Episode 190: Martha Keith

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1:27Sophie Ellis-Bextor: Hello, I'm Sophia de Spexter and welcome to Spinning Plates, the podcast where I speak to busy working women who also happen to be mothers about how they make it all work. I'm a singer and I've released eight albums in between having my five sons aged between seven years old and nearly 22. So I spin a few plates myself. Being a mother can be the most amazing thing, but it can also be hard to find time for yourself and your own ambitions. I want to be a little bit nosy and see how other people balance everything. Welcome to Spinning Plates. Hey, it's me. And look, it's you. And we're here together.

2:06Sophie Ellis-Bextor: How you doing? I am... I'm actually alright, you know. It's been a nice week since I spoke to you. I'm trying to think what I've been up to. I went over to Limerick, very beautiful part of Ireland. and did a support gig for Shania Twain, which was really cool because everybody was so excited and it felt like the whole of Limerick was taken over with, well, mainly women walking around town in cowboy boots and leopard print and cowboy hats or up for a good night with Shania, which happened. She was great. And it's lovely to play a stadium full of such a welcoming crowd. So if you were one of them, thanks.

2:48Sophie Ellis-Bextor: It was wicked. and um yeah i've been i'm only away for two nights this week so that feels not too not too chaotic one of them is tomorrow night i'm speaking to you from thursday tomorrow i'm off to vienna for a gig it looks incredible actually it's a festival that's in a kind of castle grounds i'm really enjoying doing more of these european festivals it's what i always was hoping for and uh it's just really glorious to be traveling around and yeah i think what festivals are like in other parts of the world so for this summer i've been in where have i been budapest i've been the netherlands i've got spain next week france in a couple of weeks galway in a few weeks nice places and tomorrow yeah vienna where the headline act is maybe so maybe i'll get a chance to say hi to him i haven't seen him properly since oh golly it's probably about 20 years we did a song for my first album together called is it any wonder which i really enjoyed writing actually written in very snowy new york so a very happy little bit of memory that that unearthed and yes this is actually the final episode of this series which is making me think because uh next series will take me up to episode 200 bloody hell how glorious is that where are we now six and a half years down the line and what a lovely conversation i've had for the end of this series with a lovely woman called Martha Keith, who you might know under one of either two or both guises.

4:23Sophie Ellis-Bextor: You might know her because she has a stationary business called Martha Brooke, which she's had for over a decade. And two years ago, she started something on Instagram called the Business Secrets Club, which is where she gives really valuable advice and nuggets of wisdom from her decade-long time running her business and how to help small businesses do what they do. So it ranges from practical business advice to social media advice, just really smart thinking. And what I love is it's a wonderful example of the generosity that can come when you're feeling secure with the world you've created and what you're doing with your own business.

5:01Sophie Ellis-Bextor: So I think all power to Martha with what she's doing there. I love her spirit and I love how successful it's been. been she's got loads of followers for both accounts both doing really well and uh so I approached her first because I thought oh you know I always love talking to entrepreneurs I like how she runs her business I like how she was opening up uh what she'd learned to other people but then once we got in touch and started chatting about doing the pod she said oh I had both my daughters through IVF I'd be really happy to talk about that so she's got um daughters aged eight and three and that's part of a 10-year fertility journey and from that our conversation just absolutely blossoms.

5:44Sophie Ellis-Bextor: There's a very good example of what can happen in the podcast sometimes where I'll sit down with my guest and we'll think okay we're probably going to talk about business and entrepreneurialism and yes journey to motherhood and IVF and fertility but then through that we spoke also about endometriosis and about the very difficult birth she'd had with her first daughter and about how her relationship with her dad and how losing him just before she had a second daughter affected her so the conversation has absolutely blossomed in all different areas and it was a very rich open conversation and I'm really really grateful to Martha for sharing it because I think it will help so many people who've gone through I don't know any aspect of this whether you're someone setting up a business whether you're somebody who's struggled with fertility whether you've been through IVF whether you've lost a loved one whether you've had a difficult birth endometriosis all these incredibly life-affecting situations and things we can go through but Martha's been someone that's not only gone through them all but is feeling able to discuss them and to share what she's learned and how it's affected her with other people so I suppose it's a really good indication of the same way she approached you know from her business to wanting to share her business secrets to her life experience and wanting to share that with other people and help people too so all in all a generous woman um and yeah just just be a little bit um mourned because those are sensitive vulnerable topics so if there's something you've experienced then you know just let me know like not let me know I want you to know is what I meant to say that I'm there and uh this is um a conversation that might touch on some of those points but actually I always think there's so much value from from the sharing so I hope you feel uh I hope you feel safe within the walls of this podcast you are coming from me you are all right I will see you on the other side thank you to Martha and I'll see you in a minute

8:00well hello neighbor this is the furthest the least far your podcast guests have to ever travel how crazy is that you're like four four rows away from you four rows away and yet we haven't we've met briefly seen each other seen each other and i know we followed each other on instagram and i think i saw you last year at a circus like i feel i never really know whether to say hi because it

8:20Sophie Ellis-Bextor: must be really annoying people kind of i'm not always so high i like it always happy to chat and actually yes I've been very happily following your business which is ever evolving actually and growing so even since I've last bumped into you I think you've now launched extra aspects yeah so where would you like to start why don't we start with your working world and what's going on in that oh my gosh what a big what a big workplace to start so I run a stationary business Martha Brooke which is I guess the main thing that I do and the thing that takes up a lot of my time which is my first baby is absolutely bucketing it down outside by the way if listeners are soothed by the sound of the rainforest my soothed by the sound of the rain yeah it's West London I turned up in Sophie's house looking like a sort of drowned rat you really didn't actually but now I think we'd both be challenged by this weather yeah yeah it's rather weird I did have to take my shoes off with fear of it's cosy though isn't it walking rain water over Sophie's nice carpet um so i that's i've been doing for nearly a decade i quit my my corporate life my my my proper job much the horror of my my parents and then i a couple of years ago decided to start a second business called business secrets club which is essentially helping small business owners yeah with all the things that i wish i'd known at the start which is a lot um and then i do various other things in the small business space sort of helping startups and things like that so So good.

