Ep 51: So, How Did I End Up Here?

So, How Did I End Up Here?

In this episode, I’m chatting about the whirlwind of the past year, from pregnancy and becoming a first-time mum to moving between the UAE and UK, navigating early motherhood and, somehow, taking over Next of Kin!

I’m sharing a little more about my journey so far, the reality of those early weeks with Gracie, and what you can expect from this new chapter of Next of Kin.

We’re talking:
• Pregnancy & motherhood
• Life as an expat in Dubai
• The highs and lows of those first few weeks
• Taking over Next of Kin
• What’s coming up on the podcast
• Friday morning play dates with MamaHub

Transcript

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Welcome back to Next of Kin, the podcast. I'm Millie, a British expat and first-time mum navigating motherhood here in the UAE.

Join me each week as I chat with experts, parents and inspiring guests about all things motherhood, family life and raising little ones in the UAE.

I'll also be bringing you along as I navigate the beautiful chaos of first-time motherhood, taking over a business and building this exciting new chapter. Whether you're expecting your first baby, deep in the newborn bubble, or simply looking for your village, this is the right place.

My goodness, I cannot believe that I am actually here now doing this. This is my first time doing a podcast. I did do the handover episode with Emma, which you may have listened to, but yeah, that was my first time, and this is my first time alone.

So I would just like to say hello if you're new.

I'm the new owner of Next of Kin and I will now be hosting the Next of Kin podcast. And the first thing I want to say is just a big, big thank you to Emma, who I have taken over from.

She built such an amazing community through Next of Kin and I've already got so many new friends through taking over.

I feel so honoured that she actually trusted me to do this. So I'm just excited to keep everything that makes Next of Kin already really special and then also bring my own experiences and stories and hopefully create an even bigger community for mums here in the UAE.

So I thought there's no better way to kick things off than to properly introduce myself. I mean, I did a little bit on the episode with Emma, but I was a bit nervous.

So maybe you can tell from my accent that I am a Yorkshire girl and I've been spending a lot of time in England recently. So I've got my full accent back. I think some of us sometimes lose our accent a little bit through living in the UAE.

Yeah, I definitely think my accent did change. I don't know if you guys relate. Living in Dubai, it's such a multicultural place that nobody seems to understand my accent.

So I'm going to try and be clear and then you also might see my accent change sometimes. But yeah, I've been in the UK for a while now so I feel like I've got my true roots at the moment.

So, a bit about me. My background is in early years. That's how I actually met Emma. I was the assistant manager in the nursery where Bonnie was, and that's how we met.

I've been working in Dubai in early years, first as a teacher and then I moved into management a year ago, just before I got pregnant, which was actually great because I didn't have to be in the classroom when I was pregnant. But that's another story.

I moved over to Dubai in 2021 during Covid times, if we all remember Covid times. It feels like ages ago now, doesn't it?

And that's where I met my husband. If you listened to the last episode, you would know that he was my dentist. That's how we met.

And we fell in love.

We got engaged in Italy. We went for a full Euro trip and then, at the end, he got down on one knee at the Trevi Fountain in Rome, which was very, very romantic.

Then we were engaged for a year and then we had our dream Egyptian wedding. My husband's Egyptian and we had our dream Egyptian wedding in Cairo, where my husband's from.

And things have been going very well. We now have our little baby Gracie, who I will probably be chatting about a lot because she's just my whole world now.

So we have been building our life in Dubai, our community. We both come from different cultural backgrounds and it's something I would like to delve into in some episodes, you know, what it's like being in an intercultural marriage.

So yeah, we met in Dubai and now we're hopefully going to be raising our bilingual baby.

I don't know if any of you even send me messages on Instagram if you've got any tips for raising a bilingual baby, because obviously my husband speaks fluent English and his first language is Arabic.

And I really, really want baby to learn both languages.

I actually follow a family on TikTok who do one parent, one language, OPOL, where Dad speaks in one language to the child and Mum speaks in another language to the child. Then, as they grow, they can speak both languages and change between them.

