63 | The Motherwhelm with Carly | Home Birth, Career Reinvention & Being Cracked Open by Motherhood

<p><strong>In this episode of The Motherwhelm, I sit down with Carly to talk about home birth, identity, career reinvention, and the ways motherhood can crack us open and reveal parts of ourselves we didn&#39;t know were there.</strong></p><p>Before becoming a mother, Carly spent years travelling the world before training as a midwife and supporting women through birth. She entered motherhood feeling deeply confident in birth - and soon discovered just how different it is to experience something from inside it.</p><p>Carly shares the stories of her three very different home births, including a third birth that unfolded in just 45 minutes, and the lessons each taught her about control, intuition, support and the relationship between a mother and her baby.</p><p>Together, we explore the transition from one child to two, to three; the impossibility of meeting everyone&#39;s needs all of the time; and what it means to learn to ask for and receive support. We also talk about the family patterns motherhood can bring to the surface, reparenting ourselves while raising our children, and learning to meet the messiness of motherhood with greater self-compassion.</p><p>Carly also reflects on how becoming a mother completely changed her relationship with work. After years of living and breathing home birth midwifery, she realised she no longer wanted a career that required her to be constantly on call, leading her to reshape her work around the life she wanted with her children.</p><p>This is a conversation about surrendering the version of motherhood we imagined, learning from the children in front of us, and allowing motherhood to change us rather than fighting to remain who we were before.</p><p><strong>Resources mentioned:</strong></p><ul><li>Marion Rose</li><li>Aletha Solter</li><li>Aware Parenting</li><li>Alfie Kohn — Unconditional Parenting</li><li>Hand in Hand Parenting</li><li>Sophie Brock</li><li>Seed Pod Families</li></ul><p><strong>Topics discussed: </strong>home birth, midwifery, physiological birth,precipitous labour, postpartum, travelling with children, motherhood identity, transition from one to two children, asking for support, family of origin, reparenting, self-compassion, maternal self-care, career change, lactation support, aware parenting, slowing down, presence.</p>