Mum's The Word! The Parenting Podcast - From Miscarriage to Triplets - with Natasha Sidhu

Episode Date: April 7, 2024

On This Week's Mum's The Word:Georgia Jones is joined by Natasha Sidhu to chat all about her struggles with a miscarriage, to having triplets and the trials and tribulations that come with thatThey'll Discuss:The truth about how miscarriages are treated in hospitalsWhy having triplets as your first children gives you no learning space?What no one tells you about having tripletsGet In Contact With Us:Do you have a question for us? Get in touch on our Whatsapp, that's 07599927537 or email us at [e-mail] for Listening---A Create Podcast Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello and welcome back to Mum's The Worth Parenting Podcast. I'm Grace Victory and I'm your host for this week. So this week I'm during my period so I am struggling with patience and energy. I feel fatigued. I want to be left alone like a cold dark room but alas I'm a mum so I've got to carry on. A truly inspirational woman on more than one level joins us on Mums The Word today. Natasha Sidhu gave up the security of a regular job that was well paid to follow her dreams and completely changed her life around. Getting out from under a career that was suffocating her to working out what her real passions in life were and how to turn that into a whole new life. Natasha's journey into motherhood has not been easy either. After multiple miscarriages she thought being a parent maybe something that

was never going to happen for her and her husband until she found out she was pregnant again with triplets. Welcome to the podcast Natasha. The last few years, non-stop for you. So you've got three kids. Oh yeah, that still blows my mind to say that. That is wild. And they all came at once. They did. How did this happen? Well, that's a wild story.

So, I obviously, for people who don't know, had a little bit of a non-conventional way into motherhood, shall we say. So I think it was back in 2019. Those kind of years were a blur to me, as everyone probably could agree, those last few years. But it was 2019. Obviously, I'd been with my husband or boyfriend at the time

for like 10 years. We were very much like thinking, now's the time to probably start going out every weekend and doing that and like settle down and obviously we found out we were expecting so for us it was like just amazing yeah and unfortunately that pregnancy didn't end well for me I miscarried so I don't know about anyone else but like I got to the age of 30 and just wasn't aware of things like miscarriage and loss. It wasn't something in my radar. None of my friends had done it.

Lots of my friends were already pregnant or had one child but going for their second. It just wasn't a thing, especially not someone of my age. And yeah, that didn't obviously go to plan. And I didn't kind of realise then how much I wanted to have a kid. Ryan was very much wanting to do this for years. It was always me who was very reluctant. Career driven? Oh yes! I just loved doing my own things

we loved going on holiday every month we would be like, let's just get in the car and go somewhere. I love that. And pottering about? I love a potter. I love a potter in my own house. In my own space, my own company oh yes. I love that even more now that own house. In my own space, my own company. Oh, yes. I love that even more now that I know that it's very rare.

Yeah. But no, I'm with you on that. But yes, obviously that didn't go to plan. And we then had the crazy idea to bring our wedding forward a year. Right. That's a whole other topic, shall we say. But yeah, we decided, I know what we'll do. We'll get married instead. We're not having a baby.

Let's have a baby. Let's have a wedding sorry and yeah I decided to throw myself into that and in three months do you think that was to get over the miscarriage 100% I felt like because obviously it was our first baby I really felt like we I mean our families were so excited my parents were 60 never been grandparents before it was the first time like somebody in my family was having young kids so it was like a big thing we made a big thing when we told family members so in my weird warped way of thinking it was like I'd given them such a great gift and it was my fault that it was taken away so I just thought okay well let's do something

else what's the next best thing a wedding hindsight, the worst thing I could have done. Right. I planned an entire wedding, and I'm talking an outdoor, in a forest wedding at a venue that had no electricity, no toilets at the time. I mean, we chose probably the worst venue that you could have picked. I mean, it was a lovely venue, but when I realised the capacity and the sheer size and what had to go into planning that yeah i look back at it now and

that is such a horrendous period of my life because for three months it was like we swept the miscarriage under the carpet and i went head deep into this planning a wedding i did the decoration i did literally all of the logistics had to source all of the it was you were basically frantic yeah erratic yeah completely erratic

my parents couldn't say to me especially my mum couldn't say I don't think this is going to be a good just don't do it I was just purely focused yeah of course the wedding went

