089. Discover how spiritual author Alice Grist navigated the surreal transition from assuming she was in perimenopause to discovering a spontaneous pregnancy at 44. This episode explores the power of intuition, spiritual signs, and the raw reality of starting over with a newborn after raising older children.
On episode 89, Host Jamie Massey sits down with spiritual author Alice Grist to explore the incredible story of her spontaneous pregnancy at 44. After assuming she had entered perimenopause, Alice shares the surreal moment she realized her exhaustion and “flu symptoms” were actually a positive pregnancy test. She opens up about the spiritual signs she received along the way—including a family prediction that had promised a son long before he was conceived—and how she navigated the transition from being a mother of older children to starting over with a newborn.
The conversation dives deep into the realities of a later-in-life pregnancy, from managing intense morning sickness to handling the “red flags” and opinions that often come with age. Alice provides a refreshing perspective on birth as a moment of total surrender, explaining why she chose an empowering C-section to prioritize her family’s well-being. This episode is a beautiful masterclass in intuition and self-discovery, offering a soulful reminder that motherhood can be a powerful gateway to finding your truest self, no matter when it happens.
About the Guest
Alice Grist is a best-selling spiritual author and teacher dedicated to helping women connect with their intuition and inner power. Known for her soulful and grounded approach to spirituality, Alice has authored several books and created an international community focused on self-discovery and conscious living. Her personal journey took an unexpected turn at age 44 when, after raising older children and assuming she had entered perimenopause, she discovered she was spontaneously pregnant with a son—a miracle that aligned perfectly with deep-seated spiritual signs her family had received years prior.+2
In this episode, Alice opens up about the intersection of science and spirituality, sharing how she navigated the physical challenges of a later-in-life pregnancy while maintaining a sense of total surrender. From interpreting the “flu-like” symptoms that turned out to be a positive pregnancy test to choosing an empowering C-section, Alice offers a refreshing perspective on starting over with a newborn in your mid-40s. She provides a soulful roadmap for any woman feeling caught between the biological “red flags” of age and the quiet, powerful voice of her own intuition.
Connect with Alice Grist:
- Instagram: @alicegrist
- Book: Soulful Pregnancy by Alice Grist
Key Topics
- Perimenopause or Pregnancy?: Navigating the confusing symptoms and the shock of a spontaneous positive test at 44.
- Spiritual Signposts: The power of family predictions and the intuitive hits Alice received long before her son was conceived.
- The Reality of “Starting Over”: Balancing the needs of older children while preparing to enter the newborn phase again.
- Surrender as Strength: Shifting the birth narrative from control to surrender and why Alice chose an empowering C-section.
- Managing Morning Sickness & Age-Related Fears: Honest talk about the physical toll of pregnancy and sifting through the medical opinions that come with being 40+.
- Motherhood as a Gateway: How a later-in-life pregnancy can serve as a powerful catalyst for finding your truest, most authentic self.
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Transcript:
Jamie: Alice, welcome to the show.
Alice: Hi, Jamie. Thank you for having me.
Jamie: And for your story, will you kind of brief us on how your pregnancies were at 33 and 38?
Alice: I guess initially as a younger woman, I didn’t actually think that I wanted children. And I dunno whether that’s something the listeners would be able to identify with. But for a long time it just wasn’t, I wasn’t one of those little girls who fantasized about babies. So I’m a spiritual writer and I kind of write about different experiences of spirit and one of my first books was investigating all kinds of different alternative spiritualities and faiths. And I went and did I did a past life regression, just out of curiosity to see what came up and
Jamie: how old were you?
Alice: So it was late twenties, early thirties. Mm-hmm. And I was terrified actually, about the past life regression. I wasn’t sure what would come up actually. What did happen. It, it felt very soothing. It was very lovely. It took me back to a life and I say a life. I loosely, I don’t know. It was either a life or a collective experience or something that was in a story within me that needed to come out. And it was all about how in a past life I had worked, I’d been a nun and I’d worked in a an like an orphanage I suppose. But it had felt really exhausting and it had been really like, oh my God, just constantly, constantly, constantly looking after people’s babies. And it really, this past life ex experience felt really powerful. It felt really. Real and kind of it validated something within me, which was that I’d always, as a younger woman, thought, I don’t want children because it’s just hard work. It’s just hard work. I was so connected to the idea of being such hard work and actually that past life experience kind of made me think, okay, maybe this is coming from some other place, some either mythical place or some energy within me or within the culture around me that perhaps thinks that babies are just hard work. And for some reason that experience cleared that for me. And it was not long after that that I did start to become quite compelled to be broody and to want to have a child. Mm-hmm. And it just shifted something completely which was really unexpected.
And so with my first pregnancy I guess. I kind of moved on. I’d grown, I was, I’d gone from being as well a younger woman who was in a relationship with the same husband I’m with now, but he was in bands and so we live this kind of party lifestyle and I’d stopped, I was no longer interested in that and so I was giving way to this more mature version of myself that wanted to have a family. And so it was a few years into that with my dad kind of made that leap from, I guess, the younger parts of adulthood that are still kind of teenage remnants through to being a, a young woman who, or younger woman who wanted to have family.
And so we started trying for my first child. Interestingly, I felt like her energy was around me for a long time and I dunno if that’s something that any of your listeners will be intrigued to hear or maybe they’ve experienced themselves and sometimes it’s nice to hear somebody else say it, but I very much felt. Her with me for quite a few years before I even conceived her. And when I look back on that, it does feel like the same energy as that. I now know as a 12-year-old young woman who feels so grown. She was definitely, there was something in the ether. There was some, and that’s my personal spiritual belief. I, she was there, she was making herself known and she wanted to come through. So when we did start trying, it didn’t take very long. You know, maybe a few I can’t remember exactly, but it, it was fairly quickly that we conceived her Ivy. Mm-hmm. And that was, you know, another magical thing that happened with that pregnancy. And I wonder if it was because it was my first, and you can give your first pregnancy a lot more attention than you can, the latter ones, I think because of the fact that you’ve got nothing much else to concentrate on other than work and life.
