We’re mixing things up this week with a special podcast take-over. Dr. Renee White steps into the guest seat in a heartfelt episode originally recorded for the Not Another Onesie miniseries. This conversation is one every mum needs to hear.

Renee joins Louise and Elisha, the co-founders of Not Another Onesie, for an honest and deeply personal chat about matrescence, identity shifts, and what really happens when you become a mother. Together, they explore the science behind the emotional and psychological changes, along with real-life insights from Renee’s own journey and the many women she supports through her doula work.

Whether you’re a first-time mum, navigating your second or third baby, or supporting someone through early motherhood, this episode is full of compassionate reminders and practical support.

You’ll hear about:

• What matrescence actually means and why we don’t talk about it enough
• The brain and body changes that come with motherhood
• Letting go of control and how to cope with the mental load
• Why asking for help is a skill worth practising early
• Ways to reconnect with your identity and integrate self-care

This episode is your gentle reminder that change is normal, support is essential, and you’re doing better than you think.

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!

📘 Download the FREE Quickie Guide – Over 30 pages of practical tips, mindset tools and postpartum recipes to help you prepare for life with a newborn. Grab your copy here

🌐 Want to learn more about Not Another Onesie? Click here

📲 Follow Not Another Onesie on Instagram – @notanotheronesie_

🎧 Loved this episode? Send it to a fellow mum or someone in your village who needs to hear it. And if you haven’t already, hit subscribe and leave a review to help more mums find these supportive, down-to-earth conversations.

Because your identity matters. Your feelings are valid. And you're not meant to do this alone. 💛

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.

Dr Renee White: I'm Dr. Renee White, and this is The Science of Motherhood. Hello and welcome to episode 171 of The Science of Motherhood. I am your host, Dr. Renee White. Thanks so much for joining me today. This is something new that we are doing on today's podcast. It's a bit of a podcast takeover now, I was interviewed last year by the gorgeous ladies from Not Another Onesie, and it was part of their [00:01:00] miniseries that they've got going.

Dr Renee White: And I was invited to come on and talk about matrescence and changes in self-identity and I guess, you know I'm always, I'm gonna talk about my personal experience and I'm also gonna weave in a lot of science behind it as well as what I have learned along the way personally and professionally. And, um, it was a fantastic chat and I said to the ladies at the end, you know.

Dr Renee White: I, I really get the opportunity to sit on the other side of the microphone and I thought, you know what? I think this would be really valuable listen for our Science of motherhood listeners as well. So we're doing a bit of a cross collaboration here, which, you know, I'm all about supporting other mums in business.

Dr Renee White: We have got a fantastic guide on our website, which is called our Quickie Guide. It's over 30 pages of what I like to call motherhood goodness. Um, essentially it's gonna springboard you into topics like how to keep your sanity when you're having a really rough day. It's got how to transition your toddlers with the new arrival of a bubby, how to prepare for a successful feeding [00:03:00] journey.

Dr Renee White: Alright, without further ado, here is my interview with the lovely ladies at not another onesie.

Louise: We would like to respectfully acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land as well as the Guringai people, and we'd like to pay our respects to elders past, present, and emerging. Hi, I am Louise.

Elisha: And I'm Elisha.

Louise: And we're the co-founders of Not Another Onesie, a carefully curated directory of mother focused care professionals.

Elisha: We have gathered your village so that you don't need to,

Louise: and we are delighted to introduce our new miniseries of conversations with experts from our village.

Elisha: It's through these conversations that we can really explore the unspoken truths of modern motherhood.

Dr Renee White: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.

Louise: Delighted.

Elisha: Is there anything crucial we left out of that?

Dr Renee White: No, that was great. It's always weird to hear my bio. I don't know. I get like really like all ooh.

