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You can love your new life and grieve your old one. Nobody tells you that motherhood runs a friendship audit, and nobody asked for it. This week we’re talking about what happens to your friendships when you become a mother. Bianca shares the story of a close friend who found out she was pregnant from the Instagram friends tab, and the honest conversation that followed when the friendship couldn’t carry on as it was. Rose brings what she’s seen from the research and her coaching: the guilt of not showing up the way you used to, why the first three years are the trenches, and why the friends who remain become your rocks. We get into: Why your friendship currency changes, and why a one-handed voice note during a feed countsAllowing for the drift, and when it’s fine not to have the big conversationWhy “sorry for the slow reply” should become “thank you for your patience”The WhatsApp archive trick and the Google Calendar birthday hackTrusting your nervous system after time with a friendPlus the question Bianca ended on: if you wouldn’t want this friendship for your baby, why do you want it for you? Part two is coming: how to actually be a friend to a new mum.

Part 3: What do you do when the pay rise you were promised quietly disappears after mat leave, or your manager makes a second pregnancy feel like an inconvenience? We asked for your maternity leave questions and you didn't hold back. Loneliness, guilt, night feeds and careers that seem to be moving on without you. These are the things women are thinking about at 3am and rarely say out loud at work. In the final part of our maternity leave series, Rose brings the research and Bianca reports live from five months of maternity service, with Raphael on her lap as this week's co-host. We talk about loneliness at eight months when the messages dry up, why a three-month-old has no interest in your schedule, how to go back and ask for the pay rise you were promised, and what to do when your partner gets the lie-ins and you get the guilt. We also look at what managers get wrong when they joke about pregnancy, and why so many women stay quiet about it. Plus: Bianca's first keeping in touch day, why she came home recharged, and two news updates. There's a petition calling for 90% maternity pay for the first 12 weeks, and the Maternity Commissioner's work is set to be written into law. That's a wrap on our maternity leave series. Keep your questions coming to @matrescenceunfiltered

Part 2: What if looking after mothers wasn’t just the right thing to do, but one of the smartest investments a business can make? Deloitte estimates that every £1 spent on mental wellbeing can return £4.70. Yet when the wellbeing in question belongs to a new mother, the conversation often stops being about investment and starts being about inconvenience. In part two of our maternity leave series, Rose brings the research and Bianca reports live from four months of what she’s increasingly calling maternity service: the invisible work of recovering, caring, adapting and becoming someone new. We look at maternal mental health before crisis, why women shouldn’t have to reach breaking point before they qualify for support, and the evidence linking longer, paid maternity leave with better maternal mental health. We also get into the economics of burnout, the £118bn annual cost, and why supporting mothers makes commercial sense long after they return to work. Plus: Rose’s MSc distinction, her new Gigi return-to-work support groups, and Bianca on why “rest” means something very different when you have a baby who doesn’t believe in weekends. This is part two of three. Next week, we’re answering your questions about maternity leave. Send yours to @matrescenceunfiltered or [email protected]. Join the Gigi pilot: https://gigitheadvantage.com/#pilot

Four months into maternity leave, Bianca and Rose get properly into the reality of being home with a baby: the loneliness, the loss of structure, baby groups, the strange pressure to be grateful for every second, and why getting out of the house every single day became Bianca’s non-negotiable. We talk about the things that genuinely help, from finding your people to creating tiny pockets of normality, and why “someone brought me a coffee” is not quite the same thing as feeling supported. Bianca shares what surprised her most, including the unexpected ways maternity leave can resemble lockdown, while Rose brings the research on connection, perinatal mental health and what actually makes support useful. And then there’s the bigger question: if we know that the first months of motherhood can be psychologically and socially transformative, why is so much of the infrastructure around new mums still basically “good luck, see you in six weeks”? This is not a guide to doing maternity leave correctly, but a conversation about what might help you feel like you while you become someone new.

We're back from summer, and we're doing things differently: for the first time, we're answering your questions. This episode moves through the six-week check and why the conversation stops at exactly the point it should start, trad wives and what that fantasy is actually offering, Rose's summer project born from a chat outside the vet, and a stretch of listener questions that gets more honest than we expected. Six weeks after a C-section, you're signed off and sent on your way. Bianca got behind the wheel that week and found out exactly how ready she wasn't. We're retiring another term this episode: postpartum recovery is out, postpartum transformation is in, because recovery implies heading back to a previous version of yourself. Bianca also brings the August research on care beyond six weeks, making the case that the six-week appointment is asking the wrong questions entirely. We get into trad wives via Yesteryear, Caro Claire Burke's novel about an influencer who wakes up in 1855 and has to actually live it. Bianca has worked out what she'd genuinely want back from that era, and it isn't what the algorithm keeps offering her. Rose has her own theory on what those accounts are really selling. Rose spent her summer finishing her dissertation, then fell down a rabbit hole after a conversation outside the vet with a woman called Joan, who wanted a cat. That became 75 Comfortable, her answer to the 75 Hard challenge, and it's the first time she's talked about it on the show. Then, your questions. Is it realistic to study within three months of giving birth? How do you hold on to a sense of self while breastfeeding, in what's the most honest stretch of the episode? And what do you do if you're not ambitious after becoming a mother, when everyone assumes you should be? Send us a question for the next one at [email protected], or find us on Instagram at @matrescenceunfiltered. Mentioned in this episode: Rose's Substack: soffelhaus.substack.comOur episode with Gemma Folkard of Shape Pilates (17 June 2026) on reconnecting with your bodyYesteryear by Caro Claire Burke