drastically wrong for me really yes I only now I've been married what year are we in what day is it what's my name 2024 yeah now i've been married what year are we in what day is it what's my name 2024 yeah so i've been married what some mental time i've been married like four years yeah i only now can listen to my wedding song i could only now look at photos and it's not

necessarily about the wedding aspect it's just it reminds me of what was to come right because at that point i had not experienced any kind of grief depression nothing i purely miscarried and the month later wedding planning yeah the wedding yet itself was a an experience shall we say i mean if you ask all my friends who were rolling around at seven in the morning they had a lovely time we went wild yeah and it was amazing from people's perspective who weren't trying to do it to fill in a gap inside of you yes storm because if things went wrong to start with that i was then putting right with the wedding for the wedding then to go wrong yeah no and i can honestly say after my wedding that was the worst period of time I've had with Ryan, who was my new husband, supposedly in this new wedded bubble.

I wanted to burst that bubble. We were probably the worst we've been in 10 years, that period after our wedding. Trauma. It was horrendous when I think about it. It feels like a lifetime ago now. And I haven't really actually spoken about that side. When I think back to it, I think, wow wow i did not know what was to come no so i would say that period went on for probably about

eight months where i then you know people say after a wedding there's like a not a wedding blues but there's like a low where i come down but i'm coming down from a wedding and a miscarriage that i haven't actually dealt with. And yeah, all shit hit the van, shall we say. And somehow, and I say somehow because I don't really know. I don't even feel we were on that level to even be intimate with each other. That's how much we were like not in a good place. But I fell pregnant again later that year. And obviously at that point now I had been going through just a very very big lope I don't think I'd really realized how bad things were and this

second baby was going to be you know yeah the chance to fix everything the rainbow baby oh yes and I just thought look I've had that happen once yes it's obviously not going to happen this time so let's just make the most of this experience didn't enjoy anything, didn't tell anyone anything, deep down thought it can't happen again what are the odds? well, yeah, it happened again

and that was where I would say the decline because you just think, what's the point? well you think, what's the point, and you also think there's no bloody way that this has happened once and it surely can't happen again. It's got to have been a blip or some strange thing. Yeah.

There's no way. No one of my, who of my age has had two? Let alone one, but two. And yeah, I'm miscarried again. This time though, I was in full deluded mode where I was convinced that they'd got it wrong. I started really looking into things um I researched that sometimes they can tell you it's a minute you've miscarried but

the heartbeats were pure denial and yeah I ended up miscarrying didn't go in they wanted me to come into the early pregnancy unit and I was like I just I'm not coming in just yet I'm gonna hold out kept thinking like this heartbeat was going to magically appear and I just remember one day being at home because obviously at this point I was still doing this job where I could hide myself from the world at home yeah and I rang my mum who worked about 20 minutes ago I was like mum I don't feel good and I just remember her coming into the house and I was talking to her and all of a sudden it's like I turned to ice the only way we can describe it is I was on the sofa and I was like, mum, I can't get off the sofa. And I remember putting my hand out and everything just kind of froze.

It was like my whole body had just purely frozen. I know now it was going into shock. And I was like, mum, I'm not feeling good. And I just started being able to not talk. My mum says it's really weird. I was just on the sofa and I'd just frozen. And it was like something internally was happening yeah so obviously an ambulance was called and everything when the ambulance came and took me out on a full stretcher they were like I think she's wet herself

like let's do this and obviously it was pure blood it was that much blood um but that's what happened so I um hemorrhaged with with Kimiko and i went stone cold because the blood loss was just leaving my body and it was so weird but i was in motion in motion of my hand being like mom it was like someone was stabbing me internally from there like that's how i can describe it the rest of it is quite a blur i just remember being in the ambulance and i'd gone by then i mean that whole side of it was horrendous I was left like in a corridor for hours yeah I've heard about like this the care around women that are miscarrying and like it's horrendous yeah the first time I was given a piece of paper this was my aftercare

put into a room onto but bear in mind I don't know if they can't have it but it's done an award where people are doing early pregnancy scans so you've got people coming out thrilled someone in the next room being delivered the worst news of their life yeah yeah the first time i left i left with a photocopied aftercare sheet where half of the photocopy wasn't even visible and that was my that was my aftercare it was the second i mean the second time obviously when i'd gone into hospital i was left like i said just in a corridor they're just giving me giving me basically a blanket over me while i'm literally bleeding everywhere and this is what happened right and this part still blows my mind and i would love to find this woman who was a doctor i'm not sure what she specified in but my mum was

