The Mother of Mental Loads

Meet Mia as she discusses her journey with her son's ongoing health condition, her mental health and the impact of self care!

You can reach Mia @themotherofmentalloads on instagram.

Thank you Mia.

xx

Transcript

SPEAKER_02: 0:00

Welcome to today's episode of the Confidence and Connection podcast. Today's episode is brought to you by the Mother of Mental Loads. Trigger warning, this episode will discuss pediatric health and mental health.

SPEAKER_01: 0:13

I'm Mia. I turned 30 last month. You'll have a birthday. Yeah, it's been a big month and keep saying everyone, I'm going to Fiji for my birthday for a couple of weeks, which will be amazing. I have two little boys. So one, Leo is three. He turned three last month as well. So he's a May baby. And Kieran, he's turning one in two weeks. Will you be in Fiji for that? Yes. Oh my goodness. What a first birthday. I think he's going to take his first steps there too, which is pretty cool. When I was a kid, I took my first steps. apparently under the Eiffel Tower. So I'm like, he's just going to, yeah. Following mum's

SPEAKER_02: 0:47

footsteps. That'd be pretty cool.

SPEAKER_01: 0:49

Yeah, I know. Exactly. So yeah, that's me. So my story doesn't start with me. It starts with my son as such, our family. So my eldest son, Leo, he's just turned three, but he looks the same size or age as like an 18 month old. I know when you met him, you were like, oh, and don't worry. Every single day we meet anybody new, they're so confused. I felt

SPEAKER_02: 1:11

so bad when I was like, oh, is he 18 months? and you're like no he's three and i you handled it so well like i can imagine that for some parents it might not be the easiest thing to deal with but you're like no no like it's fine i felt terrible though but you just like you just took it in your stride and kept going so it was

SPEAKER_01: 1:28

yeah i

SPEAKER_02: 1:28

think

SPEAKER_01: 1:29

um we're learning to navigate that because i mean he's adorable he really he's so cute right like you know he's my kid but i can tell you like he's very cute but um that plus he's very switched on for a three-year-old so people just get so confused yeah and so they drawn to him and there's always this conversation which can be a positive one but sometimes it's like okay here we go again yeah yeah but because up until a few months ago we didn't know why he was so small yeah that was a harder conversation because we were in sort of this medical journey of understanding that i'll tell you about but up until then that was a bit more like okay how do we nicely tell somebody um he's a kids should be doing more at that age. But then, so almost like feeling guilty that their kid hadn't got there. And it was this confusing thing of like, no guys, it's okay. He's three. Yes. He's just a pocket rocket. He's, he's awesome, but you don't have to try and compare him. And I think also for me, like this beautiful community we have out here. So we run play groups and I attend a lot of play groups and events and stuff. And so we see a lot of the same age kids every week. And so until we knew what was going on I was just seeing these kids start to grow and grow and grow. And while my son was still kind of keeping up with them in terms of like socially, that sort of stuff, you could just, you know, when the kids start growing like weeds, he wasn't. And so that's. So he's always been small. Was he small from birth? Yeah, look, he was a smaller kid. He was 2.9 kilos. He was three, two and a half weeks early, but they were really happy with everything. He got like the nine on the APCA score and stuff, everything. The pregnancy looked great. all looked really normal he looked like the average size kid so when he came out early they just thought you know he could have had another couple of weeks to bake yep um so he was he was so tiny we've looked at photos since and like seeing photos of him compared to Kieran our youngest who was growing fine um we're like holy dooly he was yeah he was just a little tiny baby um so really scrumptious but yeah just uh to begin with the first year yeah he was always smaller but he was kind of staying on the trajectory of being smaller yeah and And that's okay. I didn't have the greatest supply. So there was, you know, those fun like first mum things where you're trying to figure out, oh, is it my supply? So we were mixed feeding and that did help. But then he started solids and his weight was still kind of staying okay. But height, he'd always been smaller. And then around the 12 to 18 month mark is when, so I understand now why growth charts are so important because the reason that we've caught onto it is because he was doing this thing of kind of going on a growth chart still on the bottom of the percentile but that's fine and then his growth just started dropping so he'd never lost weight um but he pretty much just like ground to a halt with his growth yeah and so between the age of yeah 12 and 18 months is when uh the doctors definitely started paying attention and um at that age they're pretty good to just keep monitoring and see is there something going on you know it could they call it kind of um

