Pregnancy and birth are often well supported, but what happens once the baby arrives? For many women, the postpartum period brings emotional highs, identity shifts and unexpected challenges long after the six-week check-up. We spoke to Georgia Devon-Shelley, founder of mother.fm, the neuroscience-based postnatal audio platform designed to support mums through the realities of early motherhood. She shares what inspired the platform, why postpartum mental health deserves more attention, and the lessons she’s learned since becoming a mum herself.
The neuroscience behind mother.fm, the realities of early motherhood, and why mums deserve support long after birth
Tell us about mother.fm and what made you want to launch it?
mother.fm is a neuroscience-grounded postnatal audio platform, a library of 70 professionally recorded audios running from three to eighteen minutes, built for the stretch that begins once the baby arrives and most of the support disappears. There is no shortage of meditation and hypnosis made for pregnancy and birth, but the first year and beyond, when the nervous system is loudest, is where mothers get forgotten. The idea came to me a few weeks postpartum, when I noticed I was digging deep into the techniques I had spent a decade sharing with popstars – protocols designed to bring adrenaline down after an arena show, except now I was using them on myself at 3am. I wanted those tools to be accessible around the clock for every mother, so I built a tech business during nap windows to do exactly that. The dedicated app launches this October, restructured around clinically approved postnatal timelines with partner features built in too – as motherhood shouldn’t be ours to shoulder alone.
How does it work?
mother.fm is a library of audios I have written and recorded for specific postnatal moments, from hum-along meditations for crying episodes to visualisations for leaving your baby for the first time. If I had to pick a favourite it would be the pep talk for nursery drop off, because it’s the one that has had the most positive feedback / tangible help and change. I love that I’ve been able to help mothers return to work. We have this idea that meditation requires stillness, when it is really just focusing on your breath and moving your brain out of the limbic state where panic and stress thrive, which is something you can do mid night feed, one-handed, exhausted.
What surprised you most about the emotional side of early motherhood?
Being so happy but crying for no ‘reason’ at all – hormonal shifts are MAD and it wasn’t something anyone could have prepared me for.
Before becoming a mum, what assumptions did you have about the postpartum period that completely changed?
I assumed, as I think most of us do, that the hard part was birth and the recovery from it, and that support would taper off naturally because the need did. The opposite is true. I think it is disgraceful that mothers are essentially deemed to have graduated postpartum at six weeks, because so many of the real challenges sit beyond that point: the regressions that arrive once the adrenaline is gone, identity shifts, boundaries, comparison, returning to work, rebuilding confidence. I thought our progression with motherhood was linear – whereas even 18 months I think each phase has its own challenge and wonder.
There’s so much focus on pregnancy and birth, but much less on what comes afterwards. Why do you think postpartum has been so overlooked?
I think postpartum is overlooked as it centres the mother and there is the internalised misogyny that motherhood requires martyrdom – that suffering is almost necessary. It’s so exciting that our generation of motherhood is questioning the systems that fail us. With mental wellbeing . mindfulness specifically – there is also a practical design problem: traditional meditation apps are built for stillness, and a new mother has none. mother.fm was deliberately built for movement, for pram walks and night feeds and the real moments of a mother’s day, because if support does not fit into the life she is actually living, it may as well not exist.
There’s a lot of pressure to “enjoy every minute.” Do you think we’re finally becoming more honest about the realities of motherhood?
Yes I think we can now accept that there is a nuance and duality in motherhood, which the cliches never really captured; two things can exist at once, and one doesn’t cancel the other out. We can be incredibly grateful, and love our life – but also feel really overwhelmed and need a break.
Social media can be both supportive and overwhelming. How do you personally navigate it?
Comparison is one of the biggest postpartum challenges I hear about, and the feed is where it thrives, I personally remind myself that none of it is real, it’s a highlights reel – and it’s important that we don’t inherit subconscious beliefs that ‘everyone is finding it so perfect and easy’ so naming that is key. I follow accounts that inform or genuinely make me laugh, I mute freely and without guilt, and I treat my own platform as a place to put supportive, evidence-based narratives into the ecosystem.
What would you say to a mum who feels she’s lost a little of herself since having children?
That we evolve and spring forward – and to give yourself the grace of time to settle and feel into that – the transition may feel murky and confusing but you will feel like a stronger version of yourself ultimately. I think our child self is our true self, that 7 year old version of ourselves – the one that holds our subconscious beliefs, lives in us all – and for me – motherhood healed a big part of that child version – so be patient and kind with that process.
Finally, what are the things you love most and least about being a mum?
Most – how I’m often in a state of everyday wonder – my son is amazed by ducks, a leaf – that is an amazing vibration to access and to be reminded of constantly. Least – the overstimulation at times and the lack of control (but that in itself is a lesson I needed)
Photo credit: India Bharadwaj
Read more interviews here.
