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The Imperfects

Bron Lewis - Is It Me or Postnatal Anxiety?

15 Feb 2026

Transcription

Chapter 1: What is discussed at the start of this section?

0.031 - 3.454 Hugh van Cuylenburg

Ron Lewis, we are so happy to have you here.

0

3.474 - 25.573 Bron Lewis

I was like walking the streets with my newborn and she was just screaming into my chest. In this walk I was just getting angrier and angrier because no one warned me. And I saw this pregnant woman sitting at a bus stop, screamed, this is really f***ing hard. And she said, I'm not pregnant, which wasn't great. Now Ari was born. I get home with him and everything's great.

0

26.434 - 35.794 Bron Lewis

And then on day three, he didn't wake up. And my mum was there and she, like, lifted up one of his eyelids and his eye rolled back.

0

35.814 - 36.415 Unknown

Oh, my God.

0

36.435 - 59.147 Bron Lewis

And she said, you just need to go to the hospital right now. Hands down the worst week of my entire life. I made up 10 million deals with the devil when I was in there. It's like, if you get us out of here and he wakes up, I will get off social media. I will play hide and seek with the kids every day. I went to the doctor and I expected it to be really quick.

59.127 - 92.664 Bron Lewis

Do you think that you are a good mother? And that just ripped the lid off my biggest fear. And I said, no. And she said, well, let me tell you that you are. where you're going through something harder than it needs to be, because you've got postnatal anxiety, and it's very clear to me, and it doesn't have to be this hard.

96.612 - 99.799 Ryan Shelton

This is the Vulnerability House.

101.753 - 110.868 Hugh van Cuylenburg

It's so nice to be in a vulnerability house with someone who could actually, now I'm just thinking about it, Ryan, if you and I got together and we decided to have a child, this could be our child.

111.428 - 115.795 Ryan Shelton

Wow. Wow, what makes you say that? We look exactly the same, all three of us.

Chapter 2: What happened on day three with Bron's newborn?

115.916 - 123.728 Ryan Shelton

I don't know. I mean, I want to say I know what you mean to be supportive, but I actually don't know what you mean.

0

124.163 - 130.352 Hugh van Cuylenburg

You're a comedian, I'm a teacher. Sitting in front of us, we have a teacher turned comedian.

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130.693 - 133.036 Ryan Shelton

Now I can genuinely say I know what you mean.

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133.076 - 138.725 Hugh van Cuylenburg

Yeah. It doesn't quite make sense though because just two parents don't have a child that has a combination of their jobs.

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138.805 - 141.549 Bron Lewis

Don't poke holes in it. It was your idea.

141.569 - 149.721 Ryan Shelton

Yeah, exactly. And also I did, I guess in my defence, I thought you meant from like a physical point of view and I was like that's really unfair on Bron.

149.741 - 149.901

LAUGHTER

Chapter 3: How does Bron describe her worst week as a mother?

150.353 - 154.537 Bron Lewis

I don't have glasses, guys. That's the only thing you guys have in common. That's true. And I don't have them.

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154.958 - 155.378 Ryan Shelton

That's true.

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155.678 - 166.329 Bron Lewis

No, you're right. I am an ex-teacher and I am now a comedian. So yes, if you guys were to manipulate science somehow and have a baby together, yes, I would be it.

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166.71 - 172.075 Hugh van Cuylenburg

We could have a great hangout where we talk about teaching, you talk about comedy and we just like take it in turns to do that.

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172.195 - 174.898 Bron Lewis

And I call you both dad. Is that what we want?

174.958 - 182.9 Ryan Shelton

Let's try that. I mean, this is the perfect opportunity to try. Can you actually call me dad? Okay, dad.

182.94 - 184.001 Bron Lewis

Oh, my God.

Chapter 4: What realization does Bron have about asking for help?

184.041 - 184.842 Bron Lewis

How did that feel?

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185.263 - 185.844 Ryan Shelton

It feels good.

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185.884 - 186.685 Bron Lewis

Thanks for having me, dad.

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188.847 - 190.089 Ryan Shelton

Genuinely feels great.

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190.109 - 197.138 Bron Lewis

Oh, good. Wow. This is the episode where we've changed your mind on whether having kids or not. Yeah. You could have a 39-year-old woman.

198.039 - 200.723 Ryan Shelton

If I could get a Bron Lewis, I would do it in a second.

201.023 - 201.083

Oh.

203.324 - 228.876 Hugh van Cuylenburg

uh okay so so for those of you who don't know uh bron lewis so as we just mentioned having been a high school teacher for over a decade and now a mother of three bron lewis believes that she is incapable of feeling shame co-winner of the national raw comedy competition in 2022 bron stormed the comedy scene with her show probably it's a wonderful name by the way and was nominated for the melbourne international comedy festival best newcomer in 2023

229.177 - 250.078 Hugh van Cuylenburg

Bron was a writer on The Project and is a regular panelist on Thank God You're Here. Bron is also the co-host of three podcasts, Good Shielders, Work Hates, and Your Two Drunk Aunties. This year, Bron will be appearing with Ursula Carlson in Ursula's new comedy sketch show, as well as touring her own new comedy show, Chaos, around Australia and New Zealand.

Chapter 5: What challenges did Bron face after her son was born?

3195.933 - 3223.873 Bron Lewis

Yeah. But I didn't necessarily believe her. But I needed to hear it because it was the scariest thing, the other option. And then the medication helped so much. And everything seemed to get a bit better. I stopped going to CrossFit, not immediately, but eventually I stopped going to CrossFit. I stopped feeling. Everything slowed down. The lights dimmed. The sound went down.