But I was doing a course in shamanic and magical kind of things. And I’d go every Sunday and we’d sit in, in a group, in a class, and I, the very first one we did like a shamanic meditation that went, took us into the underworld. And when I was in this underworld place which is of course in your mind and kind of visualizing it, I’ve felt so experienced this energy of a lion come running up to me and jump into me. And I was like, oh, wow, I’m pregnant. And it was, it was the next day that I went and took a pregnancy test and discovered I was pregnant with this little lion energy child who she, she’s very lion energy. So that, that was like, it was epic. That first pregnancy obviously was epic. And then I went on to, you know, for many people, I think when you’re pregnant for the first time, you definitely feel like you’re the only woman who’s ever been pregnant. Ever. Yes. And that’s a really lovely thing actually. Yeah.
Jamie: Did you know that she was already a girl?
Alice: Yes, I felt very certain. I think once I was first pregnant with her, I’d started, I, I realized that I was so skewed towards her being a girl that I tried to convince myself that she could be a boy just so that I could, you know, she was a boy that I wasn’t disappointed, which, you know, because I had my heart set on something.
But of course, she did turn out to be a girl which was no big surprise. Although she does have quite a masculine energy to her. She’s quite, she’s quite rambunctious. But yeah, yeah. So then she came along and we kind of had first baby and just fell completely head over heels in love with her. And it, it was actually filmed for a. My whole pregnancy so much for on around this pregnancy. My, it was filmed for a TV show called She’s Having a Baby. Which if people wanna look up on YouTube, I think you can still watch it on YouTube. It was filmed for a uk I think it was for more four. It’s the name of the TV station. I can’t remember now. It’s such a long time ago. But it was called, she’s Having a Baby, I think it was episode two with myself, Ali, Chris. So you could Google it, you might be able to find it. It was quite a fun little show. So that pregnancy was filmed.
Jamie: Oh, that’s neat. Such a, a cool record to have.
Alice: Yes, and it’s a weird ’cause when I watched that show back, I can see the difference between myself prior to having her. I feel like I’m very pent up, like, and I’m very like conscious of how I’m appearing and how I’m coming across. And until that baby’s in my arms and then it’s like all that falls away. I can see it for myself, and I know for myself as well that having a baby, particularly that first one, it shifted me from being more self-conscious, more hyper aware, more trying to fit in more, trying to be a certain version of myself to then having her, and then suddenly I just felt so much closer to who I really was.
And that spiraled further and further with as she’s aged and as obviously the other two have come along. I feel like motherhood is a really interesting place where you can become more yourself. Mm-hmm. Than perhaps before. And I think a lot of women feel lost in motherhood or, and I have lots of thoughts about that as well actually.
But, but yeah, I think it’s a place where you can definitely find yourself. But back to the original question, so then I had my second daughter, so she, we weren’t sure. I thought for a long time we would just have the one. But then, I don’t know, I again felt that little niggle in that little calling that somebody else wants to come through.
There’s another baby here. So we, I guess we stopped taking precautions and we just waited to see, and again, not much, not much later after that I fell pregnant with Clover. So my second daughter again, a very different experience because obviously at Ivy I was already looking after and she was still very young, so she wasn’t at school or anything like that.
And there was that. That feeling of, and I think again, a lot of mothers will feel this is you have your one child and you’ve been so close and so tight with them for such a long time. And then you have this other one coming along and says all the queries and questions of what if I don’t love them the same? Or what if it interrupts the relationship I already have with this preexisting child? Or what if it, you know, ruins, not ruins everything, but you know, you have these kind of anxious thoughts. But interestingly it was a really tough pregnancy and actually the very first scan that I went for, they kind of did the scan and then they took me and my husband and they put us in the grief room.
Jamie: Oh no.
Alice: You know, you are in the grief room when you are put in the grief room. ’cause it’s, it’s just, you know, nice quotes on the wall, but they’re kind of grief related and sadness related. And you’re like, why am I in this room? And they, the man came back and told us that there was potentially things wrong with the baby and that she may have.
It was some form of cyst that when I went away and Googled it, which of course you can’t help yourself but do, it would’ve meant that the pregnancy was, you know, basically would end before 20 weeks. Naturally, you know, some really horrible, scary, upsetting things. And so then we had to have a series of tests after that and thank God she was okay. And they scanned her throughout the pregnancy. And it turned out she did have a duplex kidney, which is something she still has. I guess she will always have. It’s like a little issue with the kidney, where the kidney is almost like replicated and there can be issues with tubes coming off and oh, they can get infected and all kinds and get lots of UTIs So far in her life it hasn’t affected her.
Jamie: Wow.
Alice: So I think she has a, a mild version. Yeah, so it was a quite a scary pregnancy actually with, with all the scans and the tests and her not knowing what was going on and I was carrying extra water. So I felt absolutely huge. But I did have a really wonderful birth with her. Mm-hmm. In that, with my first, I’d really wanted, you know, the kind of was as physiological and as natural as I could get the birth to be.
And with Ivy, it it, that was not what happened. I was induced and it, it got really stressful. It went on for about a week oh. In terms of back and forth from the hospital with different attempts of things. And it just wasn’t the joyful, magical thing, but I wanted it to be, but at least with Clover, I did go into into labor spontaneously and ended up having her in, you know, five hours.
And it was really precious and wonderful and, you know, I had just had a bit of gas there. Whereas with IVI ended up having, what’s it called? You know, epidural? Mm-hmm. Yeah. But whereas with Clover, it was, you know, apart from that bit of gas and air was more or less, you know, the natural birth that I’d been hankering after that I really, really wanted.
