If you've ever felt like the postpartum experience caught you off guard, you're not alone. So many new mothers are left wondering, “Why didn’t anyone tell me it would be like this?”

In this episode of The Science of Motherhood, Dr Renee White is joined by bestselling author, postpartum doula and mother of four, Jodi Wilson. Known for her honest, poetic reflections on motherhood, Jodi returns with her latest book co-authored by Sophie Walker (Australian Birth Stories), The Complete Guide to Postpartum, a practical, grounded and deeply reassuring resource for new mums, partners and support teams.

Together, Renee and Jodi unpack the common myths and mental load of the early weeks, what’s “normal and expected,” and why support, not perfection, is the real goal. With gentle wisdom and lived experience, Jodi offers insight into sleep, feeding, mood shifts and the complex identity changes that come with becoming a mother.

Whether you're preparing for your first baby or navigating the newborn fog once again, this episode is filled with warmth, honesty and the kind of support every mum deserves.

You’ll hear about:

• Why postpartum isn’t just a phase to survive, but a life-changing transition
• The difference between baby blues, postpartum anxiety and psychosis
• What science and evolutionary biology tell us about infant sleep and feeding
• Why mothers need informed, kind and realistic care
• The value of saying “you’re doing enough” and actually meaning it

Resources and Links:

📲 Want to chat more about this? Connect with Renee on Instagram: @fillyourcup_

🌐 Want to learn more about Dr Renee White and explore Fill Your Cup Doula services

🍪If you want to gobble up our famous Chocolate + Goji lactation cookies, look no further!

📚 The Complete Guide to Postpartum by Sophie Walker and Jodi Wilson will be released in Australia, July 1, UK, July 3 and US, July 6. Pre-order your copy now: Amazon and Booktopia

📝 Subscribe to Jodi’s newsletters:

Practising Simplicity

Dear New Mum

📲 Follow Jodi on Instagram: @practisingsimplicity

🎧 Loved this episode? Share it with a mum who’s in the thick of the early days or someone who’s preparing to support one. Subscribe, leave a review and help more women find the support they deserve.

Because every mum deserves to feel seen, supported and safe. Not just in birth, but every day after. 💛

Disclaimer: The information on this podcast presented by the Fill Your Cup is not a substitute for independent professional advice.

Nothing contained in this podcast is intended to be used as medical advice and it is not intended to be used to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease, nor should it be used for therapeutic purposes or as a substitute for your own health professional's advice.

[00:00:30] Dr Renee White: Hello and welcome to today's episode proudly brought to you by Fill Your Cup, Australia's first doula village, providing evidence-based continuity of care to bridge the maternal support gap when new mothers need it most. If you're pregnant or you've just had a baby, please feel free to jump over to our website. I fill your cup.com to learn more about our birth and postpartum doula packages where we provide [00:01:00] support, food, and guidance, ensuring every mother's Cup is full.

[00:02:21] Dr Renee White: I can't remember so long ago that Jodi and I caught up over the phone and we just [00:02:30] talked all things postpartum. And I'm so excited to say that, you know, some of my thoughts and wisdom and science knowledge made it to the book, which is just so, so cool. This is the second book I've been able to contribute to, which is just so, so cool. And particularly around a topic that I am so deeply passionate about as well. So yeah, Jodi and I were chatting at length, as [00:03:00] you can imagine, about this particular topic and then of course I said to her, you know, when, when it's all ready to come out, please come on the podcast 'cause I'm so desperate to talk to you about all of this again in length, and let's record it.

[00:04:11] Dr Renee White: You know, we are just touching the surface of so many things to do with women and becoming mothers and sleep and feeding and all of those really, really important things. We talk about how [00:04:30] complex it was to, I guess, and this is the thing, this is why we do this podcast, to sift out fact from fiction to, there's a lot of voices out there and I tell you what, I, I wouldn't want, I wouldn't have wanted Jodi's job going through particularly sleep and feeding like that is oof. Those, those industries are big and, and we talk about that. We talk about those million [00:05:00] dollar industries and, and what made it to, what made the cut essentially. But we talk about, a lot. The running theme I think in this discussion is normalising experience, understanding that, you know, expectations, realities, all of those things.

[00:06:09] Jodi Wilson: I'm good, Renee, I'm in Tasmania literally, where you are, it's very cold. So although I'm in a nice room,

[00:06:30] Jodi Wilson: It's so beautiful and I've been walking still early morning and just that cold, fresh air. Yeah, because the air here is the purest in the world. The cleanest in the world

[00:06:42] Jodi Wilson: We've got the studies to show it.

[00:06:43] Jodi Wilson: and it's, yeah, it's, I find it quite vitalising and my children are totally acclimatised now because they're going off to school in shorts still. Oh, and it's three or four degrees. I'm like, wow, okay. I think we're Tasmanian.

[00:07:21] Jodi Wilson: Yeah, and I, I think I was in Melbourne the same time as you. I was actually recording the audio before. Oh. And yeah, I was like, I've enjoyed, I call it [00:07:30] like, you know, just my little trip to the mainland.

[00:07:32] Jodi Wilson: Just to reaffirm why I live in Tasmania.

[00:07:36] Jodi Wilson: I appreciate the busyness and the bustle and the amazing bookstores, but real, always really happy to fly back into Davenport on a tiny plane and settle back into the slow pace here.