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3223.914 - 3244.608 Bron Lewis

Life started to feel good again. And I was like, oh, okay, yeah, good. I'm enjoying this. I'm finally enjoying being a mum. Okay, yeah, I got this. It's easy. So you were enjoying it then? Yeah. Wow. And then COVID happened and I'd just taken long service leave from teaching because I'd started stand-up.

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3244.628 - 3249.216 Ryan Shelton

So this is obviously 2020. Yep. So how old was Olive?

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3249.276 - 3252 Bron Lewis

So Olive would now be five. So she'd just done prep.

0

Chapter 6: How did Bron's mental health impact her experience with motherhood?

3252.02 - 3252.221 Ryan Shelton

Yep.

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3252.581 - 3270.578 Bron Lewis

And I was like, okay. A lot of time at home with the kids. This will be nice. And I loved it. I know that a lot of people had some pretty tough times during COVID. Lockdown wasn't nice for a lot of people. For me and my family, it was really nice because we had no option of rushing. There was no running. It was really slow and it was time.

0

3270.638 - 3300.594 Bron Lewis

And I had a huge backlog of forgiveness and slow times with my kids to try to kind of sink into. And so I was really loving it to the point where I said to Lucas, we could have one more. We could have one more baby. And I didn't expect it. He was like, yeah, great, let's do it. Let's have another baby. And I have a joke in my comedy where I say I thought two was plenty. I thought two was heaps.

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3300.714 - 3323.232 Bron Lewis

Two was enough. We thought two was going to be exactly what we needed. Two was enough. And then we had our son, lovely little boy. His name's Ari. He's four now. When we had him. We realised two was enough actually. Two was actually plenty and we've stuffed it. But obviously it's a joke. But we had him.

0

Chapter 7: What happened during the hospital visit with her newborn?

3323.272 - 3342.412 Bron Lewis

We moved to Brisbane. We thought it would be nice to have lots of family around. We thought what is it like to have a baby with family around because we've never – Lucas' family is in Brisbane. My family is in Canberra. We've done everything in Melbourne. And I thought if I'd never asked for help with the girls – If there's help just right there with family, great.

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3342.513 - 3361.08 Bron Lewis

I could potentially enjoy having a baby. I've never experienced that. So we went to Brisbane and we had him. And during that pregnancy, I remember being terrified that the noise would come back. And I remember saying to Lucas, I think I'm going to go mad again.

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3361.12 - 3363.323 Ryan Shelton

When you say the noise, you mean the crying and the?

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3363.337 - 3369.846 Bron Lewis

No, the crying, I meant the noise of like hearing lights and hearing the kettle.

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3370.026 - 3370.927 Hugh van Cuylenburg

Extreme sensitivity. Yes.

3371.408 - 3396.462 Bron Lewis

So the chaos, it was just the volume was going to go right up again and I'd be able to feel like the sun would burn my skin on a 20-degree day, you know. I was nervous that that was going to come back, the anxiety was going to come back. So I said to Lucas, I'm actually terrified I'm going to go mad again because that's what it felt like. I felt mad. And he said, no, we know all the flags.

3396.662 - 3402.389 Bron Lewis

As soon as something feels like that, we know medicine helped. We'll just do that. What was the medicine? Lexapro.

3402.47 - 3404.232 Ryan Shelton

Oh, Lexapro, okay. It was an antidepressant.

3404.372 - 3426.637 Bron Lewis

Yeah. And I said, okay, all right, all right. You all confident? I'll be confident as well. And at the 20-week scan with Ari, the sonographer said, oh, his head's quite huge. I was like, thought it was funny. I was like, yeah, it's a big head. I think that's big for heads in my family. That's fine. They said, okay, we'll just keep an eye on it.

Chapter 8: How did Bron find healing after her traumatic experience?

3459.493 - 3483.053 Bron Lewis

I said, oh, his head's big, but they're not worried. I'm not worried. And he's like, okay. And he's Polish. He loves where it's his favourite pastime. Yeah. And so then the 34-week one, they were like, okay, so his head's measuring at 42 weeks old. Like he's really big and his body's normal. Yeah. And I was like, okay, well, what does that mean?

0

3483.073 - 3501.1 Bron Lewis

They said, we're just going to do a – we're going to do like an MRI. So whilst I was pregnant with him, I had to do a – and they were like, look, there's some fluid on the brain. We don't know what it is. We just have to wait for him to be born and to see. And I got back from that appointment. I said, everything's fine.

0

3501.2 - 3522.575 Bron Lewis

They said it's totally fine because I did not need his worry because that would make me stress. And I knew that the only thing for me to be worried about was the noise coming back. Now, Ari was born. I had to induce him two weeks early because his head was so big. I don't know why they didn't do a caesarean. I'm not criticising them. I've never been a midwife. I'm not an obstetrician.

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3522.595 - 3543.225 Bron Lewis

I don't understand. It's really easy to be like, well, I don't know why we insisted on a natural birth, whatever anyone wants to call it, but they did and he was born. It was horrific labour. He was born... And I just wanted to go home. It was COVID, so no visitors were allowed. I wanted to introduce my girls to their new brother.

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3543.245 - 3550.357 Bron Lewis

So within like, I don't know, six or seven hours of him being born, I was home. I was like, bye, I don't want to be here. Bye.

3550.757 - 3551.639 Ryan Shelton

Is that fast?

3551.879 - 3574.206 Bron Lewis

That's fast, yes. Yeah, some people, like usually it's one night. You stay at least a night. You stay at least 24 hours. But I was like, I need to get out of here. I felt like it just had an awful time. So I get home with him and everything's great. I'm like, I'm not pregnant anymore. There's no noise. He's fine. He's sleeping. The girls are happy. I've done it.

3574.647 - 3576.452 Ryan Shelton

So he was healthy when he was born?

3576.673 - 3577.836 Bron Lewis

They're like, yeah, he seems fine.

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