Parenting in the 21st-century postpandemic digital-first world is hard. But you probably already knew that. If you need a reminder, there’s Stretch Marks, the podcast about parenting that began with two friends, Caroline Foran and Sinéad O’Moore, discussing the challenges of mothering and the marks it leaves. They covered the gamut from body changes to sleep training to travelling with children after they first hit our ear buds, in March last year. And lo it went for two series.
Series three, however, arrived in February with an announcement that Foran was moving on to other projects and that O’Moore was switching formats to lean into interviews with experts in their field and those willing to talk about their particular struggles and experiences with some of the gnarlier parts of the job of birthing and raising children. Series four launched last month, and O’Moore is holding her own, proving a compassionate and curious interviewer with plenty to say for herself.
It may feel like you couldn’t swing a cat in Spotify these days without hitting a parenting podcast, but there’s a reason this life stage is so consistently mined. Procreating can dig a moat around a new mother, and hearing other people’s stories of failure and fear and bone-aching exhaustion brings the drawbridge down. Also, at a time when we are so aware of how one false parenting move could destroy the life we just brought into being, advice from compassionate, experienced people who are in the same trenches can be as welcome as a full night’s sleep. The appetite, in other words, is there for the kind of mixture of straight talk and empathy that Stretch Marks provides.
The pod makes hay from the metaphorical interpretation of its title: it’s all about the things that stretch us as we enter and stumble through parenthood, the marks the stretches leave, the embiggening of ourselves (and our bellies). In past seasons these have included such subjects as “the getting pregnant stretch”, the “feeding stretch” and “the postnatal anxiety stretch”. This season kicked off with the “fourth trimester stretch”, O’Moore inviting Sinéad de Buitléir on to talk about those early days post-partum: the challenges of breastfeeding, the being in a whole new body part, and the strange dichotomous experience of overwhelming love and exhaustion.
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Not all guests are equal, and there are some on whom O’Moore bestows a little too much time
But it’s the second episode, when she talks to Brana Gadbsy about infant loss, that’s a true gut punch for any listener, parent or not, and O’Moore makes no pretence at emotional objectivity. Nor should she. She lets Gadsby’s story move her and lets us know that too without taking it over, and there’s a deftness in it that feels unforced.
Not all guests are equal, however, and there are some on whom O’Moore bestows a little too much time. Given that she herself is articulate and informed, with a winning undercurrent of no-nonsense mamminess, I found myself wanting to hear her interject more as some guests lost my attention. But at times, as with her discussion on the woeful state of Ireland’s mental-health services for children with Niall Breslin, the subject and guest deserve every minute of this particular hour of airtime.
In short, even if you’ve moved on from the “WTF is happening?” stage and are squarely in the “I’ve already failed” camp, Stretch Marks may be worth your time. Turns out parenting keeps going and going, and while it’s mainly your patience that’s stretched, you can always learn from or lean on – or at the very least laugh – with your comrades.
