Maternity Service, Not Leave: A New Perspective - with Emma Barnett

0:07Hey, it's Zoe. Welcome to MotherKind. We are sponsored by Wild Nutrition. This is the show that's going to give you a totally new way to think about your life as a mother. And this episode is about a one word switch that is going to completely reframe an experience that most of us have had. Emma Barnett is a broadcaster and author. She is currently on Radio 4's Today programme and of course hosted Women's Hour for many years. She is here to chat about changing the phrase maternity leave to maternity service. How brilliant is that? And how actually just changing that one word changes everything.

0:54We talk about her experiences of becoming a mother, why we have to prepare women better for what's to come. and she shares some brilliantly practical and funny tips for your maternity service and beyond. I hope you love it. Here it is.

1:14Emma, I am so excited to be chatting to you today. Having admired you from afar for a long time, I am absolutely thrilled to be talking all things maternity service. Thank you very much for having me. I am very aware of you too. So this is like a first date. It is. Let's hope it goes well. So I suspect that we have something in common, which is a love of language and words. And I write in the start of my book that words make worlds. And it's so fascinating to me how one switch from maternity leave to maternity service completely reframes the whole thing. How did you get that genius insight? Well, I started writing quite frantically at the start of a heat wave.

2:07So I was on my own with both children because my husband was doing a business course. And I was with the baby, who is our daughter, who's six months at this point, and our son, who was five. And I I had to do, you know, pick up every day. And I was doing that most days anyway, but this was a really intense week. So I went at the start of the week and bought a few bottles of rose, bought some chub rub shorts from Marks and Sparks to deal with the heat and lots of walking. And then I decided to try and write down my experience of maternity leave. And two days into writing, and I was just writing in snatched moments, notes and observations I'd had, I had this thought that actually it was more like service and there were elements of it that were very service-like sort of kit uniform being prepared for anything sacrificing a lot of what you had thought of as yourself and I think what was interesting is when I started writing which is why I think if you do need something or want to do something for yourself sometimes it can be good just to start because you don't know what's going to happen, especially when you're in the love trench that is motherhood and new motherhood.

3:19I actually felt my brain starting to wake up again, you know, like the neural pathways refiring. And I do think a lot of this time, although you're having hormones and new experiences and your brain, we know, is changing, which I know you've talked about and looked at with matricence and that whole process, you are also quite deadened and you are on standby mode. And I was so excited just to have a bit of a fresh thought. And that's where it really began. Yeah, it's so true that I actually experienced my maternity services as quite a creative time. And I've heard lots and lots of mothers talk about that, that there was something, maybe it was the sleep deprivation, that a lot of those blocks to my creativity or what you have to say doesn't matter.

4:07And all that internal dialogue seemed to shift a bit for me in my maternity services that did allow a creativity to come through and definitely saved me too. Was that your experience? Yes and no. I mean, I think there were just hours and hours and days and days of walking. You know, there was lots of talking as well. And I think once you could turn your mind to something, yes. But I think what you're talking about is also the symptom of perhaps sleep deprivation, the awareness that you've done something incredible, the no shits left to give because there's so much shit around you, perhaps. You know, there's a layer of life taken off you as you give life that perhaps opens you up in a slightly different way.

4:52And, you know, I totally understand women who find or could on the surface find it annoying or irritating when people produce anything else during this time. You know, I get that because most of the time I was in survival mode for the very small person I had managed finally to create and for our older child. But I do know what you mean about there just being something sometimes a bit more unblocked. That was my experience. And I completely understand that frustration when you hear people like you and I talk about creating things during maternity service. At points, I definitely would have want to have punched anyone that suggested that was an option.

5:36So I'm so curious because I've done a lot of reading about you, obviously, in preparation for this. And I am fascinated to understand your two experiences of matrescence and how that has changed you as a person and a broadcaster and a professional. How is the Emma of pre-children different to the Emma sat in front of me today? Well, I think it's a really interesting question for me. And thank you for saying maternity service, for trying it out with me and using the phrase, because I think for me, it's a reframe. And the reason I wanted to put it out in the world, apart from this being a portrait of my type, is I'm astonished that more portraits don't exist in some ways.

