In today’s episode we talk to Liv (IG: @rattle_style). Liv, her partner Charlie and their little boy Gus live in Melbourne and Liv owns her own fashion styling business which we talk a bit about in this episode. Liv went into pregnancy and birth pretty well informed on the whole process with her mother-in-law being a midwife, she had a positive birth experience and was home within hours of giving birth. On their second night at home, Gus had some breathing concerns and Liv’s MIL suggested they take him to hospital where he was admitted for testing and given a provisional diagnosis of sepsis, which was then changed later in his admission and to this day Liv & Charlie are still unaware of what was actually wrong with Gus. Liv talks about how Gus being admitted to hospital so early helped her learn to use her voice as a mother, and although she describes herself as not very knowledgable about the medical world, she was lucky to have people around her to help her advocate for her and her baby. Liv’s feeding journey was fairly straightforward after initially having to syringe feed Gus with colostrum she collected during the later stages of her pregnancy and she says that she believes this process saved their breastfeeding journey. The rest of Liv’s early postpartum story was pretty positive but Liv found that at around 12 months postpartum she really lost herself. Being the first one of her friendship group to have a baby, sleep deprivation and struggling to meet the demands of modern motherhood, Liv was struggling and she couldn’t help but compare herself to other mums who seemed to “have it all together” with babies that slept well and made everything look so easy. We touch on sleep training in this episode and how for some people it just doesn’t feel right, and for Liv this was very much the case but she felt unable to speak about her difficulties with Gus’ sleep because she felt as though she would be judged for not wanting to sleep train. 
Liv’s story is interesting because as she describes, at 12 months postpartum there is this collective thought or pressure from society to have your shit together and you get forgotten about a bit, so for her to only start struggling at this point, she felt unable to reach out for help. This episode has some great insights and tips on how to move forward in motherhood when you are in the depths of sleep deprivation and you feel as though you have nowhere to turn. 
If you are struggling with your little one’s sleep or are past your 4th trimester and having a hard time, some things that Liv did to help herself were talking to her partner, asking for specific help from friends and family, putting Gus into occasional care, switched who slept with Gus (Charlie and Gus sleep in the same bed now so Liv can get some quality sleep) and trying to stop comparing herself to other mums (much easier said than done, we know). 
Rattle Style will be releasing a brand new Mami Mode package on the 18th June. Liv has kindly offered our listeners 20% off at checkout when using the code “afterbirth” and you can find her website at https://www.rattlestyle.com/ or via her instagram @rattle_style