Renee White is the first to admit that she had zero awareness when it came to what to expect in motherhood. In fact, on reflection, she wasn’t prepared for it at all. And so, her journey would take many plot twists. She went from biochemist to attorney to creating Australia’s first doula village, she went from expecting to have more than one baby to eventually making the decision to be one and done.

It wasn’t an easy call to make, especially when her first motherhood experience left her feeling anxious, as though she’d messed up, and desperately wishing she could have a re-do.

The trouble is, unfortunately, we don’t get a test drive before taking on the biggest role of our lives, and that re-do would never come. So instead of pouring the love and the lessons she’d learned into a new child, she combined her love of support and science and put into caring for other postpartum families, instead.

Here, we talk about how postpartum anxiety — still today — doesn’t get enough airtime, how we can forgive ourselves for finding periods of parenting challenging, and how being an academic who worked in the field of science collided with the polar opposite experience of motherhood.

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This podcast was recorded on the lands of the Boon Wurong people of the Kulin Nation. The land on which we're lucky enough to raise our sons and daughters always was and always will be Aboriginal land.

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