Best of 2025

0:00Hello and welcome to Made by Mum as the podcast. I'm Zoe Hardman and I'm Georgia Dayton and this is your parenting safe space where no conversation is off limits with five kids between G and I we have seen a lot we really have each week we'll be joined by some famous faces and experts and we'll chat about the brands and products that have saved us along the way in short we're the parenting podcast for you before we get started hit subscribe or follow so you're the first to know when each episode lands and they're on Tuesdays and Fridays and it really helps if you leave a rating and a review You can also find us on Instagram.

0:34We're on at Made by Mummers. But for now, George, should we get into it? Yay, we made it. Yay.

0:43Wow, tomorrow's New Year's Eve. It is. It really is. And we are pre-recording this, so I actually have no idea where I'm going to be. I might be in Saudi or I might be in Shenfield. Who knows? What a wonderful contrast of life, hey, George? I know. We never know. We never know where it's going to take us, do we? But personally, what's been your highlight of the year? Oh, George, for us, come on, the two of us. It was the year of getting the dogs. It was. The fur babies. The fur babies. Yeah. The fur babies have arrived. And what I thought was so brilliant, in the same way that we timed the pregnancies, even though we didn't know each other then, that the kids, you know, Luna and Axel, two weeks apart, are dogs.

1:28We essentially got our dogs like a month apart from each other. So we're going through it together again. We did it again. We absolutely did. I would say we're definitely not having as many sleepless nights as we did in, you know, the newborn stage. It's definitely not as hard, I would say. You cracked me up, though. You cracked me up the day. You were like, you just leave them in the crate. Like, they're happy. And I was like, exactly. And I know this is probably going to annoy a lot of people. So I'm sorry. But the other day, George, you said to me, you're like, yeah, I just I put him in the crate.

1:59And, you know, you just don't go back, you know, unless they're like barking and making loads of noise. Just then they just sleep through the night. Then they just sleep through the night. We're like sleep experts. Remember when we used to have them on? And yeah, when you come on and be like, well, you know, my baby's four months old and they don't sleep. And the sleep expert would literally be like, well, listen, you just put them down at 630 and then they wake up at 630. and you'd be like, hmm, that doesn't happen in real life. So I'm so sorry to anyone listening. Like, what are you talking about?

2:32My puppy literally has us up every couple of hours. But maybe the sleep gods are here to rescue us this time. Who knows? Do you know what? I think we deserve it, George. I think we deserve it. But for today's podcast, talking about kind of reflecting, we thought we would have a look back on the most wonderful, interesting, different, brilliant conversations that we've had in 2025 before we ring in 2026. So we just kind of wanted to pull a few sound bites of things that have really stayed with us since we had the chats, right? Yeah, exactly. I mean, we've covered everything. So I am going to kick us off with one that I think we sat on opposite sides of the fence when we first started this podcast.

3:13And it will be interesting to see if any of this comes true. And that was our Halloween episode with Hannah McIntyre. She was a clairvoyant. Do you remember? Yeah. And we had our cards read and I was so like, oh, this is not gonna, you know, what is this wishy-washy stuff? And about by about six, seven minutes in, I was like, that's it. I believe I got it. I love it. but also when we were talking about the supernatural and we were talking about ghosts remember in the studio when the light just flickered off asked when i asked the question to hannah i was like you know are there kind of nasty ghosts are there angry ghosts and she was like absolutely and if she said not the light just went bang and you just went it was yeah it was so funny the whole podcast i just absolutely loved so we've got to play a clip from that um let's get into the conversation with Hannah McIntyre.

4:09So we're going to get our cards read. George first. George first. Okay, George, let's have a look. Okay. Hannah is pulling three cards. Three cards. We have got the seven of cups. We have got the two of cups and the eight of swords. So you know how I just said to you, they won't say anything that you don't want out in the public forum. Yeah. They're hitting you quite hard. They're taking this chance to make a, to get their message across. I know I'm not going to do it again. The Seven of Cups is all about procrastination. It's about too many options, not taking that, making a choice and being decisive.

4:47So there's a real sense here, actually, of you. I know we all spin a lot of plates, but there's lots of opportunities coming in with you, lots of options. And you're sort of dithering between them, wondering which one's the best and which one's the most aligned and what you should do. And really, I feel, number one, you can do way more than you're giving yourself credit for. You're very either or, and I think there's some sort of mix in the middle. But also, if you just decide, the rest of it will unfold. And so at the moment, you're trying to get that unfolded energy from the future, where you know what you're doing and you know where it is right now, but you have to take a step and make a choice to bring that energy in.