6:18If you'd been on a six-month or year-long tour of something else, there'd be photos, there'd be recollections, there'd be stories. But women are then going back into the next thing, whether it's their job or a bit more of what they were doing before and a bit less in other ways. And so I wanted to put this out in the world. I wanted to reframe because I felt, in answer to your question, blindsided by this experience the first time around and also blindsided the second time around. And I remember going into Waterstones in Manchester, where I'm from, and I was working at the BBC in Manchester a couple of days a week at this point.

6:53I used to work at a station called Five Live. And I walked in and I said to the guy on the desk, have you got a book that isn't about babies, isn't about parenting, but is about the woman becoming a mother? uh have you got something about me being pregnant and the internal story of that and I didn't know what I was asking for but effectively I was asking for something about matrescence and I didn't know that word yet either and this poor guy just took me to the parenting section and there were many of the books that I knew of already having worked on women's hour for many years before I joined it full time and also just as a curious interested reader and feminist they were what I was looking for and I only discovered this word maybe two or three months into my first tour loving tour of duty as I now like to refer to it and it was like a light went on and I was reading everything I could and I think it's as you know and you will have talked about with your listeners it's a process and adolescence is a process and I felt like I needed to have acknowledged the abnegation of self and the development of myself and I didn't know that when my first child was born I there was also a death there was a death of who I was and then there was a rebirth of who I was to become and of course many things carried over but there is an interim stage where you really don't know what's going to be left a bit like when you put glue on a piece of paper and put some sand on it the shaking off takes some time that's such a beautiful analogy I absolutely love that and I cannot get the image of that waterstones guy out of my head just looking at you and it's so interesting because I feel like you know mother kind and your book and Lucy Jones and a few other body of work, which is beyond parenting.

8:58And when I started, Emma, nobody got it. Everyone thought I was a parenting expert running a parenting podcast. And I would explain, you know, multiple times a day. No, it's about the woman. It's what happens when a woman becomes a mother. And I would get blank faces back at me and they'd say, oh, we'll just put you in the parenting, you know, this is, you know, for articles or whatever. Or we'll just put you in the parenting section. I'd say, it's not about parenting. It's about the person behind the parent, behind the mother. And so I'm so excited for this new era. Do you think there's a huge change coming in what, you know, particularly Lucy and you and, you know, me, I'll say a pioneering.

9:35Can you see that change becoming more mainstream? Yeah, I mean, I feel I found some friends in books also at that time, but they were almost genre defying. And they were also still, if you knew about it, you knew about it. You know, it was kind of underground vibes, even though you can't describe Rachel Cusk as underground. and she faced a lot of vitriol for for what she put out there and I felt incredibly grateful that there was this very raw and real account of motherhood I mean it's not even raw it's just real and then I also felt Naomi Stadlin's work what mothers do when they're doing nothing filled a bit of the space for me and I also felt a book I only found this time around and it's not all about books obviously it's about podcasts about conversations as well but another book was um the baby on the fire escape which was the story of several artist mothers it's very specific about creative mothers and how they managed to get through being a parent and still being creative which if you haven't read i really recommend but this space that you're talking about and not fitting neatly into the genres of literature that have been prescribed and described, I find really exciting.

10:58And I didn't, you know, matrescence, I believe the term was coined in the 70s. I might be wrong on that, but I believe it was then. There's obviously a whole, you know, history of that that you will have looked into and talked about, as has Lucy. But making it more mainstream and creating that space is just vital because I think there are a lot of women who need to hear the things that are about themselves in addition to their child and how that works together. And a lot of women I've spoken to don't know that they're looking for it, but they are looking for it. And then when they find it, it's like they can breathe.

