Laura Marling’s Wild Second Home Birth: "My Daughter Was Downstairs Watching Paddington!"

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1:03Hello and welcome to a brand new episode of Happy Mum. Today's guest is Laura Marling. Yes, the Laura Marling. When this went into my diary, I actually had to check with the team and go, the Laura Marling. Turns out there is only one. And I was very, very, very chuffed to know that she was going to be joining me in the studio. I'm more shaft since learning that she actually listens to this podcast and is a fan. We love you, Laura. Yes, we do. Laura is an amazing singer-songwriter. She was part of the new folk scene. Oh gosh, when was that? When was the new folk scene? Are we saying noughties? What I absolutely adore during this chat and in my research is the fact that that hesitation of becoming a mum, because not knowing what that's going to mean for your creativity and, you know, this life that you've set up for yourself and how sometimes in life it takes one conversation for all of that, which is essentially probably coated in fear, to just evaporate and to just become something you don't even think about anymore.

2:12There's something so grounding about having her here and chatting. She's very funny. I think you're going to enjoy it. So here we go. Here's me and Laura Marling.

2:26I once bought them an electric drum kit so that Buzz could have his drums in his room. Yeah. So that if he wanted to practice for lessons and stuff, so Buzz does loads of different... He has lessons for drums, guitar, piano and then singing. Wow. So I just thought if I get him a little kit where he can be in his room, have headphones on, Tom wouldn't have bought him an amp. So this isn't... Did you miss the point there, Tom? what is that so yeah classic yeah whereas actually I think now that he's a little bit older I think Buzz quite likes the idea of like just sort of going off and having like a little quiet play yeah and it's so regulating yeah I used to when electric drum kits first came out because I was a music scholar at school so I had lots of free lessons I was always in the music department and you could plug your iPod into the drum kit and just play along to whatever you wanted to play along to and I did it for hours now.

3:19I was never at lessons, any other lessons. Because it was so fun. Music scholar, you're allowed to do that. Exactly, no one ever knew where I was. You're selling the school. It was great. Yeah, I love that, I love that. What was your childhood? Your childhood was musical, wasn't it? It was quite musical because my dad had run a music studio and then that went under when I was in my early toddlerdom. And then he had been an aspiring songwriter as well and he had lots of really nice guitars. And so he taught me how to play the guitar. That's amazing. And when I was really little too, and I just took to it.

3:56Yeah. I took my guitar with me everywhere. It's so cute. And your mum wasn't a music teacher? No, she wasn't. She wasn't? That's a sort of Wikipedia rumour, I don't know. So Wikipedia says, my mum's from Argentina. She's not. Well, that's chic. Never correct a mistake in your favour. That is chic. She's just from Essex, yeah. Keep that one, that's really nice. So your mum wasn't a music teacher? No, she was a gardener. Oh, that's nice. A landscape designer, yeah. I like the fact that someone somewhere has gone, let's get her in on the actual music as well. Let's fill in the picture a little bit here because it's a little bit dull.

4:30It's not. Well, it's great. I love that nice little bit of two very different worlds. You could probably use one to feed the other. Yeah, exactly. I mean, we had a beautiful garden. Yeah. Which is inspiring to sit in and write. Yeah, exactly. when did you actually start writing as a child then? I think quite young I think quite young I remember sort of you know writing getting the gist of storytelling in a song because my dad would like really sit me down and it was always Stevie Wonder, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell it was like you know the ones you'd expect I guess and he would be pointing out kind of narrative points in the song so I sort of got that you should tell a story it should have a journey and so I think from quite young in a very naive way but I always had a guitar with me and I did classical guitar for years and then I sort of lost interest in that obviously and it just was like second nature because my dad was always doing it so I realise now that it was so normalised in my house to be sitting at the piano writing songs I can remember going to Tom's so we've been together on and off from when we were 13, that's when we met.

5:45And I can remember going to his house really young and when they have family gatherings, everyone would just have a guitar and they'd sit around. So when I started learning, Tom's dad would just say the chord to me. So every now and then I'd join in with the right chord. But that feeling of it doesn't matter what, where you are with your playing, it's such a joyous thing to sit around together and just play and sing. Yeah, it's an amazing thing. It's like speaking a secret language, apart from it's obviously not secret, but it's a communicative language and I think it teaches you a lot about space and actually, as a fan of your podcast I love you I really am you have an amazing sense of space you give people an amazing sense of space to talk it's a real skill because I haven't done many podcasts but I realise that your temptation is to interrupt and speak into people to sort of concur with them but you do an amazing job of restraining from doing that thank you stuff right a musical gift what was your childhood like so you have two sisters yeah and you where are you in that lineup i'm the youngest by six years oh okay somewhat the youngest yeah quite quite the youngest so you would have seen your sisters going off and doing things before you were anywhere near going out and yeah so like quite a proportion of it felt like being an only child really but with the you know the best best version of that because i had two older sisters who i loved yeah which also meant that I guess a lot of people who were the youngest if you're close together you wouldn't get necessarily that time of having mum and dad in the way that you did have yes and now that I have two children close together I see it's very psychologically revealing really yeah because it's it feels I love my teacher I'm really glad I've had two children because I want to have more that's why I had them closer together than maybe maybe you know sort of from an evolutionary standpoint you might want yeah um but you see too the older one is too young to withstand the kind of lack of parental um attention yeah that they so i'm working like over time and i'm trying to manage to young people it is a it is a strenuous position to be in and i see it was a very like common problem of our time i guess because people are having them later but um I now see that my sisters had a very different relationship with my parents than I ever did because I was yeah I was basically like got full attention yeah because they were yeah six and eight years old by the time I came along so kind of becoming self-sufficient um and not like little kids anymore I was a baby well you realize I think for those two that would have been a massive jump in responsibility yes like we were talking earlier about me suddenly getting Buzz to take his plate from the dinner table to the kitchen, for them it would have been like, go and get a nappy, whatever that is, they would have had to have suddenly stepped up.