5:22Fucking hell. Georgia. Does that resonate? Yeah. Yeah. Okay, good. Then you've got the Two of Cups, which is ending of challenges, happy home life, lots of fun. it's got a cupid on it so that's that's the mushy card which is not my cup of tea so I'm just gonna I much prefer procrastination and choices what does that mean though that she's got a happy happy life romantic life home life good everything in balance just feels like a really lovely rose tinted wonderful time for you and I feel like that does link in with these opportunities coming in because you need that to be all good and aligned so you can take these opportunities, so you can grow.

6:03So there's a real sense of this is all sorted, your home's sorted, your love life's sorted, everybody's happy so that you can move forward. Then we've got the eight of swords, which is, it's the card of somebody who's trapped in a cage, but the door's open and they keep saying they can't move forward. I just got goosebumps. I know, that's why I said they're not giving it to you. So this is all about feeling like you're trapped, feeling like you're caught, but that's your mindset. That's you telling you, you can't do the things. So you're in the cage going, how am I going to do this? How's that going to work out?

6:36What's going to happen with this? How do I balance that? And you're building your own cage from that mindset. When the door is open, the key is in your hand, you can just step through it and everything will work out, but you have to take the step. So very similar on the seven of cups and the eight of swords with moving you forward okay i believe is that really true no no no every single part of that is true like i'm not joking i'm not good like i wanted to be like no do you know what i mean like that would have been good for this podcast if i'd have been like nah so are you converted now well let's see let's see what 2026 brings and see how accurate it all was um and then i will come back to you next year and I think you're a convert no I think you're a convert even if it's even if it's like not that accurate I still enjoy the process and I still think there is something in it so yeah I do where are you gonna where would you go next I am going to go to Tash and Carly so Tash and Carly we've known kind of from Instagram I guess but they've both been through such a big shift in their life.

7:51They've got a podcast, it's called Not As We Planned. Essentially, it's a really honest and open conversation about divorce. Both of them have been through it. And what I loved most about it was I felt, you know, you could probably get to a certain age. And, you know, if you go through something like that, you might think, oh, fuck, you know, I'm a single mom and I've got kids and what we're going to do. But actually, both of them were really seeing it from such a beautiful place of like, no, no, yes, it's shit. and yes let's not sugarcoat it but we're out the other side and all the funnies that comes with the dating and falling in love again um you know blended families i just i loved the energy that they brought to the studio that day yeah same and i just loved their funny stories and i loved like you just said how you know lots of people think that you know stay in a relationship too long because they're worried that they won't meet someone else because now they're a mom and they come with you know what people class as baggage but actually there's another life to be had if you want to you know like you don't have to stay at home like they're out dating they're sharing funny stories um oh I love those girls let's listen to Tash and Carly I'd never been on a date before I met my like before my divorce their faces like what yeah so I met a bit like bearing in mind like I was with him like yeah I'd never been on a date before I'd never been taken out and I was really excited to get on the dating apps i was like oh this is fine you know you probably feel like that being married if you've got a single friend you'll be like let me yeah let me swipe yeah so that was my thought process until i started swiping and i was like is this oh it's not fun i'm fucking dealing with no it's not anyway i came across this guy oh yes i'm excited a delivery driver so basically he was like oh you live in blah blah and i was like yeah do you he's like no but i work in your area and i'm thinking okay cool what do you do he said he's part of a franchise of like couriers yeah i thought cool okay he was my dhl driver oh he wore the outfit he had the yellow van you saw the back of that yellow van quite a lot didn't you shut up what is in i'm can you pop out i've got a parcel for you Let me deliver it personally to you.

10:15So basically we match and within like two hours, he's like, I want to come and see you. I was like, this is a bit forward. I still can't believe you did this. I know. This is a bit forward, but I thought, you know what? I was getting ready for my friend's 30th. I looked pretty good. I'd had my spray done. I'd had my hair done. I was like, fuck it. I'll go and meet this guy. So I didn't obviously meet him at my house because I was like, that's a bit too much. So I just went down the road to the shop. classy classy as fuck um i pulled up and then i just see this big yellow van approached me and i'm like what the fuck am i doing like i'm gonna get murdered and um we spoke for a bit and he was really complimentary and i was like okay yeah like you're sitting in the front of the van i know i got out of my car i was standing by my car and he came out of his van came and stood with me and then i and then we kissed within like 20 minutes of meeting right terrible oh For sure.

11:10And then, yeah, we ended up dating for quite a few months. And I can just explain it as it was something out of like Desperate Housewives. I've got to be honest, like the Gardner vibes. Oh, the little tight shorts and the little. No, but it was more like he was on my development three times a day. So sometimes. So he would just pop in. He might just message me and be like, what are you doing? And I'll be like, well, my nanny's here. And then. This is the kind of shit, George. This is what I wanted. If you don't ask, you don't get. Do you know what? I really needed to just get it out my system.