9:50Yeah, lots of different things. And it's good. So at the moment in my stationary business, we are gearing up for our busiest time of the year, which is making our stationary advent calendar, which is our biggest product. And it takes a huge amount of work as we manufacture here in the UK. And we're also behind the scenes building a new website, which is really exciting. And then I am, yeah, just Business Secrets Club is just so busy. I mean, it's really exploded. I really could never have imagined what's happened with it. And it's created lots of other things, lots of opportunities so I do a lot of different things um for example I'm at the government small business council and um do various things like that so probably like yourself dragged in lots of different directions but in a good way I like being busy yeah and I suppose hearing you talk

10:35Sophie Ellis-Bextor: about it I'm imagining that you you've put so much into your stationary company and got it to a place where you feel you are able to as you say share the wealth of knowledge and what you've learned but in doing that i imagine it also keeps your mind sharp to what your business needs the weirdest thing is that when you you learn a lot by teaching so i have i think got become a better business owner by helping other business owners because when you start saying to people actually do you realize that's the thing you go am i doing that or i you know it makes you self-reflect so it it kind of started in a strange way um which i we can i can tell you that story if you're interested but it um so I was going through a very very long fertility battle to make my children which which we can we can touch on but I also at the same time my dad was very unwell and I hit a milestone birthday uh which was 40 around the same year that he within a year of him passing away and I had this kind of real moment of, oh my gosh, life is so short.

11:43And I really remember my dad turning 40. I remember I was 10 and I remember hanging out the window and my parents were having a party and all the lovely noise drifting up to the windows. And I remember just thinking, oh, he was so old. And you get to 40 and you're like, my gosh, this really isn't old. And he also weirdly ran a business and he very much had the mindset of, I'm going to retire and do all these things that I've planned to do. And he never got to do all those things. He wanted to buy a boat and live by the sea. And I had this really like wake up call of, oh my gosh, you just have to do the things now.

12:19And I decided I'd start out to do this little bucket list for myself of 40 things before I turned 40. And all sorts of random things I've added to the list. I've tried to do as many things as possible, you know, really try and live life. And one of them at the end of the list was do something to help other people. And from that, I started an Instagram account in secret because I kind of thought people will think this is really silly. And for about six months, I didn't really tell anybody. I just posted stuff in secret. And then it sort of blew up. And then we are where we are, which is really amazing.

12:51It's turned into, there was never a big plan with it, but it's turned into this amazing community. 150 ,000 business owners in a couple of years. People saying that the advice has really been transformational to them. and it's led to so many wonderful things it's been it's been the best thing I could have I could have done and I think it's helped me find my purpose again after really struggling through many years of of being in hospitals with my dad and also with the fertility staff of just feeling like I kind of lost like lost myself and there's something wonderful about doing something which is externally focused on other people that just sort of helps you you know find find who you are and your and your and your sense of worth again and that that has been really something just kind of completely didn't expect I think that's really glorious

13:40Sophie Ellis-Bextor: and I'm really glad you took me into that space because actually uh there's there's nothing waffly about that yeah in fact what I think is really magical and I don't know if maybe um putting something together that isn't quite reflective of how you feel but you know you spent all that time building this business um presumably if you've gone from this position in the corporate world uh before you took the leap into your own business that first bit when you're on your own with the business must feel really isolating and a bit of a confidence trick of oh my god am i really doing this yeah what what am i thinking so you've got to put a facade of like but but also running simultaneously are all these real life events you know what's happening with your dad's health your your you know fertility journey um you know with your partner all these things but now that you're at a point where you can say to other business owners they're all entwined actually they there's a lot that feeds back that it all comes from you you have to still be steering the ship and all these truths can be running simultaneously you don't have to box and cox it too much more than it's protective for you i guess and what you need and I think it's so I think a lot of people do you know you start out and there's just so much you don't know it's crazy and I I definitely I I mean I was a I was a director of a company when I by the time I was 29 I was really like set in this like corporate path and this is in the healthcare healthcare world I never really talk about it because there's actually a pharmaceutical company called Galatza Smith Klein which you may have heard of I never really talk about that I think people might be a bit funny about it but I I started there as a graduate and I was on this kind of this path where they gave you increasingly senior roles and it was a great company I love the people that I love the people there I really miss the people there I missed them terribly when I left but the more senior I got the less I felt that I was making a difference and the I was always told when I was younger that I could never make a career out of being creative I had to you know follow a certain path I had to get a certain job I had to go to a certain university and then I got to a point when again it was the the milestone birthday this case it was turning 30 where I was just like what is the point I don't am I actually happy is this can I actually imagine doing this for the rest of my life and at that point I thought I'm young I can always come back let me try something different and I really again didn't have a master plan I walked in one day with my resignation letter in my hand and handed it over to my boss who was a vice president and he just looked at me like I was completely crazy and I said I'm gonna go and stop the stationary business in my bedroom but then you do then you do then suddenly the next week well actually it was three months later because I had to pay like play out my notice you suddenly this desperately lonely feeling of oh my gosh I actually don't know what I'm doing I'm in my house by myself and it's great but you know you've got nobody and I found a lot of people locally through through Twitter back in the day and social media and but there was no education on social media and I think that's what's really fundamentally changed now is that you can actually get a lot of brilliant resources and that was the idea behind starting Business Secrets Club was that if you've got an idea in a phone you can learn something straight away and it will really help you yeah um because because yeah I've learned so much in 13 years now running a statery business that I I feel like is a font of just useless knowledge that's in my head but for other people it's really really helpful things that I just didn't know at the start and you know you're learning all the time things that you've done well and things that also you just this just didn't go well that can be enormously helpful to other people and it's actually a real joy sharing that definitely and as you say that generosity of sharing the wisdom just leads to this community oh it's been brilliant the community has been the best thing i think that's the amazing thing about social media is that you can you know find other people that are in the same situation as you and actually find genuine community genuine support and feel less alone with whatever situation you're in and i think that's brilliant and also other people's stories and without sounding too trite i think if you've been through a lot and i'm so sorry with what's happened with your your dad sounds so lovely and i'm sorry he had such a protracted and cruel um you know what the health concept you know what happen with him um and also fertility but then all these other business owners maybe they've got their stories that they're bringing out as well so there's a there's a sort of a healing process as well that can happen with what brings people into these yeah i i never ever when i was going through all the fertility stuff knew anyone else that was going through it and i think i think now it's different and actually it was um emma emma from you know you suppose that women's hour podcast actually sharing her own experience of endometriosis emma barnett she's done a documentary recently about it and she wrote an article i think it was in one of the one of the newspapers about endometriosis a few years ago and it was her sparing her own experience of ivf and that really made me feel less alone and actually have the courage to talk about it myself so i never talked about it before and i think it's a case for a lot of women going through fertility it feels like a real you know it's almost like embarrassing that you feel kind of scared to talk about it or like you're sort of broken in some way and I think that has changed that has really changed now but certainly when I it was a 10-year journey for me when I first you know when I first started realizing that this was not gonna come easy to us I really didn't know anybody at all that was in that situation and it was that as well was enormously isolating but I think now you know I still get people all the time in my DM saying, oh gosh, you know, we're going for another round.