Mm-hmm. So yeah, that was, that was great. And, you know, again, fell in love with her and continued to have tests when she was a little baby, which was, that was challenging. Yeah. But you know, you just, you do what you need to do. And then that was it. I had two babies and that was all I was gonna have.
I had no intention to have any more babies. Every so often we’d think about it and then kind of like, oh, probably too old now. Or probably, yeah, let’s not, you know, don’t mess with a good thing. You know, all of those kind of things. And also then, you know, Ivy was 11 and Chloe was eight, and, you know, we’re, you’re moving on with your life and you’re not even thinking of having babies. Actually at the point that I felt pregnant with my little boy.
Jamie: Yeah. Tell us more about that. ’cause you thought you were in menopause.
Alice: Well, I just assumed I was perimenopausal. Yeah. I was 44 years old. Mm-hmm. I mean, I guess, you know what, we all, we’re all grownups here and we all know that if you enter into relations, then, you know, there’s a potential of getting pregnant. But and we weren’t taking any precautions. And, and I guess that’s what happened, but I had kind of thought it wouldn’t. Although again, intriguingly and bringing back a spiritual element to it, my dad. His wife. They were, they’re kind of spiritual hippie type people. They were pagans for a little while and, and white witches. And over the years, she’s always done a pendulum on me. So I dunno if you know what a pendulum is, but it’s where you hold like a crystal type thing over your hand and you ask it questions and it goes back and forth and it answers the questions. And so over the years, she’s always done that on me, and she’s always come up with the answer in terms of what children am I going to have? And it was always, you’ll have two girls and a boy if you want him. And I was like, no, I’ve got my two girls, two old now for this boy. Let’s just forget it. Okay. But every time she did it, this would come up. This would come up. So of course when I felt pregnant. And again, I think I’d felt his energy around me a few times.
I’d kind of thought, maybe not in this lifetime, let’s wait and do that another time. But obviously once I was pregnant with him, it was like, okay, then so this boys come in. I was pretty sure it would be a boy. And I could tell from the scan actually.
Jamie: Yeah. Now, did you have any symptoms of menopause or anything like that?
Alice: Well, I guess my periods had kind of shifted and changed Okay. Quite a bit. So they’d, I can’t remember it’s ages ago now. Like yeah, they, I think they, they shortened, so each period was like three days. Mm-hmm. Max sort of from beginning to end, and they weren’t like massively out of sync, but they weren’t as probably as organized as they had been before. Mm-hmm. Yeah. I just, I guess I just figured I was the age for it. Yeah.
Jamie: And were you late on your cycle and that’s why you took a pregnancy test?
Alice: I took, yeah. Well, yeah. I took a pregnancy. I’d had, I’d had, I don’t know if it was COVID, but I’d been very ill over Christmas. Mm-hmm. Like the illest, I’d been in years with a horrible cough throat, like flu-like been in bed. My little daughter, Clover had, its too, we’d both basically just camped out in bed together and in the two weeks. And so I just, I thought that that had perhaps sent my period a bit skew with to be honest, I didn’t think I was pregnant. And then it was like the 3rd of January and I, I remember it specifically because the kids were due to go back to school the next day.
And I remember I just said to my husband, look, it just suddenly occurred to me. Could I be pregnant? And I really did not think I would be. So I did send him out to go get a pregnancy test thinking it was probably just a waste of money. And I was just, you know, just a silly thing. And I might, but I might as well just check and it, anyway. Yeah, it wasn’t a silly thing. And he I could see the line. He couldn’t see the line, so he went back out and got some more, and the line was very, very definite. Oh it was very cute ’cause we were actually that evening taking the girls out to they have, you know, they probably do it where you in a, in the US as well, but like, you’ll have a house and it’ll all be little by lights.
So like a man ha not a mana house, like an old oldie worldy kind of mansion with grounds and stuff, and they have lights at Christmas and things like that. So we planned to take the girls there. So we were kind of wandering around there with this little secret in our hearts, knowing that I was pregnant and there was a wishing station. Mm-hmm. And my 8-year-old who had for years been wishing that mommy would have another baby, and then had stopped wishing for that. ’cause I’ve actually had a word with her the year before and said, listen, dawn and mommy’s too old. I’m not gonna have another baby. So, you know, let’s, let’s maybe not keep, use your wish for something that you’re more likely to get. But she, she wished again for mommy to have a baby. And I’m thinking, oh my gosh, your magic is more powerful than mine. It’s she, she definitely manifested it.
Jamie: What were you thinking in those moments when you saw that positive test?
Alice: I, I think that was, I was slightly shellshocked. Slightly. Well, no, very shellshocked.
I just I think with the other two. You’d, I’d asked for it, I’d invited it in. It was something we’d kind of were planning and thinking about, whereas this, it was a real, came from the left field. Mm-hmm. It was just, it, it took me a good few weeks really to get my head around it. And I would go from, you know, like, wow, this is amazing and magical and this is meant to be to absolute terror.
Which of course you then feel guilty about. Yes. But yeah, eventually it just, it just was what it was. And you know, that’s when I ended up writing a whole book about that entire pregnancy and kind of just sitting with all the different feelings that it brought up. ’cause it was a different experience as well, being so much older and having it.
You know, one of the things I I’ve spoken about is just other people’s reactions. So when you’re 33 and you have a baby, people say Congratulations when you are 44 and have a baby. People say, are you crazy? Which is really upsetting actually, and I don’t think people mean it. But that’s me giving them grace that perhaps sometimes is not due.
I don’t know. But people do tend to have very strong opinions about other people’s pregnancies.
Jamie: Yes, they sure do. It’s very strange.
Alice: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah, because they won’t comment, you know, people don’t come up to me comment on my marriage or the work I do. And some of the work I do is quite kooky, so they could comment, but they don’t, nobody says anything about anything, but as soon as you’re pregnant, there’s a lot of opinions come out of the woodwork, that’s for sure.