11:41I wasn't looking for Mr. Right. I was looking for Mr. Right now. And Mr. DHL did the job, didn't he? Did he heal your sex chakras? Isn't that what they said? Yeah, I was told that I saw a psychic and she said that someone was going to heal my sex chakras. And did he do that? I feel like he delivered. Literally. So, George, where do you want to go next? Let's go to Olivia and Alex. So we've gone from, you know, couples who haven't made it work to couples who really seem like they're making it work um and Alex Bowen you should say in case you don't know yeah I mean god they're like Cher you don't need to give a surname um no I loved this one we had a little eight week old baby in the studio and also I just loved they were so real like Alex turned up really late because she was getting him to iron her dress they were having little bickers about it it was just they're just really lovely honest people do you know what they're just showing you the realities they also brought a bloody itv2 film crew with them and i'll pop popped up on their tv show which was a bit of a pinch of a moment but even with the full camera crew i really felt like we saw the real olivia and alex that day and it's kind of warts and all you know she's she's let a film crew into her home she's got a new baby you know she she what was She was wearing her mother-in-law's shoes because she forgot hers.

13:05As you said, Alex was late. And it was all the chaos that comes with having a newborn. But just so lovely and genuine, I think. Yeah. They really show how you can make it work, for sure. Right, let's have a listen to Alex and Olivia Bowen. It's a complicated thing. You literally lose your identity to become this new human. You have no idea how to run it. and I always people always say like it's a job you never like got interviewed for and never had qualifications so yeah it is just it's a really weird thing but yeah just when I realized how much I loved it and how incredible like this little boy was and how I could still be myself it was just a different version I think I just thought I was going to lose me completely which I did for a bit yeah do you like yourself better now yeah I think I'm a lot more comfortable and I don't know whether that's hitting 30 as well like when you hit 30 you're like right I don't care about anyone's opinion of me I'm done like I'm over it I don't know I think having kids makes you just there's a bigger picture than like what I look like and what this person says about me or you know what party I'm at yeah exactly I'm too tired to party so the only party you get is three o 'clock in the morning when you're breastfeeding exactly what about Alex do you think he struggled with becoming a dad because I haven't heard a dad say that they've had that feeling before I remember him saying that he felt like it was hard to bond with Abel at first I think where you know we go through all the pregnancy and then we go through the birth and then we're feeding especially if you're breastfeeding the dad doesn't have an instant connection and he said he did find that he found it hard at first to have a connection he's had the same with her um but as they get a bit older he starts to come into his own so it it really is like so up and down and we always say it is just it's just like playing tennis like one time you've got the ball the next time he's got the ball like you have to take it in turn um I don't think we have to ask him when he decides to get here Alex where is Alex he lives on the same time zone as my husband because that's the time when he lives wrong he's here he's here that was perfect time he's joining the podcast oh my god me and you are going to have words later I haven't done anything can you iron my dress can you iron this I need this mic hi Alex hello welcome to the podcast thank you so much I'm so sorry I'm late it's alright we were just talking about you we literally were just getting on to you I hope it was good things is she making you iron her dress as you should be Alex yeah I know but I was late we were both late though You went to a dress meeting.

15:46Yeah, I had a fit in. And then time got away. And then all the stuff, the baby stuff, the cot was all up. I couldn't figure out how to work the cot. So I couldn't, I kind of just, I haven't put it down. I just put it in the cot. So I'll have to sort that out later. And then she was like, can you hire my dress for the pod? And now you're not even wearing the dress. Well, I'm literally in your mum's shoes. Okay. This is parenthood. It is parenthood. We're getting an insight into what it's like in your home. It's so chaos here. It's so great to have you here, Alex. Thank you so much for having us.

16:15We were literally just talking about that sort of moment where a mother becomes a mother, but how does it impact the dad? And we wanted to kind of get your insight into that sort of like first moments of bonding and how you felt with it. And was it different from one to two? I was saying how you had said to me before about instantly, you didn't have that instant connection, did you? Yeah. So it's difficult to explain. Like, obviously, Liv goes through all the process with all the changes in the body and hormones and everything. you have that instant connection obviously breastfeeding and stuff and like i was i remember being the exact same with abel as well as sienna like obviously i have this like love for him instantly but then because they don't give you anything back straight away and they are pretty much attached to live most of the time like it's very difficult to have that instant proper connection but then as like i don't know the days go on and then i'm kind of like switching between abel and sienna of a morning and then i'm cuddling them you just get you just grows over time so yeah We'll be right back after this short break.