It's really amazing to see.

And I think through working in early years, I could see the families who did make an effort to keep those languages. I know I've got one friend, her daughter can speak Russian, English and Arabic because they keep speaking those at home.

So that's our plan. Dad will speak in Arabic, I'll speak in English and hopefully we'll have a bilingual baby. We'll keep you updated on that.

I thought I would talk a little bit about my pregnancy.

Me and my husband had decided we wanted to try for a baby after about a year of being married. It's always been my dream to be a mum.

You know when people ask, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Even when I was little, it was always, "A mummy. I want to be a mummy."

So finally I've got my dream.

We usually come back to England each summer and then I found out that I was pregnant.

I had a funny feeling last summer. It was August, and I remember I was in Manchester with my mum and met up with a friend and my social battery just ran out really quickly.

And that's not like me. I'm a chatty girl. And I just felt like, God, I just felt awful. And I didn't know what it was. I thought it must be, you know, due on a period or something.

Even we went out for lunch, me and my mum, and I just didn't really enjoy the food and I just didn't have energy to walk around. I just wanted to go home.

Turns out I was pregnant.

I took loads of pregnancy tests. I was obsessed with taking tests and I even stood the camera up every time I took a test.

But they were all negative.

At this time, my husband, like a week before, had gone back to work in Dubai and I was always setting a camera up because I wanted to catch the moment if I was pregnant.

And I said to my husband, "Do you mind if I take pregnancy tests on my own?" And he was like, "Yeah, it's fine."

So I was filming myself every time I took a test and they were all negative.

I swear I took about 20 tests, all negative, because I still had this weird feeling. Very hormonal, I don't know.

So all the tests were negative and then I was flying back to Dubai.

It was a stopover flight, so I stopped in, I think, Saudi Arabia and I was a bit late. The plane was delayed and I was a bit late to get to the next flight, so I had to run.

And I was so out of breath.

I just couldn't believe it. I was trying to run and I used to be a good runner, you know.

I had to run like a very short distance and I felt so out of breath, so unfit, and I thought, "Something's not right."

So I decided, right, when I'm on this flight I am NOT going to go to the toilet at all for a wee because I'm going to save my wee for a pregnancy test when I get home.

So my husband picked me up, went back home, had a pregnancy test in my bag and I didn't even tell my husband.

I just went to the toilet, took this test and just thought, you know, I wasn't somehow expecting that that was going to be the one.

And I didn't even set my phone up for a video, which was annoying after all of those others.

So yeah, took this test and looked at it and I just screamed out hysterically.

He was like, "What? What happened? Are you okay?"

"I'm pregnant!"

And he said, "Are you happy?"

He couldn't tell if, because I was crying my eyes out, he couldn't tell if I was actually happy or distraught.

So no, I was happy.

And I even, when I was with my friend that day in Manchester, had bought a baby grow so when I did find out I was pregnant I was going to tell my husband in such a cute, Instagrammable way. "I love my daddy" baby grow and, you know, present it to him.

But there I was in hysterical tears and I just threw it at him.

"I'm pregnant!"

But yeah, that's the story.

So then I had my pregnancy in Dubai originally. I was consulting in one hospital and then halfway through my pregnancy I discovered British Care.

An amazing midwife, Lauren, took me under her wing and helped me navigate the pregnancy.

I did have a lot of struggles.

Thankfully, no complications in the pregnancy, but kind of mental struggles, which I have to say, Lauren from British Care, just the most patient human being ever.

Because she just, the way she looked after me in that pregnancy, I couldn't believe that I'd found such an amazing, amazing supportive person.

Because she would answer the phone anytime.

Any little worry I had, she'd stay on the phone with me, talk through things, my concerns, my worries, my issues that I was having.

I mean, one issue, actually, I'm going to go into this. I want to know if any of you listeners have also noticed this in Dubai.

We're going on a side tangent here, but that's fine.

What is it with doctors in the UAE obsessed with weight in pregnancy?

