E241. Why Mothers Are Running The World (And Burning Out) – Dr Punam Krishan

And I think, you know, that idea that we can't mother them unless we mother ourself, and that's been so forgotten, hasn't it? Like you say, there is such this, this focus on, on our babies.

Absolutely.

And actually what you said really resonated because in the pelvic health work that I do, the most common kind of period of women postpartum that I see coming to me with pelvic health concerns is when their children are about five.

And it's almost that first time that maybe they've started school, they've got that space, and suddenly they're like, "Oh, and my body." And that's five years-

Yeah

... after birth, you know, six years after pregnancy that we finally get that like breath sometimes of like, well, what's going on for me? And that's so-

And that's, yeah

... interesting that we live, we live that long sometimes with, with challenges or uncertainty.

Um, and we don't need to, and I think that's what's so important about this conversation.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

There's two peaks I find.

One significant number of mums, as you've just said, yeah, they come in when children go- go to school.

But what I am seeing increasingly more, and it's great because we have started, you know, raising more awareness, more conversations are happening about women in perimenopause and menopause years.

But that's where I see the next big wave, which is mums have gone, right, my kids are now older, they've gone to university, they've moved out, or they're really independent.

Now I'm going to address the fact that actually is this perimenopause or, ah, going back to the birth, things changed over there.

They were not empowered or they were not informed or educated or encouraged about their pelvic floor rehabilitation and the importance of that.

And the thing is, when we ignore a lot of the changes that happen to us around our birth and those pregnancy year, pregnancy time, it resurfaces later on when our hormones start doing all that kinda rage and fluctuation again.

It doesn't go away, which is why I think knowing from the very beginning that wherever in it, it, it happens, create that little space just to give your health that attention.

And it's a two-way thing.

In this country, we still have a lot of work to do with the healthcare system.

We still have a lot of work to do with clinicians opportunistically screening mums and encouraging them and referring them early.

But yeah, there are those two waves where mums go, 'Ah, now I've got a little bit of time for me." But actually prevention is better than cure, and I just wish we can capture those mums early on.

Uh, and that's really why we're having these conversations.

Absolutely.