GIVING PARENTS A VOICE
A hit podcast allows this mum-of-two to reveal her own motherhood journey as well as getting advice from some of Ireland’s most famous faces
Rebecca Horan is no stranger to the perils of parenting. With two young daughters – Ghia, 6, and two-yearold Simone – she enjoys the joyous times that being a mother can bring, but she has faced her fair share of adversity too.
She and her husband Jason suffered a number of miscarriages after Ghia was born and Rebecca then suffered a near-death ectopic pregnancy before Simone arrived. The struggles she endured when it came to conceiving Simone ensure she knows how lucky she is to have her – but that doesn’t negate the struggles of parenting.
While still knee deep in nappies with Simone, with Ghia in primary school, Rebecca works full-time running the commercial studio for DMG Media Ireland and can be heard on radio and seen on TV weekly too, so how does she manage it all?
‘With great difficulty,’ she laughs. ‘I call in favours from the best grannies a woman could ask for and I have a community of women who support each other, a devoted dad for a husband and a dollop of dark humour to soften the trickier of days, of which there are many.’
Rebecca has combined her mothering and broadcasting skills to front the hit parenting and family podcast, A Little Birdie Told Me, which returns for its fourth season on Thursday, 18 January.
Last season – which topped the Apple parenting charts both here and abroad for a number of weeks – she discussed all manner of things with Ireland’s celebrity mums, but predominantly covered the topic of fertility, infertility, surrogacy, pregnancy loss and IVF.
‘I was so lucky that the likes of Lucy Kennedy, Georgie Crawford, Paula MacSweeney, Stefanie Preissner and Courtney Smith among so many others spoke so eloquently to me about the challenges that face working mothers,’ she says. ‘One downside of that is that I definitely feel the pressure to return with even more heartfelt stories and especially ones that people need and want to hear.’
So for the upcoming series, the mum-of-two really wanted to dig deep when it came to parenting. She wanted to get brutally honest when it comes to marriage after babies, climbing the career ladder when time is now limited, financial strains, the ever talked about and hardly ever achieved balance and how most families are ‘in the trenches’, so to speak, in particular for the first five years of a child’s life.
She has spoken to some really notable parents about how they make it all work. ‘TV chef and author Donal Skehan talked to me about his frenetically busy schedule and parenting two even busier young boys,’ she says. ‘Donal was travelling in America at the time of the recording, promoting his new book Home Kitchen.
‘He told me about his lifechanging move from LA back to Dublin to put down solid roots with his wife Sofie, and he discussed the challenges families face when it comes to making decisions that are hard at the time but will benefit
everyone down the line and how he manages, with great difficulty, to split his time with his two great passions – work and his family.’
Rebecca also got up close and personal with author, podcaster and mum-of-one Caroline Foran. ‘She is very open on her Instagram page about her day-to-day challenges with her highly sensitive toddler son Caelan,’ says Rebecca. ‘She outlined what worked for her and how she keeps the noise at bay when it comes to the court of public opinion and trolling online. There wasn’t a dry eye in the studio when she shared a beautiful poem she had penned about the chaos and fragility of motherhood.’
Presenter Glenda Gilson was another famous face who brought lots of energy and passion into the studio when she spoke about her two young sons. ‘She was keen to impress that she doesn’t take the whole thing too seriously,’ says Rebecca. ‘She also said that, for her, keeping a toe in the showbusiness world was as important for her family’s security as it is for her sanity. She spoke about how she and her husband Rob share the parenting duties 50/50, as it should be.’
Another guest, Barbara Scully, has already raised her family and comes to parenting with a very different perspective. The journalist and author has three adult daughters – Carla who resides in Australia and Mia and Roisin, who live in Dublin. ‘Barbara spoke with great frankness and authenticity about the struggles she faced raising her eldest daughter on her own in 1980s Ireland, when it was still very much a taboo at the time,’ says Rebecca. ‘She then went on to meet her husband, photographer Paul Sherwood, and raise their family, which she says is the biggest success of her life.’
From that end of the scale to the other, another guest is PR guru Hannah Saunders, who spoke to Rebecca when she was nine months pregnant with her first baby. ‘She
discussed in detail the imminent birth of her son and was full of optimism and enthusiasm for labour and the busy years ahead,’ recalls Rebecca.
‘Hannah met her husband when they were only 15 on a family holiday in Portugal and decades on the couple are still as in love as ever. Hannah also explained that her bespoke PR firm was going nowhere and insisted that despite her new role she wouldn’t be downing tools any time soon, particularly after growing the booming boutique business in recent years.’
‘I CALL IN FAVOURS FROM THE BEST GRANNIES’
Listen to the latest season of A Little Birdie Told Me, a Rollerocaster.ie podcast, from Thursday, 18 January, wherever you get your podcasts