Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: Making Motherhood’s Invisible Care Visible

0:00Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: What do you recommend mothers stop doing? Whatever you do, someone's going to judge you negatively for it. Have authenticity in your own parenting.

0:10Simona: Today I'm joined by Laura Godfrey-Isaacs, an artist, writer, midwife and the founder of The Maternal Journal.

0:17Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: A lot of our guides are very quick and easy to do. The journaling has really hit the spot.

0:23Simona: It can be a very, very revealing exercise actually. She created a global movement using writing, drawing and creative practice to help women through pregnancy and parentage.

0:34Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: Rituals are a way of signaling in a way this is a really, there's something really important here. Women should be given far more choice of how they want to birth. We know from research that makes a huge amount of difference to people's experiences and their outcomes. To have a space where it's acceptable and it's OK to express those things.

0:55Simona: welcome to do not disturb the inside story where we talk honestly about work motherhood identity in the parts of women's lives that are often left out of the official story i think it's important

1:06Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: because the way that mothering particularly is depicted culturally is that we should be these perfect mothers we should be we should be striving to have this ideal that we never feel negative about our children. We never shout at anybody. We never, we are these beatific mothers. That's completely unrealistic, you know, that's denying our humanity. That's denying the really tough job of mothering, particularly in our society, as we've been outlining. So I think to have a space where it's acceptable and it's okay to express those things and for other people to go, yeah, I feel the same, to have that normalized is actually, I think, really important.

1:46Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: So Laura, welcome to Do Not Disturb. Thank you.

1:50Simona: It's so nice to have you here. Thank you for making the time. It's my pleasure. I think you are a phenomenal woman and you have a very interesting career path and a very interesting life. And just before we dive in, do you mind giving a quick intro to yourself? Yeah, sure.

2:11Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: Sure. Well, thank you for describing my life as interesting. That's always very nice. Well, as you suggested, I've had a bit of a, you know, meandering path professionally and personally, I guess, always the personal and professional kind of, I think, go along together on our pathway through life. So I was originally trained as an artist and worked as a visual artist and an academic. And then I shifted into producing, creative producing. So I set up and ran a arts company that was originally based in my house. So I use my house for performances and events. And then it kind of moved out of the house.

2:57Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: But it took a lot of those values with it of the domestic. So it was called Home Live Arts, still running. And so I was doing lots of projects then around community participation in traditional art spaces. And then I shifted even further into health care and I trained to be a midwife and I've been in midwifery now for 14 years. And I think that I thought I was leaving the arts practice behind, but I can't really disconnect it from myself. So this project Maternal Journal, which I think we're going to be talking about, kind of surfaced really through the training in health care, because I really felt that a lot of the kind of creative strategies I've been using previously could work so well with this population of mothers, people who are, you know, going on that journey of parenting.

3:52Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: So that led me into coming back to creative producing within the healthcare sector and various other roles that I've explored in healthcare. And I've also kind of come back to my own practice as well now. So I'm writing. I created a graphic guide to pregnancy and birth last year with a cartoonist. And I'm working on my own graphic memoir at the moment. So I've come quite full circle, really, with everything, which is actually really nice. I feel like I'm flexing lots of my skills and experience now these days.

4:27Simona: That's very good for you to look fully to what you have inside you and to really use it in real life. Not a lot of us get to do that. That sounds really great in a nutshell, but I want to deep dive in each part of those. So why midwifery? That's not a very usual decision for someone in arts. Where did that come from?

4:49Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: Well, as I was briefly describing my kind of creative or arts based practice up to that point, I'd always very much centered on female experience. So within my own practice as an artist, I was a painter. A lot of my work was to do with the female body and how that is depicted in art. And that is not just a sort of consideration around how women's bodies are depicted or described in art. It's also to do with, you know, why are they depicted in certain ways? What's the history of how they've been depicted? What's a woman's role as an artist in that history? So I think my concerns had right from the beginning been a lot to do with women's experience.

5:34Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: And then through my kind of creative producing, I'd also worked a lot with women's groups and using art as a kind of empowering practice. So I think when I was looking to, you know, make a shift, I really thought I wanted to keep that thread going. And I think really being a midwife, I feel is like the most kind of feminist practice that you can do. It's working with women. This is a really key moment in their lives. You can make, I think, a lot of difference in women's lives in this way. it's very hands-on you know it's not to do with theory and it's not to do with culture in in institutions and spaces it's absolutely kind of on the coalface if you like with people and also I was a mother at that time so I had when I when I trained retrained I had my my two daughters my youngest was 10 my oldest was 17 and so I'd been through a lot of mothering experiences myself, which I felt I could draw on.

