By Casey Neill
Claire Andrews is a mum and nurse on a mission.
“I really genuinely think that through shared experience we can help each other to feel a little less alone,” she said.
Her own rough entry to motherhood inspired her to become a maternal child health nurse, start online resource Safe Hands Parenting, and produce podcast The Moment.
“To know what it feels like to become a parent is almost indescribable,” Claire said.
“It is the most monumental experience that your body, your mind, your self, your identity can go through.
“People don’t have to feel isolated or helpless or alone in that experience.”
Claire has been a nurse for more than 10 years. She still remembers the moment she knew it was the career path for her.
“I was doing health and human development and we did a topic on perinatal health,” she said.
“I went home to my mum and said, ‘I really want to do that’.”
Her mum explained ‘that’ was midwifery and suggested she start out studying nursing.
Claire did just that, started working in nursing in 2012, and entered a midwifery postgraduate course the following year.
“I wasn’t a huge fan of the purely adult nursing in a ward,” she said.
Plus it was inflexible with her midwifery studies and placements, so she helped to provide termination and contraception services at Marie Stopes Australia, now MSI Australia.
“That was really fantastic. That confirmed my love of just women’s health and working with women and supporting women,” she said.
Claire joined the Royal Women’s as a midwife in 2015 and welcomed her first child, Millie, five years later.
“I had the most beautiful birth,” she said.
“But after I gave birth to her I dropped 1.7 litres of blood within the space of 10 minutes.
“I got diagnosed with preeclampsia and retained membranes and ended up in theatre very quickly.
“It all happened within my workplace. That added a layer of stuff.”
Claire was diagnosed with glandular fever at her six-week checkup, and then the lockdowns began.
Her partner, Steve, started his job as a paramedic just two weeks before Millie was born, so had no parental leave and was working long hours.
“We didn’t really have a circle of friends or support network around us,” she said.
“It was just months and months on end of not having any face to face contact or everyday support.”
Claire was diagnosed with severe postnatal depression, and later with post-traumatic stress disorder.
“The silver lining of going through such a horrible experience was it showed me what I love about what I do, and it’s really supporting women,” she said.
“I thought, ‘How can I combine my professional and my personal experience to hopefully make a difference?’.
“Going into maternal child health nursing was the best way I could see that happening.”
Claire said Victoria’s MCHN system was more robust than anywhere else in the country.
“Parents can access up to 10 appointments from birth to 3.5 years,” she said.
“But the circus is missing a trick.
“The motto is ‘children are at the heart of what we do’.
“But children do not determine what their life looks like, their parents do.
“The system is geared towards the child.
“Through my experience, over the phone, you’d be lucky if you got asked how you were going.
“A lot of people are moving away from the hospital system because they just don’t want to do it anymore.
“One side effect of that could be people navigating early parenthood move into the job.
“I think that there are a lot more people coming into this line of work who have similar passions in this area of women’s health rather than children’s health, and hopefully that will start turning the dial.”
Safe Hands is an extension of her work with new parents, and was born from having multiple conversations around navigating the same parenthood challenges.
The business includes a guide for new parents, as well as an Instagram account.
“Social media has brought a great amount of information,” she said.
“But you do have to take everything with a grain of salt.
“I don’t think there’s been enough of that genuine content, there is too much glamorisation.
“And you’re relying on people adhering to their scope of practice.
“I didn’t want to just create an account for the sake of creating an account.
“I wanted to fill the gap.”
Claire leans on her wealth of clinical and personal experience and shares content she wishes she’d seen while in the thick of it – the honest thoughts and feelings common to new mothers.
“Our generation is shifting the way we are talking about things,” she said.
“They learnt from their parents that they don’t talk about anything.
“Things aren’t kept hush hush anymore.
“Becoming a parent, you are never going to be so analytical about your own childhood in your whole life.
“Across many households that we grew up in as children, we saw mums that ‘just keep going’ because there is no alternative.
“They would never speak about how they felt, especially with their kids.
“My mum worked full time after having her youngest.
“She was juggling a huge amount of work in a paid sense, and in a household sense.
“They didn’t have an outlet so they kept it all bottled up.
“We’ve seen that role modelled.”
So Claire is passionate about preparing for parenthood.
“My biggest piece of advice is, if you have one person that you can speak to about anything, then that can really take a weight off,” she said.
“My other piece of advice is, it’s OK to feel what you feel.
“In the process of entering parenthood, you are going to have everyone come up to you and say ‘you must be so excited’.
“It minimises the other 1001 thoughts you have about your experience.
“You might be completely overwhelmed.
“Giving yourself permission to be OK with that is a really important step to having those conversations with other people.”
Claire invites parents to share these thoughts on The Moment.
“It basically is a podcast where everybody shares the moments that have shaped them as parents,” she said.
“It’s about putting words or a voice to the experiences that so many go through, yet until now hasn’t been spoken about enough.”
Listen to The Moment wherever you get your podcasts, and find Claire on Instagram at SafeHandsParenting.