Jamie: So tell us about your pregnancy. How was it?
Alice: Oh gosh. With Bowie? Oh, it was really hard. It was really, I don’t know. I think it, to begin with, I felt sick the whole time.
Jamie: Like morning sickness?
Alice: Yeah. But all day long. And it was quite debilitating. I remember with the, the girls I’d get a bit of morning sickness, but I’d kind of, well, with Ivy, I’d quite enjoy it because it’s like my little, I know I’m pregnant kind of thing.
But with him it was a lot, it felt a lot more intense. It was quite all consuming. I had to get really ridiculously hungry and eat, and eat and eats and eats and then feel so sick and then end up actually being sick and just like, you can’t win. He’d put me off chocolate. I couldn’t eat chocolate.
Jamie: Why?
Alice: It made me feel sick. Oh, how sad. It just didn’t, yeah. And so, you know, I suppose mentally, you know, you like chocolate, so I try and eat some, but it just, it just didn’t have the same. Feeling it was just not doing what chocolate should do. Mm-hmm. It was very strange. But apparently I’ve been told that that is a boy thing that you can for whatever reason, put you off chocolate.
And I felt further on into the pregnancy, really debilitated. I guess being, I think being so much older. Mm-hmm. I think, how do you know? You don’t think you are older. You know, you think you’re the same. And I think I’m quite fit and healthy, but I really felt it. I really felt it. And towards the end, I could barely walk anywhere.
I just felt exhausted. So, so tired. So tired and so exhausted and just drained the whole time. Mm-hmm. And I just wanted to take pleasure in the pregnancy, but it was hard at the end. And also he was in, he was breached for a very long time. Very long time. Mm-hmm. And that was uncomfortable. And then when he wasn’t b breached, he’d lay in this weird sideways position, which really tucked on my ribs. Yeah. So that’s uncomfortable too. So yeah, that was the most tough pregnancy of all of them.
Jamie: Hmm. So what about your doctor, since your pregnancies were kind of spread out, did you use the same doctors you did with the, your girls?
Alice: No, we’ve moved house. So, I mean, obviously in the UK it’s, we have the NHS system, so we have, we all have doctor surgeries and when you’re pregnant you go to the doctor and then they put you under a midwife or a midwife center.
Mm-hmm. So back then I would’ve been at a different midwife center than I have been with this more recent pregnancy. Mm-hmm. But then you see the same midwife. Throughout the pregnancy for just general generic checkups and things like that. Mm-hmm. They, I think they probably did a few more tests on me with me being older and there were a few kind of red flags thrown up, particularly at the beginning of the pregnancy.
Jamie: What were those?
Alice: Oh, so I had, they do various different tests and one of them was coming up as the baby having a one in 18 chance of down syndrome as well as other things. Which one in 18 is really quite high. Yeah. And when that all came out in the wash, I think that was literally based on my age, because when I’d had the blood tests and things like that, the midwife was really surprised and she said to me, well, none of, none of your blood markers or anything came back in any way that would indicate down Syndrome or any other issue.
So it was literally my age. So that somehow got configurated. Wow. To be one 18 chance, which is, it’s fine. I understand that there’s a truth in there somewhere, but I also understand that gave me a few sleepless nights and quite a lot of stress. Yeah. Yeah.
Jamie: Did she mention anything else about your age?
Alice: No. They try and say, they tried to say that they don’t talk about age and that they don’t make a big thing about it. And obviously there’s lots of women now in their forties having children, but I do think it’s an undercurrent. Mm-hmm. But I, they don’t make it, they don’t verbally make a big thing of it, but I do think it’s running throughout the way they look at what needs doing or what they might do.
Jamie: Mm-hmm. I agree. And did you find out the sex because you kind of already kind of knew it was a boy?
Alice: Wow. I could see it like on the scans. The first scan. The first scan, I was like that looks like a little willy to me.
Jamie: How far along were you? That was
Alice: the first scan.
So was that
Jamie: 12 weeks? Oh my gosh, that early.
Alice: I just, I mean, I don’t even remember the girl scans to have being able to compare ’cause it’s such a long time ago, but I could just definitely see Now there it is called nub theory. And I only discovered about, and you may know about this, but I only discovered about nub theory with this child because I’d seen what looked to me look like a little penis on the scan.
And so I’d asked the, the guy doing the scanning and he was like, well, I’m not allowed to say ’cause it’s too early. And he couldn’t tell me, but he said some people would say that that, that you are looking at is a boy’s knob. Yes. But he wouldn’t confirm. But I could see. For myself. And so that’s, there is some, I did look into knob theory and you can tell based on the way, ’cause the girls and boys have a knob, I guess, at that point. And it’s what direction it’s sitting in. Oh wow. So, but then we did, we went and had a private scan little bit further along because we really wanted to get our girls involved and, and have that kind of excitement and, and yeah, that was a boy. So, yeah.
Jamie: That’s really fun. I love how your, your dad’s wife was, correct? Yeah. That’s really fun.
Alice: Yeah, she’s spooky like that.
Jamie: Now, was there any products or anything that you could recommend that helped you with pregnancy
Alice: dogs products? Oh my gosh. I guess towards the end. Having a ball to bounce on was quite nice. Mm-hmm. Oh, it’s not really a product, but actually when the baby was breach for quite a long time I went to my friend who was an acupuncturist and we got MOA sticks that I had to burn in a certain position on my foot, which I think helped him turn.
Jamie: Neat.
Alice: And I actually think, I think acupuncture actually got me pregnant.
Jamie: Really?