6:39Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: And it almost felt like I was in a grandmotherly role as a midwife. So wanting to really support that younger generation of women coming into their matrescence, you know, their transition into motherhood.

6:54Simona: That is very beautiful. I didn't have a midwife in my recent birth, but in my first birth, I had a midwife and she definitely made a huge difference, not just to the birth, but to the bond was my child and everything. I'm really glad to hear that. I think our birth impacts a lot. Also early stages of motherhood. When you say image of a woman and art and history of a woman, can you give some examples to those? I think that's very interesting.

7:21Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: You mean in terms of in art? You're talking about the depiction of women in art? Yeah, yeah. Well, really in the history of art, women have been seen as the subjects. So traditionally, most art was practiced by men. That was harder and harder, very hard for women to practice until still, I'd say, relatively recently in the 20th century. And so I think the cultural representations of women were predominantly by men and they were seen as the subject. And I guess the sort of erotic sexual aspect of the nude, for example. so women were not often depicted in ways other than being this kind of object of desire and this subject and so looking at feminist art from the 60s onwards you can see the shift there where women started to depict their own experience their own bodies in lots and lots of different ways and that was a tradition that I guess I was part of particularly in the 90s when I was active as a painter, particularly in the, I guess, a feminist movement of art.

8:31Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: So that's what I was interested in at the time. And I still have a big interest in that. My work at the moment, the graphic memoir I'm working on, is also looking at how women's bodies can be depicted over the life course, really.

8:43Simona: And you also, with The Cartoonist, the book that you did, is it about bodies after C-section? Am I right?

8:51Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: So the book that we produced last year, I worked with a cartoonist called Lily Williams and we produced a graphic guide to pregnancy and birth. And that is basically like a pregnancy guide. So you might buy, you know, different books to help you understand what's happening to your body, what to anticipate, different aspects of that experience, what to expect with birth, the postnatal period. So we produced basically a graphic guide. I can show you if you want later in the podcast. But what it does is it tries to make all that information much more accessible, more fun to engage with because there's lots of images by Lily and the text is quite reduced.

9:31Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: It's quite condensed, although it's still very comprehensive. So instead of having this kind of huge tome that often people produce pregnancy guides, it's much easier to read and more fun to engage with. So I'm really interested in a kind of health communication. communication. Such as what?

9:48Simona: Could you give us some more examples? Because a lot of my friends are starting to have children now. I have an 11 year old, so I am ahead of my friends, a group, and they come to me like with questions that they cannot find in normal literature. Also our listeners, they're like, what is happening to me? So there is a lot of information about the baby. There is not so much information about the mom still, which is kind of surprising. Outside of being a vessel of a baby.

10:17Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: Yeah, for sure. What we try to do with the book is also try to give people an understanding of the sort of maternity service that they're moving into. I think often people are not prepared for that. So they come to that first meeting with the midwife and they face lots and lots of questions about their background, their medical history, their social circumstances. because for us as midwives, we're trying to get a picture of who they are and what vulnerabilities there might be or what medical issues there might be, how best to support them. And that I think is, it might be the first time that a woman has had that level of, in a way, inquiry about themselves in that framework.

11:00Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: And we also have responsibilities, you know, safeguarding responsibilities towards her and unborn babies. So what we try to do in the book is try to explain the whole system, what's happening, the sort of language that's being used, the history of midwifery, a little bit about the history of obstetrics as well. And then all these are the people you might get to meet. This is the kind of questions, this is the sort of journey that you're going to go on. So I think that's really important so that what we're trying to do is equipped people with knowledge and power so that as they navigate through that system, they go with the most sort of intention.

11:42Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: They go with the most power to make the decisions that are right for them along the way. That's basically the intention of the book.

11:52Simona: And let's say in a pregnancy without any complications, with mum and a baby being healthy, of course, not taking any outlier situations. what kind of knowledge if you could give I don't know three main things if you could pick on them to help women have the most successful or enjoyable birth or easy birth I mean I think it's the

12:14Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: understanding the degree of change that's happening so there's a lot of physical changes so trying to explain all the physical changes that are happening you know even your cardiovascular system your heart increases in size the amount of the volume of blood in your system increases you know you're creating not just the baby but the placenta is a whole new organ so it's trying to explain what's happening to your body and also the hormonal changes and what's happening as this baby develops but then as I say explaining the system in which you are now sort of funneled through if you like and how to navigate that and to try to ensure people understand that they have the power here, even though they are in a system that nothing can be and should be done to them without their explicit consent.