saying like outside once we got into a room like can someone just come and check no one's actually checked anything down what is happening and the nurse was like yeah we'll find out anyway later on towards evening because i've been here now like for hours and a doctor came past popped ahead and she was like oh has anyone been in to see my mom was like no one's been in and she was like let me just have a look she went underneath obviously did a quick examination she was like, let me just have a look. She went underneath, obviously did a quick examination. She was like, she ran out. She got a whole team in. Within 15 minutes, I was in theatre. So it blows my mind, because what would have happened if I was left there?

I mean, I haven't heard about that. I remember her saying she was meant to have left work. I was the last patient she'd come to kind of stick her head in to check. Angel. Yeah, she stayed. She came to see me the next morning morning and I never, ever got her. She said, I'm meant to start work and I've come to see you. She said, I've never seen anyone in the state you were in yesterday.

Just left there. Yeah, and just how I was as a person. Because she took me into the theatre. She was like, I've just never seen anyone. How are you? I don't know what I must have been saying. I don't know what I was doing. I was so out of it. And she was like, i just had to come and see you before my shift started

and she did say like i'm gonna call you next week by the time your home is settled i missed the call she never left a voicemail it was done obviously via nhs it was like a withheld number yeah i never found her and i think about her often who are are you? West Middlesex Hospital. Lovely daughter. Yeah. So you went from all of this trauma to conceiving triplets. Yes. Naturally.

Yes. And I'm trying to think of the timeline between that. Because obviously I spiralled badly after the second time that's when i got that i can't imagine going any lower yeah then that period of my life yeah um i ended up going to the gp being taken by my husband and my mom and intervention yeah you're going and i told that gp what i was considering how i was feeling what i wanted do. And I was told in two weeks' time I'd get a phone call. And I told the GP at that point, I want to die. Yeah, I'm suicidal.

That's how I said it. And I was very blunt, didn't even like, couldn't bring my head up to look at her. I was literally head in lap, I'm going to kill myself. Like, that's how bad it was for me. And I've never really spoken about how bad it was, but it was bad. I think as women and mothers, we are very good at like just putting a little plaster over things oh yeah i'm

struggling but like i'm functioning yeah i'm struggling but i can still do the washing up we don't have time to process it that's the problem it can be really bad yeah and for me i now feel because of the outcome of what happened what would my outcome have been if this didn't happen? I don't know where I would be or who I would have gone through that who are navigating that black hole that no one really wants to talk about no one kind of addresses and it is such a lonely scary place to be but hopefully my story does bring hope and you're I'm obsessed with your children the character it's that age isn't it I've obviously got a three-year-old too and it's the age wild wild when i say wild let me emphasis on the wild because honey every day is survival i'm just trying to survive you've got three three three they're three nah yeah three who are soon

to be three yeah so i yeah, game over for me. And I feel like girls just have a sass about them, don't they? I just can't imagine Ryan in your house with you and three girls. I can imagine it and I'm here for it because I think Karma's come back to get you now. I love it. I just think, oh, there's a reason. And I always do think that for some unknown reason my my piece is

at the times when these babies were brought to me previously I wasn't in the right space I'm gonna think back to it now I wasn't in a strong relationship I wasn't you know as stable as I was this time around because ironically I ended up finding some private therapy and I did that a really intense therapy session for four months and it was the last session on the last day of that therapy I found out I was pregnant again. So my therapist, Mandy, I absolutely love you, she was the first person I ever told I was pregnant again

and I think Mandy was probably like, Jesus Christ, because I'm just coming to the end. How did you feel? Horrendous. Right. There was no joy. There was no excitement. It was pure hell because I've just worked so hard on myself

to get myself out of what was caused from the last two losses. Am I really now doing this again? And obviously it was that period between COVID and stuff. I know obviously everyone had completely different experiences with COVID. But the only blessing I can take from that is it allowed me to just be with myself. I wasn't able to run away from things. Ryan wasn't able to run away if we got into awkward conversation. It made me just slow down and really kind of close myself off to heal myself, if you know what I mean.

