ON MOTHERHOOD… with Jessie Ware and Francesca Segal

Motherhood is often portrayed purely as a joyful, magical chapter of life – and while it certainly can be – we rarely speak openly about the hard, exhausting and deeply challenging truths. In this episode, singer‑songwriter Jessie Ware reflects on becoming a parent while building a career in the public eye. She talks about the pressure she felt to prove she could do everything at once, the exhaustion that followed and the grounding process of learning to be present rather than perfect. We also hear from novelist Francesca Segal, who shares the story of her twins’ premature birth and the unexpected reality of early motherhood inside a neonatal ward. She describes the chasm between the idealised story of birth and the lived experience many mothers face. I hope this episode brings comfort to anyone navigating the complexities of motherhood. May it remind you that every journey is different, that there is no single right way to parent and that you are never alone in this experience. Listen to Jessie’s full episode of How to Fail here: http://swap.fm/l/8cUuwGs4vc7tAXiPcDab Listen to Francesca’s full episode of How to Fail here: swap.fm/l/MsPtRFvgP8z18GLPgpdL 🔗 LINKS + MENTIONS: Maternal Support: https://maternalmentalhealthalliance.org/ https://mothersformothers.co.uk/ Elizabeth’s Substack: https://theelizabethday.substack.com/ Join the How To Fail community: https://howtofail.supportingcast.fm/#content 💌 LOVE THIS EPISODE? Subscribe on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts Leave a 5⭐ review – it helps more people discover these stories 👋 Follow How To Fail & Elizabeth: Instagram: @howtofailpod @elizabday TikTok: @howtofailpod @elizabday Website: www.elizabethday.org Have a failure you’re trying to work through for Elizabeth to discuss? Click here to get in touch: howtofailpod.com How to Fail is an Elizabeth Day and Sony Music Entertainment Production. Find more great podcasts from Sony Music Entertainment at sonymusic.com/podcasts To bring your brand to life in this podcast, email [email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Elizabeth Day?

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• 1:31Elizabeth Day?

  Welcome back to How To Fail. Today, we're diving into a subject so many of us carry: motherhood. Not the glossy, idealized version we're often sold, but the real thing, the version that is raw, complicated and contradictory. First, singer songwriter Jessie Ware reflects on becoming a parent while building a career in the public eye. She talks about the pressure she felt to prove she could do it all, and how with hindsight, she's learning to slow down, be present, and show herself just a bit more kindness. Then, writer Francesca Segal shares the story of her twins' premature birth and the unexpected realities of early

• 2:11Elizabeth Day?

  motherhood in a neonatal ward. She reflects on the gap between the idealized narrative of birth and the more complex and difficult reality many mothers experience. Plus, she explores the powerful solidarity she found among the other women there. I hope these stories bring you a sense of comfort and a feeling that you are never alone. First up, let's hear from Jessie Ware.

• 2:41Elizabeth Day?

  How much do you think being more in control of what you think and being able to express it to someone is partly as a result of becoming a parent? Is there any connection?

• 2:52Speaker 02

  I think there is a connection, but I also think it's potentially due to my imperfections of trying to, okay, how am I going to go about this? So being a parent, first time round, I felt like I needed to prove to myself and to my work that I could do it all, I can be it all, I could be perfect, as perfect as possible. Working mother, back to work, doesn't matter, I'm there, I'm doing it, I'm still making sure my daughter has her food every day, I'm there for bath time, I do short sessions because that's how I work and I'm doing everything and I'm balancing and I'm juggling and I'm doing it great. And

• 3:33Speaker 02

  actually, oh my God, when I think about it now, I was really struggling to pretend that everything was okay and actually tried to prove to a rather sexist, ageist industry that you can have it all. And I don't think I needed to do that and I regret that. And I do have, again, like, fond memories of times where my daughter was able to come and tour with us. Equally, it was incredibly stressful and emotionally exhausting. And I just kind of wish I'd been a bit kinder to myself and maybe lived in the present a bit more and taken that maternity leave. But I think I felt like my career wasn't at a place where I could take time off. And because I felt like I needed to prove that it wasn't going to change me, it wasn't going to change how I work and my strong work ethic.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  And I regret that a lot. Weirdly, second time round with my son, I had this added thing of having the podcast. And you know, he was at the dinner table with me and whatever, Nana Cherry, doing a podcast, but it felt different.

• 4:34Elizabeth Day?

  Hmm.

