Mama to Freddie and Leo, Sophie Church (@sophie__church) answers our Mamahood’s most burning questions around her pregnancies, life in the spotlight and her favourite Mama Mio essentials.
How Have You Found Becoming A Mum In The Spotlight And Also Being Pregnant For The Second Time?
Obviously, I had Freddie 7 years ago now, so things have completely changed since I had him and to be honest, I didn’t remember a lot about being pregnant and newborns. So, for me it feels like I’m going back to square one again, but I guess it’s completely different this time being with Jake and being in the spotlight. What I’ve realised is you have to really think about what you’re putting out there to people. Know that everyone has an opinion and sometimes that opinion isn’t what you necessarily agree with, but you just have to realise that everyone raises children differently and just because what I think personally is what I want to do doesn’t mean what someone else is going to do. And sometimes you just have to have thick skin about it. It is hard sometimes when you want to share everything with everyone but you know that some people aren’t necessarily going to agree. Â
How Did You Come Up With The Name Leo?
Leo has always been one of my favourite names, and when me and Jake were talking about names, we said that any that neither one of us didn’t like, we would completely scrap but from day dot. From the moment I found out I was pregnant I said Leo, and Jake loved it and from then it just stuck. For the girls names, we ended up having about 3 different names but for some reason Leo was always our boys name from the beginning. Â
How Did Your Pregnancy Journey Differ During Lockdown?
I mean it was hard at times because we couldn’t do the things we wanted to do and we couldn’t see our family and we couldn’t share that experience with other people. But for me the toughest part was when Leo’s here and not being able to take him to meet our friends and meet our family and take him out to do things and show him off to the world. Because during the pregnancy not really much changed in the sense that Jake could still come to the scans, which we were really fortunate he could do, and we could still obviously have the scans, we could still do the classes but they were just adapted so we had to do them online and we still got to facetime the family and share the pregnancy journey with them. But it’s just now that Leo’s here we would like to be able to show him off to the world which we can’t do at the moment. Â
What Are You Going To Do To Ensure That You Have Time For Yourself?Â
I think it’s really important that as a mum, and as a parent, you take some time out of your day for self-care to do whatever you want to do whether that be to have a bath, have a 10-minute walk, go to the gym, have a cup of tea. Anything like that is so important because as parents sometimes we put our kids first and are own self-care goes to the back of the pile and you can end up getting quite down about it and quite run down. I can sometimes feel a bit overwhelmed about everything but I just make sure that I give myself, even if it’s an hour a week to do something for me. I enjoy working out or going for a walk and listening to some music or just chilling out and having a bit of peaceful time. Â
Do You Want More Children? Â
I mean even though Leo isn’t the best of sleepers at the moment, he can be very wingy during the day and very unsettled. We’ve had a lot of troubles with his milk and the fact that he’s colic and also got reflux, do you know what it still doesn’t put me off having kids! I would love probably 2 more, so 4 kids all together. I just like the idea of having like a huge family having big Christmas’ together having big birthdays all playing games, I would just love 2 more! I would be happy with 2 but if we did have 2 more, I would be happy. Â
What Advice Would You Give To A New Parent? Â
It would definitely be, nothing can really prepare you. Expect sleepless nights, expect to be tired, expect to have days where you feel frustrated, but that’s normal and it’s fine if some days you feel sad and other days you wake up and you’re completely happy because we all go through that. Remember that how you feel in that moment is temporary. Remember that if you have an argument with your boyfriend, partner or husband in the night that in the morning just start fresh and forget about it because there’s going to be hard times like hat when you’re both going to feel frustrated with each other but remember you have a little baby at the end of the day, so what more could you want!Â
What Products Did You Use In My Pregnancy And How Early Did You Start To Use Them? Â
I used throughout the whole of my pregnancy, the Mama Mio products, which I absolutely loved and I’m still actually using them now! I started using them probably from the first trimester, pretty much as soon as I found out I was pregnant, because I just wanted to completely prevent any stretch marks from the very beginning and I used them all over my body because the whole of your body gets bigger when you’re pregnant. It’s not just your bump, it’s your arms, it’s your legs, it’s your bum, it’s your back – everywhere. So, for me, I just wanted to start them from the very beginning and then right up until now I’m still using them because a lot of people think that once you give birth your belly just goes back in and that’s how it is, but actually you can still get stretch marks after you’ve given birth when your skin is that going back to normal and healing Â