And it was on that last day, and I just thought, oh my God, surely not. And at that point, I didn't know it was triplets. When you found out it was triplets, what did you think? So the week running up to my first scan, I refused to come in for any early scans. So this time I was like, I'm going to the main ward. I want to get to the main ward.'s the only place i'm going it's so important to take back that bit of

control i just couldn't do that and unfortunately that week i started bleeding again and i just thought someone up there is having me on yeah and that was it it was just like nah we're not we're not doing this again so that's it just cut it off now I'm not I didn't allow myself to get attached so that's fine I'll just have to

go in and I had read you do get bleeding it can happen but it's still the fear isn't it anyone who's had a miscarriage

will know just sneezing too hard just going for a wee leaves you with pure fear every wipe I would do I haven't had

a miscarriage but every wipe i've done in my pregnancies i've literally looked every single yeah wipe just to make sure yeah i've never for seven months had a relaxing wee no never even in the poo thinking oh my god have i pushed too hard they might come flying out i mean yeah yeah, the lovely joys that go through parenting in pregnancy. But yeah, so I ended up going to the scan. We actually knew who we hoped was going to be our midwife, who was a family friend. So she was like, look, I'm going to be there on the day.

Just, you know, let's just come in. We're going to see what's coming up. Obviously at this point now now i have gone into pure panic attack the day of the scan so i just can't even the fact i never have to do a scan again is like i've won the lottery of life can't do them and i'd obviously gone in they'd let ryan come in with me for the first scan and the lady just went quiet my husband was like you can we just can we just could you just talk just tell us just say i'm now hyperventilating i've had to be brought up i'm like i'm literally i can't breathe they pulled me up she's like just lay down and she's gone quiet i can i can i'm

actually there with you right now so imagine my eyes are screwed screwed tightly shut ryan's holding my hand we are just like i'm like just tell me just tell me but for some reason i'm not able to talk directly to the woman it's going i'm talking to ryan yeah yeah yeah to the woman who's like 10 seconds away from me strange and um she was like i don't know how to tell you this and i was like just say just tell us and she was like someone up there really wants you to be a mum i'm i'm seeing three heartbeats yeah i just got she was two and um ryan went what i mean he did say another word yeah we won't yeah and i just went what did she say i've still got my eyes closed i've never i never saw the first scan i was just going what what is she saying ryan's going what the and this just went on for like it feels like an eternity

and the woman's going, this has never happened before. Like in 10 years, I've never had this before. Like, I'm going to have to go and get someone else. So we're now in this room

going in feeling we're going to be told the worst news again to be told this. Another lady doctor came in, confirmed. Well, I walked out of that room

and I eventually managed to walk out to our friend who's the midwife and she was like i'm so sorry and i was like i had i could she tells me i'm like just mascara it was everywhere she was like i'm so sorry are you like no i was like no this is shock there's three she was like what and she says to me now i still remember the conversation because we had to go out to the car park. And we're just like, what? I can't even imagine that feeling.

It's so weird. I feel like that day was only the other day. I can remember that day like it was yesterday. And we left. Me and Ryan left just in pure numb confusion. Like, what? Like, how is that possible? And i remember to this day we went to our favorite park we just drove in the car and we were like we need to we need to get out and we

walked in our favorite park and this story will never leave me up we walked and a rainbow appeared it wasn't raining there was a rainbow i have a photo on my phone of that day in the park a rainbow appeared and for anyone who doesn't know they call baby born after loss a rainbow i have a photo on my phone of that day in the park a rainbow appeared and for anyone who doesn't know they call baby born after loss a rainbow baby yeah and weirdly throughout my pregnancy there were three odd occasions i saw rainbows and it's just the world the world works in mysterious ways and when i think back to things that got me through that. Anyone who believes in that kind of spiritual stuff. Are you spiritual? I am spiritual. I'm very open to things.

I'm here for it. If someone tells me tomorrow none of it is true, that's fine. It brings me calmness. It brings me peace. It brings me strength. I saw 11.11. I mean, I probably have thousands of photos on my phone throughout my pregnancy where things have happened to me,

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The true heart of this podcast lies in the stories, evidence and questions shared by our devoted listeners. Will you dare to join me? Listen to Paranormal Activity with me, Yvette Fielding, wherever you get your podcasts from. I forgot to mention, obviously, we've gone for a walk and an hour later we were called back to the hospital so now we're we're like what's happening again why it was a doctor wanted to see us so I'm like they've got something wrong this is this is wrong and we were taken into the hospital room we did end up moving hospitals after this because it was just a horrendous experience but the doctor with her back to us as she she's typing away, just said, well, we need to tell you now about tryptophan reduction.