11:38Yeah, because you realize that was my experience when I discovered the word and the idea, really that you change and it's okay to unravel. I really thought I was doing it wrong. I genuinely thought that, that I was a failure and that perhaps I didn't love my child enough, which is the most heartbreaking thought. And I think that's why I grabbed both hands, that concept, because it made me feel like there was actually nothing wrong with me. It's funny. I can understand that. And I don't think I felt that. I think I didn't understand my new life I think I felt a bit like a stranger in my life so I don't know I hope you don't I'm just trying to like reflect a slightly different experience but I I've always felt that the love and all those things with the child with my son or with my daughter was there but my issue was not loving the existence alongside it as much as I felt I should so I didn't feel it's interesting I sort of managed to come I'm quite good at in some ways and awful at others at compartmentalizing But I managed to compartmentalize trying to learn how to sort of become a mother, like some of the practical stuff, as well as how much love and gratitude I felt.

12:50But at the same time, being mightily confused and pissed off about what seemed to have happened to my existence. And at the same time, you know, I got a message from a woman the other day. It felt like quite a desperate message. She was sat in a cafe five months in to her first child. And she said, oh, everybody says it's going to get easy. It's not getting easier. And I was like, it might not get easier, but it will change. And by definition, by changing, it will get easier. And it might not seem easier than what you thought before, but I can promise you it will change. And I think that's quite reassuring.

13:25It will move and you will move and things move. And then I had this much larger age gap than was planned between our children. I mean, who can say what's planned, but then I had hoped. And so at least going into the second time, I knew that things changed. Yeah. And what gives me comfort and gave me comfort was that I change as well. My confidence is night and day to how it was, you know, six weeks, five months, four, a year in. You grow with the challenge of it. And I think it's so easy not to know that and to forget that. I wanted to ask you about something that kind of predictably always gets asked and it is in some ways predictable area, but I want to get your thoughts on it, which is there's such a kind of thought around we shouldn't be telling mothers too much about what the experience is like before they go into it because everyone's is different and does it cause more harm?

14:23And is this why, you know, the birth rate is dropping? And I've got, you know, thoughts, but I'd love to get your thoughts on that. How much should we be preparing women before they have children for what might unfold? So I don't subscribe to the idea, which is put forward by certain women with big platforms, that if we tell women too much, they'll stop having children. And then that's the reason that the demographic is the way it is. The demographic is the way it is for so many different reasons, not least women having free choice, the unaffordability of housing, not finding necessarily a structure or a partner that they want to do this within.

15:00There's a lot of reasons. And men also have a huge part, of course, to play in that. And it's not like if men read these books they're suddenly going to want to procreate or not procreate but so I sort of put that on the side and that's very much how I feel um but I think it's a really important question to ask you will only engage in any stage of your life just before you're going to engage with it so this idea that you're going to read about it when you're 15 you're going to read my book when you're I mean you're not gonna be my book when you're 15 but whatever it's for the birds like we are the least prepared women in the whole of time to have children because we have been told to shoot for the moon to often at times probably prioritize success or ourselves or our own happiness more than ever before the sense of community in society is totally dropped off at certain points and we're more atomized in some ways and connected in other ways because of the internet so I worked till two minutes before my first birth I mean a week I had off and I came to you know having gone like 90 miles an hour probably my whole life till that point apart from when I used to bed on the sofa which was joyous and you know now is a total luxury I went from that to having a baby on top of me that I couldn't move from under I was like whoa okay and I think it's really amazing if you can get some prep, get some reframe, get some forearm, forewarn vibes.

16:30And the only issue is, as humans, we are often too pig-headed to listen to anything until we're in it. So I think these will become, these books, these conversations, they should become, I hope they are accompaniments to you once you're on the road. Yeah, I totally agree. I actually think it's nonsensical to me that anyone would argue that you know it's doing women a disservice by not preparing them because we're not saying and in your book and in my book and in Lucy's book we're not saying this is going to be your experience but what we're doing is offering your book off as an incredible reframe for how that experience might feel and if you have a different experience incredible you know and the whole thing's roses and florals and skipping amazing but I know and you know that's not the norm and I completely agree.

17:19I think we need to do so much more in terms of preparing women properly for the realities of particularly modern motherhood because as you were just alluding to it is so different than even what my mother experienced. Well I also just think even if you can't get to women before as I say like having some guides and some conversations alongside is, you know, invaluable. I personally didn't want to read that much until I like to almost match where I am with something and then check in on it. Yeah. I'm the opposite. I'm like a researcher. Before I go, it's like the controller in me. Although interestingly, I was looking for, you know, I didn't read anything that was useful before everything that I read was not helpful because it was all about the baby.