You know, you have to get your vitals done for every doctor's appointment. I understand that and part of the vitals is your weight, which is fine.

I have struggled in life, which maybe we can go into at some point, with kind of body issues, eating, disordered eating issues.

But something very triggering for me was being weighed, and I don't weigh myself and haven't for a long time because I really struggle with that. I just find it triggering.

And what is it with doctors being obsessed when you're pregnant with the weight?

I just couldn't believe, you know, I was being questioned.

"Why have you put this weight on this week? You've put on an extra kg. You need to see a dietician."

I was just like, "Oh my God, it was so triggering."

And that's where Lauren came into it because one night I was on the phone with her in tears, explaining all my issues and how triggering that was.

And bless her, she then sat in with me in some of my appointments and supported me to stand up for myself in situations.

I would definitely recommend if you have any issues during your pregnancy with mental health, give Lauren a follow on Instagram or a message. She's called Midwife of the Mind, so I definitely recommend getting in touch with her.

So back to the pregnancy.

It was a really positive pregnancy, thank God. First trimester did have a lot of nausea and sickness.

But you kind of, I don't know about you guys, but I seem to have forgotten that now.

At the time it was horrendous. I was in the deep trenches of nausea and sickness. But somehow I've forgotten that part of the pregnancy.

So I had a bit of a tough first trimester, a glorious second trimester and then in my third trimester, as we all know, the region was hit with the conflict, which I won't go into too much.

But just my own experience, obviously it was really scary at the time. We didn't all really know what was going on and I was quite heavily pregnant.

I was trying to make a decision: are we going to stay, are we going to go?

I really wanted my mum to be there for the birth and the plan was originally that she was going to come over to the UAE to be with me for the birth.

But we didn't know if she'd be able to come for the birth with the conflict.

We all didn't really know what was happening at the time.

As much as I wanted to stay, being pregnant, I was super, super anxious and what was happening just was really scary, wasn't it?

I mean, it was scary. We can't deny that.

Me and my husband decided to travel over to the UK and that I would have the baby in England.

I am blessed that I did have a place to go. My family welcomed me into the spare room with open arms, heavily pregnant, and then we had to navigate the NHS care back home in England.

Which obviously was scary. You hear a lot of things online, but I actually had an amazing, amazing experience, thank God, and I had some amazing midwives.

I was worried how it was going to work, like transferring care midway through pregnancy.

I had a really, really good experience.

They did book me in for a scan when I got back because they just wanted to see where I was up to and actually baby was measuring a bit big and the fluid around the baby was measuring to be quite a lot.

So they've done this scan and they said, "Your baby is measuring big. We think you may have gestational diabetes."

Which I had been tested for in Dubai at about 26 weeks, I'm not sure when the test was exactly, but I didn't have it then.

In Dubai everything was clear and then they wanted me to do it again in the UK.

So I did that the day before my baby shower, which I'd ordered an amazing cake and I felt so nervous to eat a slice of that cake.

But yeah, I found out on the Monday.

So I'd taken that test, I think, on the Friday and then on the Monday I found out that I did have gestational diabetes.

Which was really, in some ways, yeah, it was good that it happened at the end so I didn't have to spend my whole pregnancy worrying about gestational diabetes. It was about 34 or 35 weeks.

But it was scary.

It's something hopefully we can get into. I'd really love to do an in-depth episode all about gestational diabetes because it was tough navigating it.

You don't know what information to follow.

I was absolutely devastated. I thought I'd harmed my baby. I thought it was my fault, even though all the midwives and doctors were telling me, "No, it's nothing you've done wrong."

But yeah, that was a lot.

So along with that diagnosis I was booked in to be induced, which was not part of the plan.

I'd been doing hypnobirthing courses and I was convinced that I was going to have this beautiful, calm water birth.

Yeah, I was induced at 39 weeks. I'm going to do a full episode on my birth story so I won't go into it too much here.

But I got induced and then a lot of things happened and baby arrived the next day.

Thank God everything went okay.