19:24You know, I just wanted to let you know, um, in my stationery business, Martha Brooke, we've made an IVF journal, which I know a lot of people use and, um, it's lovely hearing people's stories and I think we all need somebody that we know who's been through it because it is really, really difficult thing. Um, and you know, for me it was seven rounds of IVF, which is a lot. I don't, I sometimes look back and I think, how, how did I do that?

19:47Sophie Ellis-Bextor: Yeah, pick yourself up and go back into it. It's the, yeah, it's emotionally and physically just so, so draining. And there were four pregnancy losses as well. And I had two hysteroscopies and a laparoscopy. And, you know, it was just constantly being in the hospital as well, like constantly being in the hospital. But we got there in the end. And I think it was things like hope that really got me through and thinking, actually, this could be the one. And hearing other people's stories, I think, is really helpful, which is why now I'm not afraid to talk about it. Because I think it is important for other people to hear that it's worth sticking out.

20:36Sophie Ellis-Bextor: Yeah. And I guess, I mean, wow, yes, seven rounds is a lot. Yeah. and um i think i think when people are going through their own fertility i suppose you do get really careful with who you're talking to about as well because everybody else has got their own things going on and people are worried about saying the wrong things maybe they haven't experienced it firsthand um and i'm trying to chronology this so this was all happening sort of simultaneous i guess with start starting your business and finding out about endometriosis and your first round of ivf around the same yeah so my i started the business in 2013 me and my husband got married in 2011 and i've i'm like i'm from a big family i've got four i'm one of four sisters my husband's from a big family he grew up in a house with five boys i always just imagined yeah i just imagine like like you like your family so neat of you both i kind of well he's got this theory that you are you end up being attracted to people who have the same family situation if you are from an all-girls family you put boys in a pedestal and if you're from an all-boys family you put girls on a pedestal and if you like have one brother or one sister you tend to marry people of but he's got this theory and i swear we've gone through everyone we know and actually checks out for like so many relationships we know it's quite a weird theory anyway so we got married in 2011 and i was like yeah we're gonna you know we're gonna have children it's gonna be fine you know on our honeymoon we just like you know stopped even you know using protection whatever and then it got to like I'm gonna say 2014 where nothing was happening and I have always had the worst periods like the worst and I just thought that was normal like horrendous like I would say I'd have days of school I had days of work like every month it was like a real thing that just dominated my life.

22:29Really excruciating, like pain up my legs, up my back. Like it would make me horizontal every month. And I've always had real problems with my bowel as well. And I just kind of thought that was my body and that was just me. And it wasn't until 20, I would say 2014, 2015, when, you know, we've been trying to get pregnant and nothing was happening. And I thought this is referred to this guy, a consultant who I'm not joking. He knows, I think he's one of the people that knows me the most. I've seen this, I saw him for over 10 years and he is the loveliest man. And he was the first person that mentioned the word endometriosis to me.

23:14And I genuinely had never, ever heard of this thing in my whole life. And at the time, because my husband was still working for the old company we worked for, we had private healthcare. We don't now, but we had private healthcare and we paid because the nhs waiting list was like years to have a hysteroscopy and a laparoscopy which is where they go in through your tummy so the laparoscopy is and basically i was riddled like riddled with this stuff and people kind of think it's like a condition of the womb but it's it's not it's the fact that the womb tissue grows elsewhere in your body and then forms scars which means that your organs all start sticking together so i had bits of my bowel like chunk together like bits of my abdomen were like and like one of my ovaries was completely surrounded with scar like it was like it was horrendous like and so what they do in that operation is they then try and like burn a lot of the scar tissue off um and they also with the hysteroscopy was where they kind of go up your bum you go up your vagina they do all the stuff around there so he was like look we you were riddled with this stuff we've taken it all out we're going to give you a year now and this is this is the time where you'll get pregnant if you do and i didn't I didn't get pregnant.

24:21And he said to me a year later, it's very unlikely you'll ever conceive naturally, that you'll probably will never conceive naturally. And I just remember hearing those words and it was about, I would say it was about 2016. And I can't tell you how much that floored me. I just had always imagined, I spent my whole life trying not to get pregnant.

24:38Sophie Ellis-Bextor: Of course. I was a very Catholic family. I was like, no sex before marriage. And then to find out that actually I couldn't get pregnant. And I remember my sister, it was around, it was pretty much the same week that my sister told me she was pregnant she was like oh it's really hard we've been trying for ages she got married like six months before she'd been trying for six months and I just remember thinking oh my god this is just this is not what I imagined would happen and so that was when we started on the path of IVF and my first daughter was actually only a one round of IVF baby but I had thought it was very difficult to get there because I'd had all these different procedures and stuff to run up to run up to that and unfortunately with her I had a very difficult birth um where oh gosh that's a story that's a story in itself that's a very difficult birth where where I I because I was so focused on getting pregnant that I had not anticipated the bit after the birth and like long story short they left a lot placenta in and they like cut me open and didn't sew me up and I got I was it was really awful so the recovery from that was awful and then um I ended up we had some in the free some embryos in the free so I'll go back and put one in it'll be fine again and then it that wasn't what happened and it was then could that continue all rounds of IVF while my dad was also um unwell and getting increasingly unwell he was diagnosed um about about the same time that I had my um first daughter with a no maybe a bit earlier than that with a very rare muscle wasting condition and he I mean imagine my dad's like it was a mixture between like Clark Kent from from Superman he was very tall six foot three rugby player and Ned Flanders from the Simpsons moustache glasses like Catholic but he was like my he was like my hero in life he was like the man I looked up to and he went in a very short space of time using a walking stick and then a wheelchair and being very very unwell and so I mean the lot the the the there's a few years where he was permanently in and out of hospital from having falls and and things going wrong and I was just in hospital permanently having rounds five year for losing pregnancies and um and during that time that was a really critical part of growing Martha Brook because we were going through our first round of crowdfund investment and we decided to go around down the crowdfunding route and I remember I'd be like I'd go and have an embryo put in and I'd come back and be on Instagram stories being like oh hey we're about to close this crowdfunding round or I'll be like injecting myself like walking in to go and talk to investors and I look back and I'm like how did I even do how did I do that and I I think I've just put in this front the whole time that you know behind the scenes i would then really struggle and and and be very emotional about the whole thing