Alice: Yeah. Which was not purposeful. I didn’t go, I went before I was pregnant, I went to an accu, my friend, who’s an acupuncturist for a session, just for my general energies. And the effect of that was that my energies did feel heightened and my libido was. Heightened in a way it perhaps been a bit flat for a while. So I do think that acupuncture is an interesting thing I’m gonna steer clear from, for a little while of those places. But yeah, I definitely think that that had a, a serious effect without that being my intention. Yeah. In terms of other products, no, I’m not, I can’t think of anything in particular. I’m not, I’ve never really used anything, I don’t think particularly.
Jamie: Okay. And did you have any cravings? What was your diet like? How were you able to exercise very much?
Alice: Not so much. No, not with both. My exercise went out the window. I felt like I just, I did with the other two, I did continue exercising. But with him, I just felt. Just really like, I could barely even walk. And I kept thinking throughout the pregnancy, what, you know, once this sickness is gone, I’m gonna get, I’m gonna do a bit of exercise. But then once the sickness had gone, I just felt shattered and so tired. And if I did, I think I did on occasions do a little bit of exercise and it left me feeling so drained that I felt ill.
So it just wasn’t working for me in the way that I wanted it to. And I guess the other thing is that I had two children, so I was up and about moving an awful lot. I was doing the school run. So I was getting generic exercise through movement. But anything else on top of that would just leave me feeling so awful that I stopped doing it. Really?
Jamie: Diet two, what were your C cravings, that sort of thing?
Alice: I tell. With the most recent pregnancy, I didn’t really have any cravings, weirdly. Oh, with my previous, no. Do you know with Ivy, I craved salt and vinegar salt ready, salted crisps, chips plain chips. I ate bags and bags of them with clover. I salted peanuts. With Bo I didn’t, I’m not trying to think, I don’t, I don’t think I had any food cravings, but I do, I did have a craving, which was to read books which sounds like a funny one, doesn’t it? But I just couldn’t stop reading. It was like, I was
Jamie: like Nonfiction or fiction or what?
Alice: Fiction books. Stories. Stories. Like a Mad Woman. I could not stop reading. It was, but yeah, I can’t think of, I don’t think I had any, I was kind of off food. Food was a weird thing in that pregnancy. It wasn’t a really, a particularly a pleasure. In any respect. So, no.
Jamie: It’s interesting how that works.
Alice: Mm-hmm.
Jamie: So for your birth, what was that plan like with your third, what, what kind of birth were you planning for?
Alice: Well, I was hoping, you know, to go into, to pregnancy to labor spontaneously. And I guess I would’ve liked to have had a home birth or I would’ve liked to have gone in hospital, have had maybe a water birth. And in the end I had a cesarean section. Wow. Yeah, it was you know, that was by choice in the end.
And not a choice I ever thought I’d make because I always wanted to have, you know, the natural hippie fi kind of, birth without many interventions, as with as little intervention as possible. But actually, it became incredibly stressful. My body felt really debilitated, as I’ve already said. The baby was not, was breached for a very long time, and then he did turn, but he was in a weird position. My cervix wasn’t doing anything. So it wasn’t doing any of the stuff that I know it’d done with the previous babies in terms of coming down or stretching or doing anything.
I was in and out of hospital for the last couple of weeks, like almost daily, kind of having different appointments and checkups. I had no childcare. This is one of the things with having a child at an older age is this. My mom was around, but she’s mid, she’s 75 now, and she couldn’t really do anything. She couldn’t really be as much help as she would’ve liked, and she was getting exhausted. And the whole thing was becoming really unpleasant and really difficult. And so one thing I learned with my first pregnancy was that I, I, again, with that first pregnancy with iv, I wanted this natural birth and I didn’t get it.
I ended up being induced and it taken like a week threats of C-section right up until the push point. They were threatening C-sections. And it felt like a threat. And. So somewhere within that mix, I felt like I lost control, obviously with Clover, had this nice birth, the kind of birth that I’d wanted. And then with Bo it just, it again, it wasn’t happening and I thought the last thing I’m gonna allow at 44 years old when I’m so exhausted, so drained, and everyone in my family is drained. My daughters my eldest, has just started high school like for the first time a few days ago. I had to prioritize everybody. It wasn’t just about prioritizing me in the way that I had the privilege to do when I was younger. I had to prioritize all of these different people as well as myself. And I had to ask myself, do you firstly once try and wait for spontaneous birth when that’s like, kind of Ill advised to go over 40 weeks and I’d already gone over 40 weeks by about five days or so.
Or worse even. Do I want to go down the route of induction, having already done that in the past and knowing how traumatic that had become. Mm-hmm. When I had iv particularly with when I had iv, my cervix was doing things, things were moving in the right direction with both, nothing was happening. So potentially that induction could have been even more difficult. And they were, some of the things they were saying to me about his head, the position he was in, and the things that they might have to do, like putting wet, bearing weight down on top of me and pushing and all kinds of things. I just, there was something in me that just suddenly went, no, nope, nope.
No ask for C-section. Which again is, I would not have wanted that in the past, but because I was making that choice and like it felt really liberating. And so I asked and they said yes. And they booked it in as it wasn’t an emergency C-section, but it was half emergency is I think how the, the surgeon puts it because of my age and because of the fact that I’d gone over 40 weeks by quite a, quite a bit by this point. So they got me in on a weekend, which they wouldn’t normally do.
Jamie: Wow. I’m surprised they let you go past 40 weeks.
Alice: Yeah, they kept, that’s, that was the thing is as soon as it got to that 40 week point, they were having me in hospital every day. So I’d be in hospital and go to the maternity assessment unit and I’d sit there for however many hours it took for them to see me. Bear only in mind, I’ve got two children at home who need me. Whose grandma can only do so much. Yeah. But I feel like it’s like, you know, like you’re neglecting them. One of them, like I said before, she’s just started high school that week, her very first week in big school, and I wasn’t, couldn’t be there. Yeah. Because I was in and out of hospital every day for them to monitor the baby, which of course needs to do in. Mm-hmm. But that it was just something in me was like, just no, no more. Just, you know, I can’t keep, I’m gonna give myself grace to choose to do something really different than I thought I ever would do, and on everybody who’s involved, including myself, and just let’s get this baby earth side and love him and how he gets it right now. Who cares? That was kind because then I know a lot of women who haven’t chosen c-sections will struggle with it. There’s a whole, you know, thing about natural birth being best, particularly if you’re coming from, I guess a where I would’ve been coming from in the past. But actually I just having now had three children. It’s really, birth is just a moment and one that is actually hugely beyond us. Whether we give birth vaginally or via a c-section, it’s all kind of surrendered to a higher power. Mm-hmm. What matters is that you love them when they’re here.