18:12Yeah. Well, I mean, I did do those books, of course, the week by weeks and each thing and what you could look for. But yeah, I mean, I think it's my nature as a last minute journalist who works to deadlines that will only confront perhaps reality once it's staring me in the face. So we're covering both bases between us. Exactly. Exactly. Anything on that spectrum is all good. And I wanted to talk to you about that transition back to work which is at the end of the book you know coming off that service into a different type of service I know I keep rereading this bit I'm like oh what have I said yeah okay go I just loved how you offered up a in a way it's a coaching tool as I would see it of writing a letter to yourself before you go can you share what that is and and why it was helpful yeah so I mean, there are inadvertently some of my own shortcuts and ideas in this book, which is not presented as a you should, but you could.

19:12And no one told me to do this, but I wrote myself seven years ago and then two years ago, maternity leave letter to myself. Maternity service drill notes, as I now can think of it. And, you know, from the practical of it contained my login so I could get back into my computer. uh through to some really nice i mean my job's quite an unusual job but some nice messages i'd received from our listeners wishing me well with some good luck vibes to remind myself that when i walked back into the studio because it is a strange job that you can't just slink behind your desk the first day back you have to broadcast to millions of people um that i definitely knew how to do it and i could do it and i would do it so it was a it was a hand-holding piece of well a document really and I nearly didn't write it the second time around because you know you nearly don't do anything if you're lucky enough and want to go a second time around because you've done it before but actually it was one of the most important tools I gave myself to returning it's like um it's like going into a time machine you don't really know what version of yourself will re-emerge but you're expected to at least go back if you are able to if there hasn't been maternity discrimination if you want to if you can you are expected to go back to your job by and large and I do think you know it's an exercise you could play a million different times over when it comes to parenting what if men had to do this but I do laugh when I think if men had to wander around all day waiting on the needs of babies in quite the same way for the same amount of time as women are expected to take a break from all they have known and if they then also had to be okay with being away from their job, even if it's not their favorite thing in the world, but somewhere that they had built up some standing and some connections and then just be fine with going back in.

21:05You know, having spoken to some of my close male friends, they admit that they would find this so discombobulating, so bewildering, so hard. And yet that first morning, there's no like siren outside the door for a woman to be like, emergency, I'm going back to work. You know, there's no drama. it's it's just you got to go back in go back on and go and okay so the women out there who found it a total breeze good for you but there are a lot of people who you know this is why we have return of work schemes within big organizations but there are for a lot of women this requires ovaries of steel and I think that is very much worth saying and that's why the book although it's nearly at the end I do include just that letter but I also include like the two handbags in the hallway the feeling of putting on clothes I haven't tried on for more than a year like all of the tiny details that get flattened out because we're too tired to share them or we don't think it's worthy my wedding ring didn't fit the whole time because I was so swollen from the pregnancy I was on maternity service it pissed me off I like my wedding ring it's a part of me the stone was from my grandmother, like, you know, through to having to just be like, yeah, it's totally normal to go back to work.

22:27And of course, it is in some ways. And that normality is vital. But nothing about this is necessarily the lack of ease surrounding that is not reflected very regularly, very loudly or very often.

22:50I loved that analogy by the way of the the two bags I thought it was absolutely beautiful I loved it in Emma's book if you haven't read it yet there's an analogy of your kind of work bag and then switching to your you know your change bag and I just thought what an amazing metaphor for that switch that you make and I think when you actually think about exactly as you've described it you know you're going from first gear you know lots of down regulation on your nervous system straight up into to fifth gear depending on your the type of job that you have plus so many mothers feel you know that huge guilt that huge wrench back to their child and you are getting your child used to child care which if you've been lucky enough to have that time off and that is that is such a head fuck honestly because whatever you've put in place it takes time to transition and have I got it right and often there's tears and it's just an emotional wretch and yet isn't it wild that we just expect mothers to kind of drop all that and and show up in those early months back to work it's actually insane in some levels how much we've normalized it that's just what we do and we just get on with it yeah I mean when you put it like that yeah I mean there should just be howls and screams across the nation um but there but there can't be and equally at the same time you know I am quite a heads down crack on what you're gonna do type of person but at the same time I think it's really important to make space to reflect that soundtrack the soundtrack inside a woman's mind of all the things that you described is also what I try and reflect in some of the vignettes in the book.