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29:33My dad was told in February of 2022 that he could no longer eat. So bit by bit, his body had kind of given up on him. So it was tube feeding. It was awful seeing this man that was like your absolute hero, your person you looked up to most in the world. you know, being really a shell of him for his former self. And I had that same week, just got found out I was pregnant. And so I said to my mom, I can't come and see him because I'm finding the trauma of it. Like I keep losing these babies. And I kept thinking it was my fault that I was losing the babies. And I remember she was so angry at me. And then I ended up losing this pregnancy and I thought it was the stress of it all and the same time I that day I went in to have have you know the pregnancy taken out of me and I remember my mum and me having this really big argument on the phone and I think the whole of my family were like this heightened state of like anticipatory grief and stress and I remember that I remember for months I beat myself up saying it was my fault I was too stressed I lost I kept and and then I found out they tested the pregnancy after it was taken out of me that I had an extra chromosome and I think I had beaten myself up that it was my fault but it clearly wasn't anyway and then I decided I was gonna do one more round that was it I couldn't do any more and it was October half term um in 2020 2022 and i and i was going we were going to go to the cotswolds for a week to we'd hired this bnb like to try and get out get away but it happened to coincide with the ivf so i was coming back on the train to london to go to the fertility clinic near here and then my dad got admitted to hospital with pneumonia and i know from having worked in healthcare for a long time that that was not good so i i went and sat with him in the hospital and he was slightly delirious and he was like oh you know around doing this round of ivf and then i went i went back to the cotswolds and my mom phoned me she said he his lung has collapsed and i was like this is not good and i said i don't think i can be there with him when he dies i just i've always got this fear of seeing somebody die i don't think that's something i can do and i phoned my my friend who who's a medic and she said martha look i think you should do it i think i think it's important you're there I'm gonna get upset talking about it and I remember it was 10 p.m and I thought I'll get up the next morning and drive there and then I thought I got into bed I thought I can't I need to drive now and I left I left where we were staying and it was pitch black and I'm not a driver like my husband does all the driving I was like trying to drive down country roads with like the car sat-lab which was so shit and I was like driving down these dark like country roads It took me such a weird route.

32:28I didn't get to this hospital until about 1.30 in the morning. And all of my sisters were there. My mum was there. And my dad, like, rallied. He'd had one collapse long. He was tied up to these machines. And he sort of sat up in this bed. And he looked around all of us. And he tried to be the man of the house. And he did this speech, which I'll never forget. He was like, I'm so glad you're all here. It's really important to me. I love you all. It was this, like, everyone was, like, crying. It was like a good spy speech. um and then I think I stayed there to like quite late in the early hours of the morning and then I went back to my sisters for a couple of hours and then my the message from the hospital saying you have to come now and his I think his second lung had collapsed and yeah he passed away early hours the next day and it was awful and then I got a message from the hospital the same day saying we're gonna put your embryo in in like two days time so I had the last embryo put in and that was the one that made my daughter and and she she's I always feel like part of him is in her which sounds really weird so his her middle one of her middle names is his name or a female version of his name and um I I don't know I feel like it was sort of meant to be in the end and I feel like she she I always feel like all those rounds I have and all those pregnancies I lost were kind of worth it because she's just her and I would never have her if all of those things hadn't happened and I kind of feel like some in some ways he's with me if that makes sense talking about it but yeah it was a lot it was a lot and then I I felt after she was born that I just had this urge of I have to do stuff with my life and no sane person with a baby decides to start a second business no sane person in the world decides to do this but yeah that's when the second business started was when she was six months old but um I'm glad I did it because it has helped me find purpose again when I really did feel like a broken person after after all of that and it's brought so much joy and not you know and I think it's helped a lot of people as well which has been brilliant but yeah I do miss my dad I sometimes wish I could tell him and say god dad guess what I'm doing and he was such a great a great um a great person to talk to and his big thing which i'm sure you'll relate to is music like he loved music that was our thing that was what we that was how we connected was he took me to gigs we sent each other music he loved music that was that was his his big thing when i was 18 he bought me 18 records that he loved when he was 18 that's very cool um he was a real like he was a real he wanted to share he wanted to share it like he loved it so i'm so sorry that you've been through so much yeah no it's it's a lot it's a lot but

35:21Sophie Ellis-Bextor: well thank you for talking about it but my word i thought we just need to have no sorry a five minute hug now the podcast goes quiet for five minutes sitting here holding your hands um um yeah while this is all happening yeah how many people were aware of all these things what was your support network like i really did not have a support network um after my i really didn't and that's what i've really really learned um and actually i know you had a previous guest steph from don't buy her flowers and i remember i had my first i've had my first daughter who's now eight and a half she's she's hilarious she's she's she's she's cracking and she um i was that was very much the era of like do you remember like mum influences like and it was like the era of you can have a mum and you can be a mum and like you can do it all and I remember seeing like a picture of a mum influence I still remember this picture like she had like a baby on her lap like a baby she'd given birth four weeks ago she's like back to work and I was like okay well that's what I need to do and I had with my first daughter this awful birth where um oh you know I had really quite bad medical issues after she was born but I just kind of try to work through it well you don't have anything no I had nothing to compare it to I kind of thought as a business owner that's what I needed to do and um I did not look after myself at all and I I don't know about you that when you have your first baby it's like your whole life changes and I had not anticipated that and also it had a huge impact on my relationship with my husband who bless him i was really struggling i was really struggling just to give a little bit more context i this is so awful this is maybe a trigger warning but they to get her out it was new year's eve they panicked because her heart rate was really dropping and they did a double lapar double episiotomy which is not a thing like anyone medical listening to this will say tell her that's not a thing they meant to cut you open at five o 'clock and they cut me at three o 'clock and nine o 'clock.

37:27Ugh.

