Episode 4: High Risk Pregnancy + Losing a Village to Reclaiming Power with Kylie Blascetta

*Content/trigger warning – references to suicidal ideation and potential miscarriage*

Pregnancy is often a complex time of joy and celebration mixed in with worry, anxiety, uncertainty, physical pain, nausea, sickness, exhaustion, and everything in between. But for some women, there is little enjoyment because of the risk that their baby might not survive the pregnancy or for long after the birth.

This was the reality for our guest, Kylie Blascetta.

Kylie shares:

• Discovering early on that her baby might not survive the pregnancy due to a lack of amniotic fluid and the high risk of her pregnancy ending in miscarriage or death soon after birth
• The impact of this and further difficulties throughout her pregnancy that led to a loss of her support village and the impact this had on her mental health
• How a pivotal moment when she was in the depths of post-natal anxiety and depression was the catalyst to her choosing a different way, setting her on a path of recovery and reclaiming her power

We also discuss the lack of care she received for her own needs and mental health as the mother and how the cone of silence and shame which surrounded her pregnancy exacerbated an already incredibly vulnerable period in her life.

By sharing Kylie's story, my hope is that it encourages others to talk about their own struggles and challenges and that they don’t need to suffer in silence or feel shameful. Mothers need to know that their own needs and mental health are equally as important as their baby’s health. 

This is Me! Celebrate and Reclaim who you are as a woman and a mother.

Friday 6th June 2025 11am BST via Zoom.

Book your spot here  - www.mothershood.co.uk/this-is-me

Transcript

Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Motherhood Podcast. Pregnancy is often a complex time of joy and celebration, mixed in with worry, anxiety, uncertainty, physical pain, nausea, sickness, exhaustion, and everything in between. But for some women, there is little enjoyment because of the risk that their baby might not survive the pregnancy or for long after the birth.

This was a reality for today's guest, Kylie Brata, who lives in Perth, Western Australia with her husband and 10-year-old son. Kylie shares her story of discovering that her pregnancy was high risk at the first scan, and how silence and shame shrouded this exceptionally vulnerable time in her life. She tells the ongoing complications and highly stressful events in her pregnancy, and then the subsequent loss of her support village.

This all took a huge toll on her mental health and led to postpartum anxiety and depression. Kylie goes on to share how a pivotal moment was a catalyst to her choosing differently, which set her on a path of recovery and reclaiming herself. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Kylie. Let's get started.

 Hello there and welcome to another episode of the Motherhood podcast. Hey, Kylie. Hi, Sam. Thank you so much for joining me. I'm so excited to have this conversation with you. Oh, thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. So we are gonna talk today about Kylie's motherhood journey.

And we are actually going to go back to the pregnancy journey that Kylie was on and then how that impacted her those newborn days, that very early, early postpartum time. Kylie, can you tell us a bit more about your pregnancy with your son who's now 10. Yes, I'd love to.

As you said, my son's just recently turned 10, so it was a while ago now, but mom, my husband and I had been together for 11 years and then got married and six months later we decided to start a family and we got pregnant really easily without any dramas. And I was working as a child health nurse, which is similar to the UK health visitor that you system that you have over there.

So the nurse that helps check up on, on moms and their babies after they're born talks about development and bonding and mental health and all of those things. That, that is my role here in Australia. So I was a child health nurse, so I went into pregnancy thinking, I've got this covered, I'm an expert.

I do this for a living. I was actually working in a private hospital where we support families who are coming in to stay with us because they have. Lots of issues with sleep or breastfeeding or behavior in older children mental illness, things like that. So I was actually working in our kind of private hospital, which is the shining light of mental health services over here in that we support these families who are really struggling.

So not only do I felt like I knew the ins and outs of looking after a baby, but that I was actually one of the people on the forefront helping families with really difficult situations as well with their parenting. Fell pregnant easily and I thought, this is gonna be a breeze.

I know what I'm doing. And I'm sure that perhaps if you have moms out there listening who are, maybe teachers or early childhood educators, people who've got experience in working with mom, with babies and children just feel like they've got it covered. They know what to expect.

So I came into pregnancy very much feeling like I knew what I was doing when I would have my baby. And I also had that belief that everything should just happen with ease and was really looking forward to having a healthy pregnancy. I thought because we fell pregnant easily. I would just have this amazing blissful pregnancy, like the ones that you see on TV and where everything's rosy and enjoying, I don't know, the pickles and ice cream cravings and whatever else it might be that you imagine that your pregnancy's gonna be like.

And everything went well enough until we had our 12 week scan booked in. So we booked our 12 week scan. It was my, actually my husband's 30th birthday on the day that we went to have our scan. We thought that was pretty exciting. And that weekend we had a planned, a big party with all our friends for our husband's, my husband's 30th birthday.

So it was a pretty exciting buildup to that scan as well as, getting the tick in the box to say, your baby's fine, your baby's healthy, go and celebrate your pregnancy. And at the time I very much was aware of that whole, taboo around saying that you're pregnant before 12 weeks.

So I hadn't, my husband and I hadn't told anybody except for our parents and we'd only told them a couple of days before our scan. So we had very much done the whole keep the pregnancy quiet for 12 weeks because, the flip side is if you have a miscarriage, then you don't wanna go around telling everybody you're pregnant and then you lose the baby and having to deal with all of that.

So that was our mindset around the pregnancy. So we were really excited to go and get our scan. We went into the radiology building and had the scan and there was a heartbeat and everything seemed to be okay, but our sonographer did look very worried and she was, taking her time and she started to look very serious and.

Quiet. So we were like, oh, what's going on here? And she said, look, I'm just gonna have to go and check with the senior radiology doctor about something. So she left. And of course we, my husband and I, looking at each other oh my God what's wrong? And a couple of minutes later she came back with the senior radiology doctor who also did more scanning and they did some measuring on the computer.

And they basically talked amongst themselves and it was whatever they were worried about was confirmed. And so they said, look, we'll need you to have a talk to the senior doctor. She'll let you know what's going on. Get we'll clean up and put your clothes back on and, come into the senior doctor's office.

Of course we were worried at this stage 'cause something didn't seem to be right. And we went into the senior doctor's office and we sat down in front of her desk and the very first thing she said to us was, how many people have you told your pregnant? Oh gosh.

And at that moment we were just like really taken aback, just just our parents. Like we haven't told anybody else. And of course at this stage, my heart's beating fast and I'm just, my skin's on fire. I'm just like what's going on? And she said I wouldn't tell anyone else if I were you.

Wow.

Comforting. That's the first words you wanna hear, right? Yeah. So this was before we'd even had a diagnosis of what was wrong. This was the very first thing that was said to us. And in that moment, I literally felt like there was a cone of silence and shame shrouding the pregnancy from that exact moment.

