My guest this week is the incredible Anna Geary, broadcaster, author and former All Ireland medal-winning camogie player. Anna is a national treasure, a wellness advocate and an inspiration to to others, and she's also a mum of one – her little boy Ronan is 16 months old and as Anna says, changed her life for the better. This episode was the definition of sitting with a cup of tea with your mam friend and just having the chats. We talked about the pressure to 'perform' for want of a better...

My guest this week is Rachel Ivie, someone I'm certain lots of you will follow online for her style and outfit ideas. Rachel is a fashion influencer, almost by accident, having started her outfit posts during Covid when she wasn't working at her other job as a primary school teacher. She's also a mother of two, as if there wasn't enough going on. We talk about parental leave helping to ease the pressure on parents, we talk about whether or not your child is ready for school, and about how she...

This week, I chatted to the incredible Deirdre McDonagh, a social worker who founded Five Rivers Fostering over 22 years ago. I knew very little about fostering at the start of our conversation, so I was coming to this topic with mostly questions, and Deirdre was certainly the right person to ask. We talked about the basic types of fostering, from emergency care to longer term fostering that might result in adoption, we talked about what circumstances might arise that would cause a child to...

This week's guest is my lovely friend Courtney Smith. Courtney is an incredibly talented creative director and stylist, a truly beautiful person inside and out and is someone I've worked with and admired for a long time, so it was great to speak to her about being a mam. At the time of recording, she's about to have her third baby, and though we joked that she could go into labour during the record – thankfully we got through it okay. We get real about the 'balance' in motherhood, and how...

This week, I spoke to lovely Laura Drury, also known as The Glam Shamrock, about her life as a content creator and mother of three children under the age of four. Yes, three under four – the woman is a hero. We spoke about how much she leans into the chaos, embraces the challenges but always tries to do one key thing: Find time in her day to do something that's just for her. Whether that's a 15-minute makeup break or a walk to get some fresh air, making time to prioritise her own health and...

This week's guest is Dr Malie Coyne, a Clinical Psychologist, bestselling author and and clinical psychology lecturer. Dr Coyne's special area of interest is in children's and adolescent mental health, and helping families navigate challenges around that. During our conversation today, the word 'compassion' came up a lot – not in relation to our children, but in relation to ourselves. Sharing stories of those times I've lost my patience, or been too cross with Lydia, I articulated what I...

My guest this week is entrepreneur and mother of two, Jennie McGinn. Jennie is an entrepreneur in the truest sense of the word – she's the brains behind many very successful business endeavours, and somehow seems to keep all of the plates spinning, but something I love about her is her honesty about the very real juggle we all find ourselves doing, whether self-employed or not. She's refreshingly straightforward about the challenges of doing it all, or trying to at least, and we talk...

My guest this week was Tara Anderson, or as you might know her online – Tara Makeup. Makeup artist, model, actor, influencer and entrepreneur are all roles Tara has had in her life, but her job as mam to Gene and Jools, her 6 and 3-year-old sons, is the one we chatted most about in this episode. Tara talks candidly about her two very different experiences of pregnancy and birth, about how she's a private person in spite of being well known online, and how even for her, comparison can be the...

My guest this week was model and blogger, the lovely Louise O'Reilly, who is someone I've known for a really long time, since the very early days of my former career in magazines and since the early days of her career as a curve model. Louise has not only modelled in magazines like Cosmopolitan, but has had a plus size fashion blog called Style Me Curvy for as long as she's been modelling, which is where some of you might know her from. There, she helps women everywhere to embrace their...

Before I start this week's guest intro, I just want to flag that this episode is a very emotional one and might not be a comfortable listen for anyone in the early stages of grief, as it deals with the loss of a child. My amazing and brave guest for this episode is Eileen Loughlin. Eileen is a mother of four gorgeous children, from ages 20 all the way to just two years old. Five and a half years ago, Eileen and her family's life was turned upside down when a tragic accident at their home led...

This week, I spoke to child and adolescent psychotherapist and play therapy expert, Debbie Cullinane. Debbie helps children struggling at home with anything from anxiety, behavioural issues, anger, grief, and lots more. She talked me through what exactly play therapy is, who might benefit from it, the types of play that are involved, and how after a matter of weeks she can see changes in children that parents never expected. She told me how occasionally, it's more of an education for parents...

My guest this week is mother of two, Eimear Hallahan. If you don't know Eimear's story from social media already, it's worth noting that this episode deals with a critically ill baby and might be a tough listen for some. Eimear's youngest son, James, was just two weeks old when she brought him to hospital knowing something wasn't right with him. She trusted her instinct, and once he arrived to Cork University Hospital, the doctors and nurses there sprang into action. He had sepsis, and his...