8:37Yeah, and I think that that, you know, I paid for that for the rest of my life. They sort of reminded me of that. Our relationship has evolved, obviously, over a long period of time. And I think when I was in my teens, they wanted to, and I became more independent from them. They had been very like maternal figures in a way and I suddenly became very independent of everyone when I was an 18. That's interesting though. So you're not even just pushing away in the same way that we push away from our mums. You pushed away from those two as well because they had that maternal side. Yeah. And I didn't really understand why they were so upset.

9:14Yeah. Yeah. Do you feel like you, was it long before you sort of came back? Yeah, it was. I did a long independent run there. and 18 into my early 20s, sort of independent of everything. And then, yeah, and then I came back very grateful for it all. Yeah. And I really understood that they had sort of, and they'd had done a massive job of looking after me when I was young and, you know, when I was a young teenager and things like that. And I have such a good relationship with them now. I'm so grateful for that now. And amazing to have those people that still feel that are your siblings but have that little bit of life experience.

9:50So if anything happens in your teens, being able to go, oh, this, you know. So it's very different, I think. Yeah, and my sister was, my older sister was the pioneer of having children, you know, in our family, which was amazing. We were obsessed, obviously, with our children, absolutely obsessed. It's a very different thing. I think when your sister has a baby, it's like it's your baby in many ways. Actually, it's my baby. I love him so much. I mean, I love them both. But when the first one was born, it was like, yeah, it was just, and me and my other sister, we just look after them as much as we can.

10:20And then, of course, when you have your own children, and you don't have time to do that anymore. So, you know, it was a bit of a change. How old were you when those children came into existence? I think the first one was born just before lockdown, so I was like 30. Okay. So he's six now. But she also had, with her second one, I went to pick him up from the hospital when he was born. You know, I drove her home from the hospital. I was such a special. And now I'm like, my other friend is pregnant. I'm like, can I be in the room when you give birth? I'm just like desperate to be as close as possible to someone when they give birth.

10:55It was like, Laura, just back off. Please. Her second one she had as a home birth, which I had never even heard of. Yeah. And that was the reason I had two home births because my sister had a home birth. And I was like, and she was somebody who always was quite squeamish about births. She was like, oh, I could never do that. Just whatever. And she did it because she'd done it once in a hospital. She had a great time. But she was like, I could do this at home. And then when I was doing my antenatal whatever things, meetings, I was in Hackney. So this amazing team called the Homerton Home Birth Team operate there.

11:35And the midwife I was seeing, she was like, you should think about doing it because they come and do your appointments at your house. And I was like, amazing. I don't want to go to Homerton Hospital. It's really annoying to get to. and so and because and then I asked my sister I was like do you think I could do it she was like yeah I read a headline that said something like along the lines of I had a home birth by accident I kind of did I was like what happened yeah it wasn't it was a planned home birth but it was but it was like out of total kind of laziness it wasn't out of ideology at all or you know I you know and then I sort of was radicalised by having a home birth because it was such an amazing experience yeah and I was And I had a lot of friends who'd had a not amazing experience, you know.

12:17And I was like, hi, as a kite after I had my first baby. Yeah. Because I got straight in bed and we got sushi and, you know, I watched Frasier on my laptop or whatever for three days. And just like gazed in awe at this thing. Yeah. And I didn't have to do any travel or anything. you know it was it's an amazing if it goes right obviously it's an amazing thing to be able to do and to be able to have that little bit of like the space that's locked down and yours not worried about you know different nurses or midwives coming in yeah i mean just knowing that's your bubble that's the bubble and the midwives of the homerton home birth team are like you know like literal angels you know they've done it they've seen thousands of babies enter the world that way and they know all of their all of the little witchy tricks you know and there was this amazing lady Francine who came at the end my I had a 30 hour labor so it was quite a long wait a long time wafting between rooms like you know moaning or whatever and Francine came just for the last minute I didn't even see her come in the room she was there for the last four hours sorry I say minute felt like felt like a minute kind of good job she made it really she made it just in the time um and she just sort of guided she started to guide me I was so out of it then but she sort guide me and was guiding my husband and wafting clary sage under my nose and stuff and it felt like old school kind of you know maternal power she had this incredible power to guide a baby into the world and i'm you know prone to hippy-dippy stuff like that i like it we have just launched um like a mini series on thursdays called life life of a midwife and i cannot cry i cannot listen to it without crying because I just think that role in in life to help a mother guide her baby you know out I just I'm just in absolute awe of what those those people do it's astonishing it's astonishing that it's and and and sort of heartbreaking that it's fit into this system you know and necessarily so yeah I don't know the answer to it but you know they're they're unbelievable roles to take on in someone's life.

14:31You know, dangerous, happy, joyous, exhausting, you know, any hour of the day. It's extraordinary, extraordinary vocation. It seems like we're in a really weird time at the moment as well because you've got a lot of mums who are rightfully campaigning for better maternity care. Yeah. And a lot of that is maybe being forced towards midwives. Yeah. You know, I've got a friend who's training at the moment And she's been so sad to see something that she's so full of joy and excitement about being bashed so much. And on the flip side, you've got midwives who are saying, we love what we do. We need to be supportive.

15:12We work in a broken system. And actually, the way that we work, it's not sustainable. And actually, we've got to do more. So for me, I think it can so easily make people very divided. But actually, I think both camps could very well come together and form something that does work and that unifies. Yeah, I think it's a cause I feel sort of most passionate about because it has such an impact on birth. and obviously birth trauma has such an impact on the mothers and their relationship in that early stage and their relationship with the children because it can fill you with such guilt that you're preoccupied with.