SPEAKER_03: 4:41

what

SPEAKER_01: 4:43

do They said, oh, we might wait till two because sometimes they do start growing after two. So our GP had referred us after she was like, oh, don't like this. Let's just send you back to the paediatrician you saw, you know, at the hospital. So he did some bloods and looked at his stuff and went, oh, he is quite small. We can see he's, you know, there's something there. So let's try. He said like paediatrician. So we started paediatrician. His iron levels weren't crazy low, but they were on the lower side of normal. So like he is this revoltingly ironly smelling um supplement but here it is give that to him we'll see if that helps his appetite because he also didn't really have an appetite and um i know a lot of people say like toddlers are picky they are but for leo it's just this gut feeling like i think we both had my husband and i were just like he it's not that he's picky it's that he he's not hungry so when he would get hungry he'd eat whatever you know he wasn't that fussy but yeah it was just oh my god the fight like looking back now the constant mental load of trying to keep him fed and trying to keep his weight up and trying to do this and trying to do that like at the time we just kept kept on keeping and we were coping but um you know reflecting now it's like oh that was a journey in itself like before we even knew that there was something really that wrong

SPEAKER_03: 6:04

yeah

SPEAKER_01: 6:04

so i think it was yeah it was about a year ago um that we saw the pediatrician properly that's right because kieran was two weeks old so i I was still at home with him. And then Liam went and took Leo to the pediatrician. And he ran us through that, the kind of, okay, let's start this, the pediatric and the supplements. Come back in October and we'll give you, we'll give you a blood test to do. And so he got him to do all of these much more like in-depth blood tests. We had no clue what any of them really meant other than like, you know, the usual, you know, how you see like THS or TSH. I can't even remember them, but all these different things to check off, all these little bits. And then also a bone age scan. So we just had to go get an x-ray for his left hand. So when we saw that x-ray, we're like, looks like a hand. No clue what to make of it. And so I don't think we really thought that there would be much more other than maybe it was nutrition based, even though we were doing our best and that he was picky and that eventually he would grow. But we went, I went back in October and we'd obviously not really thought about it at all because my husband usually would either call in or he'd come to the appointments but this one I took our baby and Leo and we went to the pediatrician and then I didn't call my husband in or anything because he was busy and afterwards I was like well fuck because he was like oh okay so he's not growing very well and his growth hormone levels are non-existent in the nicest way possible he might have this condition so we'll send you to an endocrinologist and we're like I don't know what and some people might know what that is because things like diabetes and any sort of hormonal issues, you go to an endocrinologist. But yeah, for us, we're like, sorry, what?

SPEAKER_02: 7:52

Yeah. We've

SPEAKER_01: 7:53

never dealt with that.

SPEAKER_02: 7:54

Particularly in babies as well. Like it's completely different adult hormones and then children's hormones. So that's a whole new... And it's your baby. It's not just like the hormones of you, it's your baby. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 8:09