37:28Sophie Ellis-Bextor: Oh my gosh. They basically didn't sew me back together properly. I know it's really awful. Well, no, I'm just thinking, I mean, I think, also, it's just, I don't understand how these things can still be happening. I know, honestly. They actually had an inquiry in the hospital after this and I had to go and give evidence because they also left a load of the centre in. It was horrendous. Oh no, you can die from that. No, I know. So I went ten days, this is honestly in hindsight, like actual, I did not do this with my second child. Ten days after I gave birth, I went and presented at a blogger's brunch that Martha Brooke were hosting, right, with bloggers, right?

38:00Sorry, did you just say 10 days? 10 days. 10 days, right? Okay. Yeah. And then three weeks later, I was in the office and I came home. I just went in to see the team. I was not like working, working. I came home and suddenly I felt these cramps in my stomach. I rushed to the loo and I gave, it looked like I'd just given birth to a small baby in the toilet. and I started like hemorrhaging like bits of tissue out of me went to hospital and they scan me and they're like oh you've got a load of placenta left in you and I was like okay great so I was admitted to hospital and had to have a general anesthetic to get the placenta removed and I was in agony with like down below and my mum had always told me as a joke oh you know after give birth you have to sit in a rubber ring so I thought oh maybe this is normal me sitting on my rubber ring and it got to like two three months after birth and i i can't even tell you how much pain i was in and i've been to the gp and they're just like oh you're fine pull yourself together sort of thing yeah honestly i had this gp who i actually now i feel you've just been let down over and over again i know no i know and i had a friend who's like please go and see this consultant and i and i went to his consultant and she looked at me and she's like okay you've not been what happened i was too i'm so cross with myself i wish i'd looked at it with the mirror is that they cut through my labia and not sewn them back together again and i she was like we're gonna need to do some reconstructive surgery on you so i had another operation at

39:28Sophie Ellis-Bextor: three months anyway really long story short martha this is too much i'm sorry i'm sorry this is too much the podcast no it's not that it's more that i just i suppose i'm starting to feel quite angry on your behalf i i why i mean even winding back to just only hearing about endometriosis No. Why do we not talk to young girls when they're starting menstruating to check what their cycles are like, to check their pain levels? It's not normal. Why is it not being investigated? And when I spoke to Emma Barnett about endometriosis, it made me think of those girls at school where their period rolled around and they were flawed and they'd always be in the nurse's rooms.

40:08Sophie Ellis-Bextor: That was me. That was literally me. They'd be grey in the face. why why are we not more um why are we not more accountable to make these are young these are you know children not even understanding what their bodies should and shouldn't be feeling like if it was boys who were there in the hospital room like in the nurse's room once a month people would be like right we need to do something about it well we do still have the largest gender health uh gap in the whole of europe when it comes to you know funding for female health and men's health it actually makes me really really angry but then when you're when you're running a business and you've got your two now two little girls yeah there isn't always space in your life to fight those battles and to take that on no but i i think i so i i what happened after my first daughter's i ended up getting ptsd which i didn't realize you know i didn't it wasn't diagnosed till a little while later and I think that working the trying to do everything did not help trying to just be you know do all the things um and and carry on working through all this stuff and that transition to having a child and that changed the relationship with my husband of course me actually really struggling and you know being tearful a lot of the time and angry a lot of the time which i hadn't realized was as a consequence of what you know the fallout of this birth and not and i was still in a huge amount of pain and then me asking him to help with child care and that was a real transition for us that period of like finding how we parent together yeah and he um so for a bit of context he he um left he took a sabbatical from his job we've actually met in our old company whereas hilariously he interviewed me for a job that's how you met yeah so we met which I got um and we ended up working in this team together but he ended up not being my boss but we worked in a team together and that my first experience with him was in the work was was working together and and so we we we worked together um and when I it got to a point because we had Martha Brooke in the house for many many years and I'd have people coming into the house like employees coming into the house that hilarious occasion where chris would accidentally eat people who work for us his lunch because it was in the fridge in the kitchen or like or like we'd come home and there'd be like boxes piled in the bath or in our city room and and he would come home from work and he would help me because i'd be like i can't do all these orders by myself overwhelming overwhelming and he got to a point where he was like okay we need to get this out of the house now this is getting silly and so he took a sabbatical from his job to help me move the business into our first premises and he never he ended up never going back to work and becoming Martha Brooks head of operations and so in my mind we were running this business together and then we're going to have a baby together so we would do it 50 50 but and all of his friends their man is like the main breadwinner or certainly you know is the person that probably doesn't do the child care in the in the house in the households certainly for a lot of his example or you know his representative relationships I think for him it was this real adjustment of I want you to have you know to to do 50-50 parenting with me that was really really really a just really a big thing um he found that really hard and I at the time obviously was really like struggling with my mental health having having had this awful birth and I remember we would get to the end of like I was working three I think I went back to work three days I was looking after my daughter then we get to the weekend and I was completely shot and he'd come to me and he said he'd be like I've done four hours and 26 minutes of parenting today and I was like sorry what you're timing you're timing this and we would have arguments about it and I just felt like I was going insane I was like I just it for me it was normal to look after your child and we would have we we would our relationship was just we would shout at each other we'd get angry at each other like he would get so frustrated by it and he went to there's a real turning point where he went to i think he went and had a drink with a friend and he was like oh it's awful i have to look after my child and his friend said to him chris you need to put yourself together like i missed a lot of my child's parenting because I had to work and you have a choice like you have you get to spend that time with your daughter and that's amazing like how lucky are you and think of the what and he's like I think it's affected my relationship with my children for not being there and you've got an opportunity to have something different and it was like this eye-opening moment for my husband and I'm so glad he had that conversation and I do think all the things I do now like he's brilliant like honestly he's amazing I don't think I do all the things I could do without him um so we don't have childcare help it's the two of us and he is brilliant but it took a while to get it yeah and I think also look relationships have to evolve like seasons right and I think there's nothing that can shift your relationship into a new chapter like like a new baby or actually like any of the things you've been dealing with never mind actually the new baby you know the trauma of your dad's diagnosis starting a new business um finding out about your endometriosis your struggles fertility these are all things that really tested everything and he has a and i kind of forget that probably had a big impact on him as well you know seeing all of watching all of that and seeing your wife going through all that and absolutely It's a lot.