My guest this week is Dr Christina McDonnell, who is a practicing GP, a Garda on-call doctor and also the owner of Genius Juniors, the online bookshop for children of all ages. I was so excited to chat with Christina because honestly, nothing shaped me more throughout childhood than the books I read, and I know just how powerful reading can be for a child's development. Christina was a wealth of knowledge about what reading can do for a child, how much screen time we should give our kids, the...

The lovely Louise Cooney joins me this week for a chat about all things motherhood. Louise, who I'm sure lots of you follow, is an influencer, content creator and mother to baby Jude, who is 8 and a half months old. From talking to Louise, it's so clear to see that motherhood suits her – she has a refreshingly positive take on being a new mam and honestly, if I was pregnant with my first child again and heard how beautifully she speaks about her experience, I would be genuinely looking...

This week, I spoke to the amazing Dr Rebecca Moore. Dr Moore is an incredibly empathetic perinatal consultant psychiatrist who works in the UK. She is renowned for her expertise in supporting mothers who are navigating infertility, pregnancy loss, anxiety, depression, and of course, our topic for today's episode: birth trauma. Around 30% of people who give birth recall some part of their birth experience as traumatic. For me, I had antenatal trauma in my pregnancy, which is often overlooked...

This week's guest is media mogul Alexandra Ryan, owner and brains behind the incredible Irish media brand, Goss Media. Ali joins me this week to talk all things egg freezing. Having undergone the process twice in recent years, Ali knows the ins and outs. We discuss her motivation for embarking on the process, the financial implications, the side effects of taking so many hormones, the physical aftermath of the retrieval and so much more. One of the things I love about Ali is that she's always...

TRIGGER WARNING: Suicide/suicidal ideation. My guest this week, and our first back for Season 14, is Sophie White. A prolific and massively successful author and podcaster, Sophie is also mother to three boys between 10 and 4 and has battled with mental illness since she was in her early 20s. As Sophie says herself in the episode, it's not often someone can pinpoint exactly when they became mentally ill, but she can – a drug-induced psychosis in 2007 led to her being hospitalised and...

Can you believe we've reached the end of the season! My last guest for season 13 is the very lovely Kelly Fitzsimons – formerly known on Instagram at least as MissEllaMayandMommy. Kelly had her daughter Ella aged 19 and her following online grew as the two of them grew up together. Sharing outfit posts with matching dresses, their mother daughter relationship was (and is!) goals. Kelly went on to have her son Mac in her early thirties, leaving a 13 year age gap between her two children. We...

I was so so grateful to this week's guest for joining me on the podcast. The lovely Dominique Nugent so bravely chatted to me about her experience, earlier this year, of late stage miscarriage. Dominique was a day short of 16 weeks when she delivered her baby, who had not survived in utero. She so generously decided now was the time to talk about it, start to finish, with me and with the listeners to the podcast, saying that she knows if listening will help just one person through their own...

My guest this week is my lovely friend, author, and journalist Liadán Hynes, who is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to parenting, and life in general really. She's a single parent to one daughter who's 9 years old. She's self-employed and works flexibly to be as present as she can for her little girl and writes often about her experiences as a working single mother. We talk about everything from facing what could be lonely weekends without your child or children, the imbalance that exists...

My guest this week is Carla Kelly, who is one of the founders of Ask The Midwife, a company that aims to support parents from pregnancy through to postpartum and beyond. A midwife herself, we asked you guys, our cherished listeners, to put questions to her that you might need advice on. We talked about an incredible grandparents refresher course that they run (totally genius if you ask me) their various antenatal and postnatal classes, how they help build a community of mothers so no matter...

My wonderful friend Caroline Foran is my guest this week, and a returning guest to Everymum the podcast. This time, we talk about her most recent struggles with her son Caelan, and how she has recently undergone assessments with various clinical assessors to help better understand her son's unique needs. We talk about the anxiety over a potential future diagnosis, how guilt can be associated with wanting a straightforward life for your child, and how she cries every night at bed time out of...

My guest this week is Shannen Bulman Joyce, who was previously known on social media as Big C and Me, because she used her platform to document her cancer journey. Over the course of her adult life, just the past ten years, she's been diagnosed with and survived cancer three times. She's now the healthiest she's ever been, and is thriving and living life as a single mother to her daughter Roisin. We chat about everything from health anxiety and mam guilt, to what it was like having to explain...

My guest today is model and mam of three, Rosanna Davison. Over the past few years, life has changed dramatically for Rosanna. From going through a tragic 14 miscarriages and believing she wouldn't be able to carry a pregnancy to term, she and her husband sought the help of a surrogate from Ukraine to make their dream of having a family come true. She talks to me about the anxiety of knowing her baby was in someone else's body in a completely different country, and how she coped with that....