And it... Again, on reflection. Yeah, it was one of the things where I left the appointment. I was like, okay, cool. And told my hobby, oh, we've been referred to this specialist. And then we started, you know, Googling. Yeah. And it's like, oh, okay. I mean, it makes sense because all of these things, he's kind of like ticking those boxes. But shit, like that's a bigger thing. And at the time we thought that's all that was wrong. And so luckily in Australia, we're really, really lucky to be in Australia because the government does help pave for a lot of the supplements and the treatments if your kid does get has have the issue that he has in America families basically they're broke like they have to try and get it through their insurance and then if they move jobs like it's you know it stops coming so we are really lucky how we've been able to kind of go from one specialist to the other and then they were a couple of months waiting but in hindsight it's like okay it felt like a long time but it was good to get on top of it so yeah that was October and then we got an appointment with the endocrinologist in November I think it was a month later yeah and the thing I didn't mention was the bone age scan he had his hand his bones were a year younger than him so that I was like oh that's kind of concerning but the pediatrician was like oh no that's actually a good thing because it means that medically if he's like a slow grower he has more time to fill into his body yeah um if his bones were the same age as him it means that he would most likely be like short for for life you know that which is fine it's not really the height issue it's for us we found out it's the other stuff but um that's how they're able to kind of tell and why they do that test to go okay so yeah his body's still slowing like it's really slowly growing yeah compared to how old he is yeah um and i remember seeing the the letters and stuff they write about him it was lovely it was like you know otherwise he's a really happy healthy engaged kid and we knew that like and that's what we just like love about him he's just a little firecracker and he's so unique like really really cool but it was just this constant thing of like my our kids not growing like in my mind once I got the diagnosis I felt this relief of being like okay it wasn't my fault because it's the mum carrying the baby like what have I done wrong thankfully we're able to figure out that wasn't really anything we could do yeah bit of a like glitch in the DNA matrix as such but between my husband and I. But all of that stuff going around in my brain was just going and going and going for nearly three years until we got the diagnosis. So to get where we got with his diagnosis and understand it fully, you have to go through quite a lot of more blood tests and an MRI and then also the big blood test, which was, they call it the stim test. It was like an eight-hour day and he'd had to fast from the night before. for which for us luckily he's not really that hungry like he doesn't get hungry so yeah you think of like other kids that are like oh my god give me food as soon as I wake up like our youngest like he's like give me you know where's my food not let him speak but that's what he pretty much says they cry yeah oh yeah like give us the food scream yeah but with Leo like we we had to be his reminder to eat and up until that point yeah which was a fine line between like making him so sick of food because we're trying to like coax him but also trust that his body knows that he needs to eat yeah fucking fine line anyways um peter shaw was pretty handy and during those days because especially when they get sick you know like during the flu season his appetite was pretty much zero so at least didn't love having to give that to him but at least that kind of kept him going um anyway so yeah the mri um and the stim test end up happening at the children's hospital which love them they're so good we got to deal with them that lady Salento yeah so the one next to Amada yeah I think that is I don't know the full name but the children's hospital right next door to Amada so you kind of walk down the road it's beautiful like the actual hospital is just so kid friendly and so family friendly and seeing like the day that he had that blood test seeing all the teachers sitting there with the kids that was in the cancer ward and seeing them being able to have schooling and stuff was just we have a lot of good support here so we're really grateful for that but yeah being in that environment is really interesting but over that day we had Captain Starlight come a couple of times for performances and just the most amazing nurses and doctors and so we did that blood test where he had to get blood draws every 15 minutes for 4 hours and he was such A trooper. It was only until the end of those four hours where he started getting really tired that he was really starting to crash. But, like, this is an almost three-year-old that once they finally got the cannula in, he was like, oh, look, that's my blood. Oh, wow. And just felt so cool. And, yeah, like, you know, kids always say, oh, I'm going to be this when I grow up. But I think he's had a really good experience with doctors and nurses that maybe one day he might head down that path. Yeah. Wouldn't surprise us at all.

SPEAKER_03: 13:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 13:40

But yeah, so that blood test was pretty hectic. It has to be done in hospital because their blood sugars can drop really drastically and that can be dangerous. And he had to have the IV drip kind of going the whole time. Yep. Anyways, that was done. So that was great. We got those two done. It was a bit of a shit show for the mumps to get there because they couldn't get the cannula in the first time, the other hospital. So that's why we got transferred. But that got done. And before that, we'd found out from the MRI what was wrong structurally or how his brain was made and the bits up there. So we kind of knew that we were in for at least the growth hormone treatment and that he would fail that test. And failing that test was a good thing for us getting the PBS. Not a good thing that he failed so drastically because he failed really badly. But it meant that rather than us having to fork out about, I think it's about 40 grand a year. for treatment it's being it's just 30 for a pen which i think it's like um ends up being 30 a month because we kind of use one pen or one or two pens across the month yeah so yeah completely like took away a few zeros which is insane um so we're happy to hear that in that we could get him qualified for that yeah um so we thought the growth hormone was the main thing his pituitary gland showed that it was congenitally really small so it it was too small to be produced Mm-hmm. We wouldn't have changed a thing as such, but it has this whole situation. You have to kind of, if we wanted any other kids, we'd have to consider that. But yeah, so hearing that there was something that wasn't made quite right, made sense. The rest of the brain looked great. So we thought that like you could tell he's just, he's epic. But the poor thing, his body wasn't producing the right hormones. And you could tell that he couldn't keep up with his peers and like his stamina and his energy. Yeah. he slept a lot which is a great thing but it's also when they got older like you could just see he was just so tired and very much a fight or flight mode for him for smaller things so we found that out and then the growth hormone treatment thyroid levels were really low so he started thyroid meds before we had any of these tests and already we saw just like his whole demeanor change you know he was happier yeah his stamina um i think we realized what a real toddler was like yeah to burn his energy yeah um so it was awesome to see that um but then that growth did cut he had like a little it was 100 or 200 gram growth spurt like yes yeah it's gonna work yeah um his body went oh hold on you know the other hormones are really low so it helped with his general well-being but his growth still kind of slowed down so once we got the growth hormone diagnosis that was great but the thing that got thrown in there right at the end which is probably the most important thing for us now is that's changed how we have to do things is that he his cortisol levels are impacted as well so he is steroid dependent which means that something like a broken arm could be deadly for him if say he was in the park on his own and nobody was with him um if he so obviously until he's old enough to understand that like we can't leave him there but um yeah understanding that that's how much it could impact him is um was obviously a bit terrifying