• 4:34Speaker 02

  And I felt more in control and I felt it was a pleasure and it was an easier way to work and be a parent. But yet again, I'm finding myself in, especially during lockdown, you know, my husband has a very different approach to parenting them. We we agree and we are so united, but he's brilliant at being in the present and he's. He gets incredibly frustrated when I'm on my phone, when I'm doing about ten thousand things at once, wherever I'm making a bloody, I mean, this is not me trying to sound like I am a perfect person at all. But of course, I wanted to make a wild garlic pesto whilst also okaying the sound thing for the Graham Norton performance that I'm doing. And also okaying the setup and also trying to do a half-assed jigsaw puzzle with my daughter.

• 5:17Speaker 02

  When actually, what I should have just bloody done is put the phone away, not done the fucking food, put a waffle in the toaster and sat with my daughter and done the jigsaw properly. You know, and I still, I'm still working that out and I'm not very good at it and I do try and do too many things. And I think failure to live in the present happened with me not enjoying that initial period of being a new artist and having these amazing things happen. I was always like fearful of what was going to happen next or that it would be taken away.

• 5:42Elizabeth Day?

  Hmm.

• 5:42Speaker 02

  And I should have just enjoyed that. And again, now being a parent, this awful thing that's happened to the world has actually made me have to slow down. And I'm still trying to slow down, but actually it's kind of been the best thing for me and my family to be able to have an accidental maternity leave, even though, yeah, I am still working. I don't know.

• 6:02Elizabeth Day?

  It makes total sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 6:04Speaker 02

  But I didn't answer your question about how being a parent made me more confident, but there you go, you've got something else as well.

• 6:09Elizabeth Day?

  It was a great answer. It was.

• 6:11Speaker 02

  Oh, thank you.

• 6:11Elizabeth Day?

  No, it was. And I do, I think I have that thing of trying to do multiple things at once and filling up my diary to breaking point. And for me, it comes from a fear that I'm not always going to have these chances.

• 6:25Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 6:26Elizabeth Day?

  And so I want to make them, ironically, it's that I want to make the most of the present prevents me from living in the present.

• 6:33Speaker 02

  I totally agree. And it's that thing of like the fear that if you say, I think I had to learn how to say no, and I really struggle with that, but it's been the most powerful thing I could ever do and the most fulfilling thing to do. And I don't know about you, but yeah, I do do a lot and I do juggle a lot. And I think I thrive on that in some ways. Was it, I think it was in the Jess Phillips one that I listened to with you. It was about like, she likes having lots on, she likes it. And I do think I kind of come alive when I've got lots on my plate, but it's about being able to deal with with each one the right way. And but yeah, I mean, I forgot that to answer your question about the other confidence, I think the podcast has given me the best confidence. That's the thing that's weirdly, it kind of was all come back around to journalism, not journalism, I don't know if it is journalism,

• 7:18Speaker 02

  but like, just having this other job where I just feel safer. And so that thing about being, I don't know whether it's for you, you know, you're a novelist, you're a writer, you're a journalist, you're a podcaster. And weirdly, you can wear all these hats now, Elizabeth, but you can also potentially feel less worried about. I'm putting words in your mouth, but.

• 7:39Elizabeth Day?

  I do. No, I feel, I do feel that. I feel the biggest lesson, and we spoke about this at the beginning, the biggest lesson to me from the podcast and the book that I wrote that came out of it, was that people responded most to me when I was being most honest and vulnerable. And like you, I'd been sort of scared of doing that for obvious reasons. I mean, not everyone feels like doing that quite sensibly. But that has been something that I feel like, oh, well, that's a relief because I don't have to pretend to be anything or anyone. So that's, that's helped me live much more in the present because I can just be myself. But do you have strategies now that bring you back to the present? Do you have any tactics? Do you meditate?

• 8:24Speaker 02

  Oh my God, I fucking paid for that headspace.

• 8:27Elizabeth Day?

  So did I.

• 8:27Speaker 02

  About two fucking times.

• 8:30Elizabeth Day?

  I got stressed then about meditating. I got stressed about like fifteen minutes a day.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  Totally. Oh, that fucking reminder, you'd be like, oh, fuck off. I'm fucking stressing out. Fuck off.

• 8:42Speaker 02

  I can switch off most when I'm cooking. And it doesn't mean that it's an idyllic, calming atmosphere in the kitchen. My husband would say completely the opposite. He's like, you are so messy. It makes me so annoyed. But I chopping, cooking, focusing on something where you can't be on your phone, where you can't be having a conversation, where potentially you could be listening to music or a podcast. That's the way that I slow down. But equally, my favourite thing is having the kids in the kitchen whilst I'm cooking. I can watch them. I'm cooking, they're doing stuff, everyone's happy. I mean, this barely happens because my husband, my, my, oh, Fred, my son will be like tugging at my legs. He now he's such a greedy bastard. He knows when I'm cooking, he knows that this means that I'm going to be delivering something soon to him.