Because here was a senior doctor, she would've probably been in her, maybe fifties, early sixties. An older woman who's obviously a professional at her job, many qualifications, and being a nurse, she's a doctor. So there was already that kind of she's a senior to me in my professional role, but as a patient, she was senior to me as well, right?

Like she's person in the position of power. And I just took her words as gospel. Because what she was saying to me really cemented my mindset around miscarriage and that it is taboo and that you don't tell people, she very much reinforced that belief in that one sentence. She reinforced the belief that it's it's tragic and taboo to have a miscarriage.

Don't burden anybody else with the fact that you might have a miscarriage and that you need to carry this alone. This is your shame and your silence. Now, of course it's not, but this is what I believed in that moment because it was reinforced by all of the cultural messages that I'd had up until that point in my life.

And it was reinforced by someone who was in a position of power in a very. Ultra vulnerable moment of my life, probably the most, one of the most vulnerable moments of my life. So she then proceeded to tell us that my body wasn't producing enough amniotic fluid, and that is life threatening to the baby to not have enough amniotic fluid.

And she said there's a high chance of miscarriage. There's some other potential factors. With having this low amniotic fluid. But what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna ring your private obstetrician and I'm gonna send you over to him and he'll have an appointment to explain all of this for you. So she put us into another little waiting room, which was a private closed waiting room.

And she rang my doctor and he was only like five minutes drive from the building that we're at anyway. And so my husband and I were just like, in this room, this like dark little, like blank walls, just a couch and a plant or something, room just like reeling, just no idea what's going on here. And just, obviously crying and.

Just not knowing what's going on. She came and knocked on the door and she said, I've spoken to your obstetrician he will see you straight away. So we jumped in the car and we drove over to see the obstetrician urgently. So we'd already seen him for a few appointments up until that. He's the one who gave us the referral to get the 12 week scan done.

And he was a very experienced obstetrician as well, and we came in to see him and he, very delicately and sensitively to us that low amniotic fluid is a major risk factor in miscarriage. So that it, it could be very likely that we'll have a miscarriage as the first kind of outcome of the pregnancy.

There's not a lot of research at that point. 10 years ago that had been done on why there was low amniotic fluid. But there was two different theories around low amniotic fluid. One of them was that the body's immune system of the mother attacks the amniotic cells. And so they don't, they can't increase in enough numbers 'cause bodies attacking it.

So it's like an autoimmune response. And I have a family history of autoimmune disease, so I was flagged as perhaps that's the potential reason in which case the pregnancy will still progress in the same manner, in that I won't produce enough amniotic fluid because the body will keep attacking it.

The second cause of low amniotic fluid is that the baby has a rare genetic kidney disease that is and quote unquote incompatible with life. So I was told that he could have this his kidneys could be not formed properly and therefore he could be swallowing the amniotic fluid and not pro processing it properly and it not getting released back into the sac.

And if that was the case, he could either have a spontaneous abortion, that's the words that they use, spontaneous abortion a stillbirth later on in the pregnancy if the pregnancy did progress or that we could give birth to him and there would be no cure for his disease and no treatment. So he would die within hours or days of being born.

Gosh, yeah. So this is the news that we were getting from our obstetrician. And then finally he said. The thing about amniotic fluid measurements is that we haven't been done doing it for long enough. So we do have some research. It's this new technology being able to measure the fluid, but we don't really know what the parameters for low are and what's the bell curve within low amniotic fluid.

And he said it's possible that your mother had low amniotic fluid and your grandmother had low amniotic fluid and so on. But because we didn't measure it, because we couldn't, we don't know if you are one of those people who this is a problem, we would never know about it because we never knew about it, if that makes sense.

And there was still babies being born from these pregnancies that were healthy with these low amniotic fluids. So he gave us a glimmer of hope that we would fall into that category. Obviously I had been born without any kidney disorders. All of those kind of things. So I was, I guess the living proof that my mom had been able to birth me.

So we were holding onto that hope and so he said at that point look, we need to do weekly monitoring. So I need you to come in every week and we'll do an ultrasound every week. We'll measure the fluid every week. We'll see how you go. We might need to put you on medication in case it's the autoimmune disorder.

We need you to get to 16 weeks before we can do the amniocentesis. Once we can do that procedure, then we can rule out if it's a genetic kidney disorder. So we were just left okay, we just have to keep going along with the pregnancy and wait to see what happens at 16 weeks.

So that was a pretty harrowing day when we were supposed to be joyful and celebrating. And then we had the party with all the friends the next day. And we didn't tell anyone I was pregnant because we just, we were still reeling in shock. And we, at that point we just felt the doctors know best.

We'll just do what the doctors tell us to do. And I think just when you're, that, when you're so vulnerable and I definitely was still in that good girl listen to authority kind of stage of my life to be honest and very much, perfectionist kind of personality. So I just listened. I just listened and I silenced and I gave my power away.

So that, that's what happened. And then the following, next couple of weeks were pretty horrible 'cause I was going to work and I was holding babies and settling babies and helping moms with breastfeeding and, doing all of this while pretending I wasn't pregnant. And of course I was like nauseated and couldn't eat anything and going to the toilet 25 times a day, like all of the obvious pregnancy things were happening and were.

Visible, I'm sure. And I worked with a bunch of nurses and midwives, so you can imagine that Yeah, my colleagues were pretty cluey. They knew what was going on, but nobody said anything. They didn't, which they which, was protecting my privacy and I appreciate that, but at the same time it was just so isolating.

I just couldn't, yeah. I couldn't share, I couldn't talk about my feelings. I, I didn't, I couldn't go to anybody to fall apart. Yeah, I just was, I did, I couldn't have anyone to encourage me or lift me up or give me hope, because it was just me and my husband, each night just.

Staring at each other. What if we haven't miscarriage? What if it's a stillborn? What if we carry him to term and then I birth him and then he dies? What if I do have, we, our genes together have some rare genetic disorder and we can't have kids together? Like it was just, all of these questions just constantly going around my mind.

It was very anxiety inducing, obviously being in this state and not having any access to Yeah. Supports really, and that just that the the words that keep coming up and really and you described that so beautifully. Thank you, you described that eloquently and I can really feel and hear just.

Just how devastating and terrifying it might, it felt for you to hear that news. And then just the words that keep coming up is the silencing and the shame and isolation and just that feeling of, I've gotta push this down. I can't tell anybody. I can't lean on anybody. 'cause I've been told don't tell anybody.

It's taboo. And it re the reinforcement you were saying of this is what we're told in society. And this senior doctor who I already, professionally and personally feel, like she's superior to me in that kind of status is reinforcing that. And just how damaging that is. And as a mother and that reinforcement continuing, I can, can imagine that kind of echoing through your mind as your pregnancy goes on.

And then carrying onto the newborn days of just, I. Don't tell anybody. Why do you need to talk to anybody about this? You shouldn't be talking to people. You have to get, almost get on with it on your own and, we are human beings. And that lack of support that you felt.

