About this episode

Becca Maberly shares her honest experiences of the challenges of motherhood, contrasting expectations with reality.

Becca Maberly did everything "right." An A-grade student with an obstetrician father, she got to the hospital, had her baby with no pain relief, and was home for lunch - certain she was going to be brilliant at motherhood. Then the postnatal period arrived, and she went, in her words, straight to the bottom of the class. In this honest, funny and disarming conversation, Becca and Laura pull apart the gap between what we're told motherhood will feel like and what it can actually be. Becca talks about feeling like an unnatural mother, the loneliness of the long hours in between, and the maternal rage that surges from nought to a hundred over spilled milk. She shares the day she asked her GP for help and was sent to a psychiatric unit, only to be handed a leaflet and told to count to ten. She also names something few people hear about: D-MER, or dysphoric milk ejection reflex - the wave of crushing sadness that hit her at every let-down, which she only understood years later. The conversation moves on through renegotiating a relationship after a baby, a ruptured ectopic pregnancy that nearly went unnoticed, and why Becca now believes the meaning of life is simply finding your own…

People in this episode

Host: Laura Dowling

Guest: Becca Maberly

Topics covered

• motherhood
• postnatal period
• mental health
• maternal challenges
• D-MER
• loneliness
• finding balance

Keywords

• motherhood
• postnatal
• mental health
• D-MER
• maternal rage
• loneliness
• balance

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: psychiatric unit

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