45:59Sophie Ellis-Bextor: And it sounds like the two of you really have been able to shape where your relationship is now because of having those bits where you've gone like, this isn't really working or this is dysfunctional. And you have to be able to have those difficult conversations sometimes. Otherwise, you get stuck in a relationship that doesn't really reflect how you hoped things would be running. Yeah. If you say now, you know, the two of you together. I mean, not having any childcare with young children and running the business is loads, I would say. It's so hard. I honestly don't think you can do everything.

46:37And I don't know if you heard this. Have you heard this really stupid theory that I think I heard once in some man podcasts and it really made me irrationally angry?

46:45Sophie Ellis-Bextor: Oh, I know that feeling. Have you heard the four burners theory? Have you heard this? No, go on. Am I going to get angry? No, it will make you angry, but then actually I flipped it on its head to actually help me. Okay. So you've got like four gas stoves burning. This will make you angry. Family, friends, health and work. Right. And you can't do all four. So to be successful, you have to turn one off. To be really successful, you have to turn two off. Right. This made me irrationally angry. Because I can imagine a man being like, yeah, I don't need to turn off my family, turn off friends. I can just do my work and health and bro.

47:20Yeah. You know, get up at 4am. Anyway, but then I kind of thought, actually, this is a point of the fact you actually can't do all these things. You can't. And what that misses, of course, is that there's a fifth one, which is home, household. And that takes up so much of my time. You know, the. Yeah, the admin. Oh, my God. Laundry. Yeah. Dishwashers. It's relentless a lot. Oh, it's relentless. Like, it never stops. and I think if you look at any woman who looks like they're bossing it like one of those stoves has to be turned down a bit like it's impossible to do all five of those things but literal I'm

47:55Sophie Ellis-Bextor: like but you can have all four but but but you can have four saucepans on you can but yeah maybe maybe maybe maybe I'm like surely it's designed to work all at once otherwise just make it with three hobs yeah but maybe this is if you've got but yes but you're not but you have a limited gas as a human right okay sorry yeah so so go with it so in my in my head i kind of think i do you do have limited gap because this is where i think i fell over with my first child was that i thought i could do all the things all the time yes and i you can't do all the things all the time and i think it's really misleading for anybody to look at anybody else who has it looks like you know they're doing lots of these projects and work and children and think that every single one of those five stones is perfectly burning so i don't think they are and for me that is true and i and i think i have learned to be really realistic that i have to do things in seasons and compartmentalize because i i can't work and look after a toddler at the same time it's a surefire way to insanity like i have to she can go to nursery for a bit i can do my work for a bit and then i can be my full attention on her and that for me is so much better i say we don't have child care i mean we don't have a nanny but yes we have nursery and yes we have after school club but it's much better for me to to to do things you're not trying to do everything at once i think that's what i really struggle with for the first trials i try to like run my business with her on my hip like she comes the office with me like it's madness i think i think you it's so much better to to be able to realize that you can't do everything and in our household we've got two gases we've got myself and my husband and you know you can't you can't do everything all the time like it you just can't and it's helped me to learn that I do need to make sure that I do look after all five of those things I do need to look after my health and not neglect that I do need to invest time in in all five of those things but just not at the same time well in light of that and I'm thinking of you here and you've obviously been so um open with me about all the all the things you dealt with and I genuinely my heart goes out to you Martha I think any number of those is a lot to carry let alone all of those and given that you're sharing that um what what would you like to come out of sharing that?

50:27Sophie Ellis-Bextor: What is your hope for that? Because I don't want you to feel like it's just a matter of, I feel like you've been let down and that there's been things you just carried and bottled up. And as I said, any number of those things would be traumatic. But to shift it into a positive where, you know, this is being recorded and people will listen to your your story what could come out of it that would actually be like a meaningful positive I think that I got very good at putting on a brave face for a lot of my life and I think that really comes from my parents of you know you you put on a front and you don't talk about the bad stuff and an expectation that you will just show up and you just handle the stuff behind the scenes.

51:21And I think my biggest takeaway from everything is that you have to ask for help when you need it. And with my second daughter, I absolutely had time off. And I actually had a post-birth doula who had a C-section with her. Couldn't do another vaginal birth. I had a post-birth doula who came and looked to help, looked after me. And that was genuinely, completely transformed my life and my experience of that period, recovering from a C-section. And I think with everything, asking for help, like not being afraid to say, I can't do it all. And not looking at other people and thinking that they actually do it all.

52:03Because there's always stuff behind the scenes that you don't see. and I might have looked like I was coping when I had my first daughter but I wasn't I was really struggling behind the scenes and I think anyone I think first of all never assume that what you see on social media is real secondly ask for help if you need it that does not mean that you're any less of a person that we all need support I think thirdly never don't neglect your health I think that that is the other thing for me if you in pain that's a sign that something is wrong and it's really important to work out why and what and what you can do about that um and I think I think I have channeled all of that into now turning you know doing something where I feel I'm able to take those lessons and you know help other other people but yeah I feel like I've really dumped on you I feel like I really dumped a lot I don't think I wasn't expecting

