In this episode Claire joins me; a mum of five and midwife, whose feeding journeys have been anything but straightforward. After breastfeeding her first baby with ease for a year, she assumed it would be the same with the rest—but life had other plans.
When her second baby needed surgery just days after birth, she found herself expressing around the clock. Then came her third, who struggled to latch for six long weeks due to an uncoordinated suck reflex. And just when she thought her family was complete, peri-menopause masked her usual menstrual cycle and she found out she was pregnant with twins—whilst in her final year of training to become a midwife. Born premature and during the height of COVID, her twins needed naso-gastric tubes and weeks of careful feeding, all while she juggled three young children at home.
We talk about the exhaustion of trying to keep everything going when there’s no time to stop, how sleep deprivation crept into every part of her life, and the moment she realised her mental health was spiraling. Claire shares the raw reality of feeling like she was just surviving hour by hour, how COVID restrictions left her isolated, and the overwhelming relief of being admitted to a mother and baby unit with her twins—a place where she could finally breathe after four sleep deprived months.
Claire also opens up about the emotional toll of pumping, how the sound of the pump became almost unbearable. We dive into the idea of enough—how pumping for six months with her twins had to be enough, even when it didn’t feel like it. And how, despite everything, she found a way to move forward, making peace with a journey that didn’t go as planned but still led to deep connection with her babies.
All this and so much more in today’s episode. So grab a cuppa, snuggle in with ya bubba, and let’s dive in.
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