17:16Welcome back to this episode of Made by Mamas. Now, where were we? So from Olivia and Alex Bowen, I'm going to move on to a podcast that we actually did only a couple of weeks ago with the wonderful powerhouse that is Anna Whitehouse, a.k.a. Mother Pucker. Now, I thought there were so many beautiful takeaways from this conversation for me, but the one that's really stayed with me was how she described her female friendships. Yes. And actually, that was the real hero in the story in her big jigsaw piece was the fact that she has curated this incredible female tribe around her that are always there no matter what.

17:49And I loved how she described talking to her daughters about it and saying, actually, forget the fairy tale wedding. Forget, you know, this, forget that. But actually, it's the females in our lives. They're the ones that are the true kind of the true hero. and it's mad because we've been doing this podcast for well this will be our ninth year that we're going into and we've never really discussed that before um well you know we've discussed maybe loneliness finding friends like that kind of thing but we've never really discussed how important like other like friendships relationships can be in your life when things go wrong and also you know how Anna was saying you know you don't have to celebrate like the weddings and the engagements.

18:32It's also like you can celebrate who is in your life every day. You know, we don't have to wait for these big milestones. I just want to hear this conversation all over again. Let's listen to Anna Whitehouse. My story with Zoe is the exact story I'm replicating to my girls because Zoe and I genuinely just kind of fell in love as women, as friends. And I'm not saying I see her every day. I'm not saying that I am constantly messaging you okay, hun, how are you? It's the least complicated friendship I've ever had because it genuinely was, it began with a man and ended with two women being friends.

19:10And I don't think, if you look at our story, so it's going to make me teary. I know. If you look at our story, the bit that really we should be celebrating in that is that Zoe and I have had a friendship that spanned 23 years. It's so lovely that I was introduced by this lovely guy. But the real success story in this, the benchmark of my success is the friendships I have with women in my life. And I don't think as we're talking about female biology, weddings, marriages, divorces, where actually is everything I'm seeing right now set in front of me? Two women who met, I think you both met on maternity leave, right?

19:47Yeah, in a coffee shop. That's the love story we should be talking about. my relationship with Zoe that to me is one of the biggest success stories of my life not how I'm measured by uh the society's expectation of what I need to be as a woman it's who I am as a friend who I am as a woman to my girls who's in my tribe who's got my back who's in my tribe you know and I think that that's the bit I consistently say to my daughters and I've noticed it is whenever they see me uh you know on a hen do or my girls come around for dinner or anything I just go you know instead of like oh one day you know you might get married and we don't talk about marriage yeah I talk about the commune I talk about the women yeah that you're gonna have around you till death do you part because I'm living proof that my relationship was there for 17 years it was a beautiful chapter i have two beautiful girls i'm going into another chapter with an incredible man i'm so in love but do you know who's there throughout yeah the women i've had a longer relationship with zoe than i have with any man yeah and one day we'll be living in our retreat in ibiza she's just such a brilliant soul so so pleased to get her back on the podcast again and and i want to take us to millie mackintosh now do you want to do you remember the bits and pieces of that conversation around her sobriety really proud of her for that yeah yeah I do and I think it's it it's quite a lot to come on and be so open about something that was going on like that in your past you know like how like her lowest points and how it's I loved that she's not just said oh I decided to turn sober and then my life got better straight away She really went into the struggles and what else comes up when you do give up alcohol, because you're essentially masking, well, many people are, so many issues.

21:47And then when you do decide to take away the alcohol, you then have to face them. And so then she's obviously talking a lot about how it's then that she's really like facing everything and really having to overcome stuff. And it is an amazing story and how she is now and how she deals with her anxiety. Yeah, really, really, really powerful charm. Here's Millie McIntosh. So I think we all know that person on a night out can't hold that drink, is obviously drunk before everyone else, is, you know, a bit embarrassing, is making a fool of themselves and probably needs to be like taken home or there's some kind of drama.

22:32That was me. Consistently? Not every single time that I drank, but there was always a high risk that that would be how the night turned out. and it felt like this really dirty secret especially being in the industry we're in like I couldn't do it publicly and it did happen publicly because I couldn't control it but it would always be like trying to stop like the press from finding out or pictures from coming out and then everyone's got a camera phone and there was so much anxiety around that as well like making up and being like oh my god what did I do like who could could someone have got seen me like that because someone had taken a picture yeah I do remember vividly talking to you actually about those photographs I think you were on holiday when think Dean was there yeah Dean and I remember that I know I do remember checking in with you at the time about them and I'm wondering if that was kind of where you were at your worst that those were definitely some low moments I could when waking up and seeing pictures from the night before and and Barry looked like you know really wasted and that the feelings of shame would really take over but I would cope with it often by going out and drinking again and just kind of in that cycle and yeah I carried so much shame around the way I would act when I was drunk for a long time then I had I also had my kids and and thought okay this I'm going to calm down now because I'm a mum and enjoyed not drinking when I was pregnant because I was like, I've got an excuse.