SPEAKER_02: 17:54

uh again is there a window like if he was to break an arm you'd need him get him to the hospital in an hour in

SPEAKER_01: 18:00

yeah so obviously

SPEAKER_02: 18:01

the faster the better but

SPEAKER_01: 18:03

we've been asking the nurse and doctor to explain this so they've given us like a chart of it's like an if this then that so okay um it gives you an idea of the worst things like say a burn or a break um and what to look for and when those signs start kicking in um we have emergency shots that we have um on our persons all the time and we've been shown how to use those and we just administer those um ambulances carry like all the ambulances in australia carrying them so um i think overseas it'd be a It's low. He's like adrenally, it's really insufficient. So he's steroid dependent because of those cortisol levels. Yeah. But I think it really kind of works almost in the opposite way that his body just goes into shock. Yeah. And he's at risk of having like a heart attack or blood sugar. Yeah. Yeah. So that's why in a situation where, you know, a normal kid with a normal endocrine system would break their arm and it would be painful and, you know, they probably would feel a bit off his body couldn't really understand that it's not a life or death situation so understanding that yeah understanding those situations things like getting sick we just have to stress dose so we just add some more meds to the to the mix but if there's a certain point where say he's having too much diarrhea or something it's likely we'd have to end up just going to the hospital to get him an IV drip he'll be better um after that so again um all these bits and pieces they're just kind of we can see it all come together now and it's called i don't think i mentioned the name so it's multiple pituitary hormone disorder and which is also known as hypopituitarism and they use those interchangeably i think because the first one is really hard to say like so many names um but yeah understanding all of that and the adrenal system and oh it was like whoa it it all makes sense but But... for our son. Um, yeah, his hormones just aren't doing what they should do for him. Um, his testosterone levels look okay at the moment. And then as he grows up, uh, they'll just keep monitoring that. And it's likely, maybe not, but most likely he'll need help, um, to go through puberty as well. Um, yeah. So we've got an awesome specialist, like she's epic. We love her a lot. Um, so as a, she'll follow him as a kid. So once he becomes an adult, he'll move to an adult endocrinologist. Um, But we're seeing her and the nurse every three months. We kind of interchange and they check his bloods, see how he's going. He gets a scan of his hand every year, I think he will. And then, yeah, he'll be on the treatment plan for his thyroid, his growth hormone treatment and his adrenal insufficiency for life. It's just that the levels might change. So when he passes the most growing stage as an adult, there should a hopefully be less dosages yeah um so the growth hormone i should mention that's um thankfully it's a weekly shot now we thought we were in for a daily shot um but it's hopefully he doesn't mind me saying this but um a needle in the butt cheek and we had to we have to um rotate every week and so left cheek right yeah yeah and he loves putting his band-aid on it now oh cute um what was it we were at a playgroup what a trooper oh he's such a trooper and he's bound dancing back so quickly now it's obviously not not comfortable yeah but he prefers that i do the shot and that my husband holds him yeah gives him a cuddle um but we were at a play group recently and he had a band-aid i think he got his immunizations and i was like i'll show you a band-aid to um the lady running it and so rather than pulling up his sleeve oh no his pants and she they were like she's like you know a really good friend of the family but i was like oh my god i forgot that there was a band-aid on his butt