13:04Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: But in order to give consent, you need to know what you're consenting to. So it's all the explaining the different things that might happen in birth, the physiology of birth, explaining how that works, what to expect, not to sugarcoat it, you know, not to say, oh, you can just breathe your baby out. Well, it's not going to be any difficulty there because I think that's not generally people's experience. So being true and honest about, you know, the challenges of pregnancy and the challenges of birth and the challenges of that first postnatal period where you're recovering and you're trying to, you know, connect with your baby or maybe breastfeeding.

13:44Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: These are all big challenges. So, yeah, just trying to equip people with information and empowering them to make the right decisions for themselves. And do you think it's more challenging now than before or it's the same? I mean, it's interesting because I often reflect back on my first birth. So my oldest daughter was born in 1996. and I question sometimes whether I would have had the birth that I had now then now if you mean so yeah that first birth was was actually a very positive very positive experience it wasn't without pain and you know difficulty and a lot of energy and you know exertion but I managed to, you know, push her out myself.

14:37Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: I was squatting. My husband was supporting me from behind. I didn't have any intervention. And afterwards, I felt amazing. I felt like the most powerful I'd ever felt in my life. And I connected with my baby. And I mean, breastfeeding was difficult. My nipples were bleeding afterwards. You know, like I'm saying, I'm not saying it was all roses around the door. It was a tough experience because it is a tough experience. But it was the sort of birth that I wanted to have. And I would, you know, I would hope that other people could still achieve because I felt so great afterwards. And I felt very proud of myself.

15:17Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: And that really sets you up.

15:19Simona: Yeah, I had a terrible experience. I'm sorry to hear that. And it was really, it was lots of intervenants. I have a solo episode about it. I can cry talking about it because it was not what I wanted. Well, I'm really sorry to hear that.

15:34Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: And I've obviously heard many, many stories. The minute you say you're a midwife, you tend to get people's birth stories and they're generally not what you'd want to have happened for them. My first one was in a birth center and it was a very positive.

15:49Simona: I don't like a word pain. I use a powerful experience because I can't say it was painful. Yeah. It was strong. it was a lot of things going on but it was not painful not like somebody punched me painful that's clear pain and it was just very powerful yeah but it was a positive experience yeah and so what did you notice as midwife when how do different women cope with these emotions and how you can help them and what then led to your journal kind of um i mean a little bubble yeah

16:25Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, starting Maternal Journal was really the motivation for that really was around women's mental health and well-being. And I started to notice I work predominantly as a community midwife now. So I do all the prenatal care, you know, all the pregnancy care and I do all the postnatal care. I don't actually do the deliveries anymore. I don't do the birth work anymore in the middle. but what I started to notice particularly when you know I was describing that first meeting with a midwife where you go in quite deep to people's history and inevitably obviously we ask about mental health history have you had any mental health issues and I notice so many women and often you know very young women will be talking about having had mental health struggles for example in their 20s and they might still you know be experiencing that and having various forms of treatment either private or not or they may have experienced an eating disorder OCD or self-harm so but those some of the women fitted in a category of how we define it as mild to moderate mental health issues so predominantly anxiety and depression but I felt that there wasn't very much I could do as a midwife they were below the threshold for me to refer them to you know perinatal mental health services.

17:51Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: I had a short appointment, so it was quite limited what I could do. And I was looking around for things that I could refer them to, or I could signpost them to. And so that's the population of women that we initially concentrated on for Maternal Journal. From my background in the arts, as I was saying, I feel that art can be this very empowering experience, can also be something that builds community. There's lots and lots of research that shows the benefits of creative activities for your mental health and well-being. So even now we use what's called social prescribing. So we often prescribe the GP, you know, the doctor will prescribe people arts, courses or things like that for their well-being.