So was there any support offered by the hospital? You had this diagnosis this is what might happen. Lots of worst case scenarios. Was there any support offered? No, there wasn't long and the short of it so my obstetrician, so later on in the pregnancy, because the pregnancy did progress and later on in the pregnancy, I had flagged with my obstetrician that I'm experiencing perinatal anxiety.

I. As a child health nurse a huge part of my role is mental health nursing. So I was no stranger to mental health. I knew what anxiety and depression was and looked like, and felt and I had experienced anxiety a few years earlier. Very situational anxiety. And I sought help and I did CBT and I did a group program for 16 weeks.

And I was able, and I changed the situation that I was in that was causing the anxiety and I was able to get well again. But also. Having had a history of anxiety put me at high risk of anxiety again, in pregnancy, regardless of what was happening in the pregnancy. So the fact that I was al, I already had the risk factors for anxiety, and then we had trauma on top of that as well.

So I was very much should have been flagged as someone who really needs extra support during this stage. And so later on in the pregnancy, I had the conversation with him saying, I'm experiencing prenatal anxiety. And he was a very good medical doctor, but he was of, he brushed me off and said you can go and sort that out.

That's your responsibility. Wow. Which again, reinforced. That my mental health was only my responsibility and nobody else was caring enough to ask me how are you traveling in your mental health? And for me to say actually it's really hard. And, for some conversations around what would support look like and how would you like to access some treatment and things like that.

I did end up seeing a seeing a mental health nurse who came to visit my home. And that was another huge barrier for me because here I was working as a child health nurse in our private hospital system who's also worked out in community. So I knew a huge amount of professionals in my field, nurses, psychologists, social workers.

Perinatal mental health specialists. Because they were my colleagues. Yeah. So where do you go when everyone, works in the field and that you then need mental health support because you just feel like you can't talk to anybody? The shame of, even though I don't, of course I don't judge anyone for having a mental illness, but the shame that I also internalized over, I'm a mental health nurse essentially, and I've got anxiety.

Yeah. And who do I go to because I don't really wanna ask my colleagues for support. Gosh that's a real it's a real contradiction there you have potentially access to all these people that you know, could help with Actually the shame with that barrier in preventing you from, you could have rung one of them up or that barrier, prevent that shame barrier preventing you from accessing that is I think that plays out in a lot of scenarios, a mother who, isn't it the shame really is paralyzing.

Yeah. So how did that play out in terms of, after her coming round and did that help you in any way or what were the next steps there? Yeah, I think it did help her because she came to my home so I didn't have to go and present at the local community health service. Because if I rocked up pregnant. My colleagues would see me. So we arranged that she would come to my home. So I had the privacy because that's the other thing, privacy and confidentiality. You don't want your personal details sitting in a record that my colleagues have access to. Yeah. Okay.

Because that's my personal information. No one would go snooping around in other people's records, but the reality is that it's now on a medical record Yep. That people have access to. So there was a confidentiality as well. So she ended up seeing me in my maiden name.

Sorry, not in my married name, but my because I worked under my maiden name. So she put all of her rec, all of the records under my married name to protect my privacy. And she came and visited me in the last few months of my pregnancy. And it was really helpful. It was probably a lifeline to have one person that I felt I could be honest with and share what was going on.

There were still parts of me that was hiding a lot. And the other complication is that my mother also works in child and community health as well. So things that were coming up about my childhood. Because when we're pregnant, we often reflect on our childhood and our own experience of being parented by our parents and what we might like to do differently.

And I'd experienced some trauma in my childhood and that was coming up for me, and I could not share that with her because she was actually like colleague and friend and peer with my mom as well. So it was helpful to a degree, but I don't think it really was as good as it could have been for me.

Like I probably could have maybe been put in touch with someone. Regionally or over the phone in another state or something like that, could have PO possibly been offered to me to give me that confidentiality so that I didn't feel like I was airing my dirty laundry and it's in medical records that my colleagues can see.

That's the other aspect of it. So yeah. So I guess what happened really was that, we had the amniocentesis and then we had to wait another four weeks to get the results. So I was 19 and a half weeks pregnant before I got the kind of the tick in the box to say that your baby doesn't have a genetic disorder.

Wow. So got to 20 weeks. So I was able to go to work finally and tell everyone that I was pregnant and they're all like, yeah, we know.

Yeah, course. They, they were very kind about it, but it was very much like I said, like trying to hide the, literally hide an elephant in the room. Like, how do you hide your pregnancy when you're months almost? Yeah, 20 weeks. Yeah. So it was that, it was almost, it could, there's a part of it that's humorous and ridiculous about the whole thing.

But yeah, I got to five months and everything was, I'd been given the tick in the box okay, we know, and I'd been started on medication, which appeared to be helping to increase the amniotic fluid. And I had about another five weeks of no dramas. And so when I'd been given AllClear we had a long weekend, a public holiday coming up.

So I was really excited. I was like, okay, maybe I can share my pregnancy now. And I have friends in the Eastern States over in Sydney. And so we decided to book a holiday to go over to visit my friends and celebrate my pregnancy because now it can finally be out in the open, right? We can celebrate it.

Booked the tickets. I got permission from my doctor to fly. He was like, yes, you can go for the weekend. That should be okay. No dramas. And then we were gonna fly out on the Friday. On the Sunday beforehand, the week before I was walking my dogs, which I did. Most days I've got two little dogs and I'm taking them to the beach and I was walking them with my friend and I was just feeling like tight and niggly and in my back, in my lower back and in my tummy just to get a few little niggles.

And I'm like it's 25 weeks. I don't think it's really early enough for my body to be doing this. Like later on, sure, but not now. And I thought, okay, maybe I've just pushed myself too much with walking the dogs on the beach. Maybe I just go home and rest and see if it settles down. And it didn't.

It kept progressing. So that night I rang the hospital where we were due to go, which is a private hospital under the obstetrician. And I rang the hospital 'cause I could have rung the obstetrician, but it was Sunday night and I just thought, no, I'll just ring the hospital and I'll speak to the midwife.

And the midwife would tell me what to do. So I rang the hospital and the midwife went, oh no. You're 25 weeks. You are too early to come to us. We only deal with babies once they're 36 weeks plus you just need to go straight away and present at the emergency department of the public maternity hospital.

So we have a specialist public maternity hospital here. Okay. So we freaked out somewhat and went okay, we'll just go to hospital. Like they're telling us to go to emergency, let's just go to emergency. So it turned up an emergency and did a whole lot of tests. They ruled out that I wasn't in labor because the, the hormones hadn't changed.

They hadn't, my waters hadn't broken. All that kind of stuff hadn't happened, but I was having contractions every couple of minutes. Wow. Okay. That was pretty, pretty scary. So I'd stay, I got admitted to hospital, stayed in hospital for a couple of days, and then the doctors told me different doctors every day because it's a public hospital, so you know, the turnaround of doctors, nurses, and I was in a lot of pain and all they could give me was panadine because they can't give you anything else for pain during pregnancy.