SPEAKER_02: 22:11

oh that's so cute Because they're like, why is he pulling out his pants? I'm like, oh, no, that's where it should

SPEAKER_01: 22:14

be. He'll just slash a child, just whipping out a butt cheek. It's so cute. And we've got the really cute ones. So, yeah, he's awesome like that. And he has to wear a medical band. So that's something I think I'd like to share more awareness about is the medical bands because we didn't know what they were really until Leo. So, yeah, it's a really cute one. It's got dinosaurs on it. I think we've got a train one as well. But it basically tells anybody in the medical field or– even a first aid officer that might accidentally be out there, that there's something wrong with him and that he needs to have the steroids shot straight away if you found him on the side of the road in a car crash or something. So yeah, he has to wear that all the time. Emergency management plan. Yeah, and the shots. So it's a lot of bits to carry and I think we've figured out how to take them overseas. As I said, I have to take them on board. But at least I've got a cute bag to put it all in and you're not going to Bali bringing all those drugs back in my husband's like god we don't want to be like because I wanted to take extra of the steroid meds it's like they're steroids and she's like I don't want us to get like done for trying to smell the steroids oh come on it's like a child yeah

SPEAKER_02: 23:30

they are prescriptions so you would be fine

SPEAKER_01: 23:33

but yeah and we've got letters and everything but it's so true like we're like shit we you know even when he wants to do like sports in school apparently some schools care that you need to have like a letter to prove to the other kids the other parents that he's not doing that for you know enhancing reasons that's crazy yeah

SPEAKER_02: 23:52

there would be people out there that would

SPEAKER_01: 23:54

oh yeah absolutely the specialist said so she usually works with a lot of kids that are a little bit older there's not many kids we know in the area or even in Queensland or Australia that have this condition it's not totally rare but it's rare enough that we know maybe there's one or two other toddlers we might meet um soon hopefully to yeah just kind of have them all in the same room and get to know each other

SPEAKER_03: 24:18

yeah

SPEAKER_01: 24:19

so that's been a um an adjustment it's an adjustment that my husband and i we just kind of kept on keeping and we totally ignored the fact that our lives have changed that much

SPEAKER_02: 24:30

yeah

SPEAKER_01: 24:30

i think a lot of it's to do with um i was going back to work at the time um i'm still postpartum my husband working full time so and we had these two you know little boys that are just non-stop so they need us and around that time. And when we got the diagnosis, I, I kind of put a timeline on my head. It was like, after we find out what's wrong, we know it's not cancer. We know that we can treat it. And we kind of knew what we were in for. Um, maybe I'd feel better. Yeah. I definitely, the past four to five months, I noticed I was just not myself. I didn't really want to leave the house that much. Um, leaving the house was feeling like a fight or flight experience. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, didn't fully realise that until I reflected on it all I was forced to but I didn't fully notice how in the pits I was and that my husband in his own way was just doing the best he could and then about a week after we got the diagnosis I went I don't think I'm okay and I think thankfully because of the community we're in and kind of the space I'm in trying to understand that and much more understanding about maternal health and mental maternal health um i did go oh i might might do a panda test like the online panda test just to see maybe i'm going crazy i did it and it was like yeah you should definitely talk to someone yeah okay and i have a great gp um she's a woman herself and um she's a great what we call a great grand doctor so my mom walked into that gp when she had a pregnancy test with and i was the one that she was pregnant with oh wow and was like I need a doctor I'm pregnant and she was unexpectedly pregnant and so this wonderful lady happened to have a kid I think my GP had her son a year before me and so they're like the same age and we've grown with them and like our whole family sees her so she's epic and so I felt like I could be comfortable in going to her and saying I'm not okay I don't think and we kind of like we've reflected on that appointment like since and she said you a total you were a totally different person