15:54And it takes a long, it can take a long time to recover. You will recover, hopefully. But it, and so much of it could be avoided by these, by avoiding these glitches in the system, you know. And it is complicated, I understand why it's complicated. Yeah. Did you always know that you wanted to be a mum? no I didn't I don't know what I thought the other option was but I it wasn't like the centre of my pursuit and then I met my partner and I guess I was like yeah we'd be pretty good I reckon and we were together eight years before we had children but it was one night I went out with I went and had a meeting a sort of dinner meeting with a director that I'd never met before who wanted to do some work together and called Darius Marder and I was doing a project another band I had that didn't really go anywhere um and I was like I was really I put so much effort into it did all like that artwork and animated all the videos and stuff and it just went nothing just a puff of smoke just disappeared into nothing and it felt like a lot of wasted time and and I was just on the sort of cusp of that project and I was having dinner with him and he had kids young and he was just like so ebullient about how amazing having kids had been young and how much he loved it.

17:18And he was like, are you going to have kids? And, you know, you're not supposed to ask that now. So I still found it funny. And I was like, I don't know. And he was like, I was like, yeah, I'm just a bit worried that it would take away from my creativity. And he was like, and he sort of laughed back at me. He's like, it's not going to, that won't even register as a question. Was that a really big thing for you, the idea that just not knowing what that responsibility or how that would play in that creative space? Yeah, I mean, a lot of my what I thought of as my creative practice, sort of embarrassing in embarrassing quotes was.

17:51We can go wanky. It's fine. Yeah. Don't you worry. Was like sitting around and reading books and underlining things and that being the kind of food that would feed the, you know, the incessant monster of creativity or whatever. And now having had kids, I realised that that's not really true. I mean, it was a way of filling my time when I had lots of time to fill. But actually it gets in wherever it can. and even if the cracks are smaller, it'll still get in. And I don't feel I have, and he was right. I haven't asked myself for a moment whether I suffer from a lack of feeling of creativity. That's not, you know, maybe a lack of time, but you make time.

18:36Oh, I certainly have found I make time and I like to be busy. Yeah. So I am really busy. Yeah. But does the creativity feel different now? And has being a mum fed your creativity rather than sort of detracted from it? Yeah, I think it's given me a very important layer of understanding about how the world works and the gravity of the potential for loss, the intensity of love, you know. I can't watch, my friend's got a version of Romeo and Juliet on at the moment in the theatre and I can't, I couldn't even imagine watching it. I would just, I would melt into a puddle. I watched West Side Story after my first was born.

19:20In fact, after my first was born, my husband suggested we watch Schindler's List. And I nearly, it nearly, you know, I don't know. It's just like a really long film. We've got loads of time. Let's watch it. And it absolutely, obviously, shattered me to pieces. And I have to be really careful, I guess, what I take in because I feel things so intensely. Even my daughter was watching Toy Story. I was like weeping. So yeah, I think that it has given a gravity to the meaning of living, which has a consequence for creativity. I'm right in thinking that you couldn't listen to music for a while either.

19:57I couldn't, yeah. I used to, in my great pleasure, was listening to The Sound of Music soundtrack or The Hills Are Alive or The West Side Story. And yeah, it's just too intense. I love that you've got this love of musical theatre. Yeah. musicals. I do, yeah, that does surprise people but it's like, you know, that's high quality music, you can get very low quality musical theatre music, naming no names, but yeah I say something about that music that is, as well as I get older, you know, like the idea that love could be missed, the idea that

20:37life can be this enriching, extraordinary journey is always, you know the central theme of most musicals. Yeah. So I'm into it. Yeah, I like that. So from having that conversation of someone saying, nah, that won't happen, get over it. Yeah. From that point, had your mind shifted completely and would you just think, right, let's just go for it? Yeah, it did. Yeah, it really did. And I wrote, he's still a good friend of mine. I told him that. I was like, I'm so, after my daughter was born, maybe a year later, I was high as a kite in my nursing chair or whatever and I was just like I'm so grateful that you've done this I feel like you've produced this child as much as we have and yeah I never stopped telling him that every time I see him Really?

21:28Yeah I keep hearing you talking about the high as a kite thing You've mentioned it in other interviews as well I was Really? Yeah, it wasn't, you know, I mean it obviously light heartedly obviously I was on the planet still you didn't start taking drugs that's not what parenthood led you to no but just that that I experienced that I would say during my birth that feeling of I felt like I had taken every single drug known to man yeah and hadn't yeah um so I I yeah that I guess I know it from that little section yeah but for for the longevity that you had it for yeah quite something yeah I do think it was because I had I didn't have that after my second I did I was like static and happy and but that was yeah in the moment kind of thing um in that extraordinary kind of between two worlds moment when they're born um but yeah I think I just did have an extended maybe like uninterrupted oxytocin high for for a long time it was just like everything yeah everything was very colors were intense and it was like tripping it was like tripping and yeah just loved it that's amazing yeah talk to me about finding out you were pregnant yeah did you suspect you were pregnant before you tested yes I did because I had like excess saliva which it wasn't I mean none of it's glamorous to be fair what so I've never heard this as a symptom maybe it's unique to me that would be really tragic did it happen to both unglamorous symptoms yeah both yeah yeah drooling everywhere did you google it did you see that Yeah, I think other people have had it.

23:03Maybe it's not very common. Yeah, I Googled it. But I like the idea of going, I think I might be pregnant. Yeah. It's time to test. Yeah, I mean, that pretty much was it. I was like, I'm drooling a lot at the moment. It's kind of embarrassing. And yeah, that was it. Especially as a singer as well, I guess, because you use your mouth so much. If there's more saliva there, you must be very aware of it. Yes. Well, yes. People, yeah, people might get rained on in the front row. No pay extra for that. No pay extra, yeah, totally. Yeah. The splash zone. Yes. A very rare OnlyFans site.