And she basically told us. No, she didn't. She did. I'm going to advise you now to reduce your pregnancy down to one or two. She said, and these are the words of how she said it. It's really simple. We just pick which foetus and we pop a needle through its heart. And in a few seconds, it's done.

That was how we were told and introduced into um yeah or fetal reduction which is basically where and i understand the statistics and there's reasoning behind it delivery though absolutely not and the reason of it is obviously it's so unnatural to have three natural pregnancies there's such a high risk of things going wrong it can be you know whether the babies are born so incredibly early that it leads to longer problems and so on or the it's higher chance that they won't be born you won't have three babies yeah at the end and then there was a lot of downsides but if you go and do the tryptic reduction that can then bring on miscarriage. I never knew this was a thing. I never knew it was a thing. It's literally like baby roulette.

So you have the best news of your life, and then you get told the worst. Yeah, and we were told we had a week to make the decision. Nah, this is too much. She went, and if you decide against it, you need to start taking aspirin. And we were just like, sorry? Like, barely had even looked at us throughout this whole delivery.

Yeah. And Ryan was very much like, just please, can you go through the statistics again? I need to know the facts and figures. And I was like, it's not happening. He's being the voice of reason. Yeah, because in his mind, he was like, would being able to take home one baby be better than taking home none absolutely not and for me it was like no i cannot categorically cannot do this he really he really did i think i know now when we talk about it he was doing it for my purpose as well he just thought

my god i was how will we ever get through if anything happens here and we actually we ended up going because it was two days before his birthday, we were going away on a trip. That morning, he'd gone out to get something from a shop and seen a friend who he was obviously not meant to tell what we'd first found out. He ended up telling him. And the guy was like, one of his friends was like, no, this is a gift.

This is God's gift. You do not mess with God's gift. And Ryan's not religious at all, but he came home with the aspirin. He was like, we're doing this. That is the story of how I found out. And then, yeah, obviously, religious at all but he came home with that with the aspirin he's like we're doing this yeah that is the story of how i found out and then yeah obviously it was just seven months of a pure hell and was you an so obviously you're an influencer yeah obviously she's an influencer creator

incredible interior style just everything is just, your Instagram page is amazing. Was you doing that when you were pregnant? Or did you have a job previously? Oh no, so I left my full-time job. I used to work in the city for like 10 years, very oddly, in cosmetics. So I used to work in non-surgical clinics. Wow. Worked with the same doctor for 10 years.

It just wasn't my thing, but I'd started at 18. That's so funny because I don't see you doing that at all. No, I never did. I used to moan about my job on a daily basis. But the money was good. Yeah. When I was young and I, what do you want to do? Yeah.

Do you want to go on a trip? Go on a shop. I could do anything. But I've always been a creative on the side. So I was always doing like, I used to have a vintage store on the weekends. So I'd fly to Amsterdam with my mum a few times a year, buy my stock and then sell it like old spitzerfields camden wow that was how i got my fix for my creative outlet because i was not getting in that job no but yeah so i did that job for like 10 years and it was fine because obviously at the time we were trying to buy our first place and

it's a bit of a world how i ended up well decided to leave that job is our niece who was around the girl's age got diagnosed with neuroblastoma cancer. Right. Thank God she's now eight and perfectly healthy. But we were basically told that we needed to raise £250,000 to get her treatment in America. And we had to raise it in like six months. And it was at the time when I was finding my job just so hard.

I was literally getting on the tube crying in the morning coming home from work crying uh it was just not good for me or for anyone else there um and I just remember before this happened being at work one day to one of the doctors and I was like just crying I was like I don't know what to do with my life like she was like you're not you shouldn't be here you know that don't you and I was like I know but what's the job that's like photography travel some fashion like interiors like what job does that and this is before influencing I hate that word it was a thing and I remember we wrote on a piece of paper it's so funny I wrote all down like what job is that and then just somehow yeah here we are when

we started the um fundraising it was like I was the only one who had any idea of how Instagram worked and things. So I just started fundraising and doing her a page to build kind of awareness of what was going on. Yeah. We did loads of events and everything.

And that's how I learnt social media. And we actually raised the money in five months. So money is now. I swear you're a powerhouse. I don't. It's weird. It's so bizarre to talk back about things that you've done. Yeah.

I've never done a podcast. To reflect and be like, wow, I actually am the shit. Like you have gone through so much and experienced like devastation. It's weird, yeah. To then come out of it. And then when you reflect, you're like, wow. And it's weird because I feel like I've just recently gone through a period again

where I felt like mentally not great and then it takes a lot to come out of that especially when you're now a parent and you've got three small children

but it's weird it's when I look back at things and I suddenly go do you know what you've done alright you know you've done things before

you can do it again it's just yeah how do you find motherhood because I find it hard let me just take a sip I find it an unraveling I just find it like it breaks me down to my core so again I will say my experiences with loss lead me to have maybe a different perception to motherhood I feel I'm always playing this game of I need to be alone I really need to have some time alone but you've waited a long time for this like and it's really hard for people to understand because I never want

to sound I always feel like I have to justify I love my children but yeah yeah because it's like well you you wanted these kids so much and you and you went through so much and then i go yeah no i know but it's always like people never say it to me it's more a battle internally yeah but the thing i will say that i find the hardest is i'm doing this one time and one time only it's not like parents who then go after a few years oh let's have another one and everything you've learned from being a parent, a first-time mum, you now know not to do certain things or you know ways that work better for you

and you implement that on your second child. Yeah. Because most people will say, oh, the second one was a breeze, third one was a breeze, the first one I did not know what I was doing.

But you got three all at once. That's it. There's no learning curve. There's no time to put things into practice and know for next time this is my one and only shot. And why is that? you've decided no more

children because it's too much you know the percentage of having multiples again is so high really could you imagine there's three there'll be three boys no for me you know it would happen 100% happen

but for me I think I always always you know when you're young and naive oh I'd love to have two children a boy and a girl like all that naivety

no I'd just like them to be alive and healthy that's how I viewed it and I got a bonus one on top so for me I don't feel the need

to have any more children I love their names yes I'm glad you do most people react nicely when I tell them, but you get the odd person who's like, oh, but I just think, it's 2024.

What do you want to be called, Susan? Yeah, and you've got to think of three names that work well together, that work with the surname, you know, that's a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But yeah, I knew I wanted strong, short, memorable names for girls.

But to be honest, the names could have worked for boys as well. They're just incredible. Thank you. And Ryan, so your husband. Yes. Has he been, because what I find is that children can really have an impact on your relationship. Yeah. So has he been in support yeah but also has he been annoying because my partner well let me tell you on my nerves he got on my nerves before we had you know what i met ryan when we were like 20 i'm now 34 so i've done

pretty much my whole adult life with this person and And we had so much fun in our 20s. We were just wild. We just ended up in weird places, doing strange things, meeting the coolest people. We had that fun. I think for me it was getting to the point that I'm ready to change the chapter. And I have to say, our relationship is a million times better,

stronger, more fulfilling fulfilling just everything since we had children i just feel i've seen a noose ryan still loves a party so he's still a bit of a wild child but yeah he is the best dad just but now i know whether your children get their wife i did say husband i said best no he's still i think that a lot has gone on between us i think over the last how many years and it's not until i think now because we got a happy ending we're able to talk about some of the stuff where i felt massively let down should we say when i went through the miscarriages i felt like abandoned that's the word but i realize now it's because he was also going through trauma and grief, but his way of dealing with it,

was to run for the hills, and kind of go out, and do stuff, whereas mine was to hide from the world. Yeah, stay in. Yeah, and it wasn't until I was actually invited back, from the people who did my therapy, to do like a chat and a presentation,

for all their fundraisers and volunteers, and he came to it, and it's the first time he's heard me say a lot of the things I've said. And he was just in tears at the front row. And I think that was a massive turning point for us because I think he heard things not from me saying it to him, maybe a naggy or an upset way. I was saying it openly like... To all these people. Yeah, who were also reacting like,

what on earth? Like, it just brought us a lot closer. He's great at knowing, I need to have some time. He's completely deluded, they may say, in like,

how it works with having kids all day. Because obviously, I still work from home, with the girls. I have my mum, who is like, my biggest, She's the village.

The mum, your mum, is the village. She is the village. The my biggest she's the village the mum your mum is the village Vivian the village yes she is what keeps me going um on a daily basis but I think Ryan's just a bit unaware because obviously he doesn't see the other things that go into a lot of things like raising a family like looking after the house I mean I like to cook for the girls 99 home-cooked meals yeah ryan will do the cooking for us so we have a lot of leveling like that but like if i'm out for a day and he's got them and he's like it was he says he sent to me the other day i just thought you did not just that it's quite easy and i thought yes my children look like they've been dragged for a bush backwards

they're probably in crap all day yeah the house looks like but they've had a lovely time and i think you haven't done anything else that you needed to do so sometimes it's still just saying things you know yeah there's a lot more that a lot of people do that aren't always noticed you're not going to notice that it's the invisible load isn't it the invisible mental load as well yeah and that's the part i think i find hard because i sometimes just want to be thanked for things that i do on a daily basis that actually have nothing to do with me like replacing things that the toothpaste replenish does that just appear in the house i can't like the toilet roll yeah because yeah yeah there's so much the clothes just like strategically placed next to the washroom.

Oh, my God. It's just, it's a lot. I've gone from like just looking after myself. We were both independent looking after ourselves on our own. Yeah. You know, and now I've got like three kids that, let me tell you, that is a tornado that just doesn't stop from 5.30 in the morning until 7 o'clock at night.

And by that time i'm shattered so sanity is gone yeah it's like a 3 p.m decline i say if you want anything from me have it before 3 p.m because after that it's not so no more children but what is next for you what career is there like do you want to do a book i've always wanted to write a book really so my granddad was actually an author so i have that in the genes yes i would love to write a book really so my grandad was actually an author so I have that in the jeans yes I would love to write a book basically on the story but digging a bit deeper there's lots of things I've never divulged too much things yeah yeah and I've never gone that deep into how bad things were and I think it would be help I get hundreds of messages from people who say because

I was very unaware of how to approach it obviously afterwards because I get hundreds of messages from people who say because I was very unaware of how to approach it obviously afterwards because I'd shared my miscarriage struggles and I'd shared my battle with mental health online so it felt only natural to then share I'm having three kids plus I have no time to do anything else so here are my children yeah yeah but I was very nervous to share it for the community of people who've gone through miscarriage or fertility problems because I know how much it was a kick in the gut to hear pregnancy announcements from other people yeah but so many have stayed and so many have gone out of their way to say like we've kept with you because it brings us hope or it makes us feel like this isn't our future or something like a

miracle something's gonna yeah something's gonna happen so feel book, I would love to do that. I would love to do something like that. And I'm always someone who's looking for the next thing. And I've just really learnt lately, just stop for a second. Work is something I love to do. Work keeps me sane, but it's also my creative outlet. So for me, I have to have something. You'll probably see that now on Instagram,

I'm finally getting around to doing like my interior stuff and my diys and that is what brings me joy and recharges me up and it's yours it's mine it's not mom natasha it's you what you like to do and it's so important to keep that yeah i i can't function if i don't have that time alone we've been like getting up at silly o'clock in the last kind of year, getting in, like started running, doing things. I know people hate it when people go, I get up at half five in the morning, but do you know what?

It keeps me sane. So anytime I'm not able to do that, I notice the effect of just not having that one hour to myself before my day starts. But yeah, I get help now with my mum and dad who have the girls in the week so that I can have the day to do it's not even fun stuff it's the the life admin I mean do you know how much admin goes

into three appointments for things three we're just I mean I don't even want to know what happens in appointments and oh my god I know and they're not in nursery yet are they or anything no forest school I want to do forest school because you're loving the forest. That's a bit of me, isn't it? No, your kids need to be in forest school. It'll probably cost me about 10 grand. No, they get free 15 hours a week for three-year-olds. I didn't know forest school was included in that.

Oh, yeah, babe. We'll talk after. Oh, okay. I've loved having you on. I've loved being here. Natasha, everyone. Thank you, Grace, love you lots Thanks for listening to Mums The Word the parenting podcast

We love to hear from you Get in touch on WhatsApp where you can send us a voice message for free on 07 599 927 537 Email us at askmumsthewordpod at gmail.com We'll be back with another episode same time same place next week