53:04Sophie Ellis-Bextor: to talk about all those things no I don't think you have at all I actually think everything you've said is really valid and I'm really grateful that you shared it I just I want I want you to to own the fact that when you share things that are personal I want you to feel good that there's something positive come out of it and I think you're absolutely right I think that there's such power in in being open about these these very private very isolating traumas that so often are the stories people don't tell that behind closed doors that don't get don't become part of the public facade at all never mind on social media but also just you know day-to-day life and all the things that people are holding on to as you say you have no idea what they're going through and as a result generationally your your little girls will grow up in a household where they know that all these things are you can they can share them they can look out for warning signs they can ask for help they can listen to their bodies that's that's incredible I think previous generations didn't encourage that you know that transparency that communication and I still think I think part of my mind is still so reeling even just about as i said the endometriosis like it's shocking to me that you just thought that was part of what your body was like when you had a period like if my daughter said to me if my daughter's like off school with her period or like in crippling pain that she can't stand up yeah like i'm taking her instantly to go and get her checked out and yeah it makes me so it took me you know like two decades to get a diagnosis of something which it shouldn't take that long like the other thing for me was i never i never took the pill because i was catholic i was always like oh and actually i realized in hindsight that meant that it could run rampant and actually the pill is quite good at controlling it so like the hormone yeah the hormone thing and you know by the time you know i got to having children it meant that i couldn't have have children naturally and i think that's really really awful and i think we need to we this is something we absolutely should be talking about more and it's not people seem to think of it's a disease of periods it's not it's a disease that affects like your whole body it's really affected my bowel and and we don't talk about that enough um but also someone said to me recently of that generation oh i presume you would never tell your daughters that they were ivf children what yeah and i was like i i'm gonna tell them and be so proud of that fact because for me it means that they were wanted they were wanted even more they was like so wanted that yeah i would move mountains to have them yeah i think it's a really precious and magical magic like i i i think it's one like that for me they are a little bit of magic and that lovely doctor who i first saw who first said to me i think you've got endometriosis who then went on to transfer both of their embryos i still think of him all the time he's such a nice man he you know he I really feel like he was a miracle worker and I have a friend who I don't know if she'll listen to this but a friend who is currently going through IVF with him and and I just I know she's in good hands I I when she tells me about it and you know it's been really hard for her um and she's you know she's she's like me she's not been a straightforward process and I think it's really important to know other people that have been through it because it's so worth it but it feels so isolating when you're in that process the inject oh my god I hate needles injecting yourself the scans the the hopes and then you know the then the dashed hopes and all of that it's it's it's really awful but I I think knowing that you know you're not alone and these things can make you a stronger person and and are not you know things that are going to define you they're things that hopefully are going to make you know come to something better on the other side I think I'm proud of my girls being IVF babies and I and I and I I'm excited one day to talk to them about it so yeah and I wish all the best to your friend as well yeah with everything she's going through um no i think i think ivf's incredible um i just i just feel like it sounds so hard i think having something medicalized like that and also having to share every tiny bit of your body and all the levels and what's going on all the time just i joke really annoys me it's when people say on social media oh my god i've got i've got to have a smear i can't go smear it's too traumatic i'm like it's a smear test you do not know how many things i have i've put up my vagina yeah yeah i know i mean i suppose yeah i think i think it's really important people understand that ivf is incredibly draining it takes over every part of your brain it reduces your every day to where you're at in the oh my gosh and there's i can't imagine what it must be like for you as well when you i know from hearing you talk before that you really like to plan things and also your business makes a lot of diaries and yeah and then you become in some of all these passing of time is so significant yeah what's happened we had a lot of the rounds of ibs were like during covid times as well it's okay this is really funny my first my first daughter um ended up being born on january the first when i run a diary business But yeah, you feel like you're constantly tracking everything.

58:50And what I think for me is I'm the sort of person that likes to be in control and know that if I do something to the best of my ability, I've got a good chance of it happening. Whereas the worst thing about fertility is that you have no control over it. You feel like in some ways you fail because you can't get to the solution that you want to get to. um and that's that's the hardest thing about it is you just feel it it it does it consumes you like it it it takes over all of your headspace and and i don't think i could have done all of what i've done if i was still doing my old life my old corporate job so how on earth do you go into an office every day and be that person yeah i think luckily being able to work for myself and you know my team were very understanding i was very very open and honest with them about it all um so i think um it's important we talk about it because i think it's something a lot of women go to that is quite secretive and it shouldn't it shouldn't have to be it's something that definitely is a is an experience that is not is not unique i totally agree with you and also

59:57Sophie Ellis-Bextor: to completely um alleviate any sense of shame about you know your body and how you feel about it and um yeah I think that that's a big a big part of it sometimes isn't it of um your relationship with yourself and where your challenges are in your body but also how you recover from birth and what can happen to you through birth um it's it's complex but it's so important to talk about it I think being a woman is hard and with all this with with your business did your did you ever feel like it was did your relationship with your work stay strong throughout all of this um I think that I felt I found it I found I found it very hard towards the like the latter end of the phases of IVF just because I felt like it was so all-consuming and I think part of starting the second thing was me trying to discover you're trying to discover what I wanted to bring to the world again i i but the thing about when you run your own business is that you can't turn it off like you can't shut your laptop and be like hey i'm gonna go and have a month off or you know nothing happens unless you're there and i it's definitely in a different place now i've built this brilliant team who i can lead them to it and that was the best thing about having my second babe was i was able to say to them guys i'm having some mat leave i'm just going to be off for a bit and that was wonderful but I think certainly through the early stage of the business a lot of it sits on you um and I think I I the business was like my first baby and I I don't I think my relationship has changed with it because it's evolved and the business is in a different place the stage for business is in a different place but I don't I don't think it made me like feel negative towards it I think it just made it it it just made it harder and weirdly actually one of the things that was really probably quite good for me in a way was I felt like I had to be in our office in our studio every single day and then when COVID happened and we split out the production side of our business from the rest of the business like the marketing the design anything that didn't need to be physically on site that was actually really really good both for my husband's and my relationship and for for me because what happened was it again created more compartmentalization whereas I'm able to let get let him get on with the bit that he does and I was able to focus on the bit that I do without me meddling in in his stuff and also it meant I didn't have to be in the office every day and it created space to do other stuff to to grow the business in ways I hadn't imagined and actually has allowed me to look after myself better and have more time, you know, have more time not to be doing all the things all the time, which was really good for the latter rounds of IVF and then actually I think has been really good for all of us.

1:03:13Because also if you leave people to do things, they do things. I think as a, you know, perfectionist, you have got, there is a danger as a business owner that you try and do everything. So delegating is. Yeah, making a business grow is about letting go. The more you let go and let people get on with things, actually the faster it grows. But you kind of don't realise that until you do it. So I think that has definitely helped.