• 9:26Speaker 02

  And so he's so greedy that he kind of just, this is his way of communicating with me that he's like, yeah, come on then. Where's the food? But no, I, I'm, that's something that I'm really enjoying during this lockdown, just cooking, enjoying that. But yeah, my phone is my biggest enemy in technology. It's like the worst thing for me and my family. And I could be glued to it all day, working. I could always find time to fit in another email.

• 9:56Elizabeth Day?

  One of the things I hear a lot from listeners is how tiring it can be when your mind just doesn't settle. And I can only imagine this feels even heavier with intrusive thoughts. It's that quiet sense of being worn down by something you never asked for and never wanted, but just can't seem to switch off. If you struggle with this, I want to tell you about NoCD because it's a resource that genuinely helps people. NoCD provides specialised treatment for OCD. And what I appreciate about their approach is how human it feels. You're matched with a licensed therapist trained in ERP therapy. That's exposure and response prevention. And over time, you learn skills that help your OCD symptoms become manageable. So you can live more of the life you want to live.

• 10:41Elizabeth Day?

  If you're struggling with OCD or unrelenting intrusive thoughts, NoCD can help. Book a free 50 minute call to get started at learn.nocd.com/fail. You talk there about the failure of physically staying pregnant. But how much was it also a failure of the narrative you had told yourself about what the first days of motherhood would be like?

• 11:05Speaker 03

  Oh enormously, I think, because particularly now because we're all meant to be, you know, we're all so hyper educated about skin to skin and about those early bonding and about trying to breastfeed immediately and all these things that are amazing aspirations and very powerful bonding mechanisms between mothers and babies, but for an awful lot of women, actually not just women whose babies come prematurely, but for lots of reasons, women who have traumatic births of other sorts. Those early moments aren't possible and they are so cherished in this narrative we have of what's owed to these babies that you immediately feel like you have damaged your children in some way. You know, what will their attachment look like if I haven't held them skin to skin within the first half an hour?

• 11:46Speaker 03

  Or in my case, the first three days. And I think an awful lot of women are left feeling guilty and anxious about the sort of those lacks because that narrative is so pervasive, but actually you're incredibly lucky if you get to hold your baby immediately after birth and there's no intervention at all and your birth went swimmingly and you feel comfortable and there's an awful lot of women who don't have that.

• 12:09Elizabeth Day?

  I think there's also this pervasive narrative about how you feel an overwhelming rush of love for your baby as soon as your baby is born. And I know that not everyone feels that because friends who've had children have been honest with me about that. But what was that like for you, given as you say that you couldn't hold your babies immediately and given that you first saw them for a full day after they'd entered the world, did you feel an overwhelming rush of love? Because they were so fragile as well and again, not looking like the baby is meant to look in a romantic comedy.

• 12:44Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:44Elizabeth Day?

  I mean, how did that feel?

• 12:47Speaker 03

  I think in some ways I did, perhaps even more than if a sort of a big fat bouncing, you know, romantic comedy baby had been plopped onto my lap, smiling, because I felt so desperately protective and worried for them. There was just a sort of big soup of hormones and worry, terror and love and fear and guilt, enormous amounts of guilt that we'd sort of found ourselves there and perhaps if I hadn't walked up the stairs at quite such a speed the day before and god knows what, you know, I'd that nobody knows why it happened, so I was left free to construct narratives in which it was always my fault.

• 13:22Elizabeth Day?

  You call them Alet and Blet in the book. Why did you call them that?

• 13:26Speaker 03

  We hadn't even started thinking about names and the hospital called them twin one and twin two. So it seemed much more sort of intimate to call them A and B for some reason. And then that became Alet and Blet and then that was so sweet and became really their names. But we kind of didn't get around to giving them names for ages. And it was only when our very lovely consultant threatened to call social services that

• 13:48Speaker 03

  we finally decided to bust out the name books and give them proper names. It seemed less important than keeping them alive, in truth. I think if we'd had names for them before they came, it would have been different. But having not even started, there was something very superstitious about it.

• 14:03Elizabeth Day?

  Will you tell us about the mirror and what happened with the mirror?