SPEAKER_00: 26:48

yeah

SPEAKER_01: 26:49

that day and i after the appointment um i thought i was sorted you know i was like okay cool i'm not okay and she sort of we worked through um you obviously want to try and move like get some movement into your um into your lifestyle things you enjoy um i did start medication because i was like yep i need something to help especially with getting through with all the leo stuff at the moment um Not something I've done before. It's a huge burden. Yeah. But, again, I wasn't really– I was just in denial, I think. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 27:23

And– Maybe, like, it's also about your baby. Yeah. Like, it's not– you feel like it's not your time. Yes. They're the priority. They're the ones that need the love and the emotional support and things like that. So you do kind of just–

SPEAKER_01: 27:37

get through it uh-huh and I think that's the only reason I went to see her actually because I went at the time it wasn't about me it wasn't for me it was my kids need me my husband needs me and um I was like cool left that appointment I called my mum and she had no clue that I was she went oh yeah we thought you were a bit different kind of thing but nobody could really say it to me or um pick it because I just tried to fake it till I made it you know and um Anyway, I just went to that appointment. I started that and was like, okay, understanding that I'm not okay. But then I just kind of picked up and moved on and thought I was doing well. I have to give a huge shout out to my hubby for that day when I told him, he said, thank you for realizing that you might need help. The way he said it was just, I'm here for you. I'm holding space for you, whatever you need. He didn't know at the time how to support me or support himself, but he was just so... um there for me which was amazing yeah um but in the month that followed i guess i yeah it was a lot more fragile um i recognized why i was so tired and why i just didn't have um you know i didn't want to get out of bed or wanted to go to bed as soon as we could um and so the load that i was carrying for the family i started dropping because i was yeah in hindsight i was totally just starting to um slip slip slip yeah and then we went on the this beautiful um trip out to to guluar where my um my hubby's brother lives and we were camping on the brisbane river like the most beautiful scenery so quiet and i was like oh this feels wonderful but i just feel like i can't catch a breath i was like okay that's weird and that morning my hubby's like are you okay like it seems like you can't catch your breath i was like yeah i just had my son sleeping on me all night i thought maybe I don't know my lungs were a bit shorter from that and I know that the feeling just kept going and then again I was we were loving the day having a really good time but by 2 30 that the next morning um I woke up and I was like I feel like I can't breathe I had to sound dramatic to my husband but I can't breathe and he said you have like a panic attack what could I possibly be panicking about like this is the most chilled I've felt that's it though isn't it uh-huh and I I was like how do i breathe i was going oh crap um okay the hospital is like it's 10 minutes drive to the house and then from the house it's another 10 or 15 minutes to the road and then from the road it's another 20 minutes it's 2 30 in the morning it's pissing down that would be a nuisance like yeah mom brain going yeah yeah no i probably should but i'll just see how i go until the morning yeah yeah um i i had a my sister-in-law had a puffer and i brought that during the day just to kind of help with that never had a puffer before so i um got my hubby to get that for me and that i think it helped but i think it also didn't help but then i felt this urge to get my youngest and just like sleep to lie down with him and sleep with him yeah and now i realized that kind of calmed me down yeah i went to sleep um woke up the next morning still couldn't catch a breath fully and i'd never never had that feeling of not being able to just have I don't know, it's hard to explain. When you can't fully catch the breath, you're like, wow, breathing seems so easy. But when you can't do it, it is terrifying. So I said, oh, I might go to the hospital just in case I have this again tonight. Like, I don't want to have my lungs not working, whatever it was. So after breakfast, my hubby and I went to Kilcoy Hospital, cutest regional hospital you'll ever see. And he sat in the car waiting and my in-laws looked after the kids. And I turned up there and I was still in denial at the time of what was going on. And when I explained my symptoms and what had happened, they're like, okay, so what's been happening recently? And I kind of filled them in and they're like, so I think this is pretty clearly a panic attack. They said it in the nicest way possible. But again, I was still in denial. I was like, no, my lungs aren't working. No, your lungs are at 80% capacity. They're great. You are healthy. But you, your nervous system... shot. And the doctor that was on that day, I was so thankful to have her there. It's funny, she got like curly brown hair, darker skin, and she looks probably like maybe 10 to 15 years older than me. So I felt like I was looking at a reflection. So when she said, from experience, you need to deal with this now. I feel like I took that opportunity to, it was like this, almost like permission to go, okay, well, fuck. If this woman, who was a doctor in this regional setting looks like she's got her shit together is saying to me she's had something similar when she was a mother when she was in her early ages and my doctor my GP had actually mentioned that she had had postpartum depression after her second if these big powerful women are able to tell that to me and trying to nudge me in the direction that they wish they could have gone or they did go I'm like fuck I really need to sort this out now and at that point I still thought it was for the boys and for my husband and I now know it was for me as well, and then that's really important. But, yeah, they gave me a week doctor's certificate to take off, and I'm like, oh, I need a week. Six months later. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so that day, that panic attack was the 1st of May, so really easy to remember. But, yeah, it was, again, I called my parents after that, and I think it was a slow burn. They were like, oh, okay, so that happened. I'm like, yeah, that happened. happened still in denial i swear i was still in denial for how long um but the next couple of weeks i did take the first week off and then i took another half week off uh and my my workplace was great actually my boss he's he basically told me him and his wife had you know had been through the pits before when they were younger um different situation but he got it and he was just so considerate and understanding um i didn't feel the pressure from them to run back into it even though the boss of the company was having to do my role like it was amazing to be um that supported there so i had that support and then i had to start accepting support from my mom from my in-laws from my friends to keep the boys going like to keep the family running and to not put that on my husband because i yeah i was so fragile like i'd never felt that fragile before mentally

