When I first heard about
Mother Tongue, I thought to myself: ‘Oh, great, another podcast about motherhood and parenting (cue eye-roll
). Surely the digital and social media sphere has enough mummy bloggers, influencers and podcasters; do we need
another one?’
As I find it far more interesting when new mums think they have garnered enough experience to share any insight (believe me as a mother of four girls, they have no idea what’s coming), I switch on
Mother Tongue. The podcast was started in January by three
British mums in Dubai: Maryanne
Peacock, 31, Ellis Harwood, 30, and Jess Savage, 33, and is about their “honest journey” of motherhood.
Most parents have heard of postnatal depression, but did you know that symptoms can start during pregnancy? Prenatal depression can have a debilitating impact on the mother and heightens the risk of adverse birth outcomes, and yet there is still very little awareness of it, says Lebanese/ Australian expat Taghred Chandab, who is mum to four daughters aged 5, 12, 14 and 15.
While our neat cultural narrative is that women ‘bloom’ when they are expecting, Taghred says that for around 15% of mums-to-be like her, this could not be further from the truth. Here, the Dubai-based marketing director and social media influencer (@arabianmum) opens up about her experiences with prenatal depression and how she came out the other side…
Walking back to her car from the beach one morning, Australian/ Lebanese expat Taghred Chandab saw something that set her maternal alarm bells ringing.
“I noticed a couple of young men taking photos of this beautiful little blonde boy, who was just sitting there with his nanny,” says Dubai-based marketing director Taghred. “I kind of got a bit suspicious and I thought to myself – yeah, something’s just not right here.”
Doubling back, Taghred approached the child’s nanny to ask whether she knew these young men who had just been photographing the child in her care. “She said, ‘no’, she didn’t know them. So I said; ‘You gave these boys permission to take photos of this child? Do you know how they’re going to use these photos? Do you know where these images are going to go?’ She just looked at me stunned.”