We're back from our summer break. And to ease back in, we've made a mini episode: our four favourite terms to retire, played back to back for the first time. If you're new here, every episode we take a word or phrase about motherhood that isn't working and give it a proper send off. This one gathers the best of them in one place, and heard together they make a bigger point than any of them do alone. We start with baby brain, the phrase that tells women they're losing it right when the research says the opposite. The maternal brain isn't shrinking, it's specialising, and by midlife it can actually look younger than it did before. This is not baby brain. It's neuroprotection. Then baby blues, which Bianca calls out for what it really is: the fastest hormonal crash in human biology, dressed up as something cute. There's honesty here about the day three drop and what it actually feels like from the inside, plus the line that matters most, that anything lasting beyond two weeks deserves real support, not a shrug. We take on the village next, the myth that community just appears when you need it. It doesn't. You build it, from a WhatsApp group, a nursery run, a partner who flexes, and every piece of that patchwork costs something. And we finish on maternity leave, the word that frames one of the biggest transitions of your life as time off. It isn't leave. It's becoming. This is a short one to tide you over. We're back next week with a full episode and a new structure that includes your questions, so if there's something you want us to answer on the show, we want to hear it. Come and find us on Instagram at @matrescenceunfiltered, and if you've got a question or just want to say hello, email us at [email protected]. If this one gave you something, send it to someone who needs to hear it.

Your working day was built around a hormone cycle that resets every 24 hours. Yours doesn't. So why are we all still measuring ourselves against it? Sophie Cliff is the author of The Hustle Cure and Choose Joy, a coach and the founder of The Joyful Coach. Seven years ago she walked away from a corporate career because she could see the trade-off coming: be ambitious, or be present. Pick one. She decided not to. Today she runs a growing business on three days of childcare a week, went back to work 10 weeks after both of her babies, and has the positive psychology research to explain exactly why it works. We get into why almost every productivity book she picked up in pregnancy was written by a man with someone else handling his life admin, and what happens when you stop trying to work like one. Sophie explains the 24 hour male hormone cycle the entire working world is built around, what your own cycle actually means for when you do your best thinking, and why waking up at 5am is not a moral achievement but simply the length of a piece of DNA. She also tells us about the nap she takes during work hours and the moment she stopped apologising for it. There is honesty here too. Sophie burnt out at the start of this year while writing a book about burnout, and she talks openly about what that taught her. We cover how she and her husband divide the mental load through explicit conversations rather than assumed ones, the shoulds she has shed in motherhood from parenting camps to the myth of having it all together, and why prioritising joy is not selfish at all but the thing quietly fuelling your resilience, your relationships and your career. If you have ever felt like the game is rigged, it is. This one is about playing it your way. A note from us: we're taking August off for a summer break, and we'll be back with more brilliant guests in September. You can find Sophie at sophiecliff.com, over on Instagram at @sophiecliff, on her podcast Practical Positivity, and in her book The Hustle Cure.

Last episode, we named the cost. This one, we do something about it. First, Rose goes solo through It's a Rich Man's World, the book from the founders of Female Invest that reframes the whole thing. Why the person you marry is the biggest financial decision of your life. Why women live longer but retire poorer and sicker. Why motherhood still costs women almost everything. Bianca joins for the practical half. The exact accounts they use. Pensions, and why they might be the most powerful tool you are ignoring. The tax-free childcare most parents never claim. And how to start investing when every app feels built for someone else. Not financial advice. Just two women telling you what has actually worked. Part two of two.

Nobody hands you the invoice. But becoming a mother has a price, and it is bigger than you think. The cost of raising a child to eighteen. The 42% drop in a mother's earnings. The nearly £100 billion the economy loses every year when women step back. This episode puts numbers on the things that usually go unspoken. And as always, we flip the story. This is not about what women give up. It is about what the economy takes for granted and never pays for. Rose brings the data. Bianca brings the reality of doing this maths for the first time, in real time. If the sums have never quite added up for you, they don't. And it is not your fault. Part one of two.