23:43Splash zone, but not in the way you think. Not in the way you think. And how did you feel when you got that positive test? I was, I was like over the, over the, I just loved it. I hated being pregnant. Oh, really? What about it didn't you like? I didn't like the restrictiveness of it. I really didn't. I didn't like it both times. In terms of what you were physically able to do, what you were allowed to eat, any of that? No, that was fine. Didn't mind that. But yeah, I didn't have like a... My nausea went on for like maybe four and a half months. Right. You know, where everyone tells you it's three months, but then it kept going.

24:20It was more... Yeah, it's the restrictiveness. I'm so sort of physically springy usually. and I definitely wasn't and I was quite grumpy Were you trying to do things that you were doing before or were you just like no I can't do that now because I have to be sensible No I definitely wasn't sensible I was trying to keep it all together but yeah I didn't really do any exercise I have a dog, I used to walk with a dog every day and then pregnant with a toddler I was like God That was insane All the screen time rules went out of the window Yeah that was so intense Have you done that? Yeah. It's mental.

25:01Yeah. So when my third was born, so I would have had four and a half, two and a half, and then a newborn. But there was less than two years between the first two. Right. And that is a very different thing. Yeah. When you're running around. Yeah. I used to miss the naps. Like my naps that I would have. Oh, yeah, because you don't get a nap. Yeah, you don't get a break. You're like trying to do insane maths, figuring out when their naps are supposed to be. And then you don't get any. No. Yeah, it's intense. How did you manage that pregnancy? I did. We introduced a couple of films, you know. Nice.

25:36I needed that length of break. Yeah. Totoro, my neighbour Totoro, and maybe some Wallace and Gromit and things like that. That was good. Yeah. And then I had to go to, I was promoting an album I released. I was doing shows and I flew to New York with my oldest and I was trying to stop breastfeeding because it's really intense when you're pregnant. Does the milk just get more? No, it's just you're very sensitive. It must be like a biological reflex or something because you need the calories or something. But I kept breastfeeding until we'd come back. I wanted to keep breastfeeding until we came back from New York because I wanted to be able to calm her on the plane and she ended up taking a nap just before the plane took off and she was away for eight hours on the plane.

26:25I said, oh my God, I'm never doing this again. Yeah, so it was a lot and I feel, you know. And also, what a time to be travelling with a toddler. Oh man, we timed it so badly. Yeah, we timed it so badly, but I was like desperate to have another one. I didn't really think it through. Did you feel like then, so when you had the first one, that you were just suddenly like, let's go, like not let's go straight away, but knowing that actually you do want another, so let's not hang around too long. Yeah, I think so. But then I guess I could have waited a bit longer. I mean, no regrets. They're amazing.

27:00We have so much fun and the age gap has got a lot easier over the course of this year. But yeah, I knew I'm one of three. My husband's one of three. I was like, three is probably it. Four is a bit bourgeois now maybe. You've got a bit too much to spare. But yeah, three would be nice. So, yeah, but my mum had me at 44, so I had some time. I had my first at 33, so, yeah. Something quite nice in that, isn't it, knowing that that's your mum's experience. So it's, whereas other people might feel like, oh, my God, time's running out. Kind of go, no, I've, you know. And people are having babies so much later now.

27:38Yeah, and you might get that surprise menopause baby, which is what my mum thought of me as. Yeah. So, and I'm the best one, so she really lucked out. I'm sure your sisters agree.

27:54how did you feel heading towards birth we've talked about the home birth was was that once that had once that kind of sat in your head was that just like a no that's definitely what i'm doing yeah and i don't need to worry about anything else yeah i got really i got really attached i didn't do hypnobirthing or anything um but i wonder if you did parts of it without realizing that you were doing this is what i realized in my second one right and also that I lived in LA for a few years and I worked as a yoga instructor. So I sort of knew... Connecting to breath and body. Exactly. I knew how to do that sort of stuff.

28:29I knew how to access that kind of stuff, I guess. But what I had read that had massively changed, because I was very, I don't care what happens as long as the baby's okay and I'm okay. I really didn't mind. And then the home birthing came up and I went with it. But the thing that really, I guess, radicalised me in a way was Ina May Garten. Is it Ina May? Who wrote Gaskin? Thank you. Ina May Gaskin. I read Guide to Childbirth. She was a home birth. She ran like what she refers to as a home birth caravan, which is like an encampment, which would go around the Midwest of America and offer home births to people.

29:15and she sort of started this movement and I think also brought this technique for breech birth back from somewhere in South America. She'd gone and found it. Anyway, she was a woman, I think she has controversies, I don't know what they are, but I read that book, Guide to Childbirth, which was basically, the thing that was astounding to me was that the production of oxytocin and being surrounded by love has this sort of effect on the muscular release of the cervix or whatever, you know, nerdy. It was nerdy stuff and I was like, I relate, I get that nerdy stuff. The kind of vague, airy-fairy stuff I don't get at all.

29:49Yeah, yeah. But she, and then in Spiritual Midwifery, which is another book that she wrote, she actually goes into like really acute detail about how the cervix retracts and whatever, the biological way that birth happens. She really described it and I really understood it. So on top of the idea that being in a love-producing, oxytocin producing environment is good and useful for relaxing the muscles. I also had this sort of quite graphic idea of what contractions were doing. And so I found that very useful. So when the sort of, what does it say, the wave hit you, I understood what was happening in my body rather than being like, what is that kind of thing.

30:36And I highly recommend those two books. When I did my, so I did hypnobirthing and I had the image of almost like, so there were two different sets of muscles. And this is probably incorrect in every science book. But in my understanding, which helped me, was that there were muscles going horizontally across my tummy. And then muscles going vertically that were lifting. Every time there's a contraction, lifting the garage door open. And that just helped my brain. I don't know what, that's so interesting. I haven't spoken about that to anybody. That is exactly what it did for me. I was like, it just calmed everything.