So I was having panadine, which was making me vomit because of the codeine element of it. But then before I could even swallow the codeine, I was vomiting. Like I was just, I was a mess. Like I just was vomiting and tired and exhausted and in pain and scared and everything. And I kept saying to the doctors like, can someone ring my obstetrician and tell them that I'm in here because I can't do it at the moment.

I'm doing all of this right now. Someone ring my doctor and tell them that I'm in here. Nobody did it. And in the end, the doctors in the public hospital said, they said, okay, we've decided that you've got an irritable uterus. Okay. That is literally the medical diagnosis for someone who ends up having contractions early without, without spontaneous labor.

Gosh, I've never heard that term before. No. It's amongst the list of many other derogatory and shameful medical diagnosis is that I've given to women like a failed cervix or a hostile cervix in the blame on women. It's all their fault. It's they're the ones that have, it's your body. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It's your body that's doing something that it shouldn't be doing. So of course I was pretty irritable at that stage. Yeah. You were irritable with this Yeah. The way you were treated, I can imagine. Yes. So I was just, yeah, so angry because I was like, what the hell is an irritable uterus?

Like my uterus is just doing its job, right? And I can't control this. It's not like my uterus is like a toddler that I can, like throwing a tantrum and I can tell it, I can do something to fix it. It's just doing its thing. But I was made to feel like a failure. I was made to feel again. I wasn't enough.

My body wasn't doing a good enough job, and it was my fault and it was, yeah. And obviously completely beyond my control. Like I can't tell my uterus to calm down. I can't make it stop. So I got discharged on the Wednesday. I was due to fly out on the Friday. I rang my doctor who said, no, we didn't know anything about this.

No one has informed us that you were in hospital. Which if the midwife who I'd spoken to that night had said to me, ring your doctor. Come into the private hospital, then he can have you transferred and admitted to King Edward, to the public hospital. Then he could have been my consulting doctor in, in, in care of me under the public system.

But she just said, no, go. You're not our problem. Go over there. So that kind of cascaded into more problems for my care during the time anyway. It's just all of these things where the system just fails us, putting the onus on you not knowing any of this. This is your, first pregnancy.

Hadn't, didn't know. You're not a doctor, you are not you don't, you're not experiencing pregnancy and then putting the onus on you to know what to do and know the questions to ask. And actually, you are so vulnerable and, without everything that had been leading up to that, would've, it would've been scary going in.

But then everything leading up to that, you're just in this heightened state of anxiety. And completely terrified and just, yeah. Yeah. That I can just imagine that, poor, that pregnant Kylie just feeling so terrified and alone and being told, brushed off and, oh, you are fine, and go somewhere else and that's it.

And as you said, wasn't was my first pregnancy. And I also didn't work in the hospital system because I was working out in community health, so I didn't know the ins and outs and neither would any other. Health consumer, right? Yeah. So I didn't know that I was supposed to ring him, but she knew that she and eventually I put in a complaint with the hospital and it was addressed because I, it was actually mistreatment.

I was, I should not have been told to present because what resulted was I had to explain my diagnosis over and over again while I was having contractions in the public hospital to every single doctor and nurse that came to my bedside. Wow. And I'm like, I think I'm having my baby at 25 weeks.

Why do I have to explain to you like you, this should be in the notes. You should know this. I shouldn't have to explain this to you. I'm terrified and in pain and vomiting like you should do your job. Like I shouldn't have to be the one that tells you my whole history, because I had to rehash my whole history.

All the test results and everything that had been done up until that point to every single doctor, a nurse that walked into the room. So that just compounded, a very difficult pregnancy, different, difficult time in hospital admission. So I did get discharged. Everything settled down.

I went and saw my doctor. I rang him the day that I got discharged. And again, urgent appointment come in what's going on? Because they hadn't received any paperwork. No one had rung them, all of that. So I went and saw my obstetrician and he was livid. He was so angry that this had all happened this way.

'cause he's just we could have prevented so much of this. We couldn't have prevented the contractions, but all the other buns that had happened could have been prevented. And then, and the way that you were feeling and the way that you were made to feel that, that period of, trauma in itself, that period of hospital could have been prevented and not added to everything else that you'd have to deal with.

Exactly. And so then in that appointment, I got the next two blows. So the first one was I said, I'm due to fly out to visit my friends on Friday. And he said, you can't go. You have to cancel your we. We can't take the risk of you going over to see your friends, to celebrate. So that was a huge blow and disappointing because I didn't feel like I could even celebrate my pregnancy, right?

And here I am at 25 weeks, 26 weeks, just not being able to celebrate anything about my pregnancy really in an open, joyful, happy way. It was all very doom and gloom and shame and anxiety. So that was the first blow. And then the second blow was, I think the best thing for you to do is to quit your job now and stay home and not work.

Because the more pressure you put your body under, the more likely you are gonna be to induce contractions and you might go into preterm labor. Wow. So at and that when I'd left the public hospital, they had said to me that the goal for my pregnancy was to get me to 28 weeks. They said, we can deliver your baby at 28 weeks with a pretty good survival rate.

Okay. Less than 28 weeks is not a very good survival rate, and also all the complications. So again, it had been reinforced at that point that it was just my job to keep this baby alive until a certain point. That was the goal, that was the medical goal. There was nothing about how are you going while you are housing this baby and having all of these.

Complications and everything else, it was like the focus was on, we want you to have a baby and we want you to have it at this sta if you can, sometime after 28 weeks, can you arrange that for us again? You all, you I've got any control over. Yeah. And if you can't do it, that's your fault, basically.

Yeah. So it was, it, again, it was the, it was put back on me like, you need to do this. I'm like what can I do? Cross my legs? I can't stop this baby from coming if this baby wants to come. But I felt like it was another thing I had to internalize, right? Like I had to just swallow it and internalize it and, okay, this is what needs to happen.

The baby's the most important thing here. And of course, I loved my baby and I would, and I do love my baby still. And I would do anything for my baby. I would move mountains for my baby, right? When the focus is just purely on the baby and not on mother and baby or mother, baby, and dad, right?

Because my poor partner's in all of this as well, just struggling to go to work and support us and support me emotionally and all of those things as well. It just sets the scene, doesn't it, which will come onto in the postpartum period of almost like you are, like, the baby's fine, there's no focus on the mother, there's no, it's it's all about the baby and there's the the mother really is come secondary or, even further down the list and that priority. And it's it's there's no emphasis on like I said, how are you and looking after your needs as well.

And again, leading into that, becoming a mother into that soci, the societal narrative of the mother is self-sacrificing. That's gonna play out later on of I can't do this for myself because my, my child always needs to come first. And just that, the damage that that does.