SPEAKER_03: 34:37

and

SPEAKER_01: 34:38

physically I wasn't feeling great either but my voice started going funny and I thought it was because I was sick but it wasn't it was my adrenal glands were just fucked and I had to learn how to swallow and breathe properly again without thinking about it and so those physical reminders were probably a positive thing in a way because they reminded me that I couldn't just get back to it and try to push through and and it just became this sort of uncoupling of figuring out who i am now who i want to be who i thought i was it was all of this sort of weird self-discovery throw it all in there and see what comes out when i'm at the bottom and coming back up and um i don't know it's actually been an awesome journey since then but um i've learned a lot and i'm still going to be learning a lot and i've had I've done therapy as well and kept seeing my GP. My chiro's been helping with like diaphragm work and being able to release stuff and giving me information on the vagus nerve, which is really handy for anxiety and that sort of stuff. And I'm actually sort of doing these sessions, which is like energy coaching with this lady who does a lot about matrescence, which is a word that I'm I came across a couple of years ago, didn't fully understand, but I realize now this is my matrescence transition at the moment and that I've given into it and I'm fully understanding why I've changed, how I've changed, throwing in also my son's health journey and knowing that we want him to be able to navigate that in the best way possible and that we want to have the right language around it and how can we be telling him or trying to encourage him him to look after himself if we can't look after ourselves so it's just this whole like it was just like an explosion i don't know um feels like a reset and it was a lot and it feels like it was a long time ago but it wasn't but i just feel like i am the person i've always want i've been working towards the person i always wanted to be i have just kind of shed that skin of um pretending that i have my shit together the mask that i have been wearing and Because when I told a couple of people about what had happened, they went, what? Like, we would not have expected that to have been an issue for you. And so being honest is one of the biggest game changers for me and just being open now, especially again, like we're just having this mirror of my son's journey. And if we're happy to tell people about what he's got, what's going on with him and have language around that and be able to navigate that properly

SPEAKER_03: 37:38

it's

SPEAKER_01: 37:39

got to start here and so for my husband and i we was really rocky we we didn't think it was rocky at that point but i was just not myself i was a shell of myself he was busy um really quite stressed at work and so between us trying to navigate all of that like we'd lost each other we were still there and we knew that it was a season but um i just feel like that hospital trip after that we talked about um him because the doctor kind of said how is your husband coping and I said I don't think he's coping but he's doing the best he can because I've dropped the ball so much and yeah the conversations after that were really hard for about a week or so and then getting emotional thinking about it but coming through the other side I just feel like the two of us now we're like we're in this together we've connected more than we've ever connected before and just the conversations we're having are amazing and I feel like it's a really good example for our kids as well I

SPEAKER_02: 38:35

think it's a

SPEAKER_01: 38:35

huge

SPEAKER_02: 38:36

deal that your husband has been vulnerable it's not easy I mean some men it is lots of men my husband is not good at opening up he doesn't really think about things he doesn't think about his emotions so I think that the fact that your husband has been able to obviously go through this journey with you as well but come out the other side and still want to be like there for you and with you is a huge asset to him

