This episode contains open discussion about bulimia, disordered
eating, body image, pregnancy loss, postpartum haemorrhage, and
health anxiety. Please take care if any of these are sensitive
topics for you.
Jess sits down with Meg Mansell, beloved New Zealand radio
personality from The Edge, mother of two, and as it turns out,
Jess's new best friend, for one of the most wide-ranging, raw,
and genuinely hilarious conversations The Cyclist has had. They
were meant to talk about birth. They talked about everything.
Meg opens up about growing up as a dancer, deeply aware of her
body from a very young age, watching the way the world responded
to her beautiful mother, feeling the pressure to look the same
way, and realising quickly that she hadn't inherited her mum's
body. What followed were years of hyperawareness, comparison, and
eventually bulimia from around 15 or 16. She speaks honestly
about what it's like to carry 36 years of that conditioning while
trying to raise daughters differently, telling Daisy her tummy is
her favourite part of herself because it made her and her sister,
while sitting quietly with the word fraud flashing in her own
head.
Then there's Miller's pregnancy, a story that barely exists in
the public conversation around pregnancy because it sits in that
rare and terrifying 1%. At 14 weeks, Meg woke up covered in
blood. She drove herself to hospital alone at 1am while Guy
stayed home with Daisy. Blood tests came back showing a dramatic
drop in hCG. She and Guy sat in hospital for eight hours grieving
a baby they were told they'd lost, making quiet decisions about
whether they'd even try again, before a scan revealed a
heartbeat. The results had been mixed up with her previous
pregnancy. What followed was daily bleeding until 23 weeks,
repeated hospital admissions, and a day-by-day pregnancy that
somehow made it to 37 weeks.
Miller's birth was its own story entirely. An induced labour, a
30-minute window from five centimetres to birth with no epidural
after the anaesthetist couldn't reach her in time, a postpartum
haemorrhage of 2.1 litres, emergency surgery, and, in a moment
Meg still can't fully explain, convincing the nurses not to tell
Guy she was okay so she could roll in and surprise him herself.
She has apologised profusely.
They also get into health anxiety, something both Meg and Jess
share deeply and personally. Meg describes the particular brand
that keeps her awake at night: the constant, exhausting fear that
she will miss something and her children will die. The 1am
checks. The spiral from a cough to meningococcal. The dog with a
bump the vet said was a bug bite that turned out to be cancer.
The way being right once makes it impossible to ever believe you
might be wrong.
And then Hashimoto's, the autoimmune thyroid condition Meg was
eventually diagnosed with after months of blaming herself for her
own exhaustion, bone aches, and weight changes. A female doctor
who pushed for bloods. A 9am phone call the next morning asking
her to come in. Antibodies hundreds of times above normal range.
Want to try Go Mama? Shop here! https://gomamamaternity.co.nz
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Hit play. And maybe clear your afternoon.
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