24:34And I had to do it while I was on maternity service because I would forget it. We are programmed to forget. We are programmed to rewrite it. We are programmed to rose tint it. I already rose tint so much of it. And I'm happy about that because I look at my daughter, she's edible and it's divine. But there was also what was going on with me at times. And I think there's a story in the book, which again I would have deleted the soundtrack to this sort of urgency there's two there's I'll just say them really quickly one is backing yourself holding your nerve and what goes on with that I was in the Tate in London in Tate Britain I was with a friend and my children cannot go to sleep in the buggy without cobbles or some sort of friction and so walking over smooth floor at nap time doesn't get them off and my daughter needed I could tell she had one sleep cycle and I could tell she needed another so again this was very hot we had a very hot summer that year two years ago and I just left my friend I was quite stressed and I knew because she was screaming down the house in the gallery which is not fun either that there were cobbles outside in the square and I walked and walked and it took nine minutes and those nine minutes I doubted my decision because I left my friend really scrappily you know she didn't mind she had a baby as well that's why you need your sisters in arms marching in lockstep as they say and I was right and she got back down to sleep and she did another sleep cycle and I felt so vindicated but so emotionally strung out by should I have done that was that right move will she go to sleep and so you're totally right about down regulation and then up but I also felt a total wreck from such a small but important move and the other thing was I went to visit a family member a cousin in town one day and the lifts weren't working nearly couldn't be bothered to go it was too much effort I had to calculate how I was going to get there could someone help me out the lift you know all these things and I got there my daughter was sick all over me I was breastfeeding she was screaming we finally got a bit of peace my cousin got one cuddle she was thrilled I didn't hear a word my cousin said I couldn't concentrate maternity leave is an exercise in unfinished conversations unfinished thought and the fact that you can't be with people but you need people It's just a bag of contradictions.

26:51And I got home. I was exhausted. Was it worth it? Yeah, made a memory. My cousin saw my daughter when she was three months old. I don't know who benefited, but it was part of the existence. And I needed to capture it. I'm just struck by hearing those two stories next to each other as well. Just the level of mental, constant mental arithmetics. Because that nap example that you gave, you do that when you're on maternity service. You do that 10, 20 times a day, don't you? particularly if, you know, feeding was hard for me. And I was like, should I do this? Should I do this? What should I do? And I'm, I'm frantically Googling.

27:26There's this site in the States. I can't remember what it was called. I spent my life on it, which was about, was it Kelly, Kelly, I've blanked it out. I've been on that. I've been on that. I think I've blanked it out. Spending my life on it, trying to let, it's just, it is insane in so many ways that the mental load on top of if you're anything like me and I bring that kind of perfectionist you know hard working researcher to everything that I do and I definitely brought that into motherhood and it definitely unraveled me quicker than perhaps I would have done because I was so like I've got to do this right well luckily I didn't suffer from that but I did have to do a lot I do like researching I just I'm not a perfectionist although I like to do things well you know what I mean but I I think that must be even harder you know I was breastfeeding through mastitis a lot in the first um time and you know everything like I'm getting the cabbage leaves I'm doing whatever I'm reading about everything like I haven't even thought about that to be honest um I didn't even include that because that wasn't the experience this time I could only capture what happened this time but this time I kept getting duct blocks and I you know didn't want to get mastitis again yeah there's so much that is going on all the time and I now look at women you know walking with buggies and they're in that wilderness full-time I re-enter you know on Thursdays at midday because I don't work on Fridays don't work I re-enter it every day whenever my work ends and you toggle between the two and it's jagged but when you're on full time and I look at those women and I just I know I know what's happening I see what's going on even though I don't know them and I obviously just want to run up to them and say you got out you got out the house well done exactly exactly and I think that word scene that you just used is so important because it's so invisible like those mental arithmetics that we were just talking about, those are invisible.