Dr Renee White: Uh, it's a great question. I think we probably have to pair it right back to, why does it happen? I, as a scientist, I kind of always go back to the why. Uh, 'cause I find when I talk to mums about this incoming transition and shift in their identity, when we talk about the why, everything kind of just falls into place right? And when we talk about the shift in identity, I think the core of that comes from the word matrescencece which I think is probably our theme for today, and people listening may or may not have heard what the word matrescence is, what it what it means. I recently did a workshop for postpartum planning and I had a whole bunch of couples there and I said, has anyone heard of the word matrescence?

Dr Renee White: Now, to go back to your kind of question of what is this shift in identity that mothers see, I think. One of the things that we are discovering now is those unique physical changes that happen to a woman right from the very beginning. So, at the mument of conception, your brain starts to remodel, and a lot of people don't realise this at all. And it [00:09:00] is this beautiful kind of neuroplasticity we call it. So neuro being brain plasticity, you know, moldable and things like that. And what happens is during that remodeling we know that our gray matter actually shrinks, which sounds alarming everyone. Everyone calm down. It's okay. It shrinks alarming it, it does shrink, but what's actually happening is there's this remodeling and what we like to call, I call leveling up and fine tuning of maternal circuitry. That's the kind of term that the neuroscientists have have called it. And what happens in this process of neuroplasticity is that we see improvements in things like memory, emotional intelligence, you know, which result in behaviors where mothers can be more flexible.

Dr Renee White: It's responsible for that fogginess that we feel it's responsible for, like that horrible phrase that we hear baby brain, which, you know, we can throw that in the bin, I'm not interested in that, but that's, that's what it comes from. But it's a, it's a, it's a very unusual feeling that we feel. But this, I guess from a biological perspective, this is the fundamental cause of the feeling and sense of change that mothers experience where you know, their sense of self, has become something very, very different and it starts to feel, I felt it personally, I felt like I was having like this kind of outta body experience and I remember checking in with my psychologist at the time and I was like, oh gosh, [00:12:00] I don't, I don't feel like myself anymore. Something's changed and I don't like it. And I actually thought I had, um, postnatal depression or anxiety. I did have anxiety. I didn't have the depression part, but it was this sense of like, things were shifting. I actually heard a really good term for it the other day, feeling untethered, feel untethered, 'cause you're just like, and you need an anchor in that mument and that's kind of essentially what you want your um, village to be, that anchor, with that untethering mument

Louise: That actually encapsulates motherhood quite succinctly, doesn't it really? Yeah. That sort of, and that that is a massive shift for many women from what their lives were like previously, you know?

Louise: I think this whole idea of reevaluating everything mm-hmm. Is, is really true. Be it your career, your friendships, your kind of lifestyle purpose, really. Yeah. Almost to some extent. Yeah. So, yeah, that's a huge transition.

Dr Renee White: I think, and I was just talking to someone recently about this. I think for a lot of people who are deeply independent and you know, A-type personalities like myself, it is, it's a very strange experience to go through because through this change in self identity, what happens also, you know, as I said, you get, the neuroplasticity, some other qualities include leveling up on like bonding and attachment. And so for people who have gone from deeply, deeply independent, I only need to worry about myself. And obviously you know your partners and friends around you, but you are deeply independent. And then due to these you know, physiological and neurological [00:15:00] changes, you are no longer independent, you can't just walk out the door. You know you've got this beautiful little baby who is a hundred percent reliant on you to survive that is, that can be quite a challenge for people to grasp that and to like really accept that.

Louise: I remember certainly with my first born, it was making that, that mental shift mm to or that realisation too, even just a few days in to having a newborn, to having a baby for the first time.

Dr Renee White: Yeah.

Louise: That, that huge understanding that it's it, it really did feel like it's all on you.

Elisha: Shower, the toilet. All the simple things you take for granted in a day.

Dr Renee White: Exactly. And you don't know what kind of baby you're gonna have as well. I think that that's something that's like really hard to grapple. You know? I recall having a conversation with a friend who had two kids, she was a nurse you know, and I said to her, I really wanna call you over the weekend because I want to go through all the things that I think I need before I have my baby and you know, I was that crazy woman with her Excel spreadsheet, with the whole list of like, everything a baby could possibly want. And, you know, I said, okay, alright I've got my computer open, let's go through it, and, and she, she just said to me, hold on. Can we just hold on? Let's just have a conversation first.