24:04No one's going to pressure me to drink. And that was like the first time in my adult life. And I was like, wow, I can actually not drink. And I don't have any want to drink. I want to look after my body and look after my baby. But after I had both of the girls, I found that when I did start drinking again, it all went horribly wrong. And I think I've heard you speaking about this sort of the mum drinking. you know like yeah you know you've got these groups of mums that you've met and someone goes oh it's a thursday let's get the kids to bed and all come around to mine and then suddenly one glass turns into you know six bottles between you all but that's socially acceptable because it's like oh yeah mum's out mum's night out you're like i deserve it i deserve it like i've had you know yeah how many night broken night's sleep i've had all this stress you know we've all been through it and you think it's like a treat yeah but then I think it's a rite of passage don't you yeah you think like that's the right yeah yeah yeah until it's the next morning and you're awake with a you know crying baby at 4am with like the splitting headache and hangover kicking in and yeah I remember one time trying to um bottle feed the baby and just being so hungover I just was like I can't I can't do this I got to give the baby to Hugo and I think I had a panic attack and just had to go had to go back to bed and feel it you know and then all that mum guilt like i'm not a good mother and how could i've got so drunk last night i've got a baby at home it comes it comes and when it comes it comes like a tidal wave actually and i think that is such an important point to be able to get to the place where it's consistently happening you go through those moments because you know we all have them when we're lying there when the anxiety comes yeah and we think fuck we've got two drunk here and then and then we know that we're going to get get two hours sleep max and I used to dread I used to wake up and think or hear the baby and think oh my god yeah and I feel really sad that I didn't it didn't happen often but I feel really sad that I dreaded that moment rather than being like okay I'm a bit tired but I can handle this and that is because of the alcohol so I think also obviously people know us for you know being kind of covering all aspects of parenting and we look at it in a very kind of maybe like humorous way I think sometimes it's all a bit chaotic and it can be a bit mad and as we know parenting can go that way but sometimes things do get very serious and things happen in our lives that we feel Georgia and I feel that it's really important that we bring you all colors of parenting and everything that goes in between that actually navigating grief you know having to discuss mental health There are going to be these bumps on the way, child illness.

26:52So we feel like it's really important for us to bring you all of those conversations. So I'm going to move on to the incredible Ben West. One of the most powerful conversations I think I've ever had full stop because I took it by myself, but Ben talked so much about the loss of his brother to suicide and all the campaigning that he has done since losing his brother. And there were these really sad moments for me where, you know, he went into detail about the last time that he saw or spoke to his brother. They'd had an argument. And for him then to have to deal with not only losing his brother in that way, but then having to make peace with how, you know, that went at the end.

27:32I found that devastating. And then it was really inspiring, uplifting, because Ben has done so much work in the mental health space and looking at young people and how we can really help them. So that has definitely stayed with me since I spoke to him a few months back. Yeah, and important to say here that there is a trigger warning because we do discuss suicide. Here's Ben West. Obviously, Sam was 15 years old when he was diagnosed with depression. He was 15 years old when he died. We've all been 15. It's not a particularly fun time. It's not the easiest time socially. It's not the easiest time in terms of knowing what you want to do with your life.

28:08You know, at school, you're about to do your GCSEs. there's enormous amount of pressure that comes along with that there's also the enormous amount of pressure in terms of you're suddenly expected to know a little bit about what you want to be doing with your life so it's the same time at school you're doing your gcses but school's also saying to you um you need to be thinking about work experience and that's a very daunting thing to tell people so it's not just you know crack on with your exams it's also what are you what are you going to do in your life and i didn't know what that was at 15 um there suddenly becomes a lot of pressure, doesn't there, from going from quite a young person who is cared for by your parents and it's a bit kind of free and easy and you're doing kind of what you want when you want.

28:47And suddenly, I think that is a turning point, 15, especially in young men. I think from the conversations that we have, you tend to see the switch at that age. Whereas I think with girls, they go through puberty maybe a bit earlier. So I've got a 12-year-old and things are happening for her now. Whereas I think men, it happens a little bit later and that might have contributed. you know and i also would you say that the school let's talk about the school and how he was at school and i guess what came out afterwards because i know that's been a big part of your campaigning is really trying to educate schools around mental health just talk me through that i think every school has the problem where historically they haven't been set up to be particularly interested in emotional well-being um you know i i love the analogy of if you think back to a hospital what a hospital looked like 100 years ago and what a hospital looked like now you wouldn't recognize it.