Jamie: Yeah. So walk us through the C-section. You came in on a weekend.
Alice: Yeah, they had me in on a Sunday, so I had to be up at like 5:00 AM and get to the hospital and they had me in scrubs and special silly tights, compression tights. And, and it was, it could have happened then and there, but it. I basically sat there all day with my husband. And I think we eventually went in at like five o’clock.
Oh my gosh. Because the thing with it being the weekend was we were priorities but only, only second to anybody who came in as an actual emergency. So I, you know, I wasn’t actually in labor. There was nothing, you know, nothing stopped me from sitting there all day. So if somebody came in who desperately needed it for physical reasons then they came first.
So I think a few of those did come in which is why we then just sat there till five o’clock, but, which at the time felt really. It was not pleasant, but yeah, perhaps easier than being in labor. Its own little weird, little labor. I mean, we were in a nice room to begin with and then they chucked us out of the nice room and put us into a waiting room that was probably about as big as this space I’m sat in now with another couple practically sat on top of each other and she was waiting for hers and I was waiting for mine and it was unpleasant.
But like, were you in scrubs sitting in there or your regular clothes In scrubs? Naked, under our scrubs. She was sat there with her partner. I sat with mine. It was a really hot, we were having a heat wave and it was, there was no windows in this room. It was just a box room. They went and got us a fan, but it was, yeah.
Wow. But then she went in, so then we knew once she’d gone in, but I’d be next. As long as nobody else came along. So of course I was I was next and it was, really super intense, actually. It was insanely intense. Obviously I’ve had the two other kinds of birth which were more, were more natural, you know, kind of vaginal births.
This was someone else, you know, kind of go into a room and my husband had to stay outside of the room to begin with so the room. The room looked like, when you see on TV shows, like the old fashioned kind of surgeon, surgical rooms with bricks, bare bricks on the wall. And it was just big. It almost like a kind of room where people get murdered in on like…
Jamie: gosh.
Alice: It was a strange old room considering the hospital was quite new.
It must have been an old room. It was a bizarre room. But big and echoy and huge and, and loads of people in there, like loads of people. There must have been 10 different. People so anesthetists and nurses and a surgeon and then other people and, and it just, I think when you go into labor, naturally you are with your own body, whereas going in for that, other people are doing things to your body. And I think either way there’s a real sense of having to trust and having to hand over to either nature or in this instance, people with needles.
Jamie: A true surrender.
Alice: Yeah. I think I felt like the biggest surrender.
Jamie: Yeah.
Alice: Because with labor, particularly with labor with clover, so when it was spontaneous labor, it does start off.
Kind of Okay. You’re like, oh, I’m having a contraction. I’m gonna eat some pizza, and this is great. And it, it builds, it builds and builds. Mm-hmm. And then it becomes so all consuming and so intense. Whereas with the C-section, they’re telling you what’s going on and you’re kind of terrified and you don’t know these people and, and yeah.
And then they’re putting needles into you and it’s doing things to your body almost immediately. And, but it’s also beyond you. It’s, it was really, it was kind of scary. I was really scared, actually, if I’m gonna be honest. But I remembered, thinking back to my first birth, all the work, I did a lot of hypnobirthing stuff, so I kind of went back to that and obviously through the years.
But, you know, I’m, I’m a spiritual teacher. I teach women, all kinds of spiritual stuff and intuition and breathing and connecting to the body. So I just had to bring myself back to all of that and just really breathe my way through it and, and again, just kind of sit with the weird symptoms that you know, which some of it is feeling like you’re really shaken and you know, the anesthetist comes right up, right up. You feel it in my throat. I didn’t like that. I could feel my throat and my voice sounded different and like I couldn’t quite talk. And shaky and yeah. And then knowing as well, you’ve got this screen in front of you, but you’re naked, completely naked with all those people in that room, Uhhuh, but you have no sense of that, no feeling in that part of yourself.
It’s really weird actually. And I remember one of the guys holding my hands and I dunno whether he was holding my hand to be nice or whether he was holding my hands to just. Like monitor something. But I was just really grateful that he was holding my hand. Yeah. And then at some point my husband came in and that’s when they then went to work.
Which is a strange feeling ’cause you can feel stuff but you don’t dunno what it is you’re feeling. And then I, there was a lot of tugging. It felt like someone was pulling my ribs out. Mm. But it wasn’t painful, but just like tugging on my ribs. And then I guess it was a few minute or so later that when you hear the cry and then they lift him up and I’m tried to touch him and yeah.
And it was just like, I, it was me and my husband just both burst into tears. It was the most beautiful birth. And I didn’t know whether it would be or not. I was a bit nervous, like, will I feel as connected? Will I feel as emotionally? Compelled as perhaps the other two, but it was just as beautiful. It was just as, it was incredible.
And yeah, and then he was, well my husband had him in his arms for a while. And then they put us into a back room and he breastfed and cuddled and had the joy of feeling my legs come back to life over time.
Jamie: Yeah. Well, how was breastfeeding for you? Did you always feed your girls too?
Alice: Yeah, I had them both, like three years each, I suppose more. Yeah.
Jamie: Impressive.
Alice: I was super committed. But the interesting thing about that is that I thought I knew how to breastfeed because I’d been supermom with the previous two and breastfed them both for like three years. It was never an issue.