18:36Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: So we know that evidence exists. So that's what I started to feel that there's such a crisis of mental health problems for birthing women and through the perinatal period and beyond. um that journaling could be a way of helping that or providing a space for people to come together and explore their their experiences and gain community and connection with others do you do

19:02Simona: you think all women should be doing that because obviously once you have births you're in a little bit of a firefighting situation figuring it all out at the same time and then you have a health visitor and then in six weeks the doctor is like mostly looking at your vagina if it's okay and it's like are you okay yeah I'm okay I'm not gonna go and tell your whole life story at six weeks appointment and and you're just left yeah to yourself to deal with anything that you might

19:34Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: be doing so yeah there's lots of issues there I mean I think the other thing that I very much notice particularly visiting people in their homes postnatally is that people are often quite socially isolated as new parents for lots of reasons they might feel they've left their old life behind they had lots of colleagues or friends at work and now they're not working and they feel disconnected they might be the first person as you were suggesting in their their friendship group for having a child so they don't have other friends that have got young children or they might and they very often are living far away from their family for example or just the way they were socializing connecting before now just isn't possible or compatible with this shift in their life so I think new parents often feel very socially isolated and that's a real risk factor for mental health disorders and distress so that's another big issue so I think coming together in a group with other mothers who are going through at the same stage as you as I say can help you build that community that connection with others that hopefully has ramifications beyond the group but also the journal itself provides you a space in which you can really have this dialogue with yourself it's this regular practice so you can be and it's a book it's a lot of our guides are very quick and easy to do five minutes ten minutes or you can develop just your own practice of journaling.

21:05Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: And so you can be checking in with yourself, you can be having the benefits of that on a regular basis, you don't need lots of space, you don't need lots of time, you don't need expensive materials, it's a very realistic kind of practice. So I think for lots of reasons, the journaling has really kind of hit the spot, it's really kind of provided a space for people. And journaling is something you can do throughout your life. It's often something we do at particular like going through adolescence people often keep a diary or a journal that's another time of great change and I would say here we are in matrescence this other very big moment of change but nevertheless you can keep that journaling going throughout your life.

21:47Simona: And what if in the journal a woman acknowledges that she's actually not connecting with the baby or not enjoying motherhood or is not coping well or cannot manage all the things at the home. It's a lot. Suddenly, it's a lot of household management. What does she do then?

22:05Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: Well, I think one of the things we really try to set up with Maternal Journal, because it generally operates as a group, is that we try to create, you know, a bit of a cliche, but a safe space in which people should be free to be able to express some of those negative thoughts. And they're often quite taboo. But I would suggest we all have them at one stage or another to one degree or another. And it's OK to voice that you are maybe not enjoying your mothering at that point or you're not even feeling positive about your child at some point. I mean, that's that's real, you know, and I think it's important because the way that mothering particularly is depicted culturally is that we should be these perfect mothers.

22:52Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: we should be striving to have this ideal that we never feel negative about our children. We never shout at anybody. We are these beatific mothers. That's completely unrealistic. That's denying our humanity. That's denying the really tough job of mothering, particularly in our society, as we've been outlining. So I think to have a space where it's acceptable and it's OK to express those things and for other people to go, yeah, I feel the same, to have that normalized is actually, I think, really important.

23:26Simona: Yeah. I mean, you know, being a mother, being a parent is challenging

23:31Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: along the way at many points. You know, it's challenging at the beginning. You know, it's challenging having teenage children. I've got grown-up children. It's challenging having grown-up children at times. You know, it's never an easy ride.

23:47Simona: it takes a lot of self-reflection maybe we should do one for a maternal journal for adult children

23:54Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: yeah i mean people we have maternal journal groups run in the community where they're quite mixed groups and there are people there with older children even grandparents because that's challenging as well that transition to being a grand a grandmother and how do you relate to your grandchildren how do you relate to your children that are now parents you know it's it's it's always challenging. It's but it's always got the it's got the highs and the lows always. It's a real roller coaster.

24:22Simona: I am 11 months postpartum and I'm still breastfeeding at the moment. So I have a lot of time where I'm hostage to my baby, as I call it. If I were to do an exercise from the maternal journal, could you tell me one so we can leave it with our audience and And maybe our listeners can do one as well.

24:42Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: I mean, an exercise that I really love and I use it for the training that I do. But anyway, the exercise I use there is My Amazing Hands. And this is a really nice, easy exercise, but it can be very revealing. So you just put down your hand, your non-dominant hand, and you draw around it. And then you take a few minutes to write inside this drawing of the hand, all the things that your hand has done or will be doing as care for yourself and others. So often if people think about what they did in that morning, because it's quite useful to think about, oh, what have I already done this morning? And that could be a good starting point.