29:36And if you were a nurse in 1920, you have no idea how to do your job in a modern hospital. If you looked at a school in 1920 and a school now, they're pretty much the same. Fundamentally, there's a lot of similarities. And if you were a teacher in 1920, you could probably get away with doing some stuff in schools now. It just hasn't changed at all. And there's still this mindset in a lot of schools, which is it's there to teach. And And obviously that's what school is there for, but you've got to understand and we've got to sort of understand that schools have a much, much bigger role to play in a child's life than just maths, English, geography, history, Spanish, French, right?

30:16It's a place to emotionally grow. And we know in the data, schools that are good at social emotional learning, you know, improve life outcomes for children, health outcomes for children. So it's absolutely clear that prioritizing the emotional side of school is really, really important. I just don't think enough people prioritize that in their schools and I know from from my school experience you know I didn't hear I didn't know anything about mental health and I just think that's such a shame I would have could you imagine if I'd had a lesson in how to talk to someone that you're worried about or what is depression if I'd had that conversation and had done in a meaningful way you know I could have I could have picked Sam up from school one day and I've had the tools to have had that conversation and that would have made the biggest difference with his treatment knowing that he's not alone and that he's not weird and he's not being judged if I could have brought that up but I didn't know how to do that um you know I just thought he'd been diagnosed with a cold like I just that's that's the level of such a lack of understanding around it actually looking back over the years um we have discussed suicide a fair bit um we know we had And Esther Marshall, who's written the book, Sophie Says, she spoke about losing her sister to suicide.

31:40And I think it's really important, like you say, Zoe, that we do bring this side of our podcast to light. Yes, we are humorous and we make jokes, but we also do really cover subjects and hopefully we can help in some way so we often will get like real experts in field on we had Dr Alex on um and he spoke about losing his brother but again how can we stop this from happening to others how can we stop you know people losing their family members to suicide what can we do as parents like how yeah how can we speak to our children it's this is you know So yes, we do cover lots of lighthearted stuff, but this is the stuff that ultimately really matters to us as parents.

32:32Like we want our children to be Brazilian and have the skills to, I guess, tackle whatever comes at them. Yeah. And he also gave some great advice on how to speak to boys, which I found fascinating because we've both got boys. And, you know, sometimes, especially in my house, I think Kit can definitely be on the more closed side. So I really took away that piece of advice from Dr. Alex. I thought it was a brilliant conversation. Here he is. So, you know, a boy and a girl's brain, you know, when you scan a boy and a girl's brain when they're born, very, very young, it's virtually not different at all.

33:07The only real structural difference between a man and a woman's brain is the size. So men's brains are about 10 % bigger, but that's just proportional to the size of their bodies. That makes sense. It's just a proportionality. When you take account for that, the man and woman's brain is not very different at all. but what happens over time and in life and if you scan and there's maybe many studies doing this if you scan a man and a woman's brain and decades later they start looking differently and behaving differently but that if you think about it well hang on we started out with the same we started out with the same brain basically how has it ended up so different well that's so interesting everyone's brain actually does if you what is actually really interesting is if you line up 50 people men and women everyone's brains will look different so it's very important to say that that everyone does look different based on their experience.

33:51But what is clear, and I think is important for people to understand with the men's health space, is that men are not just unable to speak. They're not creatures that are not able to display emotion. We weren't born with this kind of, like, inability to, you know, grow up and be able to, like, ask for help or, you know, communicate. That is something that's been cultured. So, you know, as you grow up, you know, you very quickly, He is a young boy told, man up, come on, toughen up, and all these things. And if you add role modeling, societal expectations, and the shaping that happens, you end up in a situation where many men just cannot ask for help.

34:29They'd rather suffer in silence than they would get help. But that's not because they are men. That's because we've trained them that way, literally very effectively trained them to be that way. But they don't have to be. You can very much, and many cultures show this. and there's many countries like finland for example is a good example of this where you're just not seeing that difference now as much because because men and women are boys and girls are brought up in a way that right emotional literacy is a powerful thing learning about how you feel um allows you to make better judgments and act and control of your emotions is a powerful thing and then you build upon that like this mental fitness side of things and all of a sudden you build resilience and that's what i think most parents i've spoken to over the years with the work that I did in that kind of role said exactly as you started actually or hinted at is that the biggest thing parents worry about that I've heard is they want their kids to be happy and healthy yeah you summarized two words I'd say happy and healthy was the two words I'd pull together that they want we'll be right back after this short break welcome back to this episode of made by mamas now where were we so from dr alex I reckon we need to move on to jessica may um I cannot tell you well we cannot tell you how many people listen to this podcast it was so relatable it was her very first podcast interview that she'd done about infidelity and she talks about how she found out that her partner of 10 years George remember had been cheating on her yes yeah and also do you know what I loved I think that like so many subjects there can be so much shame around being cheated on.