31:14I was like, cool, that is all happening. I've just got to chill out through it kind of thing every four minutes, whatever. Was there ever a point at home when the labour started where you were suddenly being like, oh, we're doing this? Yeah, the first one, you know, I did the like classic first birth thing where I called the midwife at like 20 minutes after my contractions. I had to be like, you probably should come because it's going to, you know, whatever. She was like, oh, I had to come over. And she was like, you're obviously not ready. I'm going back. I'll leave the oxygen machine here. And she came back two days later.

32:00It was so bad. Not even close. not even close. We had that, um, that brilliant app. It's a happy birth company with better birth company. I can't remember. Hypno, hypnobirthing app where you could record the contractions. And it was like insane. It was like 400 contractions because we didn't, we'd done it over two days. Um, and, and then when she came back, uh, and she insisted that my husband put me on the phone so she could hear where I was at. And she was like, right, I'll come back. and when she arrived I was like I want a c-section I want to go and have a c-section she was like it's too late sorry what did you spend those two days doing because from the moment I'm kind of going okay we're off we're just sat around waiting it just went in like weird into a weird time vortex I don't know what happened it is like exactly like and I remember like we had all the curtains closed to keep it dark and so I was just like wandering through a dark house like I don't even know and George was like falling asleep every time he could and I just got loads of photos of Thomas Sleep yeah yeah exactly there's one of George's sleep on the birth ball against the bar I'm here for your babe yeah yeah it was it was and then Francis the amazing Francine arrived and you know sort of provoked the final final chapter

33:31I'm Jake Stouck, co-founder and CEO of Serval. We built Serval to automate the IT work that slows companies down. Onboarding, password resets, access to applications, my laptop stopped working. While employees wait for help, their real work is put on hold. IT desperately wants to automate this work, and that's why they need Serval. You just tell Serval what you want to automate in plain English, and it's built. No drag and drop workflows. No expensive consultants. Employees get unblocked and IT teams go from drowning in tickets to building what actually matters. With Serval, IT becomes the AI engine powering the entire company.

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34:31was there much of a nudge from going no you're not having a c-section you're staying here and this is what we're doing or do you think that your mind was just literally like let's see let's see what she does if i say this yeah maybe they'll just take me to hospital and i can go and have a c-section because this is quite intense yeah yeah i don't think i can do this actually no i'll go go back to hospital. I think Francine must have been there then and she was like, basically, no, sweetie. You're staying here. This is happening. And I think the resolve, there was just, you know, they know, they've done it so many times.

35:05And funnily enough, the second time, I wanted my, my sister was going to come pick up my daughter when I went into labour, but I was expecting to have a really long labour, classic. yeah and anyway so she didn't my water's broken in the middle of the night so she didn't pick up her phone I mean not the greatest oh my god yeah talk about big sisters big sisters come on if you said yes yeah I was two weeks overdue okay just two weeks you could have kept your phone on um bless her but anyway she didn't get up until eight it's fine it's fine so what eight till eight yeah so my water's broken at two she didn't get up No, sorry, she didn't go up till seven.

35:48She picked up my daughter at quarter past seven, to be fair. And I gave birth at half past seven. Whoa! She was like not even home yet, just turned around, brought her back. Was your sister not tempted to stay? Like I know her responsibility at that point. She did stay. I know she wanted to stay with her. To stay for the birth, yeah. Yeah, I would have loved her to do that. The funny thing was, I was worried about my oldest hearing me make loud noises, which in retrospect was like, that was one of those weird things that anxiety makes you. because they don't, they get it. I think she really got it.

36:17She was a little too young, I think. I think I would have liked to have been a bit older. But I was just in the bath at home. We didn't even have a birth pool. And she was downstairs watching Paddington, sort of serenaded by mad mowing every couple of minutes. And my husband would just come up and check on me because I was like, don't leave her alone. Stay downstairs. So I nearly gave birth alone the second time because the midwife arrived at seven. Wow. My youngest got picked up at 7.15. I gave up at 7.30. So I was over-efficient the second time. I was like, everybody, don't worry about me. I'll be all right in the bath.

36:52And I was. But it was a little too close. Did you realise it was happening quicker? Yeah, I felt like I was getting it. I felt like I was in the zone. Yeah, it was definitely happening quicker. Yeah. Because I felt I was really not afraid this time. It was the first time I was like, yeah, of course you are the first time. you don't know what on earth's happening. But this time I was so, I so had faith in the physiological processing of it. That was, yeah. I had a thing though where it was my first birth, I described straight away afterwards as wonderful, like the most magical experience. Even though I had an episiotomy, you know, but I just found the whole thing magical.

37:30And then leading into the second birth, I actually felt apprehensive because I'd had a good experience. Yes, yes. yes yeah because it can't be replicated yeah and and and that is probably sort of a mash-up of anxiety about your anxiety one's anxiety about how can i possibly love yes again you know which is a huge um knot of anxiety that you feel before you have your second one and obviously it's not a problem yeah but yeah but yeah definitely leading into that you are kind of trying to make the first one feel better about life yeah yeah you're so special to me yeah yeah yeah you'll always be my baby but they just seem so big as soon as the new one's there i feel like it's like their faces explode overnight do you know i mean suddenly they're like massive yeah and then you look back at photos because i look back at photos of last year when my youngest was born i'm like she was the oldest was still a tiny baby baby you know yeah she still had her funny little wispy hair you know the back that we hadn't cut yet because it was so sweet yeah um but just yeah it's all so it's all such a weird time time is just such a strange elastic intangible thing now yeah I can't make sense of it you're not supposed to I suppose in time do you feel like things are settling down now and you're all finding a little bit more of a groove yeah definitely since my my little one is walking it makes it easier because you can just put them down And it was summertime.

39:06Winter time with a toddler and a baby was awful. Oh, gosh. Yeah, winter makes everything so much harder because we have to get out and walk the dog and everyone has to be in wet gear. Yeah, summertime with a walking baby, we can just plonk them down, push the other one on a swing. I feel like the best thing that I ever heard was just go out. We're out all day. Yeah, it's the only way to survive. Even though sometimes the idea of getting all the things together to get out and, you know, the pushback of getting shoes on or whatever that is, once you are out, it feels like all of that disappears.

