Growing Up Raising Us

How long do you have? In all seriousness, we love dads, and millennial dads are absolutely raising the bar on what it looks like to be a father. 

This chat is about society, and why dads seem to get praised for their parenting while mums are just… plain old parenting (and complaining about it on their hot mum walks, IYKYK). Our listeners had a lot to say on this one when we opened the polls up – 96% of you thought that dads do get m...

Wow, this episode is so powerful and so precious. Hayley joins us on the podcast to share her story with Harry, her beautiful son who is now 4 years old and absolutely thriving.

Hayley and her partner, Jordan, welcomed their boy into the world at just 24 weeks old, weighing a tiny 700 grams. Harry spent the first 16 weeks of his life in the NICU after being born so prematurely, miraculously coming home on his due date. 

Hayley talks ...

Ideally, we’d be raising our children in community – with others from different generations, backgrounds and skill-sets. Somebody to entertain the older kids, somebody to focus on feeding, to plan the day, to tend to the mothers in early postpartum, to hold sleeping babies, to help with laundry. In reality, most of us are doing all of this tending by ourselves, and mostly in isolation. 

In this episode, Alice (@themodern.doula) join...

Today’s episode is a playback episode from the early days of the podcast – when it was run solely by Chelsea. In this important conversation, Chels was joined by Cleo (she/her), who is now a mother to two beautiful boys. 

Cleo spoke with Chels back in 2023, just after her first son had turned one. Before becoming parents, Cleo and her husband lived busy lives socialising, DJing, and wining and dining their way around Geelong. 

Having...

In today’s episode we are joined by the incredible Zoe, who shares her experience with egg freezing here in Naarm/Melbourne. Zoe shares her experience from the perspective of a single woman in her 30s living with PCOS. She talks us through the decision to undertake egg retrieval, the process itself, practicalities of the procedure and how she was feeling along the way. Zoe also discusses her experience with ovarian hyperstimulation...

We are so excited to bring you this episode with Mikaela Ladocki. We had a beautiful chat with Mikaela all about her motherhood story. She speaks on her births and postpartum experiences with her two children, postpartum during covid, navigating breastfeeding challenges and choosing to formula feed, navigating the return to work after parental leave, showing up authentically on social media, and how she prioritises herself in mothe...

In today’s snappy ep we are discussing the “7 types of rest” through the lens of motherhood. Have you heard of them?

This is such an important conversation for mothers and new parents, when our most obvious form of rest (AKA sleep) goes out the window. We chat through the 7 types and how they can show up in motherhood.

The 7 types of rest were identified by Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith, a US physician. She describes ways to incorporate r...

Today's ep is with Jane of @doingmotherhood. Jane is a mother of two and a mental health occupational therapist specialising in matrescence and the perinatal period, currently working at @themindfulbirthmovement. 

Jane joins us to discuss:

Welcome to the first episode of our new segment – How Do I – a series where we unpack questions that have been on our minds – sometimes with wonderful experts, sometimes between us, your co-hosts, and often with experiences shared by you, our beautiful listeners. This series has been designed to answer your targeted questions, and leave you with practical takeaways. 

In our first How Do I, we are joined by a return guest, Caitlin, f...

In this week's ep, we have Part 2 of our conversation with Amy Pearson of @sunmotheramy. This chat focuses on neurodiversity - on Amy's experience raising a child who is neurodivergent and how that journey impacted her understanding and learning of her own ADHD. 

We chose to split this interview into two parts because Amy speaks openly and honestly on the experience of having a highly sensitive baby, and we hope this ep reaches anyo...

In today's ep we bring you a conversation with Amy Pearson, aka the brains, beauty and impact behind Sun Mother (@sunmotheramy). Amy is a mother to two, and a Brand and Marketing Strategist + Coach. She joins us on the podcast to chat all things motherhood, identity and career. 

She reflects on her matrescence journeys, building a business while raising a family, and some musings on motherhood now her kids are a little bit more grow...

How did you know you were done having kids, if you ever had that feeling at all? 

It’s something that is shaped by so many factors—practical, emotional, and unexpected. Fertility and financial pressures, not seeing eye to eye with your partner, feeling completely ‘done’ or maybe not at all. We wanted to explore what really influences this decision, and we asked our listeners. The response was huge. As we’ve been putting this episode...

Hello hello! We are finally back for the year and so excited to be in your ears. We are back with a chatty welcome back - Chels walks us through the experience of her second daughter self-weaning (a very different experience from her first) and Em recaps how much the movie, Nightbitch, resonated with her. 

You can expect 3 episodes a month from us this season, with a highly requested In Your Words episode coming to you next week. 

Jo...

Thank you so much for joining us for our first year of Growing Up Raising Us. We wouldn’t have been able to do it without your messages of support, listens, shares, words of wisdom, and contribution to our growing community. We are so grateful to you all. This year we had: 

✨Thirty-six incredible guests

✨Twenty-nine podcast eps

✨So many beautiful DMS and messages of impact

✨One billion voice-note exchanges between your co-hosts

Yo...

We recently asked you how prepared you felt for your first postpartum experience and over 40% of you said you didn’t feel prepared at all.

So we wanted to bring out an episode to help change that. In this episode, we are joined by Olivia, a postpartum doula, registered nurse and founder of Back to Nourishing Mamas. 

Olivia joins us to chat about why it’s so important to feel supported and held in postpartum, as well as how to prepa...

We’ve had lots of beautiful new listeners join us recently so a warm hello to you 👋 we’re Chelsea + Emma! We host this podcast - our incredible passion project - alongside our paid work and motherhood.

Chels has 2 daughters, is a teacher and has recently moved to a sweet little town in central Vic. Em is mother to 1 boy and works in research and data analysis. We’re in our 30s and launched this pod to share stories of birth, mothe...

Welcome to our next incredible ‘In Your Words’ episode, which is on the topic of positive hospital birth experiences. In Australia, over 97% of births take place in a hospital, which for some of us can be an unfamiliar or even scary place.

We really wanted to put this episode together to hear our listeners’ perspectives on what a positive birth means to them, and hear the meaning and beauty behind their experience birthing in a ho...

Today we have a jam-packed episode for you with the incredible Amy, an internationally certified Infant and Child Sleep Consultant, the Founder of Little Dreamers and co-founder of Beyond Sleep School, as well as a Mum of 3! 

Amy joins us to chat all things family sleep and ditching social expectations around sleep, as well as her advice on a few of your own listener sleep issues. If sleep is impacting your family in this season of...

 today we have a lovely episode for you with the wonderful Eleni, mother to three girls including 3.5 year old twins, Cleo and Lola, and 10 month old Hazel. 

Eleni joins us to share her motherhood journey, including her challenging pregnancy and planned caesarean section birth with her fraternal twin girls, as well as how she navigated the newborn days with two babies. She shares her feeding journey with the twins, covering tandem ...