25:23Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: So they write everything they do with their hands inside the hand. And then I ask them to then develop some of the themes that might have come from that outside of the hand. And then to also So they can use colour to decorate around the hand so they can start drawing or use little motifs or things like that. So you end up with these wonderful pictures. And then the discussion afterwards really starts to unpack and people start to understand and see, because it's right there graphically in front of them, all this hair load of mothering. So all the sort of care that they've given, whether it's to a baby or older children, maybe to other people, even to pets sometimes, and all the domestic tasks that they've done with their hands.

26:11Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: And then some of the things that they've done for themselves. And very often people realise, wow, I'm right down the list. You know, I've done very little for myself and look at all the care that I've given to others. And also that it's repetitive. It's like every day there is this kind of round of managing and responding to the care needs of others. But then what tends to happen is people develop this outside of the hand and start becoming more kind of reflective and lyrical with how they're responding. They start to also think more thematically. So they'll think about, yes, some of the maybe domestic stuff they do and that care load, but they also think about the very interpersonal care that they give and the love that they feel and the commitment that they make to their family and their children.

27:05and that you know the hugs and the interaction and then also they might think about their

27:13Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: aspirations what they'd actually like to do maybe more for themselves or so it starts to be this kind of mapping exercise where it starts on this granular detail if you like but then it starts to map this in a more kind of emotion an emotional map of their caring and they start to notice how things link up they start to notice areas that are maybe not getting enough attention and other areas that get a lot of attention so it can be a very very revealing um exercise actually and then some people actually talk about their actual hands and how how important their hands are to them that they touch and they feel with their hands and they take a lot of care on their hands they like to have painted nails and so it also starts to can sometimes go back to their own bodies and this kind of self-care aspect of, you know, literally what we do with our hands.

28:10Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: So yeah, that's an exercise that I use quite a lot. And I think I'd say most of our exercises, we call them journaling guides. They're what I call deceptively simple. So they've been designed to be very easy. People can get straight into it. You don't need to have any particular skills or experience. We need to not worry about making art. We're just doing this exercise. It's a creative prompt um so we're led we lead them through it but at the end it's often quite

28:38Simona: revelatory for them nice and where do you hope women are on that list you said usually women find out that they're quite down the list in the exercise is it possible for them to be on top of that list with children at home and pets and i have two dogs yeah dogs yeah is it sometimes i forget to put my cream on my face. So yeah, it's a big one I'm working on personally. Is it possible for a woman to have yourself really up the list? Is it something you put a boundary on? Like, how do you get yourself higher on that list?

29:14Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: Okay, so I think the first stage is to notice the discrepancy, maybe, which is often what this exercise reveals. And then to for people to think about that and to think where can I insert more of myself or more of my own needs or where can I attend to my own needs more within this scenario. Other people I notice feel often very positive about the care and the love that they give and it makes them feel good. They see, wow, look at everything that I do. Look at the love that pours out of me and that's actually what drives me. That's my value system there. I can see it. I'm living my value system.

29:55Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: So, you know, some people can interpret it as negative and they want to redress the balance and that's fine. And I hope they do. And other people actually feel good about the degree of care and love that they give to their family. And that's what is important to them. So, and it's very individual. And I think that's what's great about these groups is that everybody follows the same exercise, but actually everyone comes up with their own individual response and their own truth. And that can be very important for them. But it's also very interesting for the rest of the group to hear what everybody else's experiences is, because sometimes it's mirroring your own.

30:32Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: And sometimes it's quite different to your own, which can expand your notions and can expand your understanding and maybe point you in a new direction or a different direction to where you're currently heading.

30:42Simona: Yeah, community is a great way to get over it. Do you feel like COVID made us lose a little bit of that?

30:50Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: The interesting thing about COVID for Maternal Journal was we obviously went online like everything else did. And initially, I was quite worried, is the format going to work because it's so interpersonal and the dynamic of the group is so powerful. And that did feel it was about being present and having those little conversations as well after the group's finished and making friendships. But actually it does work online. And I think that for some people it works better. So for some people who have barriers to attending in person, so they might have, you know, mobility issues or they might, you know, have financial barriers to traveling or childcare issues, it actually enables a lot of people to take part in a way that they maybe wouldn't be able to otherwise.