With Bo he, he took to it fine but it wasn’t as straightforward. Actually I realized that yes, I, it worked really well with the previous two. It’s like I had to relearn it. Mm-hmm. And maybe he had a, a tongue tie. A small slight tongue tie. I dunno if that played into it. He, in the early first week or so, he kept, he kept losing weight even though he appeared to be having milk all the time.
And we ended up at a and e with him and I ended up giving him some formula top-ups for, just, for a short period of time, just because he was losing weight. Mm-hmm. And then I realized that the formula top-ups were kind of into, I had a friend come around who’s a breastfeeding expert and she sat and went through the whole thing with me. And I just kept saying, I’ve done this before. I did it for like, combined six years. We never had an issue. Why am I having issues now? But I just was different child. I’m a different mother, I’m older. And but I stopped the formula and I just sat and I breastfed and I breastfed and I breastfed and it. It eventually kind of kicked in and mm-hmm. Yeah. It, did what it was meant to do, but it was, again, a little bit nerve wracking.
Jamie: Yeah. So you’re still breastfeeding him now? Yes.
Alice: Yeah. Do
Jamie: you plan to go three years again?
Alice: I don’t know. I, I don’t really plan to stop it until such time as it, it stops naturally, I suppose. I know with my girls it was a big comfort thing as well. Mm-hmm. But to, and I don’t think he uses it so much for comfort. I think with, you know, with my girls, for example, if they’d fall over, I needed to cuddle. The first thing they’d wanna do is also get the boob out. Whereas when he’s had stuff similar or, something set him, he, he doesn’t seem to want to do that.
So if he’s. Using it for comfort and it’s just for food, then that might affect how long we go for. I mean he is eating food now but still having, you know, quite often breastfeed. So, I dunno, I’m, I’m open to things being different this time. And plus it is, he’s been quite poorly this past couple of weeks and I did, you start feeling a bit like a life support system and I started to feel like incredibly drained by it in a way that I hadn’t and I think, again, it’s my age showing up differently and perhaps so that could, my age could affect when we stop as well. Yeah. Or how, I feel now might not be how I feel in a year’s time. I might be, I might actually be menopausal by that point. Yeah. Which may have, you know, may have an effect as well.
Jamie: That’s interesting. I wonder what menopause has an effect on like breast milk and stuff in breastfeeding?
Alice: I dunno, it’s, it’s an interesting question. Yeah. It’s something I should probably go find out about. ’cause even if I’m not menopausal, I’m, I must be perimenopausal now. You know, I’m 45, so I’m sure I’m in that pre phase uhhuh.
So there’s only so much hormones going around and I do feel like my body is in a lot, you know? Mm-hmm. For a woman of 45. So it may be that I don’t go for as long.
Jamie: Yeah. Well, how was your recovery from the C-section?
Alice: I feel like that was the easier recovery of all three
Jamie: really?
Alice: I feel like. Mm. Yeah. I was expecting it to be really horrendous and it, I, for me, it, I didn’t think it was there was, it felt a bit painful, but not massive, not massively painful. Mm-hmm. It just a bit awkward, if you move in the, it could feel sometimes a bit took like a tug and, and I was tired. And sometimes I’d push myself a bit too hard and get emotional. But I think in terms of my mental state, it felt, I remember after the two girls feeling kind of very soggy, foggy headed for quite a while. Mm-hmm. I dunno why that is, but I didn’t feel the same way. With this one. I just felt like I had this, this injury and that, that needed to heal up. And it did.
And, and I guess it took a little while to regroup in terms of it’s like only in the past couple of months I’ve started doing exercises. Mm-hmm. And it took a little while to feel stronger doing that, but I think, yeah, it hasn’t. I feel like slightly it was better.
Jamie: Wow, that’s surprising. Yeah. Now what, what about mentally? You said you were foggy with your two girls mentally. Did you feel any postpartum depression or anything like that?
Alice: I think I’ve been quite lucky with all of them that I don’t think I’ve had postpartum depression. I’d say I’ve had postpartum intensity. And I, yeah, probably like a bit more intense, a bit more peaked emotions about things.
Mm-hmm. Definitely. But I wouldn’t say depression. No. I think that’s something that for whatever reason I’ve just been lucky to escape. And I think I dunno if I’d be right to say this ’cause everybody I. I don’t know if it’s something worth doing, but I just feel like I’ve just, whenever I’ve had my kids, I just give myself entire, I just really surrender and just go into that you know, the intensity of a newborn.
Mm-hmm. And kind of sit with that and don’t fight it. I don’t try and fight it because I think if I was to try and fight it or to try and get back to what things were like before then that would send me mad.
Jamie: Do you have any plans to have a force?
Alice: No. It’s never come up in the pendulum. Do you know what is weird though? Is, has gone No, it has gone through my head like. You could have one more, but I, I really do think I will not. Mm-hmm. Just for many reasons in that, you know, we don’t even have a bedroom for the for the one that we currently, we have one bedroom short, so he’s in our room. That’s fine for the time being. I’m quite happy with that. But yeah, it would just be, and also the, the, how could I, I feel like I’d be diluting my energies far too much for the children who now already exists. Like, because I’ve got the two older ones. They, they do look after themselves a little bit, but then I’d be diluting my attention for him and he really needs me. And I am older. I don’t know that I would have it in me, actually. I’m sure I’d find it perhaps best not. Why.
Jamie: What has been your biggest challenge being pregnant in your forties?