[00:08:36] Jodi Wilson: It needed to be mother focused because as soon as the baby is born, everyone's like, look at the baby, look at the baby and the stats support that as well in the healthcare industry because as soon as you birth a baby in Australia, whether that's in a public or private hospital, you're going to fall off what's known as the postpartum cliff. Mm-hmm. Which means that there's a void of maternal healthcare after the baby. So even the [00:09:00] health system and the maternity system is set up to push the mother into the shadows. Mm-hmm. No one's gonna say that, but the stats support it. And you speak to any perinatal health professional and they will say that's the reality. So, we know that mothers are currently really challenged by parenthood in 2025.

[00:09:50] Dr Renee White: Mm-hmm.

[00:10:06] Dr Renee White: Yeah.

[00:10:14] Jodi Wilson: And, and this, we see this in all the choices we make from when we conceive our babies to, to how we birth our babies, to who cares for us along the way and to the support networks we have in postpartum.

[00:10:52] Dr Renee White: Yeah.

[00:10:55] Dr Renee White: Yeah.

[00:10:57] Dr Renee White: Yeah.

[00:11:11] Dr Renee White: Mm-hmm.

[00:11:20] Dr Renee White: Yeah.

[00:11:25] Dr Renee White: Mm.

[00:11:30] Dr Renee White: Yeah.

[00:11:50] Dr Renee White: Mm-hmm.

[00:11:52] Dr Renee White: Yeah.

[00:12:08] Dr Renee White: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:10] Dr Renee White: Yes.

[00:12:20] Dr Renee White: Mm-hmm.

[00:12:29] Dr Renee White: Yeah.

[00:12:46] Dr Renee White: Yeah.

[00:12:51] Dr Renee White: Mm-hmm absolutely.

[00:13:04] Dr Renee White: Mm-hmm.

[00:13:13] Dr Renee White: Yeah.

[00:13:18] Dr Renee White: Yeah, 100%. And I loved the fact, as you said, we kind of employ this tact as well in our postpartum planning sessions. Is like, I know that [00:13:30] expecting parents, particularly first time parents. They want that silver bullet of like, just tell me what I have to do. And I'm like, I can't.

[00:13:40] Dr Renee White: You know, I was that mum who was like, just tell me everything that I need to buy and tell me everything that I need to do to be the best mum ever. And it's kind of like, as you say, the reality of like, here's the toolkit.

[00:13:55] Dr Renee White: And what's gonna work for your family, you know, between the three and six month [00:14:00] period is gonna be completely different from the nine to 12 month period. And I guess having that understanding and the why's behind it, I think really help parents, but also, as you say, like normalising the experience of it's okay to not get it right and it's okay to change your mind and it's okay that, you know, this is an evolving process through the whole thing. I wanna make a, [00:14:30] um, one comment when we met each other in person last year for that beautiful round table discussion up north in Tassie.

[00:15:21] Jodi Wilson: Mm-hmm. So Naomi Stadlen, who's a psychotherapist from the UK, she describes that feeling as being all at sea.[00:15:30]

[00:15:30] Jodi Wilson: And Julianne Boutaleb, who's a perinatal psychologist in the UK as well, she used that all at sea analogy as well. And I thought, well that's ex, that's precisely what it feels like. And I, you know, my eldest is 18 this year.

[00:15:47] Jodi Wilson: Yeah. I've got four kids and so when I'm writing this book, I'm returning to that first postpartum in particular.

[00:15:55] Jodi Wilson: Because I feel like that's the that's the [00:16:00] walking through the fire bit.

[00:16:02] Jodi Wilson: Yeah and what I remember most profoundly is feeling completely untethered and not knowing which direction to turn and I, it's, I could not articulate that then, but it was just like, it was like I didn't know who I was, I didn't know what I should be doing next.

[00:16:23] Jodi Wilson: This not knowing and the, the discomfort of that and the, the sea analogy is great [00:16:30] because I did not feel grounded.

[00:16:32] Jodi Wilson: I was just like, every, and a lot of that is because I am an an naturally anxious person and I was so much up here.

[00:16:41] Jodi Wilson: But yeah, it just felt like no one could even provide answers for me.

[00:16:47] Jodi Wilson: And now I understand Matrescence and I understand maternal brain circuitry, but that maternal brain circuitry research

[00:16:54] Jodi Wilson: was done, was published in 2017, which is after I had my fourth baby.

[00:16:59] Jodi Wilson: But we [00:17:00] are, we are in such a profoundly important time in maternal health in that, you know, when I spoke to Dr. Aurélie Athan, about Matrescence and she heads the school of Matrescence and Reproductive Identity at Columbia State University. And she said in all of history it was angry mothers and angry women, that went looking for the answers when they didn't exist. And that's precisely what those two neuroscientists [00:17:30] did from Spain when they discovered that the brain changes so significantly in pregnancy. They were angry because they'd become mothers and they were like, why don't we have any science on this?

[00:17:40] Jodi Wilson: And we don't have a lot of science in this perinatal period because it's ethically complicated.

[00:17:45] Jodi Wilson: Because you can't impose on mothers and new babies. But, and I don't think science is the answer to everything, but it also gives us a really good grounding in our, in our biology

[00:17:56] Jodi Wilson: And in our, in evolution that where there's a lot of [00:18:00] understanding that comes from that and then anecdotally, all of the perinatal health specialists I spoke to agreed that it, it's that sense of not knowing that's so uncomfortable and that sees, you know, especially professional women.

[00:18:17] Jodi Wilson: Who are used to ticking a lot of boxes.

[00:18:19] Jodi Wilson: And completing a lot of tasks and meeting deadlines, and really living with that quite constant sense of achievement and accomplishment and that does not [00:18:30] exist in postpartum.