29:33And I'm wondering, having done this rebrand, and I deeply hope that this rebrand reaches kind of corporates, reaches far beyond our, the mothers who grab it and believe in it and get it. What do you wish more people outside that lived experience knew? I'm thinking business leaders, I'm thinking politicians, I'm thinking partners, grandparents across the board, everyone that isn't going through that experience themselves? Well, I think there's some really obvious stuff like, it's not a holiday. I genuinely believe that women and men who haven't been through this, putting aside if they haven't been through and they desperately wanted to, putting them in a sort of very set and secure space separate to the rest.

30:21I think that would be really important for for us all to see that the next generation don't come from trees they come from us they come from women and they come from what we're going to do and yes you can make the argument it's your choice you've gone off to do this I know all that I've done all these arguments a million times a different ways on the BBC and all my different programs right but I would love for it to be seen in the fullness of what it is as much as possible and for us to just kind of understand that it's not really working in many ways and we have a failed policy in this country which is called shared parental leave it's failed by definition because of how low the take-up numbers are I think that we have to have policymakers and leaders of all sorts who recognize that just because it's been broken for ages, just like postnatal care, doesn't mean that somebody shouldn't prioritize it.

31:25How you make this whole space urgent is vital. I completely agree with you. And I think so often about what stops it feeling more urgent. And I, you know, there's so much self-silencing and that's definitely what I did when I was on maternity service. I self-silenced. I didn't want to, because I didn't want to seem like I was ungrateful or complaining. And I feel like that has been passed down the generations of, you know, gosh, huge societal structures which have silenced us when we want to speak out in these ways. because of you know you mentioned Rachel Cusk and you know the god the vitriol that she got for daring when was it 50 years ago for saying that it was beautiful and hard you know yeah it's incredible isn't it how far we've come and yet how far we've got and I also think you know we love it is a love of the media of society of of us all like I said before to flatten out women's experience but we also love putting women in in boxes and certain things so you know a crazy thing that happened six months after our daughter was born was we had the germ of an idea which has now become my husband's full-time job it's become a family business which is a publishing company called color your streets so we do local coloring books and we've now got 150 and it's grown and we were packing envelopes I mean it was mainly him doing this but because of things like that and I've spoken about it like our first one was coloring where we lived coloring hern hill colour in Brixton around there and they didn't exist and it was all through a chat with our son and it was just a lovely creative initiative that's become a proper living breathing very exciting business and you know big project really and because I've talked about that or because I've talked about the book I suppose I think one of the things that gets sometimes you know said about me and I'm saying this in case it's helpful to anyone else listening is you're a career woman and it's said in a certain way and it's said with respect as well sometimes I'm not saying but I very much view myself as a homewoman as well you know like whatever that is and the again it's hard but good you know you can want things to fill your mind fill your experience drive you but also really want to create a life where you can spend a lot of time with your family and I find you know getting pegged as one thing it's a bit like saying anything negative when we put people off women from having kids like we just need to get away from these boxes and these very sort of set things and also the thing for me about maternity leave and service and I sort of bring that up in view of this business that grew up in our living room and our daughter's bedroom was a stock room for ages, we went in a warehouse, is that the idea, again, that maternity service or leave ends when you go back to work, if you go back to work, or when childcare begins outside from you, is the fastest road to making a woman feel like something I think is a bit wrong with her if she doesn't feel quite how she felt before.

34:37Now, she may never feel exactly how she felt before, but maternity service is lifelong from all I can hear from older female friends and male friends. And I think your hormones, you'll know more, perhaps from some of your writing and reading, but with people I've spoken with, your hormones take a long time to resume. Your brain can take six or seven years to reform some of the matter it had before. even the way that we've structured the return to what is an industrial endeavor work has superseded our knowledge of science there is no reason or way you should feel normal whatever your normal is only a year after you give birth yeah exactly and the problem is i think when we've got these kind of societal given timelines that's what we measure ourselves against it's like the six-week check I get so many dms of people saying you know my baby's 10 weeks and I still don't feel okay but the six-week check said everything was fine it's kind of you know and it's the same with the you know the year long it's and I think it's so empowering the knowledge that you put in your book and that's in mine and others is to change those timelines for ourselves while we wait for the rest of the world to to catch up with the real timelines which are exactly as you described two years for your hormones to go back, seven years for your brain to go back, 10 years, you can be experiencing postnatal depletion.