31:39Simona: Do you find some people that don't want to come to a group because I found it, I'm not going to go to NCT classes. That's just like such a mumsy thing to do. I'm not going to put myself in that group. And then I did go and I loved it. And I found my tribe and I found Friends for Life and it's just been so instrumental in just navigating the whole system like you said even NHS system and nurseries and later schools and I still am part of that group so but my initial feeling was like I'm not I'm not doing that like yeah I know what you mean for me

32:19Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: yeah I think I remember when I had small children and going to these mother and baby groups like drumming groups and singing groups and blah blah and of course I wanted my child my children to have that experience but I would not I would often find it was quite negative for me so I'd be sitting on the outskirts with other parents having these rather stilted conversations sometimes it felt like competitive parenting it almost made me feel worse rather than better and I was happy my child was having fun but I wasn't particularly enjoying it um maternal journal is completely different It's focused on the mothers, on the parents.

32:54Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: It's about them. It's very nice having babies and small children in the room as well, because often you get into this communal childcare situation where someone might be finishing something off in a journal. Their child is needing attention. And when they've built up trust in the group, you know, another mother will pick up the child and take them and bounce them up and down. And then that's really helpful and lovely and collegiate. so I think the barriers to attending are more around people's anxiety about whether they're any good at making art and I think this is something we really try to break down is that you're going to be guided through something you don't need any experience or skills we're not going to be you know critiquing your work on that level and I also very strongly we believe and it's a big value of maternal gil that everyone is creative and that often people are dissuaded from exploring their creativity because they're sometimes given negative messages particularly as children so at school they might have been told by a teacher oh you're no good at writing you're no good at drawing and they carry that with them into adulthood and often don't want to take the risk of doing something because they feel shame or they feel they're going to be embarrassed or critiqued.

34:09Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: So we try to really dispense with that. And that's why I think, you know, it's good. It's a journal. It's not an art class. It's about journaling. Journaling as a practice is this much more informal practice. It's where you can be playful, where you can explore different ways. It's mostly a dialogue with yourself, as I said. And so I think that's the main barrier that I've noticed is people's worries about that, which we try to, you know, address very quickly. You know, I think we try to also make it feel like it's a very open and welcoming space. We use very diverse language, diverse imagery of mothers and parents.

34:55Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: So it's not this idolized version. It's not this sort of, you know. Yeah, we're trying to attract a very diverse group and I hope that is working. I think it is.

35:07Simona: A few questions about what you would like to change in the world for mothers. What do you think maternal services should offer in general to mothers that they don't offer at this time?

35:19Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: Well, that's a big question.

35:25Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: I mean, I think really the whole of maternity services needs to be reimagined. and restructured with women and babies at the heart of it. I think that it should be recognised more as this life event, as this rite of passage. And I think women should be given far more choice of how they want to birth, and they should be given far more support to do that. I think if we had continuity of carer for every woman And so they had the same midwife all the way through their pregnancy and birth and postnatal period. We know from research that makes a huge amount of difference to people's experiences and their outcomes.

36:12Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: I think they should have much more support postnatally. There should be much better childcare for people who want to return to work or, you know, have a mixed economy at home. I think you know we as a society should understand far more the importance of pregnancy and birth we should understand how profound it is how it affects women how it affects babies and children how it affects women's lives for the rest of the life course how it affects how families flourish I think if we put if we understood the importance and we put them at the heart of it and we put the money and the infrastructure around them to support them.

36:56Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: We would have so much better outcomes of birth. We'd have so much better outcomes for babies and children. We'd have much stronger families. So yeah, I mean, it's a huge question, but I think I can't really answer it just by tinkering around at the edges with what we already have.

37:14Simona: It has to be completely reimagined. Yeah.

37:18Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: Yeah, I think the minute a woman gets pregnant, the whole of society should be mobilized around her to support her and to make sure she has the best possible pregnancy birth early, you know, for her well-being, for the well-being of her baby, for the well-being of that future family, for the well-being of that child as it goes through. like it's like why do we not understand how important this is you know and I think it's ultimately because we don't value women we don't value babies we don't value children in our society you know it's that's the bottom line and we live in a patriarchy you know yeah and it's

37:59Simona: not I didn't understand until I went through it so yeah I understand how easy it is not to understand yeah and when you don't have children yourself you think well they chose to have kids

38:11Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: so that's their consequence um you know we're all born i think that's the bottom line we have to understand we are all born um so like we all die we don't really value death you know we don't value the importance of having a good death not just for the person who's dying but for the family and everyone else that's around that we don't value that in the same way that we don't value birth yeah yeah i think you know that i think that's an interesting idea because i think that we have we don't have sort of enough birth rituals um currently and i think rituals are a way of signaling in a way this is a really there's something really important here that needs to be marked, that needs to be honoured.

