Anya Hayes is a health and wellbeing writer and speaker, and Pilates teacher specialising in pregnancy and post-natal. She is also the author of four books: My Pilates Guru, A Little Course in Pilates Pregnancy, The Naked Truth and her latest book, The Supermum Myth: Overcome anxiety, ditch guilt and embrace imperfection. On her blog - Mothers’ Wellness Toolkit - Anya shares her parenting journey, inspiration and loads of great tools on how to navigate the challenges of motherhood - check it out here motherswellnesstoolkit.wordpress.com and her Instagram, @mothers.wellness.toolkit. I really enjoyed our chat, Anya and I could have chatted for hours – there was so much I wanted to talk to her about. She’s hugely inspiration and down to earth at the same time. I think we’ll definitely be recording another episode soon. What we cover in the episode: - The danger of expectations for both birth and motherhood - 3 simple tools for staying calm during a toddler meltdown - Control - why we crave it and what happens we lose it - Listening to our instincts and not giving our power away - Technology and social media - how to manage it mindfully I came away from my chat with Anya with an even deeper appreciation of how challenging motherhood, and in particular, early motherhood is. It reaffirmed to me the importance of having tools in our toolkit to enable us to really enjoy those early days and the journey rather than being in survival mode all the time. I really hope you enjoy our chat and if you did please leave a review on iTunes and join in the conversation on Instagram @motherkind.co. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices