Parenting

This article was first published elsewhere in August 2023.

In case you hadn’t noticed, becoming a parent is a big deal. An assumption people often make when a second or subsequent baby (or babies, if you’re expecting multiples) comes along is that because you’ve done it before, you’ve got it covered and don’t need so much help. In some ways they’re right, but in many they’re very, very wrong.

Yes, you’ve parented a baby before, but you’ve never parented THIS baby.

If you’re the gestationa…

This article was first published elsewhere in August 2023.

What do you say when someone asks what it’s like having kids? I say “kids” purposefully because this is how the question is often raised with me, partly because I now have two children which makes “kids” the plural relevant, and partly because one child families are still treated as an unfortunate aberration rather than a valid family structure.

I’ve found those asking the question aren’t much interested in my analysis of sociolingui…

This article was first published elsewhere in June 2023.

There was a time in the distant pre-kids past when I was a gym junkie. With an exercise science degree under my belt, this was fraught with danger. Every time I stepped through the doors of a gym I was met with a wave of unqualified people giving their only slightly less experienced training buddies the shittest of shit advice, barely-teenage personal trainers cluelessly writing pelvic floor destructor programs for postnatal mot…

This article was first published elsewhere in June 2023.

What makes a Default Parent? Hint: it’s not your body parts.

Default Parents are the ones whose own lives are intertwined with their child(ren)’s to such depth it is impossible to prise them apart.

They are the ones who, if out for lunch on a weekend, are asked who’s looking after the kids.

They are the ones who know if their children’s school fees, vaccinations and dental checks …

This article was first published elsewhere in June 2023.

No matter how big or small, every business owner sometimes gets the urge to throw it all into the bin and get a “normal” job. While this happens only occasionally for me, I recently had the unsettling revelation that this option isn’t available to me right now. Not because of some virtuous reason of “serving families” or “doing my life’s work” but, depressingly, because my kids and I are sick too often for me to hold down a…

This article was first published elsewhere in May 2023.

My six month old has recently discovered screeching, and it is death to my nervous system.

Want mum? Screech. Want that food mum’s eating but can’t get to it? Screech! Sore tummy from eating mum’s food? Screeeeccchhhhh!!!

As I type a variety of earplugs, ear muffs and noise cancelling headphones dot our house in child, average adult and giant-man sizes. There are times we yell from a few steps away and others we communicate…

This month’s topic on the Anna Asks podcast is “Queering Motherhood” and my guest is Melbourne-based doula Rafferty Hallows (they/them).

We recorded this episode with an unsettled four month old (me) and from a car due to nearby construction noise (Raff).

Both of us feel it’s important to share the messiness of motherhood, so the editing is a bit rougher on this one. There are places where I just couldn’t find a segue thank…

This article was first published elsewhere in May 2023.

Have you ever walked into a home and been smacked in the face by the smell of milky baby? I have. Over and again at friends’ and clients’ houses, I have opened the door to their early postpartum world and been whacked fair in the nostrils by the sweet smell of baby love. And yet, I can not smell it in my own.

We know smell is such an important sense for our babies. Baby’s first exposure to smell is that of their amniot…

We now know it's important to be on the lookout for signs of postnatal depression, anxiety and even psychosis in the early days, but what happens if a mother experiences a mental health crisis further down the track?

In this episode of the Anna Asks podcast, Emmeline Tyler (she/her) shares openly about her birth and blissful postpartum, and how these assisted in helping her be well. She explains how personal and societal factors influenced the unravelling of her mental health during the toddler…

A recent post by prominent birth-related Instagram account @trusting_birth suggested, as many others have done previously, that surrogacy is unethical. This was the case, in their opinion, regardless of whether the surrogate carried the pregnancy through commercial or altruistic avenues.  As commercial surrogacy is illegal in Australia, this article will address altruistic surrogacy, whereby the surrogate[1] does not receive payment for their role in carrying or birthing the baby. 

The original…