Matrescence Unfiltered is LIVE, a new podcast exploring motherhood, career, identity and ambition. ✨
We made this for the woman who loves her career and may be dreaming of becoming a mum, expecting, or already raising little ones. For the woman who couldn't find content that spoke to both motherhood and ambition at once.
We're Bianca and Rose. A Chief Marketing Officer in her third trimester and a coach, consultant and organisational psychology researcher specialising in matrescence and sustainable high performance.
We've been friends since we were teenagers, the first of the great neurological shifts of a woman's life, as it happens.
Matrescence is the transition into motherhood. It is as neurologically significant as adolescence. And it is almost entirely absent from the professional conversation. That's what this podcast is about.
💡 Motherhood isn't a hindrance to your career, it's a accelerator. Research proves it's a neurological upgrade. 💡
Each episode, we take one thing about motherhood and work that doesn't hold up under scrutiny and break it down properly. Research, lived experience, and honest conversation about what it actually means when your identity is shifting in the middle of everything else.
If this helps even one woman feel a little less conflicted and a little less alone, it will have been worth every second.
Maternity “Leave”: Your Questions, Answered From the Trenches
Part 3: What do you do when the pay rise you were promised quietly disappears after mat leave, or your manager makes a second pregnancy feel like an inconvenience?
We asked for your maternity leave questions and you didn't hold back. Loneliness, guilt, night feeds and careers that seem to be moving on without you. These are the things women are thinking about at 3am and rarely say out loud at work.
In the final part of our maternity leave series, Rose brings the research and Bianca reports live from five months of maternity service, with Raphael on her lap as this week's co-host.
We talk about loneliness at eight months when the messages dry up, why a three-month-old has no interest in your schedule, how to go back and ask for the pay rise you were promised, and what to do when your partner gets the lie-ins and you get the guilt. We also look at what managers get wrong when they joke about pregnancy, and why so many women stay quiet about it.
Plus: Bianca's first keeping in touch day, why she came home recharged, and two news updates. There's a petition calling for 90% maternity pay for the first 12 weeks, and the Maternity Commissioner's work is set to be written into law.
That's a wrap on our maternity leave series. Keep your questions coming to @matrescenceunfiltered
23 Sept 2026
Maternity “Leave”: The Business Case for Looking After Mothers
Part 2: What if looking after mothers wasn’t just the right thing to do, but one of the smartest investments a business can make?
Deloitte estimates that every £1 spent on mental wellbeing can return £4.70. Yet when the wellbeing in question belongs to a new mother, the conversation often stops being about investment and starts being about inconvenience.
In part two of our maternity leave series, Rose brings the research and Bianca reports live from four months of what she’s increasingly calling maternity service: the invisible work of recovering, caring, adapting and becoming someone new.
We look at maternal mental health before crisis, why women shouldn’t have to reach breaking point before they qualify for support, and the evidence linking longer, paid maternity leave with better maternal mental health. We also get into the economics of burnout, the £118bn annual cost, and why supporting mothers makes commercial sense long after they return to work.
Plus: Rose’s MSc distinction, her new Gigi return-to-work support groups, and Bianca on why “rest” means something very different when you have a baby who doesn’t believe in weekends.
This is part two of three. Next week, we’re answering your questions about maternity leave. Send yours to @matrescenceunfiltered or hello@matrescenceunfiltered.com (mailto:hello@matrescenceunfiltered.com).
Join the Gigi pilot: https://gigitheadvantage.com/#pilot (https://gigitheadvantage.com/#pilot)
20 Sept 2026
Maternity “Leave”? The Research, Reality & Things That Actually Help
Four months into maternity leave, Bianca and Rose get properly into the reality of being home with a baby: the loneliness, the loss of structure, baby groups, the strange pressure to be grateful for every second, and why getting out of the house every single day became Bianca’s non-negotiable.
We talk about the things that genuinely help, from finding your people to creating tiny pockets of normality, and why “someone brought me a coffee” is not quite the same thing as feeling supported. Bianca shares what surprised her most, including the unexpected ways maternity leave can resemble lockdown, while Rose brings the research on connection, perinatal mental health and what actually makes support useful.
And then there’s the bigger question: if we know that the first months of motherhood can be psychologically and socially transformative, why is so much of the infrastructure around new mums still basically “good luck, see you in six weeks”?
This is not a guide to doing maternity leave correctly, but a conversation about what might help you feel like you while you become someone new.
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