38:58Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: The whole community needs to be involved. So we've made it into a medical procedure almost. You know, it sits within a medical paradigm, whereas actually it shouldn't. There should be maybe an aspect that's in the medical world when things aren't going right or needs attention, but it should be seen more within the kind of life event, ritual, ceremonial, spiritual, life course, you know, rite of passage.

39:28Simona: I love the rite of passage, Trace. I use it a lot.

39:31Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: I think if we understood birth in that way, we would treat it very differently.

39:35Simona: And yeah, how do we get there? Is it by having more conversations like this with our friends? I hope so.

39:43Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: I feel at the moment we're just swamped by these very distressing and difficult maternal maternity reviews where horrific abuse and trauma is being talked about and acknowledged within the system but I don't know if the conversations are really going in a direction which will really address that in the way that we would want it to be addressed as we're discussing I fear what it leads to is actually more medicalization rather than any kind of questions around medicalization for a start. I'm not saying medicalization is the only issue. And also midwifery research is not valued and not acknowledged.

40:29Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: There's loads and loads of midwifery research, for example, around continuity of carer, which is just not being implemented. I can imagine.

40:35Simona: My midwives actually, they changed. I gave birth in the public in NHS unit and my midwives changed luckily to the one I preferred to the actual birth. But midway through the birth, one lady left, new lady arrived. And I was like, whoa, I have a new lady in front of me. Like even that, not even mentioning, you know, prenatal birth and postnatal. It was during the birth that somebody just changed, which can be quiet. I had a very positive question.

41:05Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: But then there are huge workforce issues for midwives where they're not getting breaks and they're, you know, working ridiculous hours, which is not safe for them and not safe for the people they're looking after. So, but that could be, that could be dealt with, but it's not. So in order to have continuative care, a midwife needs to be working in a system that really supports them to do that. but they're not, which is why a lot of midwives don't want to work in those kind of groups because they are abused. Their time is abused. They work ridiculous hours. They become burnt out. When they have family commitments, it becomes impossible.

41:45Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: But that could be sorted out. That could be sorted out, but there's not the will to do it. It could be more comfortable in terms of, you know, having a birthing pool in every room, if that's what a woman wants to use, having sofas and beds and you know nice inviting nice lighting um and the medical equipment can be there when if it's needed um so again if you put the woman and her experience at the center and not just think oh well someone's having giving birth we can just shove them in a normal kind of clinical room like you would if they were having a you know toenail extracted or something so I'm being extreme there but yeah the whole thing as I said in my view needs to be reimagined right from its essential level I don't I don't feel very confident that's going to happen unfortunately but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't keep chipping away and keep pushing

42:40Simona: for change yeah and and there is a change happening there are birth centers and I'm in the birth center I was in was public health and it was beautiful so I cannot cannot to hear that good yeah exactly there are some good examples for sure three questions every post-native

42:57Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: appointment should include well um well you referred to the GP saying are you okay uh so that's not an open question so personally when I would ask a woman how she was I would say how are you feeling really in yourself how are you feeling in yourself and that would generally elicit a different response to are you okay um so and often someone would actually break down at that point because some i would hear back that that was the first time someone had actually genuinely asked them how they were in themselves not just are you okay everything all right um that slightly British way of asking a question which isn't really open so definitely inquiring in a very genuine way how a woman is feeling in herself how her I often say how are you feeling emotionally so you're actually again clarifying what you're asking about not just how is how are things because they often think you're asking them about the baby when you say that actually um so that's a definite one um i guess you know there's so many questions uh you want to know how people are getting on with their feeding whatever is going on there what they've chosen to do what they want to do what their intentions are trying to help them as far as possible to realize whatever their intentions are with the feeding.

44:32Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: And I always ask the partners how they are as well, because I often think the partners are not discussed, they're not included, and actually are role as midwives to the whole family at that point. And there is a quite high incidence of postnatal depression in partners. So I always make a point of asking, how are you? How are you doing often they've been traumatized by the birth uh by what they've witnessed yeah yeah and they are not they're well they're just ill considered afterwards and like i was saying the health of the family is really important at that the health of the partner if there is one is really crucial to the health of the family the health of of the woman as she's recovering and making her transition and the health of the baby.

45:22Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: So you've got your family unit there and you want to try and support that whole unit to move forward.

45:29Simona: And what about, you mentioned partners now a little bit. What partners can do to each other, mum and the partner of a mum, to help each other through this period postnatally?