Absolutely. And you said, actually, before we recorded we were talking and you said you said something that, that was really poignant. You said, I was basically just the vessel that carried the baby. Just that image of, it's almost this sort of empty sort of non feeling, non-living.

Wo on its own. And, not attached to a person, a whole person with needs and wants and mental health that needs looking after and just, just the impact that, you know, that's going to have anyway going into postpartum, let alone that pregnancy period on its own.

Yeah, I did literally feel like the vessel and then then when I was told I had to quit work to keep the baby safe again, it, that really felt like one of the biggest attacks on my self worth and my identity, right?

Because the work was the place I went to go to feel. Like I was, I had purpose and I had meaning, and I was contributing, and I could go to work and help a family. I could, there was tangible things I could do and be, I had an identity, I had a sense of belonging at work. The place itself was very nurturing.

Like I'd worked there for a couple of years, so I had, lots of friends and social contact and everything else. And also my workplace is full of nurses and midwives and social workers and psychologists, and they're all, a lot of them are older women. So it was like I was surrounded by elders, which was beautiful.

Yeah. And so when I went to work, I felt held, I felt supported. I felt like I had other women who were. Holding me while I was holding my baby, right? And to just be told to stop work because I couldn't do any lifting. I couldn't do any, so I couldn't do any, couldn't lift any babies couldn't move any furniture, which we would often like, rock the cots and do things like that.

So all of a sudden, like I couldn't lift up a toddler. I couldn't lift up a baby. So all of a sudden I couldn't do my job. And at home I couldn't do the housework. I couldn't do anything lit. Literally. I just had to lounge around the house all the day, all day. 'cause I was told there was so many things I could not do.

So when I left work, I all of a sudden went from having a purpose and a meaning. Having a place of belonging, having a circle of older women around me who lifted me up. To being at home by myself all day, five days a week and staring at a blank wall in front of me because my friends were all working.

My husband went off to work every day. So I experienced that social anxiety or isolation was imposed upon me three months before my baby was even born. And where does a pregnant lady go when, at least if you have a baby, you can go to a mother's group? Yeah. There's a place for you. You can take your baby to a play center.

You can take your baby to all the classes that are on, you can go to a playgroup, you can go to the library. There are places for moms with babies to go where they're welcomed and they can talk to other moms. But where does a. Pregnant woman who's stuck at home. Where does she go? All her friends.

I was the first one of my friends to have a baby, or one of the very few first. So my friends didn't have babies, so they were all at work. And here I was feeling incompetent, so I was incompetent as a mother because I couldn't carry my baby very well and had, was in and outta hospital and on medication and threatening early labor and all of these things.

And then I failed as a nurse because I couldn't go to work and do my job. Wow. So I'd failed in my career and I'd failed in my role as an, as a mother. And their shame of, there's the whole idea that you know, oh, mom should have babies and it should be easy and blah, blah, blah, blah. There's also, like I said, this idea that because you are a nurse or a healthcare worker or a teacher or someone who works in early childhood, that pressure that you should do things well and easy and you should know what you're doing.

I had that pressure, I put that pressure on top of myself as well. So I'm like, I'm the mom who can't even do pregnancy. Which is, I don't believe that now, but this is the mindset. This is how I was thinking about myself because this was the messages that I got from the culture about what a good mom looks like and what a good mom does.

Yeah. So anyway, fast forward to, I spent three months at home. I was going. I was going crazy, but just from I just wanted social interaction, right? Yeah. Because my social interaction had been cut off. I did manage to talk with my boss and I ended up going to it one day a week and working in the office.

Okay. So I managed to get a little bit of social contact and that was like the highlight of my week was going to work one day just to be on the telephones and do the paperwork. Yeah. But it gave me purpose. It gave me a reason to, get dressed and have a shower and put my, put makeup on and leave the house.

Because I really had nowhere else to go. And so anyway, I had the, I had my son he was born on his due date. So would you believe at full term on his due date? Wow. I had a really empowering birth. I had done a lot because I was sitting at home for so long, I was doing a lot of meditation and I was doing the pregnancy, like the birthing meditation, and I'd really focused on, okay, the pregnancy's been outta my control and birth is out of my control as well, but what can I do to prepare for birth?

So I. I did prepare for the birth well, and I did a lot of visualization. I did mantras and meditation and I really focused a physio in one of our prenatal classes had said to us your body was born to birth. And that really just gave me something to hold onto. Wow. What a great, a belief that to have.

Yeah. 'cause we don't get that, do we? We have such medicalized births and like you said, you have those doctors always telling you about your body rather than giving you the empowering you to know that your body was meant to do this. And really flipping that, that message so that the really co conflicted messages that you were getting there and how great to have that from that one person, and sounds like it really stuck with you to empower you to go through.

You had him? I had my baby. Empowering birth, everything. Empowering birth. I felt really good about the birth. I didn't have any complications during the birth. After he was born, a couple of days after we were in hospital I had loads of breast milk pumping and doing all the things.

And I was, definitely oh, know all the things I need to do, the skin to skin and all the things to make the breast milk. And yeah. And then he ended up with quite severe jaundice. And so he needed to go into the little NICU that they had there. Not if he'd gotten worse, we would've been transferred to the maternity hospital, but he was just okay to stay with us.

We would've been separated otherwise. But again, I was told that he needed to be pumped full of, milk to help flush the excess the ce whatever it is, bilirubin that causes jaundice. And I had been producing loads of breast milk and I'd, and I started expressing straight away just to get it all up.

And again, I was told, no, we need to flush, we need to flush his system, essentially. And they coerced me into giving him formula. Is that because they thought you weren't they were telling you that the breast milk that you were producing wasn't enough. It needed to, you needed to be essentially topping it up or were they replacing it completely with formula?

They replaced the first feed with formula and then after that I was like, I am making 30 to 60 mils of colostrum and breast milk. You can give my baby breast milk. So they first, I was actually feeding him when they came in to me to tell me that about his bilirubin levels and. They said we need to put him under the light straight away.

And I said I'm feeding him, which is like part of the treatment of jaundice is feeding, breastfeeding as much as you can, to try and flush the system. And I was in the middle of feeding and they said, no, we need to take him now. And I said, can I finish the feed first? And they said, no, he needs to come now.

So they essentially coerced me into, because I was like, just let him finish feeding. Like we didn't know half an hour ago that his thoughts was this bad. What is the difference gonna be if I feed him for another half an hour? Because you are just gonna feed him with a nasogastric tube anyway. Let me breastfeed him.

So we got taken through to the special care nursery. I was given a pump and put in another room to just, and okay, just keep pumping, just you know, go sit over there while we hook your baby up. To all the monitors and in the crib and everything else. And yeah. And then when I came out, the pediatrician was very much no, he needs to have formula.

We'll give him this special kind of formula. We've gotta get it started straight away. And I was just bamboozled at that moment. Yeah. Again, another moment of just being totally bamboozled. And I was really given the coercion about this is what's best for your baby. Even though I was sitting there pumping milk and getting lots of milk, if I had two drops of milk.

