The Fourth Trimester

The fourth trimester is rough, but beautiful. Challenging, but rewarding. Exhausting, but fulfilling. Indefinite, but short. You will not just be physically and emotionally challenged for the next twelve or so weeks, you’ll be mentally challenged too. Gee, I started that off in a positive manner, didn’t I? Generally, by the time you hit home, the happy hormones and adrenaline have worn off . . . you are still madly in love with what you have just created, but things are starting to taper down.

Reality sets in and you begin to realise that what lies ahead for the next few months is constant nappy changes, never-ending walks to dispose of them in the outside bin and countless hours feeding your baby, whether that be via the breast or the bottle. The thing is, no one really delves into the fourth trimester. Not birthing classes, not your mum, not your midwife or obstetrician; it really is unknown territory. I bet you barely even knew it was a thing.

I am here to break it down for you. Before I begin, I’d like to warn you . . . some will swim through it unscathed and wonder what the hell all the commotion was about; others (most of us) will turn to water and at some point need a lifeguard to pull them up for air.

It’s long nights and slow days. Unfinished meals and midnight snacks. It’s cold coffee and toast scraps. Sore boobs and sore bums. Love handles and flabby bits. Headaches and water refills. Missed calls and unanswered texts. Netflix subscriptions and popcorn for dinner. Empty washing powder and piles of laundry. Imposing visitors and empty food cupboards. Needy animals and full arms. Tender hearts and yearning for more. Forgetting yourself and feeling invisible. Prioritising everything but minimising your needs. Healing your body yet stretching yourself more than ever before.

I guess this begs the question why I have decided to write a book on the fourth trimester and share some of my tried-and-true wisdom with you, all the while being absolutely stretched myself. Well, the truth is, I can’t help it. Write, that is. Sharing my words and personal knowledge with you all is cathartic for me. I have more than 20,000 people tune in every day to hear my stories, witness my shitshow of a messy house, observe me juggling and dropping all the balls in real time and thanking me for being so damn ‘real’ and ‘normal’ and ‘not fake’, when social media can be full of unrealistic, staged, bogus, ‘perfect’ lives, kids, mothers and households.

I say it how it is. I always have and I always will. I am perfectly very imperfect and I guess that’s what makes me stand out like a sore thumb in the highlight reels of social media. But there is more to me than that. First and foremost, I am a mumma of four bebes . . . Alfie, nine, my sensitive dreamboat mumma’s boy; Essie, seven, my mature, fiery, independent sass queen; Coco, four, my spirit animal, she will rule the world one day; and Scout, twelve months, my fourth lucky charm. My relaxed, happy, pull-me-in-every-direction-without-bother child. Will there be more? The million-dollar question. I can’t imagine never being pregnant again nor birthing a baby again, especially given how much I cherish the slow and long days the fourth trimester can bring . . . time will tell. I am not done Today, but perhaps Tomorrow I might be. My blessings are written in the sky.

When I am not baby making, I am a registered midwife and have been for the past ten years. Pregnancy and childbirth will always have my heart, making the birth suite my favourite place to be in my working week. If you can even call it that. I am also a qualified sleep consultant. I can proudly say that my sleep business has grown exponentially for all the right reasons. The importance of sleep for everyone is so underrated, and for babies postpartum, sleep is a necessity for survival. Our growing team currently sends our sleepy magic all over the globe and we have thousands of well-rested babies, mummas and families because of it.

After the birth of my third baby, Coco, I found I was absolutely loving breastfeeding the third time around. But I couldn’t help feeling a twinge of guilt that breastfeeding was so easy for me, when my Instagram was flooded with desperate mothers seeking breastfeeding support. It drove me to want to learn about breastfeeding in greater depth than my midwife training had provided, so I studied lactation consulting for a year, sat a four-hour exam and became a certified IBCLC (International Board of Certified Lactation Consultants). Despite having all of these studies and credentials behind me, one thing is certain: I am not a doctor. I have never studied medicine (if I had my time again I would train to be an obstetrician) and therefore nothing I write in this wonderful book is to be taken as medical advice. Take it more as a sister sharing advice with a sister, or a grandma or mumma telling their daughter wonderful words of insight. Basically, I’m sharing some everyday ‘common sense’ – that doesn’t seem to be so common these days – from one midwife mumma to another fresh, fragile mumma and family. Four kids down, with a successful business, a happy home and busy life, I do hope you take away some lovely sentiments from this book and, even more, find yourself more capable of catching your breath in the moments during the fourth trimester when you might feel like you are drowning.