36:00And then, you know, essentially, if you have another child, the whole thing resets. So you are postpartum forever in my mind, basically, until you... Well, that's good to know. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But those timelines radically need to change. But then you start questioning, well, why, whose timelines do those fit? Well, you know, as you mentioned, they fit the industrial world, don't they? You know, to get us back to productivity. well also just briefly you know having at the moment i am it's a whole other conversation but i'm in the the depths of trying to you know look at perimenopause for myself and also endometriosis and this my friend said it sounded like a really bad like house night where endo meets perimenopause and we should just make a rave about it and i was up for that but anyway looking at hormones and and how i can try and help myself a little bit if i can you know the guidance versus the dose that you need don't always meet and it's another example of having milestones so where i think you know you and i we've got lots of similarities here you just sound a better like you'll do things a bit more in advance than i will but where i feel you know is a is a big commonality between a lot of women i know and i know we've only just met and i think our first date is going well is liking milestones especially when you're trying to get a little person to be okay right and I think we're sort of we cleave to them and it's a bit of wisdom and it's a bit of community but to know that a lot of them are just based on averages of people that you might not be anything like whether it's medicine whether it's how you feel in yourself it's just hugely comforting it's annoying when goalposts move but it can be quite freeing yeah absolutely and I think that is so linked to confidence because I feel like when you're lacking something inside you you tend to or I tend to latch on to something externally when I feel confident internally or something I'm really good saying no this is for me whereas when I'm not sure I'm like what's everyone else doing and where does that link and so I think one of the best skills is to learn to develop that inner confidence so then you can look at the outside things and think okay how do I fit into that but this is your point about Kelly mom or whatever that website is called is you don't know what you're doing.

38:15No, exactly. So that's why I was up at 3 a.m. reading some woman in the deep south experience of mastitis or whatever it was. I drove my NCT group mad. I mean, I think we drove each other mad at points, but I used to ask so many questions. Are you doing this? Is this happening? You know, to your point, it's such a good point. When you feel confident, you don't crowdsource or triple check everything. You just don't. You don't. You check in, don't you? But as you say, you can't do that on maternity service often because it is a whole new wilderness. I've absolutely loved this chat. I think we could talk for much longer.

38:54And I wondered, I always ask the same question at the end, which is if you could give just one gift to all the mothers in the world, what would it be and why? I would give them a really great massage like not me but the gift of a massage with a fantastic playlist for them to leave the massage room with so they could have an amazing power list to help them around or you know whatever they needed but with the person giving the massage could know all about matrescence and tell them everything while they're listening that would be incredible I just got a vision of i just got a vision of emma barnett in like trafalgar square offering mother's on maternity service whispering you know lines from your book in their ear and give them a gynecologist for life yes yes both necessary the book is out and you are doing a tour where can people find and come and see you in person which is always more magical sometimes virtually we are in Manchester at the Manchester Literature Festival.

39:59I'm going to Charleston to their festival, to Hay-on-White, Stratford, Bath, looking further afield as well at the moment. I can't remember all the different places, but a good spread geographically. Cambridge, yeah, and there's a couple more in London as well where I live now. Incredible. So if you are on maternity service or not, what an amazing, I'd just love to gather your sort of NCT group or whoever it was and come along and see Emma. I think it'd be an incredible evening. Thank you so much. You're so welcome. You're so welcome. Thank you so much. And I absolutely love the book and I will no longer be calling it leave at service in my language now.

40:39Amazing. Amazing. Okay. We'll take that. Yeah. I will only be referring to it as maternity service, including when I go into corporates, which I do a lot, I will be talking about it and I'll see the reaction and I'll let you know. Yes, please do Zoe. Thank you so much.

40:56Thank you.