I had a vaginal birth with forceps and episiotomy, which sounds scary if you don't know what an episiotomy is. It's where they cut with scissors to get baby out.

But actually it's not as scary as you think.

That was the one thing I was scared of in my whole pregnancy and that was the least of my worries.

A little bit of reassurance for you there. It's not as bad as it sounds.

So husband was still with me for the remainder of the pregnancy and the birth, but unfortunately he did have to go back to Dubai 10 days after baby was born, which was really tough.

He still hasn't seen baby since she was 10 days old.

Right now when I'm filming this, it's just the beginning of August, but we're heading back to Dubai, reunited by the time this is up, which is so exciting.

We're so excited to be back together as a family.

It has been really tough solo parenting.

Although I've had my mum and dad's support, I definitely struggled in the early days. I'll be completely honest because I want this to be a space where you feel real conversations are happening.

I did struggle mentally.

I think not only do we have a huge change in hormones, but also that sleep deprivation is what absolutely sent me over the edge.

I mean, people tell you, "You're going to be tired."

I didn't realise how seriously sleep deprived I would be to the point of I felt really ill.

After my birth I hadn't slept for a good maybe 50 hours and if I did sleep I could only sleep for about 20 minutes.

My body was waking me up thinking the baby needed me or, you know, even if she didn't, she was absolutely fine. She was fed, she was maybe asleep, but my body was waking me up.

It was really like torture.

So in the end I did have to access some help.

I had my family around, which was great, because at some point my doctor gave me a medication that was safe for breastfeeding to just kind of knock me out because I was no good to anyone.

I was hallucinating.

I thought I had the baby with me when I didn't have the baby with me. Baby was maybe downstairs with my husband.

Baby was with someone else whilst they were letting me sleep and I was searching for the baby in the bed.

It was really, really crazy. I've never felt anything like it.

And I also was having a lot of intrusive thoughts, which was really hard to deal with.

I was getting thoughts of, "I want to harm my baby," which I definitely didn't.

I was having like an inner monologue, which was a really strange thing to happen. It was like my own voice in my head overanalysing everything that was happening.

It was crazy.

But thank God, after I got a few nights of restorative sleep, it did settle and I did access some help from a mental health specialist to help deal with these thoughts because it was alarming.

I definitely recommend for you to reach out if you are having any struggles. Reach out to someone.

Even for me, I found speaking about these things out loud helped. This is why I feel so comfortable to speak about these things.

Speaking out loud the thoughts you're having actually helped me to realise that's not true.

You know, for example, I had a horrible thought that I'm going to throw the baby downstairs, which of course I wasn't going to do.

But when I said that out loud to my mum and to my husband and said, "I'm clearly not going to do that and I don't want to do that," that helped me to rationalise, like, this is an intrusive thought.

If you're struggling with something like this right now, my messages are always open.

If you want to chat about it, I'm more than happy to give my experience and help you to chat about yours and maybe point you in the direction of some help.

But yeah, that was something that I really struggled with.

I think something about motherhood in today's day and age, we compare ourselves to everything we see online.

So I'd read up on everything. I need to make sure that baby is dressed in this because it's this temperature and, you know, all the safe sleep and how many times we need to feed the baby.

You know, we read so much advice online, whether it's on TikTok or Reels.

It's overwhelming.

You feel you've got to do everything perfect when actually we're all just trying our best.

So, just finishing up on that topic, I would just say it's okay.

It can be normal to struggle postpartum.

Some people do, some people don't. Some people struggle a lot worse. Some people have no issues at all.

Wherever you are postpartum, it's okay. Things will get better.

It's tough and I was feeling like it was never going to end, and I know it's alright me saying that now if you're in the depths of it, but for me it got better.

Try to reach out for some help. That would be my advice.

So obviously, yeah, I have been solo parenting, which has meant 10 FaceTimes a day.

Bless my husband, he's working. He's been working flat out.

He's been... FaceTime him where he can between patients, quick hello, pictures sent over.

But he's done amazingly.

And I miss him so much. Whenever I have an issue or need to talk about something, he's always my rock.