39:39Yeah, oh my gosh. It was just a little bit freer and a little bit easier. Yeah, it's brilliant. You have to have the creative agility of a wild animal to manage it all, but it's amazing. You do, you do. I loved reading about the fact that from worrying about your creativity to writing the next album after your daughter was born, And I love the image of you writing whilst looking into her eyes. Oh, it's just so beautiful. Like, you know, we look for inspiration in life. And what is more inspiring than that? That's a life that you've created. And then with that will come all of these different hopes and fears for that little being, the guilt, the pressure, the judgment, all of that.

40:29I was so moved by that image. Oh, yeah, I mean, it was a wonderful realisation. Really? You know, I had put my guitars away thinking, you know, well, that's not going to be my priority for a while. And I guess it's unique to your first child that you, you know, have them in a bouncer, you know, you whip out a boob every now and again, walk around town you know that's that's what it was for a while and so I was just bouncing her and playing guitar and I was like oh my goodness you know I've got plenty of time to do this I mean and the recording of it and promoting it was a totally different deal obviously but it was you know and it gave me this little flash into the future and also the past there's a lot of a lot of this in parenthood we're like oh I understand that what that meant to my parents and And I understand that this is coming in our future of like, yeah, sitting down and playing guitar with her or me or my husband.

41:35And, you know, that was mine and my dad and I. That's how we bonded, basically. And you're just like, well, that must have meant to him and what it means to me. and oh man it's a lot. There's also something special in that because you know you can like your dad would have played guitar to you not knowing what an impact that would make. Yeah. And I think when it's something creative you can never force a vocation on a child. You can never force a hobby onto them. So for that for your child to then gravitate towards what you've been showing them must be massive to your dad. Yeah. Yeah. He he loves it.

42:17I'm pretty sure. And it's still our kind of language. And it is like, I still go with him with kind of like musical problems. Do you? To solve kind of thing. And he, because he was very gifted as well. You know, like as there are so many gifted people who don't, you know, strike the lucky strike or whatever.

42:40And my husband's like great pride in our daughter is that she can eat a fish head to tail. Which is his vibe, not mine. But, you know, we were at a restaurant the other day and we ordered sardines and she ate, started with the tail, just ate the tail. I was like, wow. He was so proud because that's like, his thing is like them not being like fussy about food. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, he's a proud dad. That's quite something. Watching a fishtail disappear into the mouth of your toddler. did you do baby led weaning with them yeah is that like yeah it just gave them chunks of things yeah it just gave them things yeah and it nearly floored me with anxiety I mean the anxiety it produces was just is that because of choking yes yeah and now like second time around I was much more relaxed about it but every time there's a you know and it but it it works you know they figure it out yeah I can remember being out in a restaurant with my mum, the oldest, and he was eating something and did the whole mum was like, Giovanna, Giovanna!

43:50I was like, mum, can't be mum! Yeah, there's a lot of shushing of boomers in there and raising parents. He's working out! But just that, I guess, because we're doing things in a different way to what they would have done. But then my middle one was like, what are you doing? You're all using cutlery. What do you think? I'm a wild animal. Give me a spoon. Oh, really? That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Just completely different. Very civilised. So we just worked with what worked for him, really. Yeah. It's all very different. It is all very different. They definitely have different vibes. Yeah. You know, they're not the same.

44:26Oh, obviously they're not the same. But they definitely come out with their own personas. Yeah. It's fascinating. Which is the difficult thing when you're a parent because you feel like, oh, we'll do this because that worked before. And actually they're like, no. Yeah. I don't like that. Are yours all very different, do you think? What are their differences? They are different in some ways, but similar in others. And even in their interest, actually, they'll have a lot of crossover. So one of them will get them interested in something and they'll all go along with it. We've not got one that's particularly mad about football.

45:01Instead, it's lots of sci-fi films and therefore sci-fi creative play, music, lots of 80s films. Yeah, so I guess it's very... And adventure. They love going outside and just putting a backpack on. Are they all boys? Yeah, three boys, nice. Strapping lads. It's wild, yeah. I bet my sister's got two boys. It's all wild. But all of mine have long hair as well. So it's that constant thing of, like, they don't care. I find it fascinating. So my middle child goes to gymnastics, and all the girls in gymnastics who have long hair have their hair tied back and they look really, really neat. The majority of his friends have long hair.

45:46None of them tie their hair back. It's all really long and they'll do the whole thing without even bothering to take their hair out of their face. Like, how can you... You can't see. Yeah, yeah. But, yeah, it's a very different colour. Perfect. Yeah. One thing I read about that I absolutely love, the idea of... So when you're on tour, talk to me about the matinee shows. Oh, so good. We were going to do, for the promotion of the last album, we were going to do children-friendly shows. Yeah. So not aimed at children, because obviously I'm not deluded. I don't think children are listening to my music.

46:22But so that you could bring your children along if they were there in the day and, you know, watch a show for 45 minutes. We'd make it a shorter show for a shorter attention span. But anyway, that for several reasons didn't work out. But anyway, what we did end up doing was matinees. So, you know, everyone could be home by 7.30. it was so amazing well I ended up having to stay and do two shows a night which didn't, was not an ideal but the matinee shows were so nice they had such a different feeling and we did them in the winter so it was still dark it started at 4.30 or something so it was still dark and it was brilliant and I will continue to do them because it's such a nice I would so much rather see a show at 4.30 I haven't seen the outside world past eight o 'clock for three and a half years.

47:09So I'm not too excited at those shows. But I think this is like another thing I'm quite passionate about. I'm sure lots of people are sort of retaining kind of dignity in parenthood that, you know, quite a lot of stuff is not aimed at, you know, like, for instance, children's music, which I'm entering into a bit now. You know, a lot of children's music is aimed solely at the attention span of children and like flashing lights and, you know, all kind of nefarious, terrifying interlopers trying to garner the attention of children. That's how I really, really dress that up in darkness, maybe gone a bit too hard there.