[00:18:31] Jodi Wilson: it does not. And so it's deeply unsettling and then you start to question your worth and your ego gets a hit and you're like, am I not very good at this? And it's that all of that kind of guilt and questioning comes up and yet there is profound comfort when we're told, well, we're not supposed to have all the answers.

[00:18:51] Jodi Wilson: Like this is a period of profound learning.

[00:18:56] Jodi Wilson: And your baby is learning, and you're learning, and [00:19:00] there's ob obviously that learning and connection and, and relating to each other, but I know that there is a lot of literature over the past 20 years, and there's even more now about that process of unfurling into motherhood. And it's a such a slow it, it's slow and agonising at times, and at other times it can feel incredibly beautiful and incredibly powerful. And I, I find it very comforting as well, that with all this talk about [00:19:30] postpartum, we're also seeing so much more discussion about perimenopause.

[00:19:36] Jodi Wilson: But what we're not seeing is the discussion about how they overlap because there's so many more women having babies at a later age, and postpartum and perimenopause are overlapping. And yet there's so few studies on that.

[00:19:50] Jodi Wilson: And so I hope there's more studies soon because I think I find it very fascinating that that, you know and social [00:20:00] media and doulas have been so pertinent in this discussion. So they're really talking about the reality of motherhood. And Rachel, I don't know if you've, if you've read Rachel Cusk's, a Life, a Life's Work, I think that was published in 2005, but she was the first one to really bring maternal ambivalence to the page.

[00:20:18] Jodi Wilson: So she was talking about the, you know, the love she had for her children, but also those like deep permeating sense of hate for the act of mothering.

[00:20:27] Jodi Wilson: And that's why it was so important to put that in the book [00:20:30] as well. Like, I did not leave a stone unturned because I wanted to bring all of this uncomfortable stuff to the page.

[00:20:37] Jodi Wilson: To reiterate that it is normal.

[00:20:39] Jodi Wilson: And that the dichotomy of early motherhood is the joy and the grief and the regret.

[00:20:45] Jodi Wilson: And the disappointment.

[00:20:47] Jodi Wilson: And the awe and the happiness.

[00:20:50] Jodi Wilson: And the resentment and all of the, the fact that all of those feelings can be felt within an hour.

[00:20:57] Jodi Wilson: And I just, I just [00:21:00] want mothers to read this book and to feel like there's not something wrong with them.

[00:21:05] Jodi Wilson: And there's two words that are repeated throughout the book. Normal and expected.

[00:21:10] Jodi Wilson: And we really need to lift the lid on what post, what re the reality of postpartum is. What's normal and expected. Because there's so many mothers sitting in the isolations of their homes, watching mothers on social media who have got, who are hustling and have got perfect homes and perfect [00:21:30] children. And it's also polished.

[00:21:32] Jodi Wilson: And they're sitting there questioning why they can't do that and questioning these feelings that are coming up that are so normal, but are considered negative or bad.

[00:21:45] Jodi Wilson: But they're just normal human emotions. We need to normalise them. Anger is normal.

[00:21:52] Jodi Wilson: Rage is normal, but why do we have maternal rage and not paternal rage? Why do we have mother guilt and not [00:22:00] paternal guilt? And it's, it just comes back to the fact that that society idolises mothers.

[00:22:06] Jodi Wilson: And is very quick to vilify them too.

[00:23:21] Jodi Wilson: Mm.

[00:23:37] Jodi Wilson: Mm.

[00:23:39] Jodi Wilson: And I think it's so important to notice that, or to note that the perfect mum does not exist.

[00:23:45] Jodi Wilson: She, she is a myth. She does not exist. The best mum does not exist. Like I've never seen one, I'm definitely not one and so many of the psychologists and psychiatrists and social workers I spoke to were like, [00:24:00] she is a figment of our imagination.

[00:24:02] Jodi Wilson: And she's doing so much harm.

[00:24:05] Jodi Wilson: But what exists is the mother that is hopefully informed, and I really believe that. Dr. Aurélie Athan, who is that head of Matrescence, and she really revived the term a few years back. She said we really lacked curiosity about mothers who did really well in postpartum because we are [00:24:30] often seeing mothers falling apart in postpartum and crying out for help.

[00:24:34] Jodi Wilson: And that's, you know, reflective in our perinatal anxiety and depression rates. And I think it's probably quite evident on social media as well, where at one end the spectrum, you've got the mother that, has the beautiful nursery and is totally polished. And then on the other end, there's the mother that's sobbing in a corner.

[00:24:55] Jodi Wilson: And looking very disheveled and, and quite overtly crying out [00:25:00] for help.

[00:25:01] Jodi Wilson: But in the middle is, you know, a whole array of experiences but what Dr. Athan's said is that we really lack curiosity about the mothers that did really well in postpartum.

[00:25:11] Jodi Wilson: And her research shows that they were really good forecasters, so they weren't Pollyanna types.

[00:25:18] Jodi Wilson: And they didn't love every minute.

[00:25:20] Jodi Wilson: But they had a really educated understanding of what postpartum would look like for them and I really believe that [00:25:30] the Complete Guide to Postpartum offers parents that really stick day to day understanding of what you can expect in postpartum.

[00:25:39] Jodi Wilson: Which is you have no idea what each day is going to bring.

[00:25:43] Jodi Wilson: But one bad day does not mean you're going to have a bad week.

[00:26:04] Jodi Wilson: I think it was probably in regards to evolutionary biology.

[00:26:15] Jodi Wilson: and it just still baffles me.

[00:26:20] Jodi Wilson: Why parents are not taught evolutionary biology about their newborns.