1:03:38Sophie Ellis-Bextor: And am I right that you still look at your Martha Brook London, like the sort of business values regularly as a sort of way to anchor your relationship with business? I think being intentional in business is what people buy into as much as they buy into the product itself yeah very much so I think it started from a place of wanting to help people capture things on paper and the the fact that I think still now I very strongly feel there's something magical about writing something down I really do think that and I think in this digital world it's brilliant to be able to to put your phone down and have a moment whether that's keeping a five-year diary or you know making a photo album or I think it it simulates parts of your brain in ways that being on your phone just can't and we're actually going through a process now of doing a bit of a rebrand which is quite exciting and re-working out what those values are because I think that has always been really important to us and I think has been a real reason that people have have fallen in love with the businesses it's been very much about community it's been very much about helping people be the best version of themselves and and find themselves and do the thing you know people live their dreams and and and make them possible and that's what I really really love about it and in a way both of my businesses do that in slightly different ways they help people take an idea and make it happen for them which is amazing which is like the best feeling ever I love that you wrote your list when you sort of had your 40th of just all these things you wanted to achieve and and how brilliant it feels to help other people I think I do feel like um when you reach this part of your I'm a bit older than you I'm 47 now but when you reach your 40s you kind of either like consciously sort of open up more or things can start to calcify and draw in but the more you keep your curiosity and like your outreach I think the more fulfilling life feels I honestly in my 20s was so hard on myself about everything about myself and I was like that was like corporate me that was not me 30s I felt like was just this decade of grey mouth broke but also fertility now I feel like honestly my life is starting I know I'm like 43 but I feel I feel I've just got more to you know got more to give to the world and I it's brilliant because in your 40s you just stop really stop caring about what people think about you and that's taken me a really long time to get to that point um I'm just like you know fuck it I don't care I'm gonna I'm gonna do the things that I want to do definitely you know and I continually come back to the fact I do not want to be in a situation like my dad where I didn't live life while I could and I guess as well there's part of this this chapter of your life that's about putting down any masks you felt compelled to wear and I suppose by you being so beautifully open about your experiences it's a way of also reflecting on a chapter that must have felt like just at the time you're just in it I felt good I feel like I've worn a mask for a lot of my life and I kind of I want to be I want to be more open and transparent because I think it's I think it's important that we are and I think all the things that you go through make the person you are and I don't think you should be ashamed of that like my mum often thinks I shouldn't talk about these things and I think that's the wrong way of thinking about it because I think that not only can it help somebody else but actually it's part of you like these things are intrinsically part of you um yeah and actually positive things come out of sharing experiences I think and look you know everybody's wired differently and for your mum that might be how she's always functioned and it works for her but um I think there's so much value in in being open about things and I think yeah here's to your your businesses here's to your little girls and your partner but also here's your dad because ever since you've been talking about him so much I feel like he's been woven throughout a lot of it and I I really have this vision in my head of him in the hospital bed surrounded by all you but he is he is yellow like a simpson because you said he's like ned flanders he's so sat there kind of cartoon drawn like superman size with the ned flanders face he looks very like very sweet he was a really really sweet man and what was his name philip philip oh here's to philip yeah and and his legacy and yeah somewhere out there i'm sure he's aware of all the good that's followed

1:08:27Sophie Ellis-Bextor: Oh yes, to Philip and his legacy indeed. And thank you so much to Martha for sharing so much with me. What a beautiful conversation. And, you know, as ever, when people are kind enough to open up with me, I always want to make sure they feel really good about it. So I spoke to Martha only yesterday and was saying how valuable I think our chat was. So I just wanted you to be reassured that Martha had, you know, it's been given her full blessing to share all of that with you. And I think it will really help people. And yes, if you need help, ask for help. What valuable advice. That's very good advice indeed.

1:09:06Sophie Ellis-Bextor: And what a glorious, rich conversation to finish this series on. Thank you so much to all of my guests. as ever we have bopped about all over the shop when it comes to jobs that my guests have had and how they spend their time and their routes to motherhood and all the good stuff. I am so lucky with this podcast. It has given me so much, honestly, the amount of wisdom I've absorbed and take forward with me and the amount of strength I feel just knowing about this island of women. I mean, look how populated the spinning plates aisle is now with all these incredible women, all these smarts, funny people, clever people, sensitive people, empathetic people, generous people.

1:09:53Sophie Ellis-Bextor: It's brilliant. I love being on this island. I'm happy with the world around me. And thank you so much for being a part of it. I think when I started this podcast, I recorded the first interview back in January of 2020. And I had no idea, firstly, how much enthusiasm and motivation I'd have for keeping to build it. I've loved it. For two, how lucky I was with the team I started with, with Claire Jones, who's produced the podcast from the beginning. Richard, who's edited everyone. Ella May, who's been doing all the artwork since the beginning. Lovely, lovely team. but also so many amazing guests and quite what it was giving me like a little handbook to this chapter of my life I've taken so much of it and poured it into everything actually it's helped me give advice to my friends it's helped me feel supported in myself and a lot of it was poured into perimenopop too so it's there in my music as well so lucky lucky me and with that I'm looking forward to the next one because the next series will take me all the way up to episode 200 so So I'm thinking I'm going to really go back to my long list of all the names I've been chucking onto this list since I started.

1:11:04Sophie Ellis-Bextor: And though I've been lucky enough to speak to so many of those women, I'm thinking, right, I'm going to really see some of the people I've always thought, that would be a good chat. I think we should really celebrate the next series and lead up to 200 with a bit of a bang, don't you? Please, please, please, though, keep your suggestions coming. I'm not just saying it for kicks when I say you've shaped what the podcast is you 100 % have so whether you stop me in the street whether you send me a dm on instagram whether you put it in your comments on apple or wherever you get your podcasts I see it all I absorb it and you help me you give me inspiration so thank you uh in the meantime if you're coming to any of the gigs I've been doing thank you so much I've been having a ball serve the band uh Richard and I've been loving all the gigs we've had um in the diary and all the ones that come over the summer this podcast will take a pause over the summer so if you are going away if you've got family time i hope it's fun i hope it's smooth uh i always get a little bit tense just before we do any family travel but then when we're all there on holiday and uh it's yeah someone does something funny and we're all up together and it all feels nice and and and just all the edges are kind of a bit more squidgy around the edges and we're not in our usual routine i always feel like yeah this is what it was worth.

1:12:21Sophie Ellis-Bextor: It was worthwhile. It was worth the stress of the packing and getting to the airport and all that stuff. So if that's happening for you, I wish you well. And I'll see you on the other side. I'll be back in, I'm going to say September. Got to get my act together a tiny bit. I haven't even started recording, but hey, I'm keen. So I'll get it done. And yeah, thank you so much for your support. Thanks for your time. Thanks for your ears. And send you lots of love and I'll see you the other side of summer. Until then, keep dancing and all that jazz. Lots of love. Thank you.

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1:14:12Sophie Ellis-Bextor: The anti-Semitism capital of North America is now Montreal? That's what the New York Post reported. Hatred of Jews is now normal in Canada, and Jews are now the number one target of hate crime in the country. That's what the government of Canada says. I am a Canadian Jew, and I want to know, is all of that true? My name is Jesse Brown, and my new podcast is called What is happening here. Find it wherever you get your podcasts. Acast helps creators launch, grow, and monetize their podcasts everywhere. Acast.com.