47:49But, you know, like, I don't want to listen to some weird person singing a patronising version of a song with maximum kind of like sparkle. Do you know what I mean? Because I feel it's undignified. And very synthetic sounds. Very synthetic, yes. It's not real instruments. yeah and I don't think children need to be patronised that much but the sort of the I don't know jarring and annoying thing is is that the first thing you type in it's the first thing that comes up if for instance you're looking for a nursery rhyme the first thing that comes up is going to be the worst

48:26least nourishing musical project you know it's going to be the worst one that comes up and it's all yeah like everything's kind of a balance between I mean, them feeling, particularly my oldest, who's a toddler, I guess, her feeling like she can express herself in the environments that we're in, but also that they are not, you know, they're not like environments that are solely aimed at children and not the dignity of the parents kind of thing. We try and avoid that, yeah. Talk to me more about venturing into the world of music that is for children, but not for children. It's for everyone. It's for everyone, yeah.

49:04And why? So this is Rafi? Rafi, yeah. So I'd never heard of Rafi and then I was looking on YouTube and my youngest was kind of dancing along to some of his songs. So what led you to Rafi? So I lived in America for like seven years and a lot of my friends when I was living there were having babies and they all listened to Rafi because Rafi was big in America in the 70s and 80s. So almost nostalgic of their childhoods Totally, yeah, just a total repeat of their childhoods And Raffi in the 70s and 80s released these amazing albums Lots of them, but one of which was called Singable Songs for the Very Young And Singable Songs for the Very Young 2 And a couple of others, Banana Phone And they're just like, they strike the kind of note that classic Sesame Street struck which was that parents could watch it, find it sort of chic and charming and funny.

50:03And it was pre, this is quite a scale I'm working with here, but it was pre like Barney, things that became very like surreally just in the world of children. And I think Rafi strikes this tone, who I should be clear is a children's singer. He writes children's music. When he did his shows in the 70s and 80s, which you can watch on YouTube, all these children, I guess like five, six, seven, eight year olds dressed up in their beautiful like Sunday best and they're all so happy to be there and all so excited and he strikes this really brilliant tone that I guess is becoming rarer to see or I certainly, I found it refreshing where he is not patronising, he's not goofy but he's sort of like, he strikes the right level for the age group that he's aiming at and he's also just got a great taste in music and he hired a great band and he put together great records and so I genuinely love listening to Rafi not many people have heard of him in the UK or Europe so I started off with doing these covers of Rafi songs most of which are his originals and some of which are sort of classics but he sung in his style basically and then it got me I just I was sort of working this was after I had two children so I was sort of stealing evenings to work as I have done since my children were born and I was just like there's a whole world of like this balance of music that's perfectly palatable to anybody's ear but children just love it and my daughter just loves Rafi and there's some other, there's a lot of French music that's amazing, like children's music that's really good and really funny and weird so I think I'm going to try and do some of that and then I've been doing some originals but yeah I'm just interested in this thread that means that the parent and the child can be united in their enjoyment of it rather than you know, putting on some truly godforsaken music.

52:13I mean it makes such a difference if there's something you can all listen to Well it's like, somebody told me when I first started introducing screens, TV or whatever, my friend was like, just make sure it's an amazing film that you love watching. And I was like, my neighbour Totoro. It's my dream to watch my neighbour Totoro once a week. And I have done for the last year, basically. And if you get it right, you can hook them on really good stuff. See, we watched The Muppets for a long time. So good. So joyous. Yeah, exactly. The Muppets totally get it. Like the Muppets Christmas Carol and Christmas Vacation, all of those, the Muppet show, they have that uncanny tone where it's funny and it's, you know, charming.

52:57You're still laughing on your 100th watch, you know. There's still something to tickle you. Yeah. It must be lovely having music in the house and knowing. Do you have any hopes for your kids in terms of music? Do you want it just to sort of feed their soul in the way that a lot of us music is just that way of an expression or just to get those feelings out. Yeah. Yeah. I can't remember who said it, but there's a quote like, always believe that life is as amazing as music says it is. Yeah. And I think an appreciation for music gives you that sense, you know, like always believe it. It is as amazing as the effect of West Side Stories music And it's like life is this extraordinarily intense, incredible, wonderful experience.

53:44And music serenades it perfectly, obviously. Going back to the Muppets, there was one song that always used to stop Buzz crying. And it was, I've got everything that I need right in front of me. And it was just that life's a happy song. If there's someone by your side to sing along. And it's just like that. And then on this actual film, you've got all the people coming together and you're just like, oh, this is amazing. I want him to know that. Yeah. And kids remember things from music as well. Like they remember, he'll remember that as a happy, uniting, calming experience. Yeah. And another thing we do, well, I do with my oldest is to try and sing bossy like chores that I need her to do.

54:35and so so she'll remember them like before we go to bed we tidy up the house before we go you know and it works quite well because it sticks in their head and then they enjoy singing it oh that's nice so yeah it's a hook it is a hook I just irritate mine every now and then by pretending I'm in a musical so I just sing everything yes I do that too it just happens to you when you become a morrow and then you're like that's it it's a hideous loud word I think it's a it's like a stim in a way because it's like a calming singing very loudly in full head voice around the house it's like a calming female rage or something I don't know what it is it's nice that it comes out that way exactly yeah it's a necessary evil I just remembered about a treatment that you had or a moment where was it progressive or regressive therapy that took you back to a moment in your childhood yes I was fascinated by this because and then I was wondering about the impact that it's had on you as a mum yeah ah yes interesting I hadn't even thought about that but yes it has probably had an impact on me as a mum I mean unpick what I've just said and make it make sense Laura well it is uh it was it is hard to say it was regressive hypnotherapy yes um or something I think I'm missing a prefix there because regressive hypnotherapy sounds wrong but um it was yeah basically hypnotherapy going back to your childhood um and i had it at the time when i was like absolutely i was kind of like metaphorically literally stuck in a loop going around america touring in a in a car by myself i was like couldn't stop doing it like four times drove around around playing shows and i was like what's wrong with me why can i just go home go home anyway i stopped i was looking for woo woo kind of answers everywhere and um and landed on the woo-woo final boss of regressive hypnotherapy.