[00:26:27] Jodi Wilson: So a baby is born [00:26:30] and their habitat. We all know what a habitat is when we're talking about animals. And I think it's important to reiterate that we are animals too. Like we are nature. Our baby's habitat is us, like we are their whole world because we're all they've ever known.

[00:26:49] Jodi Wilson: So if we think about why the baby isn't sleeping in the cold, hard, still bassinet, and yet they settle on us because [00:27:00] we are warm and we smell like home and our heartbeat is familiar and there's a rhythm to our bodies. Like why? And I know that there's so many thousands of parents every day, millions of parents every day going, why won't the baby sleep in the bassinet?

[00:27:17] Jodi Wilson: That they'll settle on me.

[00:27:20] Jodi Wilson: Yeah, exactly. You are your baby's habitat. That's not easy in this modern life though, because we are living in a [00:27:30] cost of living crisis where parents are having to go back to work. And I think what was like, I admit, and I even said to my publisher very early on in the writing process that I'm not sure I can write a hopeful book.

[00:27:42] Jodi Wilson: And that makes me really sad. It still makes me really sad because mums have it so much harder today than I did even 18 years ago. I could live off, my partner and I, our rent was under $300 a week.

[00:27:58] Jodi Wilson: You know, we could live off [00:28:00] one income. We had Kevin Rudd's baby bonus.

[00:28:03] Jodi Wilson: If I was a 22-year-old now having my first baby. That's a completely different scenario, and that is one massive reason why it's hard and new parents are going back to work earlier than they expected or planned for or hoped and it's directly informing how they choose to feed their baby and how they choose to approach infant sleep.

[00:28:26] Jodi Wilson: So these massive decisions we're making as parents are being [00:28:30] influenced very directly by the need to go back to work to pay the mortgage or to pay rent.

[00:28:38] Jodi Wilson: Um, and so we can have all this information about evolutionary biology and the fact that our babies continue to grow and develop in our arms. It's a term coined by Ashley Montagu called exterogestation. So, we, we are mammals without a pouch, but our pouch is our arm. So we're carrying mammals and our [00:29:00] babies essentially there's one train of thought that says that our babies are born so early and so incapable because they need that stimulation of the world for their brain to develop. And so they continue developing in our arms until they're old enough to be able to crawl away from us and that's at about 7, 8, 9 months.

[00:29:26] Jodi Wilson: Yeah.

[00:29:39] Jodi Wilson: Yeah. It's, yeah. It's, it's really, but you know, that's, that's all well and good to understand the evolutionary biology and that our babies should be on us and that our babies develop on us and we should spend as much time, you know, nurturing and caring for our babies. And aside from that, there is a train of thought about, you know, if we look at anthropology through the years, it has [00:30:00] looked at alloparenting.

[00:30:02] Jodi Wilson: Um, and Sarah Blaffer Hrdy really looked into this and that showed that in many cultures around the world, still newborn babies are cared for by so many different people.

[00:30:13] Jodi Wilson: By aunties and uncles and siblings and neighbors and grandparents and her research shows that by three weeks of age, the newborn babies was with people other than the parents for 40% of the time.

[00:30:26] Jodi Wilson: But that's the village we're missing.

[00:30:28] Jodi Wilson: Yeah you know, so this, we've got [00:30:30] all this evolutionary biology talk, and then we've got the void of the village.

[00:30:35] Jodi Wilson: And then we've got modern pressures of cost of living and going back to work, and they don't all fit together. That's why it's so hard.

[00:30:43] Jodi Wilson: And I think that's why mothers are really crying out for support because we've got, we've got evolution, which, and there's a lot of comfort to be found in that, to help us understand our babies and how our babies sleep and how our babies eat and how they behave. But that doesn't necessarily [00:31:00] fit in with, the demands of modern life.

[00:31:03] Jodi Wilson: And another really beautiful thing I came across in the research was that it takes a village to raise a child, but it takes a community to raise a mother.

[00:31:13] Jodi Wilson: And yeah, and community and community is, has always existed for mothers. And it doesn't exist now. I think it, it's starting to exist more and more as we see the rise of doulas and podcasts like this and [00:31:30] just more women talking openly about how mo motherhood feels. But one of the most beautiful, I'm a bit of a language nerd, so I always kind of look at the origin of words.

[00:31:40] Jodi Wilson: And the origin of the word gossip, which I love

[00:31:43] Jodi Wilson: Comes from a woman's lying in. So in England they, you know they called it a lying in when you would rest before your baby was born and afterwards.

[00:31:55] Jodi Wilson: And a merry meet of gossips at a women's lying in was when all [00:32:00] the women would surround the new mother and, and speak about, about new motherhood and about how to look after a baby and the youngest siblings and neighbors were there to learn before they'd given birth and so all new mums should be encouraged to gossip.

[00:32:19] Jodi Wilson: I know. I just, I think that's beautiful and I think we've lost that because we're not, we're not having those honest, heartfelt conversations with a mother while we care for [00:32:30] her as she rests.

[00:33:18] Jodi Wilson: Mm-hmm.

[00:33:33] Jodi Wilson: And you know, that's, it's those conversations that are considered early mental health prevention.

[00:33:39] Jodi Wilson: And when we don't have, when we don't have safe community spaces for mothers to go and to congregate and to talk, we're essentially intensifying perinatal mental illness.

[00:33:53] Jodi Wilson: Because that early intervention is not happening and

[00:33:57] Jodi Wilson: Tasmania actually does that really well. I interviewed [00:34:00] Meagan Smith, who runs the West Ulverstone Family and Child Center.