Dr Renee White: And I was like, what does that mean? I was like, what do you mean? Like, I'm. I dunno if you're gonna have a carrier baby. She's like, well, you know, it might have for my first, she just, you know, didn't really care for the carrier, screamed the entire time, but was totally chill in the pram. Whereas second baby was like a barnacle baby didn't wanna be outta the carrier, screamed if I put him down, all of those things and it blew my mind 'cause I was like. Oh my God and for someone who needs to be in control, A-type personality, that's a big pill to swallow, right?

Dr Renee White: Yeah, absolutely.

Louise: The standards of your previous life and changing them and reshaping them to, according to what you know, your new levels of productivity look like. And I. That's, yeah. Completely different.

Louise: So on that note, what aspects do you wish were more widely shared and spoken about With regards to mm-hmm. Um, so that women can actually feel more prepared and, and more kind of at peace with, I guess, the transition that they, they make.

Dr Renee White: And I think if we can have more and more conversations about it, the better because mothers need to understand that this is a really normal [00:21:00] process and it's really normal to feel untethered. It doesn't feel great, but it's really normal to feel untethered. It's really normal to feel foggy and different, and to have that out of body experience, but also that you, you don't need to know it all. You know, like as a mum, we're stepping into this journey and we're discovering who we are ourselves, as well as taking care of our babies, but I would, I would really highly encourage people to talk about it, not only amongst your friends, but like talk about it with your partner. You know, Lucy Jones wrote an amazing book, which is all about matrescence, and she's interwoven her own personal experience, but also she's interviewed researchers along the way and honestly, I recommend all of my families, like mums, dads, you know, supporting [00:22:00] people to read that book because it gives you this beautiful insight into all the changes and so when you get to that point, you're like, oh yeah, that's what's happening to me right now.

Elisha: There's something wrong with you or that you're broken, right? It just, this is, this is what it is in all it's shapes and forms, it's normal process.

Dr Renee White: Because motherhood is really difficult to do by yourself, like we think I thought I could do it all by myself. It's really challenging, like it's really, really challenging and we weren't wired to do it by ourselves, I think that's the other thing that we need to acknowledge, and we saw that time and time again through Covid here in Australia we put mums in isolation. And what happened? The wheels fell off, you know, for so many people. So I think on that point, it's something that I always encourage our families to think about is [00:24:00] learning how to ask for help. Totally. It's a hard one to do, right? It's, it's just so, so difficult for some people. So what I suggest is, start flexing that muscle, I always talk about flexing the muscles. It's like as well.

Elisha: Yeah. You start all little steps feel more comfortable. Yeah. And I have to confess it's, I'm learning as I'm, as I'm helping others do that, I'm learning. Yeah. Do that myself. It's not, it's not easy, but it's it, it's not needs we, we need to change that whole mental shift around why can't we ask for support? Why can't we ask for help and change? It's essential.

Elisha: Yeah, actually, I think I, I read something by Brene Brown where it was, I can't remember the exact quote, but she was saying how we tend to pride ourselves on our self-sufficiency. There's a sense of self-sufficiency equals success or equals. We're proud of the fact we can be. But to break that down, it's actually in order to connect with people, in order to have vulnerability and actual connection, which is a skill, uh, which is a, a something that we need, it's a survival skill, is you have to be able to connect. You have to be able to ask for help. It's, they go together, although

Dr Renee White: absolutely,

Elisha: Wants the connection, but we're not willing to ask for help.

