Explore every episode of the podcast Ready Birth Go

In this episode of Ready Birth Go, Carly Sandland talks to nutritionist and bestselling author Madeleine Shaw about her two births, and the honest, messy, wonderful reality of becoming a mum twice over.

Her first birth was fast and unmedicated - ten hours, and she arrived at hospital already eight centimetres. Her second was a planned caesarean, and nothing about it went the way she'd pictured.

We talk about:

• A breech, big baby, and deciding not to try to turn him
• Why she never wrote a birth plan
• How an early loss shaped everything that came after
• What no one warns you about caesarean recovery
• The love, and the fear, that arrive with a new baby
• Quickfire: three words, and the worst advice she was given

Content note: this episode includes discussion of pregnancy loss and miscarriage.

Madeleine: instagram.com/madeleine_shaw_ · tiktok.com/@madeleine_shaw_ · The Glow Space, her wellness platform: madeleineshaw.com/the-glow-space

Carly: instagram.com/thedoulaclub
Ready Birth Go, Carly's birth preparation course: readybirthgo.com

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
https://uppbeat.io/t/william-proulx/for-me

In the first episode of Ready Birth Go, Carly Sandland talks to Emmerdale's Amy Walsh about two births, four years apart, and how the first one shaped everything about the second.

Bonnie arrived on Boxing Day 2021 after a Group B Strep positive result, an induction Amy was pushed towards on her due date, an epidural that fell out without anyone noticing, an episiotomy and a haemorrhage. She calls it torture, and says she came out of it feeling cheated.

So when she was pregnant with Nell, she read more, asked more, and declined nearly everything she was offered.

We talk about:

• Group B Strep, and how one test result can shape an entire labour
• Why a sweep is an induction, and why it's rarely described as one
• Declining a seven-day induction and negotiating for ten
• Epidurals that don't work
• Fetal scalp monitoring
• Birth trauma, and how a second birth can reopen the first
• What partners carry into a second birth
• Quickfire: three words, the TENS machine, and a six-hour playlist

Amy: https://www.instagram.com/amyvwalsh · https://www.tiktok.com/@amy.walsh27
Carly: https://www.instagram.com/thedoulaclub
Ready Birth Go, Carly's birth preparation course: https://readybirthgo.com/

Content note: traumatic birth, haemorrhage, and postnatal mental health.

Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
https://uppbeat.io/t/william-proulx/for-me