[00:34:04] Jodi Wilson: And her whole, which isn't, it's an area that has quite a low socioeconomic demographic, which I would say probably exists across the whole of the state.

[00:34:15] Jodi Wilson: And these, these centers are so vital because she explained that they really meet mothers where they're at. And she said, if a mother can come in and there's a safe place for her baby to lie down or to play, and I can hand her a cup of tea, [00:34:30] she will start talking.

[00:34:32] Jodi Wilson: And she said, she'll, I'll ask her, do you need, um, shoe laces for your toddler? Do your school, school children have a warm jumper? Like all those kind of conversations.

[00:34:43] Jodi Wilson: And really normalising what we're all feeling in motherhood alongside those daily kind of everyday challenges.

[00:34:51] Jodi Wilson: But there's a lot of states that don't have centers and when I was chatting to Dr. Rebecca Moore, who's a psychiatrist, and she heads [00:35:00] Make Birth Better in the UK, she was saying that I know the UK have gone through so many governments in the past 10 years, but she said one government essentially eradicated these family centers that existed in every town. And so she said when they eradicated that, they eradicated that early intervention for mental health for mothers because mothers could no longer come together. They, you know, they might just walk down the street and pop in at any time of day and those safe spaces for us all [00:35:30] to talk about how motherhood feels are so vital.

[00:35:34] Jodi Wilson: And of course, it's really confronting to meet new, new friends in early motherhood.

[00:35:40] Jodi Wilson: And I liken it because the maternal brain changes aren't dissimilar to the teenage brain changes.

[00:35:47] Jodi Wilson: And teenagers find it really hard to make, like first year of high school, how hard is it to make friends?

[00:35:57] Jodi Wilson: Yeah and it's the same for mothers. It's like, well, [00:36:00] like, you know, are they gonna be like me and are we gonna like, have the same, and, and then there's that whole talking about the birth and how you choose to feed your baby and, and how you choose to approach sleep. And I think it's really helpful if we all come to those discussions, understanding that our experience and our beliefs aren't everyone else's.

[00:36:23] Jodi Wilson: Yeah.

[00:37:19] Jodi Wilson: It was so hard.

[00:37:22] Jodi Wilson: I've written four books now in five years and nothing was harder than those feeding and sleep [00:37:30] chapters.

[00:37:31] Jodi Wilson: And I felt so overwhelmed.

[00:37:35] Jodi Wilson: And so angry and I, I was, I typed sentences just to get it out and then I deleted them.

[00:37:43] Jodi Wilson: And I'm coming to this book as someone that breastfed with enormous ease

[00:37:50] Jodi Wilson: Four children.

[00:37:53] Jodi Wilson: And who figured out very early on in my mothering journey that I wanted to co-sleep.

[00:38:00] Jodi Wilson: But I wrote as an objective health journalist.

[00:38:05] Jodi Wilson: And also was really well aware that there is so much grief for mothers who want to breastfeed and can't.

[00:38:14] Jodi Wilson: And so much confusion confusion for parents, because the social narrative around baby sleep is that a baby sleeping through the night is success and it's the end goal.

[00:38:27] Jodi Wilson: And it's so misinformed [00:38:30] and again, let's go back to evolutionary biology because there's so many good answers there.

[00:38:40] Jodi Wilson: Yep. About how babies sleep. They were, they were such hard chapters to write. So many specialists I spoke to said, I'm glad it's you and not me writing these chapters. One GP said it will be like herding cats. So the infant feeding, um, we called milk.

[00:38:58] Jodi Wilson: So reiterating [00:39:00] and like if we look at the statistics, 96% of Australian mothers are initiating breastfeeding at birth. Only about 35% are exclusively breastfeeding by 12 weeks postpartum.

[00:39:13] Jodi Wilson: By six months postpartum in the UK, 1% of mothers are exclusively breastfeeding.

[00:39:20] Jodi Wilson: That just shows that there's a profound lack of support.

[00:39:23] Jodi Wilson: And there's a profound lack of realistic expectations and we are living in a [00:39:30] world that doesn't really support breastfeeding and going back to work.

[00:39:36] Jodi Wilson: Yeah. So mothers deserve information and they deserve acknowledgement for how challenging breastfeeding can be and the grief when it doesn't go as planned.

[00:39:50] Jodi Wilson: And the fact that you are allowed to grieve that experience that you really wanted. And I think that's really pertinent for mothers that had birth trauma, because a [00:40:00] lot of them, a lot of that cohort are really desperate to kind of make up.

[00:40:05] Jodi Wilson: With breastfeeding but then the physiology, and this again plays into birth. So we're seeing there's a direct link between cesarean birth, postpartum hemorrhage, birth trauma, separation of mother and baby after birth, and low milk supply.

[00:40:23] Jodi Wilson: And late onset of milk.

[00:40:25] Jodi Wilson: So there's all of these physiological factors that inform that initial [00:40:30] first stage of breastfeeding,

[00:40:34] Jodi Wilson: a lot of people aren't talking about it. No, they're not.

[00:40:45] Jodi Wilson: Mm.

[00:40:55] Jodi Wilson: Yeah. But no why?

[00:41:17] Jodi Wilson: And I think that's really, it's so important for mothers who want to breastfeed to understand that the lactation support that you're gonna get on a postnatal ward, especially if you're in a hospital where there's the high cesarean rate.

[00:41:29] Jodi Wilson: And one [00:41:30] lactation consultant said this to me, she said, it's really important to remember you're essentially on a surgical ward.

