. I haven't experienced having a premature baby. And it is a really, you know, it can be incredibly traumatic. And I think it's one of those things that you can't prepare yourself for. So knowing that there are people like you sharing your story so that we can get the insight. And yeah, really important. So Sarah, But if you could share one thing with all the mums, what would that one thing be for you? So I think it's so easy to feel isolated and that you're the only one going through something. So my one thing is you are not so unique or extraordinary that you are alone in feeling the way you do. However, excruciating, I can guarantee that someone else feels or has felt the same.

The content of our stories might differ, but I really believe it's the process that binds us and that we can all recognise those similar traits in each other. And I think a lot of that has been born from my neonatal experience and the difficulties and challenges surrounding that. But ultimately what I've learned through that time is that if you can be really honest and sincere to yourself really, not just to other. It's not just saying, yeah, I say it how it is, but actually really honest when you look into yourself and reflect on how you're feeling.

And if you can manage to find the courage to share that and say, share some of those darkest, deepest thoughts you have with somebody, you will be so surprised. And the feeling that you get when somebody says to you, I felt the same. And suddenly the feeling of isolation is completely changed. And you realize, I'm not alone. in feeling this way. And I think that's such a power of powerful thing. Absolutely. And I think I think you're so right. Sometimes we do feel like our situation is that only is that is there is the only one that anyone has ever been through like it. And even if I guess someone's situation isn't exactly, you know,

word for word like yours, it doesn't mean that they haven't experienced some of those feelings that go alongside it. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, coming back to that neonatal experience, it's really focused in on that because you have got such different stories and outcomes for babies at different gestations. You've also got full-term babies who come to neonatal. So those, you know, on the face of it, when you're going through that, you think, oh, I can't possibly compare myself. You know, a mum with a full-term baby who ends up in neonatal where you've got a really healthy, sized-looking baby, who's really sick compared to the most fragile tiny baby next to them. These two moms are are faced with this conflict of thinking, I can't be as upset as she is because she's going

through something worse. But actually, when you distill it down, the actual facts might be different and the context might be different. But the feelings that you go through, whether your baby was born, you know, 29 weeks like I was or even earlier, or all the way up to full term, when you have those open, frank discussions with somebody, it's really bonding and less isolating for them to say, I was angry, I was, you know, sad, I was just absolutely overwhelmed. And you realize that you are all in a club. And I think motherhood, you know, no matter what your story binds us all in some club, doesn't it? You know, those familiar channels that we all kind of understand.

And, you know, I think learning to be a mum is hard at the best of times with a full term and healthy baby doing it and navigating your journey through a neonatal one is very difficult. And I have no qualms about saying this because I know that there will be at least one person who listens to it who says, yes, I agree. But it was that the horribleness and the stress adds this layer of complexity that you have to try and find your way through.

And it does feel very, very lonely. And I think you've got to try and, find what bonds you with others to try and remove that loneliness. So it's kind of, it's seeing that comparison that we so often jump to, don't we have? Actually, my baby, you know, is, seems healthier than that. The situation that that family are in next door and the room next to me or the bed next to us, I don't have as much right to this fear or this grief or this, you know, this trauma. and actually if you if you can just nudge that aside

acknowledge that that's there but nudge it aside and think actually there will be an emotional connection there will be there is a way that I can connect outside of that and I think we often do that don't we to to invalidate our own feelings when when actually those are the things that can connect us together and when we invalidate it our own feelings it kind of then just drives us further apart doesn't it and has us feeling alone we need connection That's absolutely right. And, you know, even now, you know, seven years on, when I talk about my experience, I've learned so many, so much more and I've heard so many stories from other families that there's times where I feel very fraudulent standing up to talk about it because I'm always aware people have had such a harder time. And, you know, I have to try and remember and remind myself, actually, it was hard and it was hard because it was. was hard. And it was hard for me, just as much as it was hard for somebody else who was going

through something slightly differently. And, you know, I've had the community. I think that mums are a lovely community and the neonatal community is such a supportive one. And actually, all the times when I speak to and chat to other moms, moms who I kind of perceive inwardly, oh my goodness, they have had this so much harder. And I feel like an idiot for even suggesting that I might kind of be able to identify with any of the things that they feel. They've all come back and they're all equally as supportive to me. And just as much as when I speak to somebody, you know, whose baby was only in for a couple of weeks, I say only, for a neonatal. And they're saying, oh, I only had this.