• 14:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, so the first time I held one of them, I held Alet. And it's not a straightforward thing, holding a premature baby. You need sometimes a nurse, sometimes two. One to lift the baby and one to lift this amazing salad of wires, this kind of spaghetti junction that comes off them. And they've got this paper fine skin, so you can't tug on any of these cables that are attached to them. So you have to lie back in a chair and have this nurse, have a nurse deliver the baby to your chest. And then you can't really move them once they're there. And so it was the most incredible, overwhelming experience, having this baby on my chest. I couldn't really see her. She was tiny and she was tucked up under my chin. And it's really not done to talk to the other mothers, the other parents on the ward.

• 14:47Speaker 03

  You're in very close proximity, but you're having such intimate moments with your babies and such painful things happening that you really, there's no eye contact or communication at all whilst you're tending to your babies on the ward. But I was saying to Gabe over and over, I can't see her, I can't see her. And one of the other mothers, Sophie, who then became one of my most precious friends on the ward and since, sent her husband over and gave me a hand mirror. And that's how you look at your baby's face when you're holding a premature baby on your, on your chest.

• 15:17Elizabeth Day?

  It's one of the most moving moments of the book, I found, and I'm welling up now even thinking of it. Because it's such a beautiful moment of solidarity between two women in a traumatic and similar situation that you can't possibly understand unless you've been through it. And as I mentioned at the beginning, mothership is also testament to the friendships that you forged on that ward. And I wanted to ask you why you called it mothership.

• 15:46Speaker 03

  Well, I can't take credit for the title. That was a lovely friend of mine, Nat, who came up with it. And I think it's brilliant. And as soon as she suggested it, I thought, that's it, that has to be.

• 15:54Elizabeth Day?

  I mean, you turned down some of my suggestions, just FYI.

• 15:58Speaker 03

  They were excellent.

• 15:59Elizabeth Day?

  Thank you.

• 16:00Speaker 03

  Excellent. I can't remember any of them, but I'm sure they were excellent.

• 16:02Elizabeth Day?

  I'm so probably right not to choose a deeply unmemorable title, but please, well done, Nat. Well done, Nat, with mothership. Please continue.

• 16:11Speaker 03

  Um, yeah, well, what I really wanted to write was, it was threefold, really, my ambitions in writing this. But one was to write a love letter to my daughters, but also to write a love letter to the NHS and ultimately to the other women, to the mothers of this ward. Because that comradeship really was what saved me. And I just think it's an extraordinary example, an extraordinary environment in which women are free to support one another, as we have always done in an atmosphere that is, it was, nobody spoke on the wards, but you were endlessly expressing breast milk for these babies who can't eat orally. They're fed by nasogastric tubes. So we were in what we call the milking shed endlessly, this little room with all the breast pumps.

• 16:52Speaker 03

  And you're sitting in a circle, tits out, completely exposed to one another in almost every way. And that was really where these incredible friendships began very, very quickly. In parallel with sort of lifelong lasting friendships, also just really powerful human encounters that might only last an hour because you might never see that woman again, but you would talk incredibly frankly to one another. And my experience there was that it was just an incredibly supportive and almost kind of deliberately nurturing place. It felt to me as though everyone who came in understood that this was not a place for competition. This was not a place for discussions of, you know, well, how many days your baby was on a ventilator? And how many days your, you know, it was a source of such tremendous strength for me.

• 17:36Elizabeth Day?

  There's a really interesting subplot to the book, which is about you finding your voice in that particular situation. So that when you started out as this new mother, you were still in the situation of being a people pleaser and a good girl and the one who didn't bother the doctors. And it was actually the other women who taught you that you had to stand up for your own children. So did it feel like that, that you were finding your voice through that process?

• 18:06Speaker 03

  Very much. I can't speak for anybody else, but I did not become a mother the moment my children were sort of lifted from me. I had to learn.

• 18:15Elizabeth Day?

  That's so interesting, I think. You had to learn.

• 18:18Speaker 03

  I had to learn and I was slow. And I learned by study, careful, rational study of other people around me. You know, Sophie taught me by spying on her really across the ward that I should be singing to them. It didn't cross my mind. I didn't know. Of course you sing to babies, that's what babies need. They crave your voice. It's the only familiar thing they have. But it was watching Sophie that taught me that I should be singing to these babies in their incubators. And similarly, it was, you know, other friends whose robust interactions with the doctors and their bravery in taking hold of their children's medical care and understanding it and asking questions that made me realise the NHS is incredible, the doctors and nurses are incredible, but the only person who's there every day is you.

• 19:00Speaker 03

  The only person who saw what happened yesterday and will see what happens tomorrow is other parents. But it wasn't overnight.