[00:41:37] Jodi Wilson: So a lot of the midwives are spending a lot of time with the mother and the post-surgery, the post birth, cesarean birth.

[00:41:47] Jodi Wilson: Care.

[00:41:48] Jodi Wilson: And there's so little time for lactation support.

[00:41:52] Jodi Wilson: And lactation consultants are minimal on those wards as well.

[00:41:56] Jodi Wilson: There's also so much conflicting advice.

[00:42:00] Jodi Wilson: Because I think a lot of midwives, if they're not lactation consultants, they have to be quite self-disciplined and go and do their own education.

[00:42:10] Jodi Wilson: And the evidence is changing all the time. We've seen that with how masti mastitis is treated.

[00:42:15] Jodi Wilson: Like that changed quite significantly.

[00:42:18] Jodi Wilson: Just over the last few years. So I think all the evidence points to the fact that if you want to breastfeed, you connect with a lactation consultant in pregnancy.

[00:42:28] Jodi Wilson: And, and you really [00:42:30] find someone that you trust and that you gel with and you set those appointments up. You know, for a week or two after your estimated due date or a few days after, and you, you don't let, you don't kind of wait and see you kind of get that support early.

[00:42:46] Jodi Wilson: But that is dependent on money to pay these people.

[00:42:51] Jodi Wilson: Awareness, information like accessibility, all of these things are barriers to new mothers accessing that support.

[00:42:58] Jodi Wilson: So of course we can [00:43:00] understand why when it is incredibly painful when milk supply doesn't establish, and again, there's just so little awareness of the importance of skin to skin and maternal nutrition. To make milk. Um, and I think one of the most beautiful pieces of information I came across, which again is linguistically based, but uh, the linguist Roman Jakobson said that the origin of the word mama is from the sound a baby [00:43:30] makes when they attach to the bottle or the breast.

[00:43:33] Jodi Wilson: And I think it's really important to reiterate that the connection and the attachment that you have with your baby is not dependent on how you feed them.

[00:43:42] Jodi Wilson: But new parents need so much support with infant feeding and again, that's just doesn't exist for a lot of mothers.

[00:43:50] Jodi Wilson: And it's a confusing, debilitating, often painful experience that can last for six to eight weeks, that pain even [00:44:00] longer.

[00:44:01] Jodi Wilson: And again, that's not a realistic kind of conversation that we're having with a lot of mothers.

[00:44:06] Jodi Wilson: And because it is the next natural stage after birth, so many mothers feel like they really should be. Able to do it.

[00:44:16] Jodi Wilson: And I've just really wanted to shout out to my editor a Andrea O'Connor, who is a beautiful mother, and she has breast hyperplasia, which means that she doesn't have enough breast tissue to store [00:44:30] milk.

[00:44:31] Jodi Wilson: And she couldn't breastfeed her, her two babies, and she still carries the grief of that. And she was such a brilliant person to be editing me

[00:44:40] Jodi Wilson: And to be picking up on my judgements that I wasn't even aware of as a woman that could breastfeed with, you know, relative ease. And I did wonder like, am am I the right person to be writing this chapter?

[00:44:51] Jodi Wilson: Because I did have that immensely positive experience. But it really, you know, we've really outlined what your options are [00:45:00] when you, when you do have any of the challenges that exist in, in the breastfeeding experience and then and then what your options are when you are using alternative feeding methods. And it's really, it's really hard because the whole time I was writing, I knew exactly who my reader was.

[00:45:19] Jodi Wilson: You don't always get that privilege as a writer, but I knew that my reader would be sleep deprived.

[00:45:25] Jodi Wilson: Very emotional and so from a sentence level, every single [00:45:30] sentence had to be read over so many times to make sure that there was no judgment.

[00:45:35] Jodi Wilson: That there was no incorrect assumptions and that I was acknowledging every mother's experience. I'm not sure if I've done that. I'm sure there will be some women that do feel judged and that feel unacknowledged, but that was my intention. Especially with feeding, because it can be such a grueling experience.

[00:45:55] Jodi Wilson: And it can, but also on the flip side, it can be so beautiful [00:46:00] and so joyful and you know, I I, I still have a visceral reaction when like, I see a video of a, a baby sucking at the breast and that sound

[00:46:11] Jodi Wilson: It's almost like I can feel the letdown again.

[00:46:15] Jodi Wilson: But I think so much so important to the whole breastfeeding discussion is an understanding of hormones because it's a hormonally driven process at the, in the very beginning.

[00:46:27] Jodi Wilson: And you know, we hear so much [00:46:30] on social media about cortisol.

[00:46:32] Jodi Wilson: But we need to be talking about oxytocin.

[00:46:35] Jodi Wilson: Oxytocin.

[00:46:38] Jodi Wilson: Oxytocin is so powerful and we can all experience the warm, gooey sense of oxytocin and we do that when we are snuggling with our baby and I think, you know, by the time I had my third and fourth babies, I knew exactly how fleeting that newborn stage was.

[00:46:57] Jodi Wilson: And I was not going to let anything get in the way of [00:47:00] me, like really just soaking in the slowness of it and the skin to skin.

[00:47:05] Jodi Wilson: And the, my house was an absolute mess, but I didn't care.

[00:47:10] Jodi Wilson: You know, but there are all the things that you kind of have to, you can learn from other people, but you do have to learn for yourself, I think.

[00:47:19] Jodi Wilson: Um, and yeah, then the sleep chapter was

[00:47:23] Jodi Wilson: It was a minefield. It was a minefield. And I think it's really baffling to me, and I think it goes back to what I said at the [00:47:30] beginning, that postpartum healthcare can be the wild west of medicine medicine because there's a lot of not evidence-based practice being taught in the infant sleep space.