45:41Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: I think really open and honest sort of conversations and dialogue about what's going on for both of them, how they're feeling how they're coping you know I always say to people you you want to be a team you want to be a team working on this new endeavor that you have now this this massive change in your lives you need to support each other you need to talk to each other you need to acknowledge what's going on for each other and then come up with whatever arrangements work for you and don't worry about you know well he's now sleeping in another room well if that's what's working for you that's fine you know um so yeah and I think trying to include the wider family and the wider community around those people is really protective as well so I always say to people have your family there if you get on with them um doesn't have to be just family right yeah I mean, families and friends.

46:45Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: But sometimes you have family visiting and you can sense this tension. And sometimes I also talk to people about there are times when you need to create some barriers and some boundaries here. If you are finding certain family members difficult, they're being intrusive, they're actually behaving like guests in your house rather than actually helping you. Then you need to speak to them or you need to say that's enough now, you know, visit in a few days. There are also times when you have to prioritize your little unit and protect yourself from what could be potentially negative interactions. So get the support from the people that you feel comfortable with that are going to interact with you in the way that you feel is the most positive for you.

47:31Simona: And what do you recommend mothers stop doing or stop judging themselves for? Everything.

47:39Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: um yeah i always say to people that whatever you do someone's going to judge you negatively for it that's again the societal uh obsession with what mothers are doing and whether mothers are doing the right thing or the wrong thing or the good thing or the bad thing or the trendy thing or the whatever um so find the thing that is right for you listen to yourself um so long as you're you know, following current guidance on safety and things like that. Find a way of parenting that suits you and your family. And whatever you do, you're going to get judged by someone. So just forget that and do what is right for you and be, have authenticity in your own parenting.

48:25Simona: Beautiful. One way employers can protect maternal mental health after returning back to work.

48:32Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: one way well well they should be doing lots of things i think again it goes back to that acknowledging what a huge shift it is for women and for men as well all partners that are coming back to work um this huge life event has happened this huge shift has huge physical psychological social implications um so i think acknowledging that being really supportive understanding that parents on the one hand parents may they will have more caring responsibilities obviously so they might at times have a sick child or they might be sick themselves and you need to be understanding and flexible around that.

49:10Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: They may not be able to travel for things as easily, they may not go things in the evenings, all those kind of adjustments and considerations should just be understood. But also parents, yes there might be that but parents tend to be also very focused because they have to multitask, they have to prioritise. So yes parents might have those adjustments that you need to make as an employer but they will also bring a wealth of new experience to their role as human beings as parents and they will also most likely be very focused and when they're at work really be able to you know get on with the job and do it and then they probably will have to leave and not be able to hang around for the drinks and this and that because they have another shift at home with their child.

49:59Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: But don't focus just on the negatives or the changes in your need to be flexible and supportive. Also notice that parents bring a lot of new experience and focus from their lives at this point, which should be valued as well.

50:17Simona: Is there a book you would recommend mothers to read?

50:20Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: So, well, this is the pregnancy and birth, the graphic guide. So you can see there's all these lovely pictures. So it's very engaging. Lily's a fantastic cartoon. So you can see we follow these very diverse characters through the book. And then on the back, there's them with their baby. And then, of course, there's the maternal journal book, which is a really lovely kind of companion to journaling. So this is also very visual with lots of illustrations, but also examples from people's journals and lots of journaling guides. So you can work your way through the book at home and try journaling. So, yeah, those two books I would recommend, obviously.

51:12Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: Other books are on the market.

51:15Simona: Last question here. for the mother who feels that she has disappeared into the care, you know, everything what her hands do, as you said. What is the smallest thing she could do today to remind herself of herself today?

51:31Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: Maybe a little bit of journaling. So maybe get her journal page up and she can journal on her phone if she doesn't have a book at the moment. She can just get up a little note or she can even do a voice note and just remind herself of all the things that she does for her baby and therefore start to value more what she's doing, this incredibly important job that she's doing. So she might have disappeared from some parts of her life, but also think about what she's gained in this incredible interaction with her child, this incredible experience that she's given you life and all these tiny little things that she does throughout the day to sustain her child.

52:10Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: That is amazing. So to hopefully try to value what she's doing and who she's become and then stride forth into the world with that sense of her importance. Beautiful. I'm going to go and do that now. Thank you so much for coming.

52:32Simona: It was an amazing conversation. I really enjoyed it. I hope you enjoyed it as well.

52:37Laura Godfrey-Isaacs: Thank you for your lovely questions. And yeah, lots of love to everyone listening. If you like this episode, please like, subscribe and share with the press you need to hear.