I didn't have the months that you had. And, you know, I don't view that as anything different. What I understand is, gosh, in that case, you know that. Don't you? And there's a connection. There's, you know, there's this eye contact where you just, you see each other across a room and you just, you just know, we both know what we felt and that the other felt it too. And I think it's really important to remind people not to invalidate their own, their own feelings of fear and, and what that experience was like. Because also as time goes on, your mind does funny things with your memories, doesn't it? And you get, you get past these things. to some extent, but it's still there. And it's very quickly, very easy to allow yourself to try and brush under the carpet and say, oh, mine didn't really count. It's not like that.

When actually you kind of know it was and you put those feelings to one side. But I think if we bring them out in the open and just understand you can have really different experiences. I remember one of my most telling moments was with what, one of my friends who has had a really, really difficult time with one of her children, completely different circumstances than a neonatal birth. But they have been, you know, fighting and still do, you know, fight survival every day pretty much. And fought for the life of her child.

And now, you know, my little boy's grown up in those parental challenges, those motherhood challenges where you absolutely lose your rag with them. and it's this really difficult conflict having come from a neonatal background where I prayed and begged for my baby to live and I will do anything, I will be the best mum, I will not please just let him come home and here he is and when I get really angry and lose my temper I find the conflict with that really difficult because it takes me straight back to how could you ever ever be angry with your baby?

who is this miracle who you prayed and begged for and here he is and that's really difficult and one day I found the courage to say to a friend do you ever find it really difficult when they're really naughty and she just sort of smiled and you know she has been through such a trauma with her baby with her child and and she just said oh yeah sometimes I want to kill him but that's okay she's still a miracle and I'm still just a mum and that's okay and it was so uplifting and liberating because it was I felt it was a difficult conversation to try to say to somebody sometimes I really lose my temper and I'm really angry with my little boy how could I be

angry and when we when we had that conversation with somebody who who could identify and understand what it was to pray and beg for the life of your child it was so liberating to know, oh, oh my goodness, that makes me feel so much better. Yeah, I'm just a mum and that's okay. Almost as if that experience means that you shouldn't be allowed to have human responses to momentary circumstances. You know, I went through that, therefore I should never feel angry again. I should never feel, you know, shouty or lose my rag because of what we went through.

And love is never going to be enough to stop you from feeling. that huge spectrum of human emotion in response to what's going on in front of you. So that, oh, what a helpful conversation to have with your friend. And that comes out of that vulnerability of you saying, do you ever feel like this? And that must have felt like a vulnerable moment because she could well have turned around and gone, Sarah. No. And you knew that you could feel safe doing that. And it just shows, isn't it?

often amazing connection comes out of the vulnerability of communicating that emotion. You're right. It's making yourself vulnerable. It's also being sincere and not feeling that you have to conform to this idea that we know it all, we can do it all, everything comes naturally. And I think there is a lot of pressure on women to be able to do this. It's like it's, it's like an episode of extreme multitasking, do everything, and also make everything come naturally and just know the answer straight away because that's what you should do, that that's who you should be. And actually just allowing yourself the space to say,

I don't know the answers to this and I don't know why I feel this way and I don't really know what to do next. And that's okay. And I think this sort of this ranking idea that other people's pain, might be higher or greater than yours and that you shouldn't be feeling this way those that that should we should try to get rid of that although it is hard you know I still have that you know

some babies don't come home from neonatal and so the idea that I can sit in a podcast and complain that my little boy's naughty it feels really awkward and wrong but it's it's again just understanding that well this is my situation and this is where I find myself. And again, coming back to what I said at the beginning,