In this episode, Bianca and Rose break down what's actually happening inside a new mother's brain in those first twelve weeks known as the fourth trimester, and why "baby brain" is one of the most misunderstood phrases in motherhood. Because your brain isn't failing. It's remodelling, the same kind of major neuroplastic shift as adolescence, trimming and strengthening the connections that make you sharper at reading emotion, detecting threat, and keeping a tiny human alive on almost no sleep. They get into why everything suddenly feels louder. Why your nervous system and your baby's are, for a while, essentially one shared system learning to divide. And why the guilt so many new mothers carry, for needing help, for feeling depleted, for not bouncing back, might be less about personal failure and more about a species that was never designed to do this alone. If you've ever looked in the mirror in those early weeks and thought, "why don't I feel like myself," this episode won't fix your sleep. But it might change the story you're telling yourself about why.

Women are using AI about 25% less than men. Lauren Ingram is on a mission to close that gap before it sets. We sit down with the founder of AI Girl Gang to talk about the skills gap no one has named yet, and why mothers have the most to gain and the most to lose. Lauren tells us how she built her whole career from her phone on maternity leave, newborn under one arm, talking to tech leaders at 2am between feeds. She shares the early pregnancy loss that sparked a strange creative renaissance, and the name AI Girl Gang itself. And she makes the case for trading the fear of being left behind for curiosity, play, and opting in. Honest, warm, and a proper nudge to stop watching from the sidelines. Find Lauren AI Girl Gang: aigirlgang.tech Substack: aigirlgang.substack.com LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ingramlauren Instagram: @laurennextbigthing

Your brain didn't break when you became a mother. It got an upgrade. Clinical psychologist Dr Rosanna M joins us on compassion-focused therapy and the three systems that run how we feel: threat, drive and soothe. Motherhood sharpens two of them. You hear the cry before anyone else does. You hold a hundred things in your head at once. The one that quietly slips is soothe, the rest and the steadiness that hold it all together. So we get practical about getting it back. A grounding exercise you can do mid-feed. The five percent shift. And why a treat is never just a treat. Warm, clever and genuinely useful. Find Rosanna on Instagram at @DrRosannaM. Resources:Guided breathing exercise (diaphragmatic breathing with Sophie, Nuffield Health): https://247.nuffieldhealth.com/videos/diaphragmatic-breathing-with-sophieValues vs goals, getting a sense of what matters to us again (video): https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-sMFszAaa7C9poytIAmBvAThe Happiness Trap Bull's Eye worksheet (PDF): https://thehappinesstrap.com/upimages/Long_Bull's_Eye_Worksheet.pdfMore from Rosanna, Becoming Mum resources: https://becomingmum.co.uk/resources/

This episode is about the body. We spend a lot of time on this show on the neurological side of matrescence, but the physical transformation gets far less honest airtime. This week we change that. Rose brings her research and coaching background, drawing out the link between movement, the nervous system, and identity. Bianca joins three weeks postpartum, asking the questions she is living through right now. And our first ever guest, Gemma Folkard, brings over a decade of teaching and a down to earth way of talking about the postpartum body. Gemma is a Pilates and strength trainer, a mother of three, and the founder of Shape Pilates. We talk about why she does not see ambition the way she was taught to, how she built a business around her family rather than the other way round, and why she is wary of the phrase bounce back. She makes the case that softness is not weakness, that most postpartum healing happens where you cannot see it, and that breathing, not the gym, is where new mums should start. For this episode's term to retire, we get into baby brain and bounce back, and why both deserve to go. Whether you are in the newborn fog right now or further along and still making sense of it, there is something here for you. Where to find Gemma Instagram: @shape_pilates App: Shape Pilates London (Apple App Store and Google Play) Website: shape-pilates.com

Sensitivity note: this episode discusses birth trauma, emergency caesarean, and the emotional aftermath of a birth that didn't go to plan. If you're currently pregnant or in early postpartum, please listen with care. You write a birth plan before you know what birth actually does. Bianca's didn't hold. Episode eleven is about what happens after. Two weeks on from her son arriving, Bianca sits down with Rose to talk honestly about her emergency caesarean and the shame that followed it. Why she felt she'd failed at something her body was supposed to just do. Why that feeling landed so hard. This one isn't Rose explaining the science. It's Rose listening, asking, trying to understand it alongside Bianca, using some data along the way. One study found 65% of women reported feelings of failure after birth, and they pointed all of it at themselves. Then they get into the words. Why "natural birth" carries so much, what it quietly says about every other kind, and why they want it gone. This is for anyone who has grieved the birth they planned for while loving the baby they got.

Bianca recorded this episode two weeks after giving birth. On the same day, as it happens, that the UK appointed its first ever National Maternity Advisor. It is a meaningful step. Michelle Welsh MP will work with families, the NHS, and ministers to push for safer, more compassionate care. It happened because women like Louise Thompson and Theo Clarke refused to stop pushing. But the announcement said nothing about what happens after the hospital door closes. The identity shift of matrescence did not feature. The neurological rewiring did not feature. The return to a workplace with no framework for what just happened to you did not feature. Bianca is living all of it in real time. And the research backs her up: the brain changes of matrescence are not temporary. They are lasting adaptations. The support infrastructure for them does not exist. This episode is for anyone who has felt the drop-off. From the moment the hospital door closed behind them to the moment they were expected to function as if nothing fundamental had changed.