36:06And I love that she comes on and she's like, I know it was nothing to do with me. Like, this is not my fault. Because I think so often the narrative has been, oh, well, you must have been like neglecting. Oh, well, you didn't work in your relationship. Oh, well, you know, they're only cheat if there's a reason. All of this absolute rubbish. And she is really like shining the light on cheating and all of that stuff that comes with it but also empowering people to be like no it's not my fault I'm the victim here and he is the one who's done something wrong there is no explanation there doesn't need to be and you know but we we can still move on and we'll co-parent together and you know we don't have to be you know angry and at each other in front of the kids anyway but she's yeah I really love that she has just come on and been said exactly what happened how it is and she's she's owning that for other people as well yeah I absolutely loved her as well here's Jessica May let's go back to your time with your ex and seemingly in your eyes everything was all hunky-dory everything was going great yeah talk us through that moment where you discovered that actually that wasn't the case because I actually think that is a, I don't know about you, George, and we've never actually spoken about this, but my deepest fear, my deepest wound, and I think maybe a lots of people is, is that love is so, when you give your heart to somebody and you share your life with somebody, it's a knife edge, right?

37:42Because you put your trust in somebody and you give them your heart. At least I do anyway. I'm not sure you guys have been together since you were 17. But you do, you guys love each other to death. And it's a very scary place to be when you have given everything to that person. But it's also really beautiful and rewarding. But you never really know, do you, if your heart is going to be taken care of? You don't. I think that's the hardest part of it all. So when I first kind of found out about what he was doing, only a few months before or the year before, so to speak, we had just bought a brand new house together it was the end of lockdown it was sort of you know the end of the covid era 2021 and in the january we bought we kind of upgraded our house whilst i was pregnant with our second child and then my second child our second child was then born in april um and it was in the march of the following year that i it's really hard to explain but he had been going out a fair amount and not coming home and I think I was so busy with the children that I just I just really didn't pay any attention to it and I was like oh he is where he says he is like you know he's sleeping on a friend's sofa like that's what he's doing classics classic story tale as old as time and it wasn't until I think maybe kind of all this like bubbling frustration in me and the doubts and sort of you know the reality of I'm juggling two children whilst also trying to work and hustle on the side of you know making videos and content on instagram that the pressure was just bubbling and bubbling and my mum came around one day and i just snapped at her i was so upset and i was so angry with her and her reaction was just because he's cheating on you doesn't mean you can treat me that way wow and she left and she walked out the door and i was hang on what what and he's upstairs laying in bed hung over because he's been out the night before and he's just got home and I go upstairs and I say to him like are you cheating on me no no no no no I'm not doing that I'd never do that we've you know we've got a baby call it no no but the seed had been planted in my head hadn't it so I think a few weeks later we went for a family walk and I remember at the time our youngest like she's you know she wasn't even one but she soothes really well by listening to nursery rhymes like on a phone and you would put it in or some white noise and I would push her and she'd fall asleep and my phone had run out of battery that day for whatever reason and he wasn't concentrating and he gave me his phone and it was the first time I'd got hold of his phone in months and months and months right and I took the baby off pretending to put music on and instead I spent over an hour reading through messages on his phone and the most heartbreaking part of all that is I I hate to admit it but I let my baby sit there and let her cry because I was so consumed by what I was seeing and I was so devastated that I almost didn't hear the noise she was making I was pushing her but I just wasn't paying her any attention because I was so I was in shock I couldn't believe what I was seeing oh my god his phone firstly letting your baby cry for an hour is not the most heartbreaking thing no no no I know I know but I think for me like the kind of that that continues throughout all of the story is that you you you prioritize that person because you want to make things better and actually forget about the children a bit and that's I think that's the bit I hold on to and feel quite sad about sometimes I feel I missed out on part of their lives because I was so obsessed with trying to save our family but yeah so you've obviously found out the messages were there the evidence was there what happened next I left him where he was so we I calmly walked back to where he was with my oldest daughter and I just said to her you need to come with mummy we're gonna go and wash our hands and go to the toilet come with mummy and he knew that I knew I don't know how he knew but he knew and as I was walking away he came after us and I started putting the children into the car and he was just very like he was like I'm coming with I'll come with you in the car I'm coming with you in the car and I just I just shut the whole car down so the children couldn't hear me and I very calmly said to him, you're not, you're staying here.

42:26I don't care how you get home, but you're not coming home with us. Well done. Yeah, it was probably the only time I was really the strongest out of the whole thing because I was, I just, the main thing for me was I never wanted the children to hear us fighting. Yeah. And so I thought I have to just take them away. And I went straight to my mum and I just stood there and I went, you were right. You were really right. so as we're talking about kind of these big friday q a's that we had with various different guests don't forget as well to go back and have a little listen to all of our q a's that we've done because obviously we do two episodes a week on a tuesday where we normally speak to a celebrity guest some with a profile some with a big story and then on a friday george we sit down with an expert don't we so we've done loads and loads of q a's this year uh how to talk to children about food um i don't know a friday q a and do you even like your own children where george and i just kind of went through your questions that you had sent in.