Dr Renee White: And like there's method to the madness because there's a particular page and I always ask our families to pop it on the fridge and on it is a little section about the mental load of running the house and we do like a traffic light system where it's like essential, preferable, or like don't really care. And so what we find though is that when they've written down the essential items that need to get done on a daily or a weekly or whatever it [00:27:00] is, we find that when friends and family come into the house, they always have a little sticky beak on the fridge and so when they see those essential items. They actually start to do them without being asked when they come and visit in the house. And I, and the point of that is, is that if you start to display the behavior, if you start to ask for help, I. You see this beautiful ripple effect and other people are like, they feel, they're like, oh, okay. It's okay to ask for help, so I'm gonna do that, or I'm gonna be generous and I'm going to like, you know, start to implement those essential items.

Elisha: Yeah. Rather than resisting.

Dr Renee White: Yeah.

Louise: I read something recently that Zoe Blaske had had written and it was, um, no one enjoys every minute. Try to lock in the good moments and let the hard ones go. And I think, I think that's a really important point we speak of you know, motherhood is kind of beautifully chaotic. It's perfectly imperfect, whichever way you want to cut it, but I think it's just about understanding the highs, the lows, and everything in between and, and just embracing that as much as you can.

Dr Renee White: Hmm. I'm so glad that you, I could see the cogs moving you, you, you're like, actually she's not going back to the person she was before. It's this whole new identity. Yeah, it's true. I look, I've had those exact conversations 'cause I'm like, uh, hold on a minute you're not going back to your different, your, you know your initial self, you're like rediscovering this new person. My number one piece of advice is always self-care. Yeah. Because when you integrate self-care within your daily activities, you have that time for reflection and Self-awareness and that is when you can actually truly discover this new person that you have become. Um, so I think from like an emotional kind of perspective, there's that, but we also have the [00:30:00] psychological benefits of it. And they've done a research study where they followed mums in the first kind of six months postpartum, and they showed that the mums who took 30 minutes of self-care per week with three times less likely to develop postnatal depressive symptoms

Louise: 30 minutes per week.

Dr Renee White: I think it's really important that you try and integrate something for yourself per day. But I will put a caveat in that, in that I know there's a lot of people who are gonna be sitting there going, yeah, right renee, like, how can I possibly do that? I [00:32:00] am absolutely exhausted. I don't have help whatever it is, it comes back to having a conversation. With your partner, your support person, your neighbor, whoever it is, and saying, Hey, I would really like to be able to sit in the garden for 10 minutes, or go for a walk for 10 minutes, or have a nap for 10 minutes. Do you think you'd be able to look after my baby? You know, you need to be able to schedule the timing and be really intentional and clear with what your expectations are, 2:00 PM tomorrow I wanna do X, Y, Z. Can you make that happen for me?

Dr Renee White: Yeah. Protecting your boundaries is like is a whole, is a whole conversation we have in postpartum planning and we're often or not, like I, I joke in it like we have to have a bit of humor, but like, I literally sit there with couples and I go, um, I'm just gonna give this to you now [00:34:00] here is your permission and here is your permission to say no to someone, even if you have planned something two weeks in advance, it's the morning of and you're so excited, but you are absolutely exhausted. Like you have been up all night and you're finally getting like a couple of hours to have a nap, but you know that person's on their way. I was like, here is your permission to tell them I'm really sorry, but we're gonna have to rain check. Yeah. Because like it's not the end of the world. Like they'll come back another time. It's okay to say we're just not good today.

Elisha: You know? Yeah.

Dr Renee White: It's alright.

Elisha: Yeah. I think that permission. Is important. I think if I had have had that when I was. In my early stages of postpartum, if somebody had have actually said that to me, if I'd ever heard those words, I felt relieved.

Dr Renee White: I know, wouldn't we all? God.

Elisha: Definitely. And I think the only way we can see these changes take place is by conversations, conversations going out into the ripple effect of, you know, wherever they go and hopefully just more and more of these conversations will actually make changes. So thank you for being part.

Dr Renee White: My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me.

Dr Renee White: If you loved this episode, please hit the subscribe button and leave a review. If you know someone out there who would also love to listen to this episode, please hit the share button so they can benefit from it as well.

Dr Renee White: Until next time. Bye.