SPEAKER_01: 39:00

yeah absolute testament to him but even for him he knew he was reflecting on things where he realised he wasn't okay the week before this happened like before I had my panic attack and we kind of started talking about this but he just didn't know how to say that and obviously I was in my own bubble so I didn't even notice that you know he was feeling so burnt out and overwhelmed as well so yeah it was really shitty like the I remember that I think it was the day he went and talked to somebody that sort of set me into almost another anxiety attack because he didn't know how to put words to that and it's not because he didn't want to tell me it's just that as a man especially like that whole toxic masculinity is that he didn't want to talk about it because if he did he'd probably cry and

SPEAKER_03: 39:45

so

SPEAKER_01: 39:47

again for me like how I've grown up for me that felt so weird for him to not be telling me that but I had to sort of take a moment to realize that that's That's what he wanted to do and I had to just let him be in that and that we were in this together and that eventually he did start to tell me sort of, you know, it was the stresses from work and obviously all his Leo stuff and then not knowing how to support me, like all of that just kind of combined. But, yeah, like allowing ourselves to kind of have this journey on our own terms but at the same time has been important and understanding how the mental load, the thing that I'd love to talk about now and the thing that mums need to understand is that women mothers usually carry that mental load so much more heavily than men and it's just as it's something that society just kind of goes here it is take that um and you're still figuring out how to be a mother how to to be this person that you're changing into to look after these humans and then you throw that on it and um we all just kind of keep on keeping we don't really stop and go okay well let's just acknowledge that that has happened that not only have I changed physically. I've also gotten this whole other load on my brain. And so understanding that also impacts partners as well.

SPEAKER_02: 41:09

Have you read the book by Dr. Libby Weaver, Rushing Woman Syndrome? Yes, I've heard about that. It's incredible. Definitely recommend it. Read it. It's so good. It talks about all of that and cortisol and everything. And we're the first generation that's had all of these pressures to work, run a household. raise children like our parents didn't have that pressure some of them did but we are the first generation to be doing it all and no wonder we're fucking struggling exactly my GP said

SPEAKER_01: 41:39

that she like pretty much said like this generation this generation my generation your generation yeah basically said you're fucked yeah because there is just that it's just so much pressure and then throw in social media yeah that's can be a positive cost of living

SPEAKER_02: 41:54

buying

SPEAKER_01: 41:55

a house yeah holy shit So, yeah, it's just this whole storm that for us we've sort of come out the other side. And for me personally and how I've been showing up, I used to be the sort of person that would not try to fix people, but I've always been more of that motherly figure. I've kind of had to be. Help. Yeah, and people have always looked to me for that. But I've had to really kind of step back and go, okay, how I want to show up as a mother is not– how my mother had to show up and that she was always very, you could tell, like I know now that she was very stressed. The mental load would have been really heavy. She didn't have the language around that because again, they didn't know. It's that whole thing of like, now we know better, we're gonna try and do better. But throwing all of that into the mix, I didn't want to show up like that. It was draining. I was becoming that person that couldn't communicate. what I needed or what somebody could do to help me and so I've just kind of gotten really really bloody honest with everyone around me and from that I guess there's been kind of little ripples within that whether it's other mum friends or the mums that we see out in the community or even my family and my kids like I can tell the relationship with my kids has just gotten so much better because I'm more present I'm just more vulnerable and honest and totally different me um but I feel like even though it was an absolute shit show and we've still got Leo's condition that we're going to have to manage for life I just feel like it's been like this beautiful restart that I want to make sure that just not just for us for our family but anybody that I know that um that is around me that hears this that talking about it and and being real and not wearing a mask if you feel say enough to do that it it helps a lot with all of the above with the mental load with being a mother with being a human with the anxiety that i have had i think for quite a while but never was pushed to the brink where my nervous system shut down so that's a really long way of saying that's my story

SPEAKER_02: 44:18

no no but yeah awesome well thank you so much for coming on and sharing your story it's been such a pleasure

SPEAKER_01: 44:25

thank you it's been a pleasure as well