So it's been tough not having him there with me every day, but it is what it is and this is how this chapter worked out for us and thank God it's gone okay.

I am counting the days until we're back together.

But we've enjoyed the summer, we've avoided the peak of the heat in Dubai.

Naturally, the next step was to decide to buy a business whilst I was filled with hormones and figuring out how to keep a tiny human alive.

But here we are.

So we went into it a little bit in the handover episode, like how me and Emma knew each other, as I said at the start.

I'd contacted her once I saw a video on TikTok actually.

I was just scrolling through my For You page and I saw Emma's face and I thought, "I recognise her."

I'd always dreamed of having something out in Dubai for myself.

I didn't want to go back to full-time work straight away and did want to have something flexible and something exciting that I could do while being a mum.

And then me and Emma got chatting and realised that we did really align on a lot of things and that this business might be a good one for me.

As you listeners probably know, Next of Kin started as a children's clothing brand.

Emma founded the business.

Next of Kin then grew into a marketplace for other mummy-owned brands to showcase their amazing products up on the Next of Kin website.

Next of Kin hosts some amazing, amazing mummy-owned brands. You can go and have a look. Hopefully we're up by then, if not it will be coming soon.

The podcast is something so up my street.

I love chatting, I love meeting new people, getting advice on different topics and as a first-time mum I wanted, selfishly, I actually wanted to be able to ask questions to experts about different parts of motherhood that I've been navigating.

So not only am I able to ask those questions and get the answers, I'm able to share them with you.

So we've got some amazing guests lined up. I've got so much up my sleeve and I'm so excited to share what I've been getting up to.

And on top of this, something Emma used to do was host a weekly playdate with Mama Hub, and this is something I'm so excited that I will be hosting every Friday at 8.30am at The Garden Project at The Hills.

So keep an eye on socials for that.

I'm just so excited to be able to be meeting other mums out there, getting my own little community.

So obviously, yes, I'm not going back to work. So this is my job now.

But I'm also so excited to get to meet the community of amazing mummies in Dubai.

I've already got to speak to so many amazing mums through Instagram and through social media that are just cheering me on.

I'm so happy to get to know everyone.

What we're trying with the Mama Hub Playdates on a Friday morning is build that community for you to come.

Maybe you're a new mum in Dubai, maybe you've just moved to Dubai and this is a place that you can come, you can just rock up.

There's no pressure to be glammed up or, you know, come straight from the gym. We don't care.

Just a nice place to go meet other mums, chat, your children will be entertained, there's lots of toys, lots of bits to keep them busy and you will maybe find your village.

Because so many of us are out here in Dubai and we've not got our families.

You need your village, you know, when you're a mum.

And what we're trying to do at Mama Hub is help you find that village.

So I would be so happy to meet some of the listeners if you want to come along.

It's 50 dirhams per family, not per child, so if you've got a few children that's fine. 50 dirhams that you'll pay and we can meet there.

I'll look forward to that.

So we are kicking that off on the 18th of September, so I'm so excited to be doing that.

That is my introduction episode.

I guess what I really want to finish with is I don't want this to be just another parenting podcast.

I want this to be a place where there's a real, genuine community.

Really honest conversations. You know, no topic is too taboo.

We've got some amazing experts that have got loads to share. I've got lots of questions for them.

And actually I've opened a WhatsApp group called The Kin Club.

In there I post, you know, "I'm having a podcast recording with an expert on this topic. If you've got any questions or anything you would like to put to that expert," you can join in the conversation.

So I'll put the link to that in the show notes if you'd like to join the WhatsApp group.

This is my first time being a mum in a different country without my family.

I think as mums we go through so much each day, each week, and just having a place to chat about them is going to be really, really beneficial for me.

I would love to hear from you.

You can message me on Instagram over at @nextofkin.ae or on my personal Instagram, @millie_french_.

I would love for you to come say hello and let me know what you thought of the episode.

Thank you so much for joining me on this episode and I hope you will all tune in for next week's episode.

See you next time. Bye.