[00:47:45] Jodi Wilson: and I think, well, I think you've, you've hit on it there, it's an industry.

[00:47:50] Jodi Wilson: People are making money off it.

[00:47:52] Jodi Wilson: There's a product to fix every issue when the issue doesn't really exist in the first place. [00:48:00]

[00:48:02] Jodi Wilson: So we've gotta kind of, if we're going to come to it objectively, we're going to say that, uh, that it, it's a multimillion dollar industry, global industry.

[00:48:14] Jodi Wilson: And it was really alarming to me that baby monitor companies can often send parents information about sleep training.

[00:48:26] Jodi Wilson: Yes.

[00:48:28] Jodi Wilson: Quite alarming. But [00:48:30] then I got to speak to Dr. Uh, sorry, Professor Helen Ball from the

[00:48:40] Jodi Wilson: Well, she's got a new book coming out I read it, it's called How Baby Sleep. It's amazing.

[00:48:47] Jodi Wilson: Yeah and she's done a lot of research. She's an anthropologist and she has done a lot of research on breastfeeding and sleep, and she's got studies to show that when a baby is separated from the, from the mother, even when they're in the same room, [00:49:00] so if the baby's in the bassinet beside the bed

[00:49:03] Jodi Wilson: The baby will come to the breast half as much as when a baby is right next to the mother co-sleeping.

[00:49:10] Jodi Wilson: Yeah.

[00:49:13] Jodi Wilson: She's done a lot of studies and they were done, they were studies that were done in hospital and she really reiterated to UK sleep industry and experts, how important or how vital it was that all parents understand how to co-sleep safely.[00:49:30]

[00:49:30] Jodi Wilson: Because it's between 80 to 85% of parents will do it even though they thought they never would.

[00:49:37] Jodi Wilson: And we, and again, if we're gonna talk about, honestly, about how motherhood feels, we need to talk honestly about infant sleep.

[00:49:44] Jodi Wilson: And the fact that it is a continuum and that you are gonna move up and down that continuum as your baby grows and you, and as your lifestyle changes.

[00:49:54] Jodi Wilson: And you're gonna make decisions based on your family values, but it comes down to the fact that you're the only [00:50:00] one that can decide where your baby sleeps.

[00:50:58] Dr Renee White: We knew what to do or what [00:51:00] not to do and yeah, absolutely. I wanna talk about. One of the things that I really loved about the book was the like, question and answer sections on the first six weeks.

[00:51:14] Dr Renee White: I loved how like, informative it was and the fact that like you explained the why I'm always about the why I am like, if people understand the why, everything just falls into place. And the other thing that I loved is that you didn't just [00:51:30] like throw a quick fix or like, um, you know, a million dollar gadget at the answer. How did you collate those? Like how, how did that all pan out for you?

[00:51:55] Dr Renee White: Mm-hmm.

[00:51:58] Dr Renee White: Yeah.

[00:52:02] Dr Renee White: Mm.

[00:52:05] Dr Renee White: that old chestnut I feel like we're gonna have to do like a little webinar on the evolutionary biology of human beings.

[00:52:19] Dr Renee White: Mm-hmm.

[00:52:28] Dr Renee White: Mm-hmm.

[00:52:46] Dr Renee White: Mm-hmm.

[00:52:51] Dr Renee White: Yeah. Yeah. I'm, I was, yeah, I was reading through those. I just, I find, like, I read a lot of books, like people send me a lot of books [00:53:00] to read.

[00:53:00] Dr Renee White: And I, I think I just really appreciate, I can see the time and effort that has been put into this book. It is immense and yeah, little sections like that, like as you were saying, like you really know your reader. Like that to me is like a section where people would be like, hold on minute. I saw that the other day. Like, that's exactly where we're at and you know, they might not have time to like digest a complete chapter, but that Q [00:53:30] and A section I think is a really good, quick go to like a, not a prompter, but almost like as you were saying, it's that reassurance of like what you're feeling is okay.

[00:53:42] Dr Renee White: And this is, as you're saying, normal and expected.

[00:53:46] Dr Renee White: And, and like this is just the phase that we're currently in at the moment.

[00:53:54] Dr Renee White: Yes oh my god.

[00:54:03] Dr Renee White: Yeah.

[00:54:07] Dr Renee White: Mm-hmm.

[00:54:15] Dr Renee White: Yeah.

[00:54:16] Dr Renee White: Yeah.

[00:54:36] Dr Renee White: Yeah. Agreed.

[00:54:44] Dr Renee White: Mm-hmm.

[00:54:49] Dr Renee White: Yeah.

[00:55:01] Dr Renee White: Mm.

[00:55:17] Dr Renee White: Mm-hmm.

[00:55:22] Dr Renee White: Yes, I was

[00:55:23] Dr Renee White: That was gonna be my question. Like, this is not just like, in an ideal world, like I would be handing this [00:55:30] book to everyone in your inner circle. Um, because I think, and this is the other thing, we, I actually have a lot of, um, grandparents who listen to this podcast and who are part of our, um, you know, community. And I see them, you know, they send me an email or a direct message on Instagram and they're just like, oh my God, thank you so much for talking about this particular topic on the podcast, because now I understand what my daughter is going through, and now I'm gonna be able to action, you know, [00:56:00] X, Y, Z or whatever it is.

[00:56:13] Dr Renee White: Yeah.

[00:56:18] Dr Renee White: Mm.