Alice: Just how exhausting it was. I guess I already had children, so I knew of the intensity of that. Mm-hmm. So it’s, I think it would be a challenging thing to have your first child in your forties having always lived a life without having a child. So, but also a pleasure. ’cause I do think it, you know, if you want it, then it’s a pleasure. But yeah. And, and again, the, the difficulties of people, it upset me quite a few times in early pregnancy when you tell people you’re pregnant and they’re the same sort of age as you, and perhaps their children are grown even. Mm-hmm. And you get these kind of negative comments that it just feels really intrusive. I don’t really care what their opinion is, but it’s just, I hate the intrusiveness of people feeling that they can pass off a comment even if it’s supposed to be a joke. It’s not funny, you know? Yes. So that was, that was disheartening.
Mm-hmm.
Jamie: Is there anything you’d recommend that would help prepare someone for pregnancy and birth over 40?
Alice: I think anything that you can do to bring yourself into alignment with who you are and confidence within your own decisions. Mm-hmm. So that might be thinking about, I dunno, going to therapy or doing work on yourself, reading the self-help books, finding your own faith, having your own spirituality.
I think all of those things that help you center within who you, within yourself have been the things that have been most helpful to me. Mm-hmm. So I think if you’re grown and you’ve grown with your own life, then it just helps you welcome this new part of life in.
Jamie: Yeah. I love that. What advice would you give yourself when you’re pregnant if you could go back?
Alice: I dunno whether if I’d give myself an air, I think I just wanna say, you know, it’s all gonna be okay. Mm-hmm. I feel like obvi with my first baby, I, I knew everything was gonna be okay. I had like, that, I had this super silly confidence of youth. And with the second baby, even though that got really stressful and scary, I knew it would be okay, but I think not so much with the third one.
There was a lot of fear in me with the third one. Mm-hmm. Which some of it is the stuff that gets projected on you because of your age. But I think I would just wanna tell myself that, that it was gonna be okay and that, you’ve got this, those kind of. Positive affirmations.
Jamie: Yeah, that’s good. Now a lot of our listeners are trying to conceive, what advice do you have for those women?
Alice: Well, I definitely say that give acupuncture world. Yeah. And I think, again, a lot of my work is, is in the spiritual realms, the sacred realms, the realms of self-discovery. I think anything that you can do at any point in life to, to look further into who you are, to align with the truths of yourself, to release anything that’s no longer serving you, that’s toxic.
The masks that we wear as women mm-hmm. Where we’re trying to fit in, whether it’s with work, with partners, with family, I think all of those things really dilute us and spread us too thin and put us in different directions. And actually, just coming back to a whole idea of who you are, is gonna be beneficial? Not necessarily. I mean, maybe it’s, maybe it’s conceiving. I don’t know. I’m not a doctor, but I just think anything that brings you into a full alignment with yourself has gotta be a powerhouse in terms of helping you approach that pathway to trying to conceive as well.
Jamie: Mm-hmm. That’s perfect. Now, you mentioned you wrote a book during your third pregnancy.
Alice: I did.
Jamie: What inspired that? Tell us more.
Alice: I wrote this book, it was called Soulful Pregnancy. Mm-hmm. And it’s week by week journey through pregnancy. So within that you get a little bit of reflection of what, where I was at with each week, but also a general theme. So there’d be themes about like.
Connecting to the wisdom of your ancestors or other people’s, how to deal with other people’s opinions or how to be physically within your body. So what I wanted to provide for people and for myself really was a kind of touchstone to something that’s looking at pregnancy as a place where a woman can grow and become more herself in preparation of becoming a mother.
Mm-hmm. Or becoming a mother again. ‘Cause I think I felt I really needed that. I really needed to go back to basics and really think, okay, so pregnancy is almost like a, this unique vision quest. This magical space out of time where you’re doing it, your body’s doing this most incredible thing. And it can be disconcerting and scary and, and miraculous and wonderful at the same time. And I just feel like there’s a huge amount of. Energy there to be explored from a spiritual and creative perspective. And that will help the pregnant person to really get to know herself and to get to know where her intuition is and what her intuition feels like and sounds like, and how she’s going to then take that forward into the next big adventure, which is being a mother to this particular child. So the book really is an adventure that anybody can follow. So with different themes every week and a different creative practice, a different soulful practice and affirmation and a meditation to work with week by week as you move through your pregnancy. Mm-hmm. So a little bit different from the normal pregnancy books, which might be more like physically based as, as in what’s going on with your body and how big is your baby? Is it a cabbage or is it a avocado? You Yeah. Something a little bit different from that. That’s a bit more. Internal and sacred really.
Jamie: Yeah. That’s what I really appreciated about it. I do love that it’s by week, but I think I also started off with eight weeks and it’s, it asked you about your high school self and I was like, oh wow. I have so much to tell her. It really kind of puts you to that deeper level. I really liked that.
Alice: Yeah. I think it’s a, pregnancy is a bit of an initiation and I think as women, as a culture, we’ve lost those initiations that perhaps we would’ve had in the past. Mm-hmm. And if you have 40 weeks that is a set space in time where you’re doing this incredible thing within you, then why not also absorb that through your own understandings and, and come out maybe a little bit different, a little bit changed, a little bit more Ready, hopefully. Mm-hmm.
Jamie: Yeah, I love that. Where can our listeners find your book at?
Alice: They should be able to find it at all kinds of places. It’s released on the 21st of June, so I think it’d be out in the world by now. So in, in the US it’s distributed by Red, red Wheel Visor. I can get it from Amazon, get it from any bookstore. Should be able to order it in or get hold of a copy in most, most places. And it’s published, it’s published by Woman Craft Publishing. They also send them out.
Jamie: Awesome. Would you like to share your Instagram account in the social media stuff?
Alice: Yes. It’s Alice Grist. I can’t help but notice that my name down the bottom of this says Alpha Males. Does. That’s my daughter’s again, so I don’t know if I can change that, but it’s Alice Gris, it’s A-L-I-C-E-G-R-I-S-T not Alpha males.
Yeah, that’s, that’s where you’ll find me over on Instagram.
Jamie: Perfect. Well, Alice, thank you so much for sharing your story with us.
Alice: Oh, thank you for having me.