43:21We did a Q &A on family law with the legal queen. There are all of these episodes for you in the library. Kids mental health. And also I find personally as well, they're really good to go back to if you've got a specific thing going on in your life. So whether that's, yeah, like, you know, you're worried about, I don't know, your relationship, you can go back and listen to the couples counsellor. You know, if you're worried about your kid eating you can go back and listen to the nutrition episodes they're like they are always there and they're always going to be relevant as well I think that's quite key and I think because we're nearing the end of the podcast obviously we have been um kind of sharing some some pretty heavy subjects I think we do need to flip it on its head slightly and leave you with something that also changed our lives forever the conversation that we had my favorite podcast of 2025 five dr tara oh my god dr tara oh my god i don't know where to start i don't know what to say let's start with the fact that she had a dildo around her neck called the crave which i now own and um the reason she was 15 minutes late to the podcast was because she was doing what in the cat in the car i mean and she also produced it from her bag wiped it clean said sorry it's a bit dirty I think I can't really get past that, if I'm honest.

44:41Please, please, please, can we share it? Please, can we share it again? Let's do it. Let's leave on a high. Dr. Tara, we love you. And this was our favorite moment from 2025. The best position to use a clitoral vibrator with a partner in is using a clitoral vibrator on yourself while receiving his penis in a doggy style. And you get combo orgasm. I mean, talking about flooding your brain with oxytocin, dopamine and serotonin, lots of dopamine. It's that you come through clitoral stimulation and vaginal stimulation at the same time. I mean, there's almost nothing better than that. Yes! I'm here for it, guys.

45:24Thinking about it, I'm getting goosebumps. I'm like, ooh, like, you know, taking it and taking it. So a vibrator on a clit during doggy. Anyone you love in particular? actually someone here is put i mean best sex toys for women that are not too expensive you know so there are two different routes i go for because i teach gen z so i can't be recommending things that are like 120 quid right so with young people i always say just get a simple bullet that doesn't have too many options because it's like you don't actually need those that goes like whoa you just want it to vibrate steadily all the time yeah um so get a simple bullet um when you look for a simple bullet vibrator make sure you get um medical grade silicone people get like itchy itchy vulvas and stuff from from poor quality yeah right so just make sure you it doesn't matter what brand just make sure that it's silicone grade i mean medical grade silicone uh bullet vibrator however those that are listening that are able to drop a hundred quid on like the best and i'm not getting paid for this just fyi this is not a sponsor post like i just i am a huge fan because it's like the dyson of vibrators oh my god i hope i've got it i feel like i'm about to go to top of the class what is it dyson of vibrators it is extremely quiet you don't hear a thing which i love because i don't want it like to be like i love when i'm like having penetrative sex and like I can't do it.

46:58I can't do it. This you don't hear a thing. I used it in the car earlier today. You don't hear a thing. You did not. When you're in traffic on the way here. Yeah.

47:10I have it in my back. Wait. I have it in my back. Don't get it out. I have it in my back. You don't hear. No, this is my lip gloss. Oh my God. This is my lipstick. She's actually getting it out. Here. Oh, it's a little. oh my actual christ what the fuck is that it's 18 karat gold um plated dice and vibrator i'm telling you it's like what's it called crave crave just crave yeah crave yeah crave yeah it's it's so powerful yet so quiet and it looks like jewelry so like i have like I sometimes I wear it as a necklace nobody knows like Anna Williamson yeah she didn't know I was wearing a vibrator what around your neck yeah yeah because it comes with like a a gold chain well there we go I need to get you go on a low well I will I'm stripping this tea bar out for a crave yeah wow I know well that is a first like change my life the kind of clitoral orgasm that like my face is numb I thought you looked a bit funny when you came in yeah because I did that in the car.

48:22She is a complete legend and actually I'm sure there's people campaigning i.e. myself to get her back in 2026 so leave it with us team. Thank you so much for being part of Made By Mum as a podcast for our eighth year. We absolutely love bringing you these episodes. Have the most amazing New Year's Eve. We will be back on the 2nd of January with a fresh episode for you. As always we'd love you to rate, review, subscribe and please give our podcast a follow. Yeah, and do tell your friends. Do all of that stuff. We really, really, really need you to. It really does help. And if you've got any feedback on this episode or things you'd like to hear from us in 2026, drop us a DM on Instagram.

49:01We're on at Made By Mamas. And we'll be back on Friday.