[00:56:25] Dr Renee White: Yeah.

[00:56:32] Dr Renee White: Okay.

[00:57:08] Dr Renee White: Yep.

[00:57:25] Dr Renee White: Mm-hmm.

[00:57:28] Dr Renee White: Yeah.

[00:57:35] Dr Renee White: Right.

[00:57:41] Dr Renee White: Wow. I did not know that.

[00:57:44] Dr Renee White: that's very interesting.

[00:57:48] Dr Renee White: Mm.

[00:58:02] Dr Renee White: Mm-hmm.

[00:58:05] Dr Renee White: Yeah.

[00:58:16] Dr Renee White: Mm-hmm.

[00:58:30] Dr Renee White: Mm.

[00:58:31] Dr Renee White: Yes. Yeah. We've had, um, um, on the podcast before, talk about her experience, um, with psychosis.

[00:58:39] Dr Renee White: And she's actually, you know, her role is in the mental health kind of, or uh, no, it was Siobhan. Oh God. What her, she's got a double barrel name Kennedy-Costantini and it was, it was fascinating to hear like her, her account of it.

[00:58:59] Dr Renee White: As [00:59:00] well. Like she wa it, she was just like, it was such an out of body experience for me. She's like, I could see myself, you know, making decisions and thinking about things and doing things and she was just like, it was e extraordinary. Never been through anything like that before in their lives.

[00:59:22] Dr Renee White: Yeah.

[00:59:55] Dr Renee White: Yeah.

[01:00:01] Dr Renee White: Mm-hmm.

[01:00:07] Dr Renee White: I knew we were gonna run out of time before topics, Jodi, but I do wanna dive in quickly to our rapid fire, if you will indulge me in that.

[01:00:15] Dr Renee White: Okay. Are you ready?

[01:00:16] Dr Renee White: First question, what is your top tip for mums?

[01:00:22] Dr Renee White: I know everyone's just like, Renee, why? Why would you do this to me?

[01:00:33] Dr Renee White: Yeah.

[01:00:40] Dr Renee White: Yeah.

[01:00:48] Dr Renee White: Mm-hmm.

[01:00:52] Dr Renee White: Agreed. A hundred percent. What's your o, obviously apart from this book, and I always like to like maybe step back [01:01:00] into your own personal experience, did you have a go-to resource, you know, throughout your motherhood and it could be like a book or a poem or you know, a piece of art or a workshop it could be anything. Was there something that you kind of really gravitated to?

[01:01:21] Dr Renee White: Mm-hmm.

[01:01:47] Dr Renee White: Mm-hmm.

[01:01:52] Jodi Wilson: So Clare Bowditch was in there and Holly Throsby and they just spoke about the challenge of being a [01:02:00] creative person and a mother.

[01:02:02] Jodi Wilson: And it's something that I've lived with my whole motherhood life because I am a writer and, and trying to etch out my own writer self while also mothering has been a journey in itself, I think and often very challenging. And I think, you know, postpartum is an innately creative season of life.

[01:02:22] Jodi Wilson: And yet you do not have the time or the capacity to really delve into that. But I would say to mothers, don't [01:02:30] underestimate the notes that you can take in a five minute period or the beautiful foundations of projects that are just being planted and are kind of growing in your mind as your mother.

[01:02:56] Jodi Wilson: Mm-hmm.

[01:03:35] Jodi Wilson: it's because your values change.

[01:04:11] Jodi Wilson: Mm.

[01:04:21] Jodi Wilson: Wait for the philanthropist to come along.

[01:04:33] Jodi Wilson: I keep a lot of books, so I'm a big reader. I have a alarm clock that's just, just a cheap one that does not require my phone. So my phone does not come into the bedroom.

[01:04:48] Jodi Wilson: I sleep much better as a result.

[01:04:51] Jodi Wilson: And I've got an oil that I rub into my neck at night, which is rose and frankincense.

[01:04:57] Jodi Wilson: Um, just for calming and [01:05:00] moisturiser and a bit of jewelry.

[01:05:33] Jodi Wilson: you can call it that. That's fine. That's a great sales technique.

[01:05:38] Jodi Wilson: I hope it is. I hope it, I hope that when a new parent opens it up, they feel really seen.

[01:05:44] Jodi Wilson: And um, and I think that's what all new parents need is just someone to reassure them with information and that's kind and gentle and says, I see you and here are your [01:06:00] options.

[01:06:01] Jodi Wilson: And I know it's hard that you have to make a decision about this, but this is your family and that's part of Parenthood.

[01:06:07] Jodi Wilson: Um, and yeah, I, I hope that, I hope that it reaches the parents that need it most.

[01:06:29] Jodi Wilson: It's [01:06:30] publishing July 1st in Australia, July 3rd in the uk, July 6th in the US

[01:06:36] Jodi Wilson: And you can get it from all good bookstores, but, um, I'll share a link with you so you can share that with your listeners. But yeah,

[01:06:44] Jodi Wilson: I'm proud of it and I, I do hope it, it fills the massive gap that does exist for New Parenthood.

[01:06:54] Jodi Wilson: Thanks, Renee.

[01:07:14] Dr Renee White: You've just listened to another episode of The Science of Motherhood proudly presented by Fill Your Cup, Australia's first doula village. Head to our website, ifillyourcup.com to learn more about our birth and postpartum [01:07:30] doula offerings, where every mother we pledge to be the steady hand that guides you back to yourself, ensuring you feel nurtured, informed, and empowered, so you can fully embrace the joy of motherhood with confidence. Until next time, bye.