56:29And, yeah, I went back and I had this memory of being in a garden strapped into a pram in the sun. And I was awake and I'd obviously been left sleeping and I was awake and I was, like, screaming and no one was coming to get me. And I was with a babysitter and they had gone inside. Whatever, who knows if it's true. But that was the feeling. And that feeling, I was like, oh, my God, that is the feeling. I don't know if it was like totally linked to that, but that feeling of being left restrained, you know, scared in pain, you know, it's like that brilliant opening of Hamnet where the sun is roaming around the house, roaming around an empty house looking for a parent that isn't there.

57:12You know, that feeling is really, she obviously does that brilliantly. But that was the feeling. And so, yeah, I think I'm very conscious of my. I think you naturally are when you're a bit of a mother but very conscious of my when they're babies having consciousness which can obviously like at times when they're like driving you nuts when they won't go to sleep or whatever and then I try yeah exactly I think that has really had an effect on me they aren't expressing something that they feel very keenly and I think the feelings the sort of primordial feelings that you don't yet have words to explain do you kind of stay those memories stay with you in adulthood I think you have to do a lot of untying of them and later on um even if you yeah don't recognize where the root of it has come from yeah because if if it's all happened at a point where your memory's not completely there your communication is not there you've not ever been able to vocalize it is just this thing that's in you yeah yeah unintegrated kind of yeah experience and then since then I've been a perfect human being since I thought so.

58:21Yeah, so that was really worth it. That's good. If you could write a letter on motherhood, who would it be to and what would you say? Obviously, I prepped for this because I do this. Did people go, can it be somebody who's not still alive? Yeah. Yeah, my mother was adopted. She was abandoned when she was seven by her mother. And then she was adopted and had quite a rough time. Seven as well. Seven, yeah. So she'd have clear memories of her as well. Can you imagine? I mean, can you imagine? Anyway, she went into foster care and then was adopted some years later and had quite a rough time. But I think, like, I would want to write to my mother's mother and just say, because I can only imagine what state she must have been in, you know, and what the feeling for the rest of her life, you know.

59:14just to say that you know in spite of that unbelievable trauma it wasn't the defining feature of her life you know she did she raised us she's a wonderful mother and it wasn't I'd want her to I hope that she made her peace with it you know somewhere towards the end because I can't just what a mess and it could have It could have been the defining tragedy of my mother's life, but it wasn't. She ended up having three daughters of her own. And I don't know, I'd want to be in conversation. I obviously like, again, part of my woo-woo practice when I lived in America was like trying to understand my matriarchal lineage on both sides because both of them are quite intense and sad.

1:00:05My father's mother and my mother's mother. And I'd want to know what they felt about it. seeing it now as it is. I can't imagine what that would have been like as well for your mum when, say, your eldest sibling, your older sister, turned seven. I know, yeah. Just that feeling of how. Yeah. I think before my first nephew was born, it was a big reckoning for her. She found it very transformative, I think, in a good way. Yeah. That we had made it to the point where we were going to be mothers. And, yeah, yeah. Because you spend your whole time sort of going, am I doing the right thing? Am I going to be making mistakes?

1:00:45I would imagine that especially in that scenario where you would worry, is that in me? Can I do that? And also not having the maternal figure to look up to, to be like, oh, is this right? Is that right? You know, of course everyone makes mistakes, but, you know, neither of them, neither of my parents had a maternal figure at all. So they didn't have any blueprint for motherhood between them. It's kind of insane, actually. Sounds like they've done a wonderful job. They did good. They're great. Also, if that had happened now, you know, there's a world in which DNA would be able to, you'd be able to find that parent.

1:01:32They did. They did. Yeah, she did find her. And I sort of can't remember what the conclusion was. It was before I was born. But, yeah, I think it was peace was made-ish. That's a really beautiful letter. Thank you. We end the podcast on you completing three sentences. The first one is being a mum means. Being really busy. How are you finding that juggle? I love it. Do you? I mean, I don't want to sound like I'm just like one-trick pony, one-note pony or whatever. But I do, I just love it. I love being really busy. I'm really busy all day. I take them out, walk the dog, you know, go to as many parks as we can.

1:02:14And then I come home, hopefully get them in bed early. And then I do my work in the evening. Yeah, so you're doing a lot of what me and Tom did, which is once they were in bed, working again. I was the most productive after my second. I had my most prolific writing year. Right. It's funny. It is amazing. It fits in the gaps that you give it. And the final sentence is, I'm happy when. I'm really busy. Truly. Yeah, truly. But I am looking forward to holiday when it's a holiday again. Yeah. We're talking 10 years? Well, you can tell me. No, no, no, it's good. Okay. So my youngest is seven. I'm now, I can go on holiday, sit in a sun lounger, have a book, pina colada.

1:02:54They're in the pool. It's fine. Yeah. That'll be nice. Yeah. Once they start learning how to swim, that is an amazing thing. Okay, so yeah. Because the risk assessing is just constantly there. Yeah. I mean, you're still looking after them, obviously. Yeah, yeah. Only one pina colada, let's be sensible. Okay, one pina colada in a book. I look forward to it massively. And if you're really worried, you just put your feet in the pool and you're still there. Yeah, great. You know, with your Kindle. Perfect. Yeah, you're all good. Great. Laura, thank you so much. I've loved this. Yeah, me too. Thank you for having me.

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