Episode 23 | Lilly
In this episode, Lilly shares her experiences of becoming a mum to her two boys, Roo and Franklin, and reflects on how motherhood has changed her both personally and professionally.
As a midwife who had spent years supporting women through pregnancy, birth and postpartum, Lilly had a lot of relevant experience before a mother. But after an emergency caesarean under general anaesthetic with Roo, she was surprised by the intensity of her instinct to retreat from the world, stay home with her baby and slow everything down. She reflects on the vulnerability of those early weeks, processing her birth experience and building confidence in being a mum to her little one.
We also discuss the unexpected shift in Lilly’s relationship with her career. Having loved her work as a caseload midwife, she shares how confronting it was to realise that returning to on-call clinical work no longer felt right, and the complexity of finding a version of work that could sit alongside the way she wanted to experience motherhood.
Lilly then shares her second postpartum experience with Franklin, including the transition to parenting two children, mastitis and an incredibly challenging period with an unsettled baby. She talks openly about feeling out of her depth, questioning herself as a mother and learning to focus on the small things she could control while trusting that the difficult season would eventually pass.
We also talk about matrescence, the impact of welcoming a second child on Lilly and Ben’s relationship, the importance of protecting your postpartum space, and why self-preservation can sometimes mean saying no and allowing your world to become smaller for a while.
At the end of the episode, Lilly shares more about Growing, the podcast she co-hosts with fellow midwife and mum Beth. It is such a beautiful podcast, and the recent episodes are filled with beautiful conversation between Lilly and Beth, who share their glimmers and growing pains during their current experience of postpartum with their babies. Would highly recommend listening!
You can find Lilly at @lillian.beth and Growing at @growingthepodcast.