I'm not the only, I cannot be the only one who feels this. If I feel it, somebody else does too. And they'll know what you might want to ask. They'll know what you might be to hear. So thank you so much. Thank you for your empowering, affirming, confidence giving, validating, yeah, insightful words and for giving me also a bit of an insight into some of the emotions around

what you know what it means to have a premature baby so sarah to get to know you a little bit better we finish off with some quick fire questions so what is a motherhood high for you i think um on the back of our neonatal experience a motherhood high now are birthdays um as a other people who've been through a journey of maybe a premature baby or a traumatic birth will know those first few years, it's an anniversary for yourself. It's really hard to find a reason to celebrate the day that it was terrible and almost took your child and everything that followed. But what I've discovered recently, it becomes about your child and the pain recedes or you get used to it. And suddenly the birthday becomes the day for your child.

the, you know, I can say my child was born on his birthday, which is quite a powerful thing when actually the last thing you wanted was for your child to be born on that day. And now it's all about him. And recently, Callum said, I wish I was born sooner because I can't wait for my birthday. And I just, you know, a few years ago, that would have really been painful for me and hard

and would have given me a gulp. And it didn't. I just was completely immersed in his joy for his birthday is all about him. And that's been a real revelation that his birthday can be his birthday and nothing to do with me. That's beautiful. Thank you. And what's the motherhood low for you? I think stand out for the neonatal journey breastfeeding, which deserves a whole podcast in itself.

You know, crying more tears than milk that you've produced is hard. but I think coming into the present day just saying the word just I say it all the time I've just got to send this email I've just got to do this I'll be with you a minute I've just got to finish this I've just and I hear myself say it to my children

and just not allowing them the time that they're wanting and the attention and I hate the word just so I keep trying to trying to get around it and making sure that I'm not just doing anything. I'm just I'm going to immerse myself in

whatever I'm doing and particularly in my children when they're asking for it rather than trying to juggle all the time. Yeah. It's life isn't it? Oh it is and that will resonate with so many calling us to be a little bit more conscious where we can and Sarah what's one thing that makes you feel really

good? Anything. My main thing I think I do barcour, which is a kind of exercise mixed with Pilates, yoga, and ballet moves. My friend Kat runs a studio near where we live, and it's just the most lovely place to be. It's really challenging. So when you're immersed in it, you can't think of anything else. You have to concentrate.

And what I really love about it is she gives you permission to breathe. So during the exercises, she reminds you to breathe and tells you how important. important it is when else do you get a moment where somebody says just breathe and it's it's really really lovely that's my happy place oh brilliant brilliant and how would you describe motherhood in three words the simplest question of them all oh um trial and error oh i love that yeah i think we none of us are born with a handbook there's no right answers um there's no solution just keep keep trying. I often think, look at what we say to our kids, you know, oh, it's okay, you're only learning. You've just started, it doesn't matter if you make a mistake. And I think, right,

we should counsel ourselves in that same way. It's, it's okay, we don't know. We are, you know, we take such good care of a newborn baby. Equally, the mums have just been born too. We're just learning. And I actually, I kind of loved that element. When Callumverse came home from hospital, we found that really quite, you know, hilarious at times, this idea of, do you know what you're doing? No. Okay. Let's give it a go. And that was actually moments of, moments of fun in amongst the moments of horror. Trial and error. Just give it a go. Liberating to be able to admit that as she, you don't know. I haven't got a map for this. I wasn't trained for this. I'm just trying to do my best along the way well thank you so much for sharing with this um your warm your warm and wise

words and i will share links to the bliss charity um within the show notes as well and different pages and things so that people can can find those but thank you so much for your time thank thank you so much for having me really appreciate it thank you for listening to today's episode of the therapy edit if you enjoyed it please do share subscribe or review because it makes a massive difference to how many people it can reach. You can find more from me on Instagram at Anna Martha. You might like to check out my three books, Mind Over Mother, Know Your Worth and my new book, The Little Book of Calm for New Mums, grounding words for the highs, the lows and the moments in between. It's a little book you don't need to read it

from front to back. You just pick whatever emotion resonates to find a mantra, a tip and some supportive words to bring comfort and clarity. You can also find all my resources, and videos all with the sole focus of supporting your emotional and mental well-being as a month. They are all 12 pounds and you can find them on anamatha.com. I look forward to speaking with you soon.