Fair enough. But I was literally day three, producing 30 or 40 mls. And I could, and I was I said, I'll pump every hour if I have to. Yeah. You'll have more than enough fluid. So they hooked him up with the nasogastric tube and they started feeding him and he vomited it all up straight away because he'd already had a feet.

So it went in and went out straight away. And I was like, see, I was just feeding him. He didn't need more. And anyway, after that I refused to give him any more formula and I just expressed and then he eventually came. Good. So we were discharged seven days later and went home and I was breastfeeding at that point and expressing and, within a couple of weeks. It was obvious to me that he had reflux because I'd nursed so many babies with reflux. I knew exactly what was going on. He wasn't feeding well. It was, there was one side he had, he couldn't feed off, and it was because he had to co so his neck was stretched from the way he was inside my womb.

His neck was twisted and stretched, and so he could feed off one side comfortably, but he couldn't feed off the other side, the other breast. So tor co and reflux, and as soon as I saw the pediatrician, he was asleep in the bassinet and he was twitching and stretching and gurgling and he was stiffening out and throwing his head back in his sleep because all the milk was being churned by the acid and it was coming up and down his esophagus.

So he was actually, while he was asleep. So this poor kid was like, just suffering in his sleep. And the obs, the pediatrician took one look at me and said. He's got reflux, don't you? And I said, yeah, I know. That's why we're here. And we got talking about the reflux. We put him onto reflux. We talked about the breastfeeding and how I was making heaps of milk, but he just wasn't feeding very well.

And in the end, couple of, over the next month or two, we found out that he had a lactose allergy. And the lactose allergy can happen when a baby is given one formula feed and subsequent feeds of breast milk afterwards. Wow.

It was the same pediatrician that was in the hospital that we saw afterwards. So at that point, I, like I tried to advocate for breastfeeding my baby, and I'd been told no, we know what's best. And then I witnessed my baby vomiting up. All of the formula feed, because I had been feeding him and he was full, and he subsequently ended up with a lactose allergy.

So we had lots of issues. I had to put him on a special formula, the breastfeeding. I went to ev, I went to the best lactation consultants in Perth that I knew of, because they were my colleagues again. Yeah, I had to go to all of my colleagues to get support. I did every single trick in the book for the breastfeeding, but the problem was I was getting more and more anxious, so my letdown wasn't happening, right?

I had the milk. I could make the milk, but the letdown wasn't happening because I was so exhausted. I was so anxious. My baby wasn't sleeping because he had reflux and he wasn't feeding very well, so he wasn't sleeping very well. And at that point I was just so beyond beyond any ability to soothe myself or soothe my baby really, because I was just so highly anxious.

I'd also had my whole pregnancy, I'd had insomnia. So my, I had a sleep debt already for six months before my baby was even born. And part of the insomnia was because of the anxiety around the pregnancy. So when my baby didn't sleep, then I was even more anxious and more stressed and more sleep deprived.

Yeah. I had the local child health nurse come and visit me and we did all the mental health stuff and whatever else, but I was obviously able to lie. I was like, it's pretty hard, but, everything's fine. I'm not suicidal, but I was. I had suicidal ideation. I did okay. There were moments where I thought I could just drive my car into a tree.

Maybe my baby would be better off without me if I did that, because I felt like such a complete failure and exhausted. Just exhausted from the constant anxiety, the constant renomination, the constant blaming myself, beating myself up for my baby, not feeding my baby my pregnancy. Like everything. It just, everything was my fault and I was to blame for everything, and I was a crap mom, and I was failing miserably.

That's how I felt. Wow.

That's, and I couldn't, and I couldn't ask for help. Yeah. I just, and what was the, was this a shame? I think the shame and the silencing, the, to, being told to suck it up. I think I just really internalized, like what is wrong with me? Like I, I have all the knowledge and I think I compared myself a lot to my nurse self, who at work, I would get all this reinforcement that I was good at parenting because I would help parents with parenting and I could settle those babies that couldn't be settled.

There were time and, pre mom me felt good about the fact that I could settle babies with reflux, and that I could, and it's because I didn't have the emotional attachment and I wasn't exhausted. Yeah. I could go to work and settle these babies, right? I could hold them for hours and settle them and rock them and, try all the different, and I could listen to them cry without having the heartstrings being tugged so much so I could do the sleep training with them and I could hold them.

And I wasn't exhausted, I wasn't tired, I wasn't emotionally invested, and my self-worth wasn't tied up in whether or not this baby would sleep today or not, because I could just be like, oh, we tried. Yeah, maybe your baby will sleep tomorrow. And it sounds like. Sorry, it sounds like you are, if I'm right in saying this, there was so many moments where if you'd had some intuition of what the right thing was to do, you were constantly, the doctors would ride over that and say, no, this is what we need to do.

And it sounds talking about the hospital and then even in your pregnancy, this is what we're doing and there was no sort of consultation with you or No, how should we do these easier options? It's, this is what we're doing. And that constant belittling, and it is probably not the right word, but pushing down your own opinions and your own as the mother.

So then you are at the point where you've got this baby and you've constantly had these experts telling you what to do, and all of a sudden you are at home with this baby on your own. Oh where were these experts that that I'm supposed to rely on? I, you are in that conundrum, aren't you? Of I tried to advocate for myself and tell you this was the, the right thing.

And all of a sudden you're left on your own with this baby. And that's a society we live in of we refer to the experts in our society of we say mother knows best, but actually people don't mean that. They mean the experts know best. So how did that going forward for you?, Your son had reflux. You went and they said, yes, he has. And then you said, the your let down wasn't happening because of the anxiety and this from my understanding, it continued for some time and manifested. And how often did it manifest and what happened from there.

We did everything we could to get the breastfeeding happening and. In the end, I had to switch him over to Formula because I was doing, mixed feeding for a while, just because it wasn't working. And in the end I had to give up breastfeeding and that was another huge blow, right?

I had dreamed of breastfeeding. And breastfeeding. I was in the profession of people that say breast is best, right? I personally had never forced my opinions about breastfeeding onto mothers. I was very conscious of that even before I had my baby, that I wasn't gonna be one of these people that made moms feel guilty about whether or not they could breastfeed because I'd seen the impact of that in Thes that I, being that.

Support service, right? Like I'd seen the effects of how awful it is to put a whole lot of shame and guilt and expectations on mothers about breastfeeding when it doesn't always happen naturally. It doesn't always happen easily, and it's not anyone's fault if they can or can't breastfeed or if they choose not to, that's okay too, right?

Like we shouldn't be putting any kind of moral assignment on. Anyone's breastfeeding will or capacity. It's just, that's a whole, we could do a whole podcast on that. Yes. To be continuing with that one. Yes. Yeah. Part two. But the breastfeeding was another failure to add to my list of my growing list of failures.

Failure. I've failed to make enough amniotic fluid. I failed to keep my baby safe in my tummy and not have contractions until it was time. I I failed to advocate for my child when they said he should have formula. And I said No. And it, and in the end, I signed a piece of paper and gave consent to say that he could have formula.

And then I failed him because he had lactose allergy because of that. And now I've failed him because he's got cortico and reflux and can't feed, and can't settle. And I've also failed a breastfeeding. Okay. And I failed at being a happy mom. Because on top of that, yeah, I am beyond yeah, beyond anxiety at that point.

The depression and thinking thoughts of hurting myself, which, obviously I didn't truly want that, but I was at that point of desperation and and yet I was still so conscious of my baby's needs and I was really trying hard to do a lot of the attachment parenting stuff.

So I would be exhausted and lying on the floor, but I'd still smile at him and I'd still play with him. I couldn't get off the floor, but we could lie on the floor together and I would smile at him. That's what I could do. I gave, I, I say. To, I said this to one of my friends, I gave the best of what I had to him, even when the worst of me was 90% of my experience.

It was, like the absolute joy and love. Any tiny little scraps of that. I had infinite love, but I had very limited joy and happiness. But whatever I had, I gave to him and I had to learn how to give that back to myself. I guess that was the turning point really, was I had poured whatever I could into him.

I, I infinitely unconditionally loved my baby, but I didn't know how to do that for myself. What did that look like for you? And, what was that turning point or was it whether it was over a period of time, what did pouring that love and kindness back into yourself look like at the beginning? 'cause obviously there's a long journey there and it's ongoing, isn't it?

But what did it look like in the beginning for you? I think there was a pivotal moment for me where I think my son was sleeping when one of the rare times that he did actually sleep. And I remember looking out the window I had curtains and a sheer curtain and there the sun was shining outside and it was a beautiful day outside and could see the leaves and the flowers and the trees and, looking into our yard.

And I just remember noticing like that how beautiful it was outside and how the sun was shining. And that, that gave me a feeling of happy, a kind of a momentary feeling of happiness. Because I love, I live in Australia, so you know, I love sunshine and I get lots of it. Not to rub it in.

Yeah. But you I live in a beautiful state. In a beautiful city. I have nature all around me and I have beautiful weather and that's something that I'm really grateful to enjoy. So I remember seeing the weather and thinking oh, it's just so beautiful outside. I just, this is something that makes me feel good.

The sunshine. Wow. And then the next thought was about how terrible I felt about myself. I noticed that, I felt like I'm beating myself up and I'm exhausted and I'm I don't wanna be thinking these thoughts anymore. I don't want my head space and my heart space to be taken up with so much shame, blame, fear, anxiety, criticism, self-criticism.

I don't want, I don't wanna choose this anymore. I don't want this. How does this change? What do I change from here? I, I wanna be able to just feel like the sunshine, just feel like I could enjoy a beautiful day and feel happiness and joy and peace and all of those good emotions that I'd not experienced for months and months.

Pretty much the last time I remember feeling ecstatically joyful was, at my son's birth and when we found out we were pregnant. But apart from that, I didn't feel. Lots of happiness or joy because every time I felt good, something bad happened. Like I felt good about being pregnant.

And then that all hit the fan because we found out it was a medically complicated pregnancy. I felt good about telling my friends at work that I was pregnant, and I booked a trip to see my friends, and then I ended up in hospital. I felt good about having my baby, and then he ended up with jaundice. I felt excited to go home and look after my baby, and then it was really a very difficult, challenging, hard time that brought me to my knees.

So it was almost this kind of, I guess I'd always felt like the reverse of foreboding joy. It was almost like it's better to stay in this kind of state of negativity, because whenever I do feel joy, then something bad happens again, it gets worse. So I'd internalized this mindset. And I decided in that moment, like I was listening to my thoughts about myself and I decided what if I work on giving myself one positive thought a day?

So what if I was to tell myself that I love myself and I'm good enough, even if I do it once a day for me, when I was in the height of my anxiety and then I subsequently had depression because I think I was just so adrenally fatigued that my body, like I just swung for anxiety to depression because I was just so exhausted from the anxiety.

But for me choosing to have that one thought when I would have. A thousand other thoughts in a minute that were telling me I was wrong and I was bad and I was a failure. That was a big step. Like even just deciding to think of one positive thought about myself. But I chose that. Yes.

And then I chose two positive thoughts a day and then three positive thoughts a day and I just had to really very slowly incrementally choose kindness for myself. And it was a very slow, long process. But the more I chose kindness and I chose the sunshine, like it was like literally sitting in my dark house, looking out at the sunshine thinking I wanna choose that.

Like I don't want to be. Like this for the rest of my life and I don't want my baby growing up and seeing me like this for the rest of my life either. Like it was a choice. And so I then I started to look into the work of Dr. Christine Kristin Neff, who is a expert psychologist on self-compassion and kindness.

And I did some work reading up about her, just even watching her YouTube videos just gave me a sense that I can change this. I can be in control of this. I did see a counselor, but, and perhaps was slightly helpful at that time, but until I decided to choose kindness for myself, I think the counseling was just me just going blah.

And not necessarily progressing, but for other people. Obviously counseling was great, but for that time in my life, I don't think it was particularly helpful. But because I ha I was the one who had to do the work, right? I couldn't go to somebody else and expect them to fix my mindset for me, I had to fix my mindset.

I had to repair my relationship with myself. I had to find ways to reconnect to my own joy and happiness. And and I really had to redefine my thoughts about myself because I was comparing myself to who I thought I should be. And that wasn't happening. The, the whole saying everyone's.

A perfect parent before they become a parent. Yeah. It's like everyone thinks they're gonna be perfect. And when you have a good girl, perfectionist mindset, when you go into pregnancy and birth, and often there's big shake up of all of those things, right? Because you're like, but I'm trying to be perfect and I'm trying to get it all right.

And it should be this amazing experience. If only I try hard enough. Yeah. And I'd be a good girl and I listen, but being a good girl didn't help me. Being a good girl didn't help me advocate for myself or my child. Being a good girl did not make my experience of pregnancy any better. In fact, it made it worse, obviously.

It didn't serve me. It didn't serve my child, it didn't serve my family. And so I had to, over the following. I don't know, probably still dismantling some of my good girl tendencies. But there was a long process of defining what does it mean for me to be a good mom? What does it mean for me to be a good nurse?

And it was a very humbling experience. And I had to bring a lot of humility and self-kindness and compassion, and I had to drop a lot of judgment and criticism, self-criticism. And I also realized that I very subconsciously was very judgmental of a lot of other people. And I think that experience, paying attention to my thoughts and seeing how I beat myself up also opened my eyes to the fact that I was judging other people unfairly and.

The more we judge others, I think it is a reflection of us, like we're projecting onto other people. 'cause we're like, oh, I can't believe he feeds his kid chicken nuggets every night. That's terrible. Don't they know how bad chicken nuggets are? That's just a silly example. But yeah.

We all do it really. We all do it. But that's if you got to, if you unpack all of that, it's you don't know what other people are going through. And like I said, there were times when all I could do was lie on the floor and gaze my baby during his playtime and talk to him.

I couldn't get up off the floor and do anything else. 'cause I had to conserve my energy for changing his nappy and feeding him and yeah. Like just living life. I was in survival mode, so I wasn't, doing a home workout on the tv I dunno, washing the dishes or all the other things I should have been doing.

I was literally just like lying on the floor. And that was a very humbling experience because it's like you just don't know what's going on in people's lives. You don't know what's going on behind closed doors, and everyone is doing the best they can. And I think I had to learn that I was doing the best I could with what I had, and that's okay.

And once I accepted that and I loved myself for that, then I could heal. And when I healed, I was able to do more and more. Yeah. And I was able to find more enjoyment in my life and I was able to yeah, grow into motherhood in a much more I wouldn't say in a more, a better way, but I was able to step up into that.

But I was at ground zero and I had to grow through that. There was nowhere else for me to go. I couldn't expect myself to be further along than where I was. Once I accepted where I was, then I could have hope for getting to where I wanted to get to. But just living my life in my head, trying to be in the future and just beating myself up and berating myself for not being there, wasn't helping, it wasn't getting me there any quicker.

In fact, it was holding me back. And it just shows, doesn't it how much space that inner critic can take up in our heads. And then that realization I don't, I dunno about you, but becoming a mother was the first time I realized how loud and how present and how repetitive that inner critic was and how much they or she I still haven't named.

That voice. Yeah. I know some people do name that voice, but how loud and how present she was in my life and how much she ruled. And for you that, that moment of looking out the window, seeing the beautiful sunshine and noticing those thoughts in your head, I don't want to feel like this anymore.

And choosing that. We both know that it's a really hard thing to do, to change that narrative, to change that mindset because you've spent all those years believing it. That's what shaped you to now, that's what's probably driven a lot of decisions, but not realizing it.

So for you to take that step of, I'm just gonna have one positive thought today. Just gonna have one positive thought and really you're describing how much, even how much effort even that took, really those small steps of two, two a day, three a day, and then making more space for that. That, and there's so much, all amongst that. And I'm not just saying it's just think a positive thought and you're gonna get better, but it's just really great to hear how you set yourself on a path of moving yourself out of outta feeling rubbish and crap and all of that. And how now, there's a lot of sex in between, but how now you are thriving in motherhood.

And so we're just gonna end on that just briefly. We'll just talk about what thriving in motherhood looks like for you on a daily basis. I think thriving for me looks like knowing who I am now and stepping into my power. And like I said, I think I've mostly gotten rid of the good girl.

I think it's trust. I think it's building that trust in yourself that. You are the master of your life, the mistress of your life, whatever word, the create that you know that as you have so much more power in your life than you realize. And if you're giving it away it is time to take it back.

You, we all are faced with challenges and some of us have very traumatic and tragic situations. And I came from a very I had some childhood stuff happen in, in my childhood. And I'd had lots of circumstances beyond my control before I'd even got to that point in my pregnancy. And a lot of that, I was I was self silencing and shaming, like I, I had taken on the shame of all of the things of my childhood that were out of my control.

And I think. What thriving looks like is choosing to shine a light of empathy on anything that gives you shame. Like any, if there's any part of you that you feel ashamed of or shame or failure is that if we can bring some empathy and some grace and some kindness to it and we can share it and we can be, be vulnerable and find people who you can trust to open up to where you can share your stories, where you can share your struggles speak your truth.

And then do you know what, when you share your struggles.

Power of the shame is taken away, right? Like shame can't, like Brene Brown says shame can't survive the light and the light being empathy, love, race, kindness, connection, right? As soon as we bring anything up to the surface and we acknowledge it and we honor it, and we shine love onto it, the power of the shame dissipates.

And then we can look at it from a different perspective. And when we can look at it from a different perspective, we can choose a new narrative and we can choose to take back our power. Because really shame is giving away your power. Shame is saying, I'm giving away all my power to this idea or this emotion, or this concept, or this mindset, or, whatever it might be.

You are giving away your power to that. Whereas if you say, like for me, for example, I couldn't choose my childhood. Experiences and my, that, that was something that happened to me, not because of me. I can separate that out and I can say I did nothing that I need to feel ashamed of because that's something external to me and it has shaped who I'm, but I am not my shame at the end of the day.

I think that's what it really comes down to is don't identify with your shame. Your shame is an emotion, but it is the deepest, darkest emotion. And when we just shine some light onto it, we can lift ourselves out of that and we can separate out ourselves from our shame and we can say, actually I'm this amazing, beautiful human being who is worthy of love, of belonging, of joy, of power.

Because I exist, doesn't matter what's happened to me, doesn't matter what I've done. Doesn't matter what other people have done, doesn't matter. Whatever circumstances I've been through. I deserve healing. I deserve happiness. I deserve to be empowered, and I deserve to write my own story. Oh, I love that, Kylie.

Thank you. You just really describe things so beautifully. And sharing that story I know is gonna be so helpful to so many mothers listening to this, and exactly as you say, share shining a light on that shame. Hearing others do it is sometimes the first step isn't, it's oh, she's been through something that caused her to feel shame at that time, but she's talking about that and look at how she's thriving now.

Maybe I can talk about where I'm feeling shame because it's often ourselves that are our worst critics and actually taking that power away exactly as you said. So thank you so much, Kylie. I absolutely love that conversation. There's just so many nuggets in there, but I'd love to explore further.

And sadly we, we don't have time. Just one, one last, one last question to end on. Just want you to imagine that. That, that version of Kylie with the newborn baby. When you are feeling in the depths of despair, what would you like to say to her? Now?

I would like to say that you are loved beyond measure

and you are enough. Oh, I love that. Thank you, Kylie. That was absolutely beautiful. So what I'll do, I'll pop there's some things in the show notes there that you referenced, and I'll pop those in the show notes. Yeah. Kylie supports women and mothers in various different ways, and I, if you just let us know where we can find you again.

If you just let us know your website and your socials. Sure. So I'm at Liminal Women, LI mn a l, women on Instagram and limina 📍  Women au on Facebook. And yeah. I support women in a diverse amount of ways, but particularly around learning to embrace the power of their menstrual cycle.

Wonderful. Thank you so much, Kylie. You're welcome. Thank you so much for the honor of sharing my.

 thank you so much for listening. If you enjoy this conversation and would like to support the podcast so we can reach as many mothers as possible, please share it with your mom of friends, or leave a rating and review. Sign up for the Confident Combat Newsletter, your regular dose of honesty, support, and inspiration for navigating